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 Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:29 pm
Day 1
Björn's first thought upon opening his eyes was 'I'm not dead'. This was not at all brought up by the fiery rock or the sound of bubbling magma, no, but simply by the fact that Liam had immortalized him some time ago. All the short man had done was remove his soul, so why wasn't he back home?
The answer came short. Lacking a soul meant he was damned and thusly at the will of Satan ******** tried to sit up and found himself unpleasantly sticky, coated in sweat, and attached to the ground as one would be to a leather car seat on a hot day. He groaned and put a hand to his forehead. So light-headed.
"It'sss awake," came an unnervingly breathy voice from a few feet away. As Björn's vision cleared, he noted two figures closing in on him. One was thin and wraith-like with a blank white face that may have been as mask and sickly blue-green flesh. Draped from its waist like a dress with no torso was odd, tattered...soul, it looked like. It had no legs. The other was enormously muscular and bright blue; its face a Picasso-esque visage of two sharp-toothed mouths and four beady yellow eyes. Its nose appeared to be within the fold on a wrinkle on the side of its neck. Its shoulders were coated in warts and wiry hair and its three-fingered hands and four elephantine feet and were thick and tipped with decaying, teal nails.
"Who are you?"
"We are your sssssaviorsss."
"...I somehow doubt that."
"Think of your life in the Above World."
Björn blinked and cocked his head to one side.
"Isn't this all a little excessive? I mean, just toss me into the pit to be tortured for eternity because I...like men. Or whatever your reason is this time."
The wraith-demon gave a scandalized breath of laughter.
"Of coursssse not. Masssster hasss chossssen you to join hissss legion."
"Your lisp is really getting on my nerves, buddy."
The wraith cocked its head. Clearly, this was going nowhere.
"Think," it commanded.
"Of?"
"The boy. When he died. He left you alone."
"He didn't die. He just--" Suddenly, memories flooded Björn's brain. Ethan, lying on the ground, convulsing as the...thing took him over. Spider legs erupted from his back, slimed with ropy, viscous fluid. How could he have ever survived--?
"And the otherssss. All of them." More memories. Bizarre memories. Rabid, ignoring him as he stumbled into the kitchen, clutching a broken arm to his side. The children laughing and throwing things, goaded on by Malachi. Liam using his powers to drive immense pain into the very centre of his mind, Hellis laughing.
"...what?"
"Yesssss. Living down here will be peasssseful. No more pain. Jusssst watching the otherssss. Keeping the damned sssssoulssss in plassse."
"No."
"What?"
"I said no."
"...what?"
"It didn't happen like that."
"Like what?"
"Don't try to ******** with me. It didn't go like that, damnit. Ethan's still alive, and while the s**t with Rabid wasn't so very off, you really could have done better with the kids."
"What?"
"So ******** coy. Can I go now?" Björn stood, but the wraith gave a hiss of defiance. Hard, writhing pincers like handcuffs shot from the wall, wrapping around the man's wrists and slamming his into the far wall, nose snapping on impact. He looked to the side, pressing his cheek against the scalding wall, and laughed. He spat a bit of blood to the floor and watched in amazement as it sizzled and dried almost immediately.
"I'll take that as a no."
"Quite," the wraith growled. Although Björn could not see what was going on behind him, he could easily assume. There was the hiss of something being dragged across the floor, and then a grunt from what he guessed was the large blue thing.
CRACK!
A sharp pain, careening down Björn's back. A cat o' nine tails dragged its fishhook tips through his flesh, burning as if it was on fire. And, he would realize later, it probably was. Fists clenched. Teeth gritted. Eyes narrowed, but he did not scream. He wouldn't give them that satisfaction.
CRACK!
"This all you got, you sons'a bitches?"
CRACK!
That shut him up good. He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the pain, trying to time the intervals so as to not be caught by surprise. If they thought he would want to join them after this, they were damn crazy.
CRACK!
In Hell, it is rather easy to lose track of time, unless you are counting each second that passes. Nobody could really tell how long it was before the slashing stopped and the chamber went terribly silent. Björn's chest heaved with every labored breath, and he gave a wide grin at the ringing in his ears that signaled the end. Streams of blood dulled the horrible pain in his back, which had in and of itself diverted the pain in his broken nose.
"Heh. Doesn't even hurt."
