"About the Circus." Michael blurted out. "You seem like you know something about it."

"I want to know what it is. Is it just a normal Circus?" Michael's voice was like some kind of deep baritone singer. It was his normal voice of course, but on a small, thin kid, the effect was somewhat off-putting, except for his family.

Sometimes, Shawn would catch a puzzled look when Michael spoke. But Shawn never caught that glance from Anthony nor Tiffany.

OOC: Shawn Chooses:

If Shawn decides to lie to Michael, then Shawn Rolls Manipulation + Empathy + Striking Looks + Specialization(+1) vs. Michael's dice pool of 4

OR

Shawn Tells the truth: No roll required

Shawn considered his answer, and what sort he could give Michael. In the end, he settled for truthful, but hopefully vague enough he wouldn't put himself in danger or undermine him with the other kids. "I...think that circus is weird...I have a really bad feeling about what might happen if we go, you know? It just seems like something we shouldn't do."

"One Circus." He calculated, transmitting the words to Shawn, face a deadpan glare.

"It will be here next week. One week. Seven days from now."

Michael said in a neutral tone.

"Some people said that Safety was weird." Michael told Shawn, jarring his memory that that was where Michael had spent some time as a delinquent.

"Is the Circus like Safety? Because everything was better in Safety. In Safety, you had rules and everyone knew where kids were. There were rules for getting up. Rules for sitting down. Rules for bed time. There were rules for what time to eat and what you could wear."

Shawn took a moment to think of how to phrase his answer. Fortunately, he was getting kind of used to talking to Michael, and the other boy didn't seem to notice if he took a little longer to answer. "I don't know if the circuses have rules. Or if there are, they don't tell you what they are, but you get in trouble for breaking them anyway."

"What kind of trouble?" Michael said, as if wondering out loud or to Shawn. It was hard to say.

Shawn chose to interpret it as Michael wondering out loud, so he didn't have to give an answer that might sound suspiciously knowledgeable and/or insane... Hopefully he'd said enough to bring the boy around to his side.

"What do I need to do?" Michael asked, posing the question in a way in which a computer program might require input from a user.

"Who is going to be hurt?" He asked, further interpreting Shawn's statements, or even omissions and drawing a logical endpoint to them.

"In Safety, those where questions that the kids would ask each other. They would ask two questions. The first was 'What do I need to do?', and the second was '"Who is going to be hurt?' So there were two questions. One and then another. One plus one is two." Michael explained his reasoning to Shawn, taking great care to go over the details.

It immediately drew to mind the comments that Shawn used to get on his homework assignments long ago, like 'need to show your work.' Only this time, it was like Michael was showing his work, only verbally.

Shawn took a moment to consider the answer. "I think you need to stay away from the Circus. Because if anyone's going to be hurt, it's the kids who go there."

Michael didn't say anything for a moment. "They get stabbed, don't they?" He asked.

"I had a dream about that. A Clown was chasing me. And he tried to stab me. His name was Mr. Tatters. He had long coat tales, and patches and things like that on his clown uniform. He had 27 patches on his clown uniform."

"I've been thinking about that dream. I did not like that dream."

"I did not like that dream."

Shawn looked at Michael curiously; he hadn't heard of Mr. Tatters before, but he knew the Circus could come to people in their dreams. "How long ago did you have that dream? How'd you get away from the clown?""

"I got away after the Clown killed Tiffany and Anthony. There were Clown rockets falling all around us. I looked up and Tiffany's brains had been smashed open. They were hanging from this tree branch." He pointed upward to show Shawn the branch, voice remaining a calm, monotone.

"I knew in the dream that I had lost everything. Anthony, Tiffany. My Mom. My Dad. My Cousin. That is five people. But in the dream it was everyone and everything." Michael said, explaining the logic that only made sense within a dream.

"Then in the dream, I realized that everything was a Clown. There was no such thing as a peaceful neighborhood. They were all Clowns. Except for you and Bobby. And Delilah. And Ralph. And me. That's five people too. Actually. Ralph was half a Clown. So it was four and half. He was the letter Y, which is sometimes a vowel. So he was sometimes a Clown."

"All of us rounded up all the women and children in the neighborhood who were Clowns. We poured Kerosene over them and set fire to them. Yes we did it. But those women and children Clowns were torturing both you and Bobby and Delilah when you were wounded. They did it with knives."

