Short Story: All That Remains

[strangetomato]

Warnings: violence, death, sexual situations, some language





All That Remains




The night was warm, the air thick.




Though late, there was plenty of sound carrying up from the street below. It was rarely silent in that part of town, and he was grateful for it. The last thing he wanted was to be alone with his thoughts.

Ripp watched as people stumbled from the clubs below, as couples yelled at each other and men fought. It was always the same, and he watched. He watched, but didn't participate.

He reached for his bottle, only to find it empty. Had he really drank it already?

His cigarettes had run out, too. He could call it a night.

He probably should.




Below him, he heard the heavy door at the side of the club open, its rusty hinges like nails on a chalkboard. The sounds of female voices filled the alley.

Maybe he'd go buy another pack, he decided.




He leaned up against the wall, covered the smoke with his hand, and lit it. He took a long drag, closed his eyes and waited.

He heard the click of her heels approaching, but didn't look up until she spoke.

"Got a light?"

"Maybe."

That was all it took.




"So you live here alone?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Nice part of town. Rent must be crazy."

"I get by." She returned his wry smile and continued to look around the room. Seeming satisfied with it, she turned her eyes back to him.

"You in the war?" She gestured toward the patch, which covered his left eye socket. "That where you... got that?" He paused a moment before responding, feeling her eyes move over the many scars on his face. He nodded.

"Something like that."

In a sense, it wasn't even a lie.




"Get up!"

He remembered it like it had happened just that morning.

"Get up, you worthless sack of shit! Get up and face me like a man for once!"

Would it have made a difference if he had? Would Tank have taken it easier on him? Would he have let him go unbroken? Whole? He'd like to believe so, but doubts lingered.

"My eye... Oh God, my eye..." He felt a sickening pain shoot from deep in his eye socket up into his skull and back down his neck. Hot blood where his eye ought to have been. Hollowness.

"Now get the fuck out of here before you lose the other one. Don't think I won't."




"What are you going to do to him?"

"What we have to do. Now get the fuck out of here! You knew you shouldn't have come down here." As if this excused his actions, somehow. "You knew..."




"How about you?" he said, shaking it off with a practised smile. His thoughts had drifted only briefly, but long enough for her to catch him with his guard down, if he let her. He wouldn't.

"What about me?"

"You like it rough, too, huh?" He reached forward and placed his hand on her ribcage, below her left breast. She'd taken great care to cover the bruise with makeup so the patrons of the club wouldn't see, but some had brushed off.

She seized his hand, moving it upwards.

He grinned, moving on her with an empty mind and a ceaseless, animal hunger.




His question, left hanging in the air; her answer, her story, was never given.




"What would he think? If he knew..."

"I can't see how that matters now," she said, without looking up.

"You know, I've wanted this. I've always —"

She silenced him with a kiss. And another. And then another. It was all she'd offered him in response.




"Why are you telling me this?" asked Johnny.

Instead of answering, Ripp continued. There wasn't time to explain. "I'm taking her away from here," he said. "They won't know the difference..."

Johnny stood, silent, his head hanging forward.

"I have to," Ripp said. "It's the only way."

Johnny's nod was barely perceptible. "You'd better go..." They both knew that Tank would kill Ripp this time if he found him there.

"Listen... if you get out of here... If somehow..."

Johnny closed his eyes.

"You can find me. Search around. I'll be in the phonebook. Some stupid name. Say, Oliver Green... Oliver O. Green." In happier times, they might have laughed. "Yeah, that. That will be me. Find me, alright? I'll be waiting."

Again, Johnny nodded, but he didn't smile.

"Listen..." Ripp reached through the bars for Johnny's shoulder, pulling him forward to look into his one gleaming eye. "I'll be there. You know I will. I'll always..."

All the words they'd never said and never would say hung in the silence.




She pulled out a cigarette. "Can I get another light?"

"You smoke a lot," he said. "You should buy a lighter."

"I like having to ask. It's a good opening line."

"I'll bet." He grinned, reaching into the pocket of his jeans to pull out the familiar object. His hand extended, then froze in the air between them. In another room, a sound disturbed them.

"What the hell?" she asked.




And he remembered another time, when he'd first heard that sound. Her face had shown true fear. More fearful than he'd been when Tank had found him. More fearful than Johnny. It was the truest fear there was.