"Hurt?" the wraith hissed, leaning in so close that Björn could feel the burning, fetid, clammy breath assault his senses, "Björn Ndeka, you do not know the meaning of 'hurt'." It reached up, pressed a fleshy claw into a wound, and tore down. Hard. An awkwardly diamond-shaped piece of flesh ripped from Björn's back and fell to the floor with a sickening plop.
Now he screamed.
The wraith laughed, continuing the evil business. Piece after piece left until every nerve was exposed, and each burned with intense pain, stinging and vibrating.
At least the whipping was over.
Soaked in sweat and panting, Björn went limp in his bonds, cheek pressed against the hot wall.
And then he shrieked again.
The wraith had picked up a handful of some kind of mineral Björn had only barely heard batter the stone floors, and pressed it into the wounds. Salt.
Björn's fist clenched and he raised back, beating his head against the wall, trying to divert the pain or, at best, knock himself unconscious so he wouldn't have to live it. A short time passed, but eventually blackness overcame him. Whether it was from the self-abuse or the pain, he would never know.
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Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 4:38 pm
Day 2
Hours could have passed. Days. Months. Years. Minutes. When Björn opened his eyes, he couldn't care less. All he knew was he needed to get out of here before these two freaks of nature did anything else to try and break h--huh?
He rolled his wrists and found that they were not still cuffed but were, in fact, simply lying on the floor beside him. He reached up and gently pressed his nose. Healed. He tried to figure out how long it would take for a nose to set, and then reached behind to his back. Scars. Long, raised scars, likely from the whip...but not indented, not stinging.
There went his idea of the time.
"Hello?" No answer.
"YO! s**t HEAD! I KNOW YOU'RE HERE!" This time there came an annoyed hiss as the wraith emerged from the shadows, seeming to simply separate from the wall, soon followed by its blue accomplice. The hulking mass of flesh held a large bowl and Björn's mind immediately assumed the worst. Acid? Flesh-eating bacteria?
What sat in the bowl placed before him was much more gruesome. A million tiny eyes turned toward him, and a thousand mouths opened and closed to emit a bizarre, unnerving gibbering shriek. Björn gave a short expulsion of air and tried to skitter away, hit the wall immediately, and tried to go left.
"Remember. All you have to do isssss drink from the bowl and you will be free."
Björn looked up, eyes wide. THIS bowl?! He soon realized that, no, the wraith meant the bowl in the opposite corner of the room, atop a pedestal that made it look for all the world like an ornate golden birdbath.
"I'll pass."
"Ssssuit yoursssself."
The blue monster moved forward and swung a knobby fist at the bowl, sending it on its side and allowing the hideous abomination within to slip to the floor.
And then it began moving.
Björn, panicking, did a kind of backward army crawl to try and escape, but suddenly hit the wall. His heart beat insanely in his chest. His breaths turned to frightened pants.
"Ressssisssstansssse is usssselesssssssss..."
Björn realized just how right the wraith was as the creature's mouths all opened simultaneously, the gibbering ceasing and turning to an absurd gurgling.
"What's it doi--"
His voice was cut off as a thousand tiny tadpoles, made of sentient slime and eyeballs and gaping mouths, jetted from the main body and attached to his flesh like a million mutated leeches.
Björn gave a strangled yelp and tried to tear the wriggling things from him, but found he could only pinch at tails as they made little wounds in flesh and wriggled in. Another scream, and the wraith gave an elated, whispery giggle.
Tadpoles wriggled beneath flesh, causing hideous moving lumps that Björn beat at feverishly. They separated beneath his skin, erupting into a flat explosion of slime, but reconnected immediately after his fist had raised. The pain of the creatures burrowing and consuming was too much to bear. The small cavern filled with the tortured man's cries.
The tadpoles wriggled and burrowed down, deep, deep, starting to move down Björn's thighs. He immediately leaped to his feet, not wanting to feel the things wriggling beneath him. Alas, in mere moments they were at his feet. He shrieked and stumbled, leaning against a wall and going up on his toes to try and stave off the discomfort. The creatures reacted, following each other to the points of pressure.
Another shriek, and Björn hit the floor, manually convulsing and tearing enormous gashes in his flesh. Every tail he nabbed, though, reconnected to the translucent body and continued on. Too much. Too much.
He rolled to his side in a fit of panic and sheer insane brilliance and each small lump began to travel to the arm he was weighing upon. Dreadful moments passed as flesh was abandoned, feeling loose and unfitting now that it had been burrowed beneath. Björn gave an insane chuckle, ignoring the sting of sweat in his eyes, and waited for each and every tadpole to reach his bicep before acting.
