The front door was open when Lilah arrived. Not much, perhaps just a fraction of an inch, but it lent the scene a disquieting air as she approached. Dave didn't usually forget things like that. Even when the two of them partied so late and so long that they had to lean on each other to keep from collapsing on the lawn in an ungraceful heap, Dave somehow had the presence of mind to get them both inside safe and sound with the security system turned on behind them before he staggered inside and slumped on the couch. It was half the reason she toured with him--sure, he made a good opening act, but Lilah really relied on him more for the nights when the bus broke down or the crowd got rowdy or the management decided to play games with the gate receipts. She didn't like the idea of a situation he couldn't handle.
But she didn't turn back. She'd been playing gigs with Dave Dryden for ten years now, from the days when they schlepped their gear around in the back seat of his beat up Toyota through her meteoric rise to stardom all the way up to the big arena shows they did now, and Lilah took pride in the way she never ditched her old friend for someone younger and hipper and more MTV-friendly. She might have sold out a little--just a little, her wounded pride reminded her, just a tiny bit less death metal and a titch more melodic--but she didn't abandon the people who were there for her at the start. Because they never abandoned her.
(Besides, it never hurt to have an opening act that was so fucking Satanic compared to her that Lilah could actually hear parents' anuses unclench when she took the stage.)
So instead of pulling out her cell phone and calling the cops, Lilah knocked on the door and called out, "Hey, Dave? Dave, it's Lilah. I, uh... I brought the scissors you asked for. Clippers too. Okay if I come in?" She honestly didn't know whether she expected to find him tripping out of his fucking mind on something, or waiting for her with a bunch of her best friends in some kind of bizarre attempt at a surprise party. He'd sure as hell sounded serious over the phone, but Lilah knew from rueful experience that Dave could say just about anything with a straight face and didn't mind playing the long con when it came to springing a prank on someone.
But it wasn't a prank. Or at least, it wasn't a prank Dave was ready to reveal just yet. "Uhhhhh... maybe not," Lilah heard him call out from upstairs. Something sounded odd about his voice--it was a far cry from the usual full-throated growl that carried across a crowded room. The shiver of disquiet in the back of Lilah's head became a river of icy fear. "I, uh, I think things have gotten a little out of hand. I don't think scissors are going to do it anymore. M-maybe you should just gkkh!" He broke off with a strangled yelp. Lilah didn't hesitate.
She launched herself through the open door, then up the steps two at a time. Her Doc Martens pounded a furious rhythm on the hardwood floor as she sprinted down the hall to Dave's bedroom--it occurred to her in a moment of giddy, adrenaline-fueled hilarity that she was literally running with scissors just like all her teachers told her not to back when she was a kid, and Lilah almost caught herself giggling at the absurdity of the thought before she turned the corner and saw something far more unpleasantly ludicrous waiting for her.
At first she thought Dave had somehow gotten tangled up in seaweed. That was obviously, patently impossible in a second-floor bedroom in a house on a hill in the middle of drought-stricken Los Angeles, but it was the only way Lilah could make sense of what she was seeing. Dave hung suspended in the air, his limbs entwined with hundreds of strands of bright green fronds that floated in the air and clung to the walls and floor and ceiling. They blocked the windows, giving the whole room the air of an undersea grotto lit in shadowy emerald. Lilah could barely believe her eyes.
But as she slowly took in the details, it began to make a bizarre kind of sense. Whatever the, the vines or whatever were, they must have been a lot stronger than their delicate appearance suggested. They literally held him up off the ground, knotting together into thick cords that bound his wrists and elbows and knees and ankles and throat--thankfully not tightly enough to strangle him, but enough to make speech almost impossible. They even clung to his head, a thicket of them pressing against his scalp as if they were actually growing out of his... his... oh god. Lilah suddenly recognized that viridian hue.