"I tried it, you know." He words seemed to come from somewhere beyond her own body.

He couldn't speak.

"I wanted this. I wanted it to end. Even yesterday, I wanted it." Her grip on his arm tightened, cutting off the circulation. "But now... now that it's happening, I know it's real. I didn't know what it meant, to die. Now that I know, I really know what it is, and it's too late... now I don't want to go."

"Oh God..."

"Take care of him."

"No... " He could barely see her through the tears. He clung to her, hoping beyond reason that she'd be okay. "No, don't!"

"It was real, you know..." Her smile was real, despite the pain. "Us... It was... Oh God, it's coming!"

And what happened next was too horrible to even remember.




"Was that... a baby?" she asked.

He should have stopped her, as she stood up, walked from the room, but he couldn't move. The whole thing had been a bad idea, bringing her up there.




"Phi," he cried. "Oh Phi, Oh God... No..." But there was nobody left to speak to. Then a sound...

Crying.




"Oh my god! It's a —"




"A boy. It's a boy, just like you said, Phi."




"How are you... I thought they died, all... the men who had them." She turned to him, eyes wide, as if looking into the face of a ghost. "But you're alive..."

The statement hung, on the verge of becoming a question.




She thought she saw the briefest movement, an impulse in him to react, before he turned his head and resumed that well-worn smile of his.

"You should go," he said.

---

Notes:

This story was inspired by the Strangetown storyline in the PSP version of Sims 2, which has Johnny locked up in a facility by the Grunts, and Tank's strained relationship with Ripp has degenerated to something much more abusive. It also uses the idea that alien births are fatal to those who carry the hybrids, which I first considered in this post. This grim trait even passes on to the 1/4 alien births, which was something the sims weren't initially sure of. This story does share some minor details with Strangetown, Here We Come, but I won't tell you what those are. You'll have to wait and see.

It seems the more I like a character, the more I want to put them through the wringer. What does that say about me, I wonder? *nervous sweat* Strangetown, Here We Come is not exempt from this tendency, either, just in case you thought it was, but I'll admit that I've redirected some of them from their much unhappier original character trajectory.

Ripp, for example, was originally meant to flunk out of university, live alone in a filthy apartment (just like in this story! :P I'm so creative...), and become a hopeless alcoholic. I did eventually have him lined up to bounce back to a happy(ish) ending in a couple of versions, but there was also one where he dies a horrible death. (Just thought I'd throw that out there for those who think my original intention was for Johnny to end up with Jayne so Ripp/Phi could happen. It wasn't.) Happy times.

And now for some cc notes: The more realistic Maxis-match skins and eyes are by Summerdream Sims (aka the incomparable Neena/Ninika/chokelate, woman of many names and awesome Maxis-match cc), the alien skin is Uranium P32 Space Modulator by bondchick_nett, and I used a number of lots from the Soho project by Rosehill9991 at MTS2. I love them and use them all the time. There are also the usual suspects, like Phobia and Simgaroop for hair, and build/buy mode stuff from GoS. (Lovely, lovely Maxis-match clutter!) Feel free to ask about anything else you see that I haven't mentioned specifically, since I utterly fail at being organized and posting a resources page.

The notes are longer than the story! XD And, with that, I must go... Thanks for reading!

Comments

[robertcarney.livejournal.com]

words cannot describe how incredibly awesome this story is.
its a refreshing break from all the legacies and whatnot that i read.

great job on this! (;

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you! I'm so happy you liked it. ^_^ This was one of those ideas that was floating around in the back of my head for years half-formed and then suddenly come together one day and demand to be written immediately. It was a refreshing change of pace to do something in a completely different style.

[rustyrosesims.livejournal.com]

I mean only the best when I say that this is great! And kinda makes me want to go back on the Sims wiki and learn more about this PSP storyline. But mostly just kind of warm myself by the greatness! Thank you so much for sharing it!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! ^_^ I'm very curious about the PSP storyline, too (and I'd love to play it one day), at least where it concerns the familiar Strangetown characters we all know and love. I've been taking some inspiration from it in S,HWC, but not quite as directly.

[peasant007.livejournal.com]

This was spectacular! I love the CC you used for this and I am also kind of curious about the PSP storyline for Strangetown.

But, most of all, it makes me look forward to seeing S,HWC again seeing as you mentioned that some of the details here are similar to what's going to happen there.