He then reached up, digging his fingernails into his shoulder. Blood jetted from the arteries and veins and pain overtook him, but he continued digging deeper and deeper. He tore violently through muscle and writhed as he screamed and laughed, tugging harder and harder.
Finally, his shoulder erupted from the socket. The man gave a triumphant laugh and pulled. Harder. Harder. His arm went purple and more blood flew from the unfortunate limb, smattering his face with black liquid.
With one final, weak pull, the arm was gone. Removed. The tadpoles wriggled through the dead flesh, eating hungrily and occasionally going to bring food back to the mother ooze. Björn simply lay there, pale as death and clutching his bleeding painful stump...and laughing. Just laughing. And he continued laughing until the blackness met him again.
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Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:28 pm
Day 3
Björn was awakened manually the next time by what could only be described as demonic smelling salts. Sulfur, he assumed. He jolted up to a sitting position and patted his flesh with both arms, looking for those damnable ooze fiends.
...wait. Both arms?
Björn stared in wonderment at his right arm. Hadn't he torn that off? He was sure he had...
He craned his neck to see his shoulder and saw, ah, yes, he had. There was a scar ringing his flesh where the demons had likely decided to heal him again.
"You have a very high pain threshold."
"Pain is...temporary..." Björn found himself weakened by the previous session's events, still sweating, still trembling. He dreaded whatever they had cooked up for him today. But, he reminded himself, he had expected eternal torture. Perhaps this was how it was for everyone, locked in a room with the fiends of Hell, teased and seduced into becoming a demon or tortured forever.
The blue behemoth moved slowly forward and grabbed Björn by either side of the head. The man just peered up, eyes half lidded. In moments, he would wish he was staring up into that hideous maw again. Instead, he saw Maureen.
His wife, standing there, with Damon on her arm. The young man looking up to his father, tears standing out in his eyes. His mouth opened to say something, but nothing emerged. Too disturbed. Too devastated. Maureen tugged at him and the young man waved almost imperceptibly. Another tug, and they were both gone. Gone forever.
Damon, his son, looking just as young as he had when his mother had dragged him off. He sat by The Whirlpool, a pond that had long ago been turned into a cyclonic abyss. There was something in his hand...something in his--a razor? The young man raised the object, staring at it with a strange glint in his eyes, and then began to bring it down. Björn called his name, but he didn't seem to hear. The Vavvian slit each wrist, brackish green blood bubbling up from the wounds. He smiled and stood, heading for the lake. Björn called to him again. Still no reaction. "Love ya, Ma," the young man said and sighed, smiling again, "Love ya, Da." And then he lunged forward, splashing into the infinite abyss of the whirlpool.
Mier and Cairn, running up the hill in Mei-Vaar. The forest in the back. Yelling, screaming. Men crowded around Hellis, laughing. A shriek. The unending pulse of gunfire. Joe, hysterical, yelling something. Lifted off the ground. More yelling. Strangling. Running. Björn shrieked in agony.
Ethan. Laying. Twitching. Reaching. Calling him a name that wasn't his. Choking. Pleading. Begging. Frightened. Tears streamed freely now.
His wife, standing there, with Damon on her arm. The young man looking up to his father, tears standing out in his eyes. His mouth opened to say something, but nothing emerged. Too disturbed. Too devastated. Maureen tugged at him and the young man waved almost imperceptibly. Another tug, and they were both gone. Gone forever.
Damon, his son, looking just as young as he had when his mother had dragged him off. He sat by The Whirlpool, a pond that had long ago been turned into a cyclonic abyss. There was something in his hand...something in his--a razor? The young man raised the object, staring at it with a strange glint in his eyes, and then began to bring it down. "ALRIGHT!"
Björn shrieked, sobbing, tortured.
"ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! I'LL DO IT!" The visions faded as Damon stood. Finally, all gone.
"Yessss," the wraith hissed, holding a hand up to Björn, "Yessss. Drink and you will resssssseive your every dessssssire. Immortality sssssshall be yoursssss."
Björn took the hand and stood weakly, legs feeling of rubber, still unable to control his emotions. He stumbled to the corner of the room and landed hard on his knees. He slid his hands beneath the enormous bowl and lifted it to his lips, tilting his head back and swallowing the horrible black liquid.
"Yesssss, your ssssoul."