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Post by Otis Pearson on Nov 19, 2012 2:15:00 GMT -8
 Otis, PearsonPLAYED BY : Matt Lanter
THE CHARACTER
FULL NAME: Otis Levi Pearson
NICK NAMES: Otis or Odie
PREFERRED NAME: Otis
AGE: twenty-one
GENDER: male
OCCUPATION: bartender
HOME REGION: Southwest/California
PREFERRED WEAPONS: Anything heavy enough to do some damage but light enough to swing quickly
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
Otis is normally five feet and ten inches. Depending on the time of day he may be an inch or so taller or shorter, but seeing as there are fewer and fewer people to compare with, if asked he'll say he's tall enough. Before the... unfortunate event, Otis wore what many young fashionable men wore: scarves, v-necks, corduroys... Basically, if it looked like it came from a thrift shop, he bought it and wore it. Now, however, he sticks to fitted plain white t-shirts with a sturdy and worn leather jacket, jeans, and athletic sneakers. To be frank, it isn't that much of a change, but scarves and Toms don't have much place in a world were everything revolves around mobility, at least in Otis' case. Despite the horrors all around him, Otis still walks with a relaxed gait, easing his body over whatever terrain his feet may be traversing. His face tends to remain neutral towards a far-off musing sort of look. As far as ticks go, Otis tends to avoid eye-contact, bite his lip before saying something potentially altering in any kind of relationship, runs his hands through his relatively longer hair, and whispers his thoughts out-loud more than he would like.
PERSONALITY: Otis falls into the oxymoronic group of extroverted introverts. Or, if you would like, introverted extroverts. The order doesn't mean much, just that while Otis loved to surround himself with people, he found that he tired of it very quickly. People often mistook this trait as what was previously known as "douchebaggery". Once he tired of a person, he simply stopped talking and wandered off to find something more exciting. It wasn't so much that he wanted to act in such a way, but rather it was a natural sort of instinct that drove him to do so. His humor is based entirely upon whatever cogitations his mind finds humorous at the time, which isn't much. Jokes and physical comedy never really were his cup of tea. Despite his tendency to toss people aside, when he thinks about it, he can actively chose to continue interaction with the person he finds boring. Often, given a prolonged effort, he can spark a new interest in that person. He's much more whimsical than fickle, though the latter is what he appears to be when observed. Very little bothers him, though the dead coming back to life is, arguably, a large source of the majority of discomfort he feels. In a sentence, Otis is a man who lives for himself not out of selfishness, but because he's far too preoccupied with living to deal with life around him. Living to Otis does not involve parties or sex or drugs. He craves travel. New sights, constant stimulation, and the feeling of being alone in a crowd of strangers all drive him along his desired path. At least... They did.
After the (more or less) end of the world, things changed. In a very short amount of time, Otis found himself wanting to be in the company of others. Not only that, but to be understood and cared for by those others. The reality of a world devoid of all human life hit Otis and hit him hard. Though the core of his slightly cynical whimsical nature remains, Otis is now much more open to the idea of spending extended amounts of time with anyone living who lacks the craving for human flesh. Romance was never really anything Otis thought much about and still isn't. Beauty is beauty in either man or woman, and he appreciates it but rarely acts on any kind of emotional pull. Mostly because those pulls last for a very short time. He's soft-spoken, which helps when the majority of things to talk to want to embed their molars into anything making sound and moving.
LIKES
- Thinking
- Camping
- Hiking
- Biking
- Sailing
DISLIKES
- Commitment
- Responsibility
- Public Transport
- Jocular individuals
- Blood
HISTORY BEFORE:
I should probably write this down so I don't forget. It's hard to remember things as they were, you know? Well, maybe not. My name is probably a good place to start. I'm Otis Pearson. I guess that doesn't mean much to you... Whoever you might be.
I decided to write this anyway, even if no one is going to read it. It's something to keep me busy while those... Things are active.
