all_inclusive | Entries tagged with zz: jay gatsby

Any entries earlier than this were pre-reboot.

Once, New York had been his place of landing.

Not entirely home, because Jay Gatsby had yet to invent a home for himself without Daisy at his side and without Daisy Buchanan, no place could truly be home so much as a web of inviting glamorous aspects to draw her in. He's hard pressed to name a home for himself, but New York had come closest with its lights and the promise of a future. After the gunshot, Gatsby had given up on ever seeing it again.

That's before he arrived here at the Nexus and before the strangeness of the doors.

Now, he's standing in the midst of a snowstorm that's stripped the streets of New York City of most of its people, with Jay Gatsby standing in a nearly deserted Times Square that looks so much the same and yet as different as ever. There's no doubt in his mind that he's managed to find the future, but the sheer wondrous amazement at seeing the Collars ad lit up and glowing leaps beyond Gatsby's beliefs.

And where, he wonders, does Daisy Buchanan end up in a world like this? Where do people like her and Tom sit? He can imagine Daisy on one of the sparkling posters advertising the city's golden girls in its fabled shows. Gatsby, though, Gatsby is just a remnant of a past that no one wants to go back to.

Shivering, he turns to look for a place to purchase something to keep him warm. "Excuse me," he calls out to someone standing by a door under an awning. "Where's the nearest department store I might find?"

concierge

Throughout the day on the 14th, the Nexus staff deliver single roses and accompanying notes to designated hotel guests in celebration of the Valentine's Day holiday. For some, the gesture will be a foregone conclusion; for others, it will be a surprise. For some, they might only guess at who sent them the gift in the first place.

[Comments with deliveries ~~will follow~~ are done. You may reply to yours with a reaction if you like!]

concierge

The annual Nexus New Year's Eve gala began at 8 in the evening. Too grand to be contained by the lobby or dining hall, the gardens at the front of the hotel were employed, with long strings of white lights forming a twinkling canopy from the front doors all the way to the hedge maze. The weather was temperate and calm, and the night perfectly clear.

Drinks were served at various bars set up throughout the gardens and lobby, with champagne cocktails being the specialty of the night. Wheeling through the crowd was a bartender with golden cart providing warm drinks on the go: Tom and Jerrys, rum punch, negus, and Irish coffee.

Crisply-dressed wait staff wove through the collected guests with an abundance of hors d'oeuvres for all different tastes. The Bistro remained open with a limited selection of items for those who were wanting something more substantial.

Above the front doors was hung a large, gold-rimmed clock counting down the last hours, minutes, and seconds of the current year.

incurablydishonest

Early September | The Nexus

How many times had Jordan, as a girl, marveled at what it must be like to be a man? The very idea of it had fairly made her head swim, a seeming endless parade of raucous freedoms that were always just out of her grasp for having the audacity to be born female. It had chafed, and eventually she had learned well enough how to turn that friction into a more creative means for grasping freedom, but never was she foolish enough to think it would ever be the same. There was nothing about her gentle or sweet, and yet still she was the gentler sex, placed neatly within a box from which a lifelong battle would never extract her.

Or so she had believed. The hotel, apparently, had other ideas about these things.

"Miss Baker, may I say your suit looks very fetching."

concierge

The fog had begun near the dusk hours, coating all the plants and flowers in the garden. It settled, heavy, and blanketed everything with a new cover that was only matched in mood by the graveyard that had unearthed itself from the grass and the moss. Names were etched on each gravestone, but the most unnerving part was that every few steps, if you stopped and listened very, very carefully, you might hear a knock of a human hand against hard wood. It was almost as if the dead were being called upwards.

The maze stood normal, but inside around the corners, there were things lurking and waiting.

