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rottendeadpan
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- rottendeadpan
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OnionArnie Thompson
Arnie
If sweet southern charm could be bottled and sold with a plantation owner's desposition, that would be Arnie. Perhaps, if his wife had survived, things would've turned out better for everyone. Or maybe, something worse would have come.
Personality
While he's not as much of a default dump-stat of charisma and charm as some of the boys, Arnie is up there. It's hard to say no to a man with that booming of a voice and that friendly of a touch dragging you in for a few drinks or sundries. His personality mask is on super tight, though, and even if he gets rattled by something either innocent or purposely stabbing that someone said, you won't know about it until it's too late.
It's not that he's quick to anger. It's more he's too quick to stop himself from deciding on a quick-end to a situation.
Likes & Dislikes
- His truck
- Cooking
- Entertaining company
- Nosy bodies
- Crocodiles
- Whispers
Attributes
You wouldn’t say he’s balding, just that his hair has all migrated inwards and upwards. There is still a thick, greying white patch of hair at the top of his head with thick, bushy eyebrows. He has a button nose. Arnie doesn’t bother with shaving his body besides to maintain his mustache and goatee combination.
There are several hairline scars and stretch marks scattered over his body. He is overweight on top of a stocky build, making him seem more obese than he really is.
He tends to favor hats with a brim to block the sun, button-ups, ties of various sorts, trousers, and suspenders.
Arnie’s “Plague” paint completely covers his eyes and most of his forehead like a wide domino mask. His cheekbones are painted in with thick, sloping triangles and a line trails to follow his jawline. There are three 'teeth’ painted in thick strokes going up on either side of his chin along the jaw. His clavicle is painted with two thin dots, sternum painted with a thick square-like blob and a thick, rounded triangle underneath it much like a necktie. He has four ribs on either side painted in with varying degrees of thickness; the thickest on top and narrowing as it goes down. Unlike the others, these reach around back to connect to a thick set of five vertebrae along his spine. His shoulders are painted in with jointed blobs; first a large rounded triangle and then two dashes of lines under. There is a thick line along his bicep that leads to a blob-painted elbow joint.
Family
A wife, deceased. Arnie never had any children.
History
Arnie was 16 when he met his would-be wife. They were two kids, not so popular, not so rich, hailing out of a town so small in Mississippi it’s only claim to fame was that a major highway passed right by. If you were lucky, maybe someone would stop in at the town’s only gas station. Bring news.
Arnie was 20 when they left that town as husband and wife, headed down deep into Louisiana. At 43, the pair got the bad news– his wife had a tumor in the brain and the prognosis wasn’t good.
At 45, Arnie moved the pair out to a still in-construction town to let his wife live out her last days in peace, reliving the old days of their youth. Town so small it doesn’t even have a gas station yet. She lived until 53 despite all odds. The duo had made a wide array of friends in the tiny town to help out along the way and keep Arnie from spiraling after her passing. It was fine. This was fine.
What his wife didn’t know was that Arnie had started dabbling in non-ethical medicines the moment he’d learn about her health and death sentence. Herbs added to the food, teas made of things one wouldn’t normally throw in a drink. Special plants lined the walls. Bags of herbs under the pillows. Wards, charms, quiet prayers to will back the disease a little bit each day. It became almost an art for him to hide things here and there. Arnie dug up any book he could find for ways to prolong life through any means necessary and it was there he learned of the craft of hoodoo. And through that, eventually, voodoo.
Since failing to keep his wife alive, his goals changed. Now, he wanted to bring her back. Make her better again. There were ways, according to these books, that he could do that. Through sacrifice. Through messing with spirits no sane man would want to dig up. Through curses.
Arnie had the social connections through his wife. He had connections through the Rx shop he opened as a way to earn a living wage using the skills from all his readings. Now he just needed to get some gophers to bring her body back.
Setting
Arnie owns two buildings in town; the Rx shop that contains a top floor, hidden secret, and a bottom floor that contains the actual store. His second building is his home, spaced far enough apart that he can keep his eyes on the workings of nearly two sides of the town without anyone realizing.
Ongoing Story
Arnie is a well respected man. Sociable, honorable, charismatic. If the townspeople didn’t want to leave their small world to go to the doctor, they’d go to him. He gained close friends through this; Beau who he treated like his own son, Chris who he found a like-mind in. Reed and Creed, two city-slickers with gumption and gusto to join him. Scout and Rusty, two girls who needed an after school job and were innocent enough to agree to pretty much anything.
Arnie appreciated Chris; he was the one who brought up doing the Rx shop as an underground hoodoo company. It was startling at first, the man thinking he’d been caught, until he realized it was just a golden opportunity. Nobody had any idea what he’d been doing. Now, here was a chance to go for it ten-fold, no need to hide. It was perfect. He agreed almost immediately.
Everything goes easy when you have patsies doing all the tedious work for you while you keep a corpse fresh in your attic.
He barely felt remorse when he killed Reed. The spirits in the swamp whispered for a sacrifice and he had the perfect candidate. If he killed, he’d get her back. Nobody would look twice at a swamp-tromper getting sucked in by the muck.
There was barely a twinge of sympathy as he smashed Chris’s head in with a shovel. Boy had always been too curious and well-read for his own good. He’s so close now, he can’t let anyone get in the way.
Beau’s acting funny but he’s yet to raise too many alarms. The girls are too sweet to look twice. So close, so close.
The swamp is whispering again, it just needs one more. Just one more, and her spirit can be brought back.
Trivia
- There are two attics Arnie uses for his 'special’ activities. The one in his personal home houses his wife, or the bits of her he could get away with keeping without raising too much suspicion. The one in the Rx shop is extra storage and a small bedroom with a false wall, separating out an alter room.
- Arnie’s outward personality is one fine-tuned falsehood based on several adults he remembers from his childhood.
- After Reed died, Arnie tried to enter the cafe and felt a strong urge to turn around and not attempt to enter again. It took three more attempts for him to realize he’d been blocked out of the building and that he couldn’t do anything about it, since Reed was dead. If he brought it up to Creed, it’d only bring forth more questions as to why he wasn’t allowed in, which he couldn’t risk. He’s still trying to figure out a way around this without bringing it up to anyone.
- Arnie has one more 'enemy’; It’s the one Sheriff in town, Sheriff Golde. He’s aware of Arnie’s 'underground’ business but has no grounds to stop him, but he’s sworn if Arnie ever makes any move towards his daughter in any way that isn’t friendly, he’ll shoot first and ask questions later.
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