So I was born in Eugene, Oregon. It's this hippie city where everybody smokes weed and talks about politics. There was a lot to do there, I guess, but it didn't really matter that much to me. I wanted to go... Well, pretty much anywhere but there. The mountains nearby were great for hiking, the beach wasn't incredibly far away, and there were plenty of amazing wooded areas to camp out in. I guess... Things weren't as bad as I led myself to believe back then. In fact, Eugene was heaven compared to what things are now. I'll get to that. My parents weren't on the best of terms. Marie, my mother, found it was much easier to talk to Jack Daniels than deal with basically everything. Robert, my dad, wasn't really fond of that. He would come home from work - I'm not sure exactly what he did. It was some white-collar thing for a huge company. He made a lot of money, but I know he hated whatever it was he had to do to earn it. -, and he and Marie would just go at it. There were multiple occasions when things would be thrown. What things exactly, I'm not sure. Most of the time I was in my room, under the covers, telling myself bedtime stories. It sounds a little pathetic, I know, but to be fair I was seven. There wasn't a whole lot I could do. At least, not that I thought I could do. When the divorce came, neither of my parents were able to gain custody over me. In the process of processes that procedurally produces the anullment of a marriage, it was brought to light my father was abusive and my mother an alcoholic. That happened when I was ten. By that time, I'd learned to just ignore whatever it was those two were arguing about. That might have lent to my less than desirable social abilities. That was how I ignored it: I made myself bored with them. In fact, by age ten, I was glad to be rid of them. Now, yeah, I'm sure you might think I'm just writing this down like this so I make myself sound like a strong, independent kid, but that's not what I'm trying to get across. There was - and maybe still is - something wrong with me. A ten year old should have at least wondered why neither parent could take him. I just gave the social worker a polite nod before boarding the plane to California. Apparently, my mother's brother's third wife lived there and was the only person intelligible - and willing - to take me in.
California was great. Comparatively, thinking back now, Eugene was probably better in terms of people and location, but the city was just so exciting. It was never the same. Things were always changing, people were continually flowing in and out, and the best part was that my aloof nature - natural or not - was accepted there. Dumping friends left and right was almost expected. Life at home was better than anything I'd had previously. Chelsey was about eleven years older than I was, so it was more like having this crazy older sister for a guardian than an actual parent. I'm still not sure about the details between her and my uncle. I never asked because, quite frankly, it kind of freaked me out. Anyway, Chelsey let me do just about anything I wanted. If I felt like staying out past two in the morning, she'd call me up and ask if I needed any extra money. It was cool. ...I miss her. I'll get to that later too. Maybe. This is getting exhausting. Life back then was just... So much better than it is right now. It's only been three weeks... But it feels like years...
Sorry. I was talking about California... Yeah. The high school I attended was brimming with people. I'm pretty sure I ended up known at least three quarters of the students who went there at any given time during my "career" there. I had a couple... Dates? Nothing ever really went down though. I'm... Fairly attractive. So people wanting to explore what I had to offer were pretty common. There was one time I did some stuff, but afterwards I just felt so disgusted with myself. It probably has something to do with observing all the crap my parents went through when I was a kid. Maybe not. Either way, I figured out romance wasn't for me. I guess I skipped middle school. It wasn't really that eventful. In fact, school itself wasn't really that big of a part of my life. Yeah, I spent... pretty much all of my life in school up until now, but for some reason I can't remember too many specifics about it. It's like... Like I've lived only half the life I should have. The important parts of being in California... I can remember those. Surfing and sailing. Man, I was terrible at both of those when I started. It was so difficult to force myself to keep going. What kept me coming back was that beautiful picture of being out on the water where anything can happen and just... gliding. It's hard to explain, but surfing was one of the first things I actively forced myself to be interested in. It taught me stuff that I'm sure I use today, I just don't notice it. Those kind of life lessons that shape how you act in the future but shape them subtlety; kind of like learning to drive. Anyway, surfing was big. Once I had the hang of it, more or less, I would just go out on the waves for hours. Of course, that wasn't the only thing I did there. I wasn't a beach bum. There were loads of great trails to hike on, though some of my favorites were a pretty good distance out from the city. I didn't really get much into the outdoorsy mountain camping until my junior year of high school. By then, I'd gotten my license, so leaving the city was a lot easier than before. That's one thing that hasn't changed. The stars are still here, twinkling in that purple darkness we call night... I spent a lot of time in the mountains. Probably more time than on the ocean. Man. I felt so safe out there in the wilderness... I miss that too. That safe feeling.
So I was a pretty active kid. If I wasn't surfing or camping, I was probably out roaming the streets looking for adventure. Well, not adventure in particular... Mostly just trying to be a part of whatever was happening. I saw a lot of things. Drug busts, orgies, gang fights, drive bys, street performers, weddings, hobos, homos, parades, gun fights, fires, laughter, joy, sorrow, pain... You name it. Honestly, I think it was good for me. I got to experience so much of the human condition without having to actually be a part of it. You know, I used to think of humans as just... Background noise. Sometimes it was interesting to hear what was going on, but most of the time humanity was just this sort of buzz in the back of my mind. Well, the buzzing has stopped and there isn't a way to get it back. I took it for granted. I took all of it for granted. I thought I didn't need any of it until I no longer had it and now...