Outside might have become frightening and gloomy, but the contrast to indoors was stark. Inside, carved pumpkins lit with candles turned the ballroom and restaurants into amber-lit abodes, costumed partygoers twirled to the music played by the band in the lobby (while the DJ had set up in the conservatory). Candy and small hors d'oeuvres circulated on the trays of immaculately clad waiters and though outside it was stormy, foggy, and spooky, inside was a delight of themed drinks, delicious food, and the manic and half-crazed mood of people in the midst of their fun.

The party for Halloween had begun.

And there was no telling when it might ever end.

tenthlife

After another night spent asleep on the sand, I thought it might be a better idea to go to the Compound for a shower before heading back to the empty hut filled with memories of the sister I'd lost. Again. I wanted to be happy for the time we'd been able to spend together on the island - time to get to know each other face to face rather than consciousness to consciousness. Maybe someday I'd find that feeling. Now, though, there was too much sadness and loss mixed in to find anything positive. There was a part of me that longed for other lives long past where emotion, if it existed, was more muted. I hadn't had any at all as a flower, or a bat. Existence had been very simple there.

But I also remembered how unfulfilling it had been and how, as my host's life-term had neared, I knew I wouldn't be remaining on those planets but moving on again. Then I'd found out about Earth while rooted to the sea forest on the water planet and knew I'd be going there. Here. Little had I known then just what I was in for on Earth. I had mobility again, something I missed more than I'd realized, but emotions as well. I remembered them from the Mists planet and wanted to experience them again. Little did I realize at the time just how much...more human emotions could be. They were overwhelming to my new life at first, even discounting Melanie's manipulation of them at first.

It was strange, I knew, that the very emotions I'd come for had been the reason I'd nearly left my host body behind and gone to another body, or another planet. I wondered, as I walked towards the Compound, if my life wouldn't have been simpler if I'd done just that. It would have been. No fear, no anger, no sadness. Just a peaceful existence on Earth like the rest of the Souls. Fulfilling my calling as a teacher at the University, doing my part of help with the upkeep of the community, living out my host's short century life term before moving on yet again.

Yes, it would have been simpler. I would have missed out, though, on what it truly was to be human. And though the sadness still choked me at times, I could find happiness that I hadn't skipped. That I'd stayed and seen far more than the other Souls on Earth ever would.

With that in mind, I pulled open the door to the showers, stepped through...and stopped.

The air was different. Cool, dry. Not dry like the desert, dry like the buildings I'd been in on raids. Everything else was different, too. The furnishings, the carpet, all of it. I'd never seen anything like this on the island. I thought, for a moment, that whatever force changed things here might be behind the new area, so I tried to go back out the door I'd just opened. It didn't open, the doorknob didn't turn so much as a fraction in either direction.

I shrank back against it and looked around. Was I back in my own time again? I didn't think I'd ever been in a place like this - not before I ran away, not on any of the supply raids with the humans. Pet's fragile heart pounded in my chest and I had to work to control my breathing.

I heard the sound of someone approaching and looked around wildly, thinking of nothing but hiding until I could discover where I was. Or who was here. I found nothing but a small decorative table that had no chance of concealing me. Resigned, I did the best I could.

"Excuse me," I said, my voice softer than usual but still carrying. "Could you tell me where I am?"

likepalegold

There's a strange sort of energy behind him, at Gatsby's back as if heralding his exit from one world into the next. It's as if he stepped over the threshold and found himself in a new world, only he doesn't quite recall how he got here, only that he's clasping a wand in his hand, wearing a fine suit (the finest that money can buy, old sport, the very finest of them all) and his tie bears the distinguished hint of his alma mater.

Supposing he can call it that. It's hardly as if he can call Hogwarts his alma mater when, really, after the war, he'd been invited to study there, being so far from home and possessing the right blood for it, but not the right age. Still, war had displaced them and made immigrants of them all and so Gatsby feels safe calling himself a man of Hogwarts.

And what better place than Hogwarts in the 1920's, resplendent with its fineries, looking every bit the dazzling wonder that he remembers.