He switched away from the dream story, to make a practical point.

"When you kill, you don't feel calm. You just feel indifferent. You just become cold."

Then he switched back to the dream story, continuing to answer Shawn's question

"Sometimes in the dream, we would kill people in the neighborhood, Clowns, for no other reason then to test our guns. Like when you, in the dream, were curious to see what the inside of a human being looked like. Or what is inside a smashed head. But there is also the fact that if  you don't kill, then the Clowns will kill you."

"It is a feeling of being sick on blood. Or dreaming on blood. Or like when  you go to the dentist and they give you the gas to get a cavity filled. Only not that gas. Blood gas."

"Then in the dream, often we all would kill out of boredom, or just because we felt like doing it."

"That is how we got away from Mr. Tatters. We killed all the Clowns." 

"That's...a weird dream. No wonder you don't like it." Shawn was a little weirded out by how oddly insightful the dream was. It made him a little uncomfortable.

"Yes." Michael agreed, returning to the terse form of discussion that Shawn remembered was characteristic of the boy

Shawn almost got whiplash from Michael's sudden return to form, but he rolled with it gamely,
 trying to keep to short, actionable phrases. "We should steer clear of the circus."

"Yes." Michael agreed. And then, after a small pause, "Because if we don't, then we will probably have to do bad things. Because if the dream is true, then someone will try to do bad things to us."


There was a long pause as Michael stared blankly at Shawn. His face didn't move. The mask of nothingness.

Then he asked Shawn a question. "Do you think the dream is true? Do you think dreams are true?"

"I think sometimes your mind sees and understands stuff even if you don't realise it, and sometimes that makes into your dreams." Shawn couldn't read Michael's face, but he felt like he understood what he was thinking about by his questions.

"So the dreams are real then." Michael concluded, the droll tone of his voice ending in a way that suggested he wanted affirmation of the statement. It was like a command prompt, waiting for the user, Shawn, to enter something.

"Maybe not literally. But it's probably good evidence. Like, you know how if you want to check if it's going to rain, you look for clouds, and you also feel the humidity?" Shawn was trying to strike a balance, lest Michael have an unrelated dream that would be much more dangerous to apply in the real world.

"So its almost always real." Michael concluded. "Most of the times that there are clouds it rains." Michael reasoned. "Sometimes it does not happen. But most of the time, it does."


He stared blankly at Shawn, blinking his eyes occasionally before coming to his final verdict, based on what Shawn said:

"Most of the time, a dream like that is true." 

"What about overcast days? Lots of those days, it doesn't rain." Shawn kept his tone low and neutral, trying not to overload Michael.

It kept happening. Shawn would say something nuanced, or neutral and then Michael would land on one side or the other. This time was no different. Michael, the entire time responded without any emotion or attachment to his argument. He just spoke like the words written on a stereo instruction manual. Logical. Direct. Devoid of any color.

"A lot of those days is more than one. Because a lot means more than one." Michael informed Shawn.

"But there are a lot of a lot of days when it is cloudy and rains. That means that there are more days for rain. More days when it is cloudy and then it rains." Michael explained.

"That means that there are a lot of dreams that are not true."

"That means also that there are a lot of a lot of dreams that are true."

"That means that a lot of a lot of the time, a dream like the one where we killed people is true."

"A lot of a lot is more than just a lot."

Shawn wasn't exactly the most studious kid, and even if he was, grade school didn't actually cover formal logic, so he didn't really have a good counterargument for what Michael said. "A lot of a lot isn't always, though. A lot of a lot of the time, there's no car when you're crossing the road, but I still look both ways."

"Yes." Michael agreed.

"So we should prepare like the dream is true." Michael proposed. "We should prepare for Mr. Tatters." He reasoned.

"Is that what you mean?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:14, Sat 10 Feb 2018.

"Yes. We should be careful." Shawn was glad that apparently their thoughts had finally met in the middle. Talking with Michael was really hard, but hopefully it would be worth the effort to convince him.

"OK." Michael nodded his head. The two boys began the trek back to catch up with the other kids.


OOC: Shawn Joins Thread

Shawn: "It's Called 'Method Acting'"