My godmother, Chelsey, she was great. She used to do this thing where she'd laugh and start snorting. She'd try to hold her nose to stop the snorting, but it'd just make it worse and... I miss that. My senior year of high school, you know what she did for my graduation party? She hired strippers. Not a stripper, but strippers. As in, multiple humans paid to provocatively remove articles of clothing. I remember when they stormed in through the doors to the living room and all the people there started cheering like it was the best day of their lives... Chelsey winked at me a roared, "I had no idea if you dig the monkey or the banana, so I just figured 'What the hell! I'll get him both!'" I honestly don't think I've laughed more than that night. Three years ago... It feels like forever. Anyway, after I graduated I thought about college. I thought about it and decided it wasn't for me. I was finally free of the public school system. I saw absolutely no reason to plunge back into it. I remember telling Chelsey that was how I felt. She practically threw money at me and told me to travel. We both knew that was the only thing I wanted to do. I shouldn't have done it. I don't regret all the amazing places, people, and food I experienced but... I should have stayed with her. Throughout my life in California, we had had plenty of money. I had never really stopped to wonder where it all came from. I mean, after all, Robert had been up to his ears in money, so it was something I was just used to. Apparently, Chelsey worked for some crazy huge bio-engineering company. Lots of classified stuff. The kind of stuff that they put on television under the genre of Sci-fi. I didn't know it at the time, but when I left to start travelling the world, Chelsey was working on some weird kind of virus. Now... I don't know if what she was working on had anything to do with what happened, and I'm not saying I think it did. I'm just writing down what I remember.
I was in Thailand, I think, at a hotel that had Wi-Fi. I was there resting up before going on this huge month long backpacking trip when I got this really weird e-mail from Chelsey saying I needed to head home right away. I was twenty-one by then. This was... four weeks ago? My time spent travelling... Man I could write books on it. But I said I would write down the things I thought were important. This... This was important. When I got the e-mail, it was the first I had heard from Chelsey in the last three years. So I immediately cancelled my trip and found the first plane back to California. It took a couple days to get back, but when I finally made it... She was different. It was something about her eyes. They were dull and almost blank looking. I remember when I knocked on the door, she slumped right into my arms and just held me for a couple minutes. It was weird because she had never really been the touchy type. I think I was in too much of shock to really say anything, and before I could she pulled away. I asked her what was going on and she just turned at looked at me with those dead eyes... "Everything." I didn't understand what she was talking about. Honestly... I figured she was pregnant or something. She wasn't. I wish she had been. I wish that was the only thing that had been wrong.
I don't know how she knew it was coming... I don't even know if she even knew, or if she just had had a bad feeling... But...
It's weird. Life. Life is weird. Death is weird. We, humans, live our lives... But what exactly is living? Existing? Influencing the future? I don't know. I don't even know if I want to know. There's just too much... Death. It's... Everywhere. I miss so much that sometimes... I forget to live. But I have to live. I'll keep on living because I refuse to accept that death is the only thing left. I'll also finish this. I have to finish this. I said I'd explain later, so I guess... Here it is.
DURING APOCALYPSE: It was like an avalanche. One person got sick, then another, then twenty, then one hundred until... It was horrible. There was screaming every minute of every day. It got so loud... Every hour it seemed like a thousand more voices hurled themselves into the fray. The hospitals, grocery stores, police department... Everything just shut down. There weren't enough people in the world to keep them running. Chaos ensued after the first day. That first day, so many people just... died. Millions more followed each day. I can't... Even begin to describe what it was like. People would scream about the fires... There weren't any fires. There wasn't anything physically wrong with the people except for the fever... It sounds trivial. Just a fever, right? It was so much more than that. The temperatures people were reaching should have been impossible. People's blood was literally boiling in their veins. I mean, by that point they were dead, but not before tearing off as much of their skin as possible. It was...