(Does he? Does he remember this? Surely this can't be, surely there is another world and another war and another life, but Gatsby has told himself a grand story since his earliest childhood days and despite twists and turns, they have a tendency to stick)

He shakes the self-doubt as he strides forward, towards that gleaming past. "Alohomora," he speaks the incantation, striding through the open door and into the grand hall, decorated with the finest ornamentation of the times. Perhaps Gatsby will stay a while, this time, and turn this visit into something else.

Yes, perhaps he'll start again. Perhaps this is the next chapter in his story.

likepalegold

If he pays careful enough attention standing at this door, in this exact spot, Gatsby can hear the music drifting on the wind over the bay, like someone has left their record player on and the tune has been shared out to the world. Gatsby stands on the threshold of this world, knowing that he cannot go back without being stopped in one moment of time. If he walks through that door, it will be that late summer day with the leaves falling into the pool.

And the phone will sit there and not ring. It will torment him with its silence and its all-encompassing ability to surround him as though the cloak of the reaper. Silence had come after the fall, though. One big bang and then there had been the Nexus Hotel.

It seems cruel that there should be a door here that leads back to New York and West Egg, because it means that somewhere out there in that wide world is Daisy Buchanan and she never loved him as much as he'd always wanted her to, because here he is and there she is, and there's the largest valley of ashes and death separating him that Gatsby can ever picture.

He's been struggling to find purpose. He's debated throwing one or two more parties, but he wonders what the point of it all would be? Money? What's the need for money? Esteem? Tom had proven that no matter how far you'd climbed, there were always more rungs being held out of your reach.

So what happens when your life has been laid out with your own auspicious dreams and those dreams had been shattered? What step comes next?

Gatsby inhales the cool autumn breeze in the air and closes the door in front of him carefully and cautiously, as though he can control what lies behind it with a simple thought. He raps on the wood of the door when it's closed, once, twice, and a third time. He has his hand on the knob, ready to see what awaits when he can feel someone else's presence lingering nearby. "Where do you think it will lead?" he asks. "Now that you're here."

concierge

A large, decorative sign situated prominantly in the lobby reads:

The Nexus Hotel
proudly presents its
ANNUAL NEW YEARS EVE PARTY

Event Location
Nexus Premises
6 PM - ?

1920's themed dress recommended, but not required for all guests

The sumptuous theme of elegance that typically surrounds the Nexus Hotel is out in full force on the evening of the 31st. With efficiency and very little said, a group had entered and snapped white tablecloths on long tables in the main lobby of the hotel, turning side-rooms into similar displays of elegance. Then came the food, followed by the alcohol, and the guests were quick to follow.

Drinks were on the lawn, in the hotel, making their way into the hands of party-goers who wore shining, shimmering, jewelled gowns of all eras, but only those from the 1920’s hung on a rack in the luggage room where hotel guests entered to check in and found themselves amidst a welcoming committee like none before.

In the skies between the hotel and the stars, fireworks shot off in hourly intervals, sparkling and accompanied by a great bang that the music from the band does its’ best to drown out (to no avail). And under those shimmering lights, the party for New Years Eve roared. It was not the only party, though, as a door had been propped open that led directly to the shining lights of Las Vegas, the gleaming neon of the strip beckoning any guests daring enough to try their hand at games of chance and luck.

incurablydishonest

1 NOV 2013 | NEXUS LAWN

Dressed for swimming and wet, in the sun he looked dipped in gold, the spectre of Venus risen from an invisible sea. Jordan flicked ash into the neatly-trimmed hedges and stepped forward.

"Well, this is a surprise," she drawled, head tilted with polite curiosity but voice stitched up with tightly-controlled bitterness. "I've never met a ghost before."

G; Ongoing

All Inclusive

Reboot Marker

no subject

Valentine Delivery Service

Gathering: New Year's Eve Gala

She's got enough, she's got too much.

All Hallows Haunt and All Must Have Fun

no subject

because of the colossal vitality of his illusion

and all they can do is stare blankly

Gathering: NYE Gala

…borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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