[peasant007.livejournal.com]

BTW, I'm assuming that's Lilith Pleasant, yes?

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. My first draft used Roxie Sharpe, but then I thought Lilith would be more interesting, because she seems more vulnerable overall, and I couldn't resist the wonderful collection of disfunction you get when Ripp and Lilith are in the same room. ;)

This take on Lilith has obviously been through her own version of hell (don't think too much about the maid costume, for example), but I'm going to leave it all to the reader's imagination. She's another character that I often imagine alternate (and often horrific) stories for. Poor girl. She could just as easily go on to be a successful businesswoman in some creative field, I think. She seems to teeter right on that edge.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I owe a lot to the cc-makers, for sure. A lot of the build mode content came from Garden of Shadows (or creators that usually reside there), which really helped with the overall look of grunge and decay. The Garden is my best source of clutter, too, which all came in very handy for Ripp's apartment.

The PSP storyline is interesting and dark and I quite like it. I've been working out ways to use it that don't go quite to the some extreme, like with Vidcund selling Pascal's alien child to further his own research (which makes less sense when he has alien children of his own, for starters). I do like the overall drama these storylines create, but I don't think they give the characters their due. Tank and Vidcund get reduced to pure villains, when I think they're much more complex than that. And I think they're both essentially good people, despite their (many) character flaws.

Thank you. ^_^ Writing this has gotten me excited to write more S,HWC. I'll soon be nearly the part where some of the same (or similar) storylines begin to emerge. I just need to finish of the Veronaville tangent first, and I'm nearly there.

[spyroeldragon.livejournal.com]

That was...
...awesome. Awesomeness in the purest form. 8D

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you. ^_^ I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Wow. I really enjoyed this. Very dark. You don't really go all light and fluffy in your regular story, but this is several steps darker. It seemed like the beginning of some noir movie. :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I suppose you're right about the main story not being all fluff and sunshine, but it does balance the darkness with some humour and its lighter moments, while this version is just unrelenting bleakness. (I suppose I needed to get it out of my system? :P) I also usually say and reveal a lot more in my writing, and I think this is probably stronger for not going into as much detail with all the emotions. It's a bit more subtle, and leaves more to the imagination.

Thanks for reading and commenting. ^_^ I'm really happy to hear you liked it.

[a-gates.livejournal.com]

Very nice!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Glad you liked it. ^_^

[aledstrange.livejournal.com]

That was great. Very dark, but very well done.
Awesome job.

(I've never played with PSP, but heard that the storyline there is much darker, specially about aliens and the Grunts, though didn't know about the alien births being deathly. Interesting...)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad you approve. You know Strangetown like the back of your hand, so if you like it, then I know I must be doing something right. ^_^ Thanks for reading!

The deadly alien births is a separate idea, not from the PSP storyline. I should have made that clearer, I guess. I didn't even get into the details of how messed up Johnny must be because of that (assuming his mother died giving birth to him, and knowing that it would kill Ophelia), but I think there's a lot of potential in that idea. Perhaps I'll revisit it one day.

I love that there are different versions of their story out there. I've always wanted to play the PSP version. I guess I'd need the PSP first (we're a DS sort of family). :P Maybe I can borrow one.

[aledstrange.livejournal.com]

Oooh now I get the part about the babies better. :)
Thanks for explaining that up, I couldn't stop wondering what happened with the Curious in the PSP version then XD (noooo, not obsessed much lol)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I guess in my efforts to avoid over explaining the story, I've managed to under explain it? Nice. Go me! XD

I guess, if the story follows true to that interpretation of alien birth, Pascal and Vidcund would both die. The whole Curious family would also have to be a lot more fanatical about aliens to want to go there. Only Lazlo would remain at this point in time. Here's hoping he hooked up with Crystal and headed for the hills!

[aledstrange.livejournal.com]

No, no at all. :) It was my bad. It was too late at night and think I rushed a bit reading the final notes. I noticed the mention to an older post that explains about the babies after reading the whole thing more calmly.

The baby's very cute, btw. He looks so much like Johnny! <3

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Okay, good. I thought you meant the part about the babies in the story. That's good to know.

Heheh. There's a reason for that. It actually IS Johnny, aged down. I did have Ophelia give birth to a baby (the original was a girl), but then I had Ripp and Ophelia and the baby on a lot, both frozen with the Feezer Clock, and the social worker came. I decided to seed my adoption pool in Elsewhere (my legacy hood), and just went ahead and saved. I figured I could just use Johnny instead.

Oh, the fun never ends when you're working on a sim story! :P

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

Well, I liked it! And yeah. We Sims writers always hurt the ones we love, although I am really cranky at Tank for hurting Ripp (destroying his eye? that's--ugh.)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. (I couldn't resist! :P)

This version of Tank is a real a-hole, no doubt about it, with very few redeeming qualities (though I suppose it's a fine line, since he also beats up Ripp and breaks his nose in S,HWC). I see him as essentially the same interpretation of the character, but this Tank takes a bad turn at some very important juncture. I really see him as capable of going either way as a character, just as I see Ripp as having the potential to either be utterly consumed by his passions or eventually learn to find his way in life and develop his kind and more nurturing side (and this version has a little of both, though one might wonder about his parenting skills).

Thanks for the kind words. ^_^ I'm glad you enjoyed it.

(Love your icon, by the way. :D Remus is my favourite Harry Potter character.)

[muslemura.livejournal.com]

Oh my! This was...heartwrenching!

In a good way. You do dark* very well :)



(*as in even darker than S,HWC)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you think so. ^_^ And thanks, as always, for reading.

[clarejosephine.livejournal.com]

And thank you for writing :) <3

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

^_^

[budgie-budgie.livejournal.com]

Loved it! Thank you for a great story on my coffee break!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I hope it was a dark roast. Heheheh. (What? Laughing at your own jokes is totally cool! XD)

Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[doda-lani.livejournal.com]

Wow,I'm very impressed by this story even if i didn't understand anything

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you. ^_^ I'm sorry you found it confusing. Ripp is drifting in and out of memories the whole time, if that helps.

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

This is great. But am I reading it wrong... Ophelia is the one who carried the baby, and died giving birth? That's how it sounds to me. So it's not just men who die?

I might be thinking about this too much. I'd thought, yeah, logically, it would rip a man apart to give birth. In reality, of course he would die. Women have the physical structure to give birth, and (in the sims world) have survived alien pregnancies -- Jenny Smith had Johnny and Jill, after all. But this seems to suggest that it's not always the case.

I'll be obsessed with this for awhile, now...

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're reading that correctly. Ophelia was pregnant with Johnny's child. Ripp pretended it was his to divert any chance of attention from Tank and his father, and then they ran off together so Ophelia could give birth (and die) without anyone finding out.

I haven't really considered the mechanics of how the alien pregnancies actually kill them, just that it does. Perhaps the alien fetus is enclosed in a sort of pod (I use this idea in S,HWC) and when it's ready to hatch out, the process is violent, regardless of whether the host sim has a womb or not.

I doubt I could work out a more logical(ish) explanation than that, because I'm not really that well versed in sci-fi, for all my writing of it. I'm pretty sure I write more of a soap opera with aliens than anything resembling real sci-fi. :P

My thoughts on it for this story are that they were initially unsure if the children of the hybrid sims would result in the same process with their diluted genetics, but then it is discovered that it works the same way. Johnny would never have intended for Ophelia to get pregnant, but when she realizes that they're likely to come for Johnny, and a full-blown war on the aliens is about to break out, she chooses to get pregnant without him knowing. She didn't want to live.

Pretty bleak, right? That leaves Ripp with nobody but a baby that he's ill equiped to raise on his own, given that he doesn't even take very good care of himself.

Thanks for reading! I'm really happy to hear you liked it. ^_^

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

So many layers of misconception (pun not intended, but also appropriate). First with Ripp pretending to be the father of Ophelia's baby... later, Lilith jumps to the conclusion that he birthed the child himself.

Still pondering alien pregnancy, implanting of pods vs. a human woman getting pregnant the normal way (via sexual intercourse). If the fetus still grows within a pod, inside the womb, then it probably doesn't even trigger labor when it hatches out. It would come out through the abdominal wall as with males (at least, that's what I'm envisioning). *shudders* Gross yet so fascinating. One thinks of things like the wasps that lay their eggs in caterpillars, and the hatchling wasps eat their host while it's still alive.

I did like it. Your writing here is terse but still carries everything necessary to flesh out the bare bones with emotion, and that leaves plenty of room for people like me to speculate endlessly about various factors. Not just the mechanics of pregnancy but also the relationship of Ripp with his brother, with Johnny; my doubts that Johnny will ever get out of there alive; and yes, why Lilith and the maid costume...? Heh! there's so much here. It's really great fan fic. ^_^

[petchy-14.livejournal.com]

Maybe, the reason why Jenny survived was because her husband and pollinator was the "Famous Pollinator" he is, (was?)and thus more than medically equipped to simulate Female Birth.. right? I mean, if the Pod was ready to "Break out" and have the baby, all you'd need is the female to be giving birth at the same time - IE: All those ol' hormones and such - and then you wouldn't.. die?
It's just a thought :)

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting twist. I like it.

You could also construe that PT#9 actually loved Jenny, and so would want her to be saved. He'd be going against the norm for his kind in doing so. Other pollinators might scorn him for "going native," if they regarded humans as not much more than incubators for their young.

The younger generation might not know how Jenny survived, either. They might assume that only men die, and that Ophelia had a chance of making it. (Well, Ripp might have thought that. It's clear that Ophelia wanted to die, in this fic, at least up till the point of no return.)

[petchy-14.livejournal.com]

You inspired me.
<3

[llama-ramalon.livejournal.com]

I absolutely loved this. :) Though I have to say, I almost freaked out, because for a second I thought she was saying that he pulled a baby out of his pocket. . . Thankfully it wasn't so. :P

[junebug-13.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was intense. I liked it a lot despite the very potent bleakness of it all.
I agree with your earlier comment; Ripp and Lilith could have a very unique and cool dysfunctional dynamic and lots of parallels could be drawn in their pasts. Broken family life, already on a darker path than their sibling(s), the black sheep of the family in a way...it'd be neat to see someone flesh that out.

[crushthecamera.livejournal.com]

That was awesome, in that as every new difference from S,HWC was revealed I got progressively more distressed until by the end I was sort of curled up in my chair going, "I don't like this story! DDD:" like a toddler. And I am kind of amazed that you've made me love these characters so much over the years that when something bad happens to them in an alternate universe, I still get upset for them.

You are a horrible person! And that was brilliant, thank you.

[collidingwithme.livejournal.com]

Wow. This is such a good read! The style is very, very different from what I usually see (okay, maybe I'm just a hermit), but I really love how you don't describe everything. There are so many things that aren't said and I thought that makes it so much more real. The conversations flow so well. I didn't understand most of it while reading, but that's actually the fun part: you kept me guessing all the way! (So glad you left notes at the end, lol.) Awesome writing! ♥

[pascal-curious.livejournal.com]

I am fascinated by this storyline. I had no idea that there was that much difference in the storylines for TS2 on different platforms.

You write dark brilliantly. I cannot write dark, for whatever reason. I have found that the more I develop a character and become attached to them, the more I like to torment them. Unfortunately the torment usually turns out to be silliness rather that anything really awful. I would think with my real life experiences I would be able to write something truly disturbing, but I guess that, in the end, I just want everyone to be happy. It's like living Stephen King and writing L.M. Montgomery.

[simsforaranya.livejournal.com]

*splutters*

This was amazing. So much darker, so gooodddd. I love the idea of alien births being fatal. I mean, I love doing challenges involving aliens, but from a story point of view, it is epic. Even if ;-;.

[poppyperson.livejournal.com]

Wah, stop being so brilliant:(

[kin-thalas.livejournal.com]

Woah. Great, but hard story.

Do the storylines differ on the different platforms, or was it your intention?

I played Strangetown several times and all stories were different, but I only play on PC.

[tsal-sims.livejournal.com]

Really enjoyed this. Dark and subtle, and poor Phi.
I tried to read it as I do most things, but it quickly sucked me in, and I ended up having to go word-by-word. XD

[freezer-bunny.livejournal.com]

I'm a long time lurker, but I had to come out of the shadows to say this story really blew me away. I absolutely love your writing style and this story is amazing. Though Strange Town, Here We Come is one of my favorites, I also appreciate the darker tone you used with this. Overall, well done, and thanks for sharing!

[ikichi.livejournal.com]

Wow! Holy sh*t!

[dolly-riot.livejournal.com]

that was awesome, thank you =)