On the first day, we heard about some strange cases where people had taken seriously ill for no apparent reason. The news channel had been on twenty-four/seven for whatever reason. I remember Chelsey's eyes when the reporter started coughing and making this... This grotesque grimace. There was fear emulating from every part of Chelsey... I was too preoccupied with the dying news reporter to really notice then, but she was absolutely terrified. The broadcast was quickly shifted back to the anchors who were trying their best to keep everybody calm. They were terrible at it. I remember I wasn't scared then. It just seemed like whatever was going on was so far away from me that it didn't have any kind of meaning. ...I was scared on the second day. One day was all it took for that godforsaken disease to spread across the entire earth. I woke up that morning to Chelsey screaming. I ran into her room to see what was the matter... She was just laying on the floor, completely naked, bawling her eyes out and screaming. I didn't know what to do. I stood there, frozen in her doorway, unable to do much more than feel the panic slowly rising up my stomach and into my throat. At the time, I didn't understand what was happening to Chelsey, to the world, but I instinctively know it was something beyond my imagination of bad. Her screaming didn't stop. It got louder and louder. I more I heard it, the more I was able to understand it. My tired brain was overwhelmed by the panic and confusion, so it took some time to realize Chelsey was wailing about how hot she was. I ran to get cold water. I think I grabbed a pitcher or something and filled it... I remember throwing it on her. It just made her scream louder. She started tearing then... I tried. I tried so hard to stop her. I don't know why. I knew, deep down, I couldn't stop her, but I tried anyway. I tried...
I think she died from bleeding out. She-
After Chelsey died, I wrapped her in sheets and dragged her out into the living room. By then, there were so many screams from so many different places, it almost seemed like she was still screaming, even after death. I was crying. I know I was. I can't remember it, but I'm crying now, writing this, so I must have been. I just... sat there. Her blood was all over me, but I didn't care. I didn't care about anything. I couldn't feel anything. The screams were just noise to me. Background buzzing. I don't know how long I sat there before I took a shower and changed my clothes. I don't remember what I did that night or the night after... But I remember the fourth day. That was the day Chelsey's body... wasn't there. I remember walking out of my room confused because I had heard a noise in the apartment. When I realized her body wasn't there, I don't know. I guess I assumed someone had stolen her. Thinking back, I have no idea why I thought that. I wish it had been just that... But when I heard the noise again, my scream, the only scream, rang out in the dead, silent air. She had moved herself. She had... She wasn't-
Zombie. I mean, that's what she was. A member of the undead. The worst part about it was her eyes. They were frozen in this horrific gaze of terror... I honestly don't remember much after seeing her like that. My scream alerted her to where I was and... Well. I did what had to be done. I think I may have used a chair or something... I just remember one moment she was running towards me and in the next her head was smashed on the ground and I was shouting something over and over again as I repeatedly bashed her remains into the rug. I wasn't thinking. Obviously. All the noise I had made attracted even more visitors. At that point, the fact that there were more of them didn't seem to surprise me. Nothing really surprises me anymore, actually. When I heard them clawing at the door, I quickly barricaded the entrance. I figured I didn't have a whole lot of time to get things together before they made it in. The apartment doors weren't really the most sturdy things known to man.
I was strangely calm as I gathered up what non-perishable food I could find. I packed things I thought I would need into my camping backpack. A flashlight, army knife, a few sets of clothing... I'm not going to write down what all I took, just that I took it. By the time I'd finished packing, I could hear the door starting to give way. Our apartment was on the fourth story of a twenty story complex, but it had plenty of footholds on its exterior. That's how I got out: I climbed my way down. My time spend rock-climbing in various different countries paid off. I made it to the ground with little trouble. The majority of the shamblers had pooled around the entrance to the complex, probably due to my cries earlier. I made my way through the city, remaining undetected by the things thanks to them being easily distracted by noises caused from rocks being thrown and such. It was slow going, and as it started to get dark, I scaled another building and spent the night on the roof.
That was the beginning of my new life. This life. My present life. I've killed... lots of these monsters. Distractions only work so well. I don't have a gun, I'm low on food, and I have no idea where I'm supposed to go. For all I know, I'm the last member of the human race. I was never really a religious person, but every day I pray that there is at least one other person out there. Someone. Anyone. Because I don't know if I can handle being alone anymore. I'm starting to hear their voices. It's... Frightening. I know they're not actually saying anything, but it's getting harder and harder to ignore.
I'm scared.
ROLEPLAY EXAMPLE:
PLANS: Preferably, I would like him to find some survivors! From there... Probably a kind of resistance fighting sort of thing. Otis isn't the kind of guy to be content with just surviving. He wants to live. But, as is the wonder of life, anything can happen really!
ANYTHING ELSE?: It's... Longer than I anticipated.
TL/DR: Born in Eugene, Oregon. Moved to California to live with a distant relative because of divorce. Traveled a few years after high school. Was called back by his godmother. The virus happened. Boom.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GO BY: Call me "Whoops"
ROLEPLAY LEVEL: Semi-literate to Literate
HOW DID YOU FIND US?: Those Advertise! boards. Crazy things.
PASSWORD: *****
TIME ZONE: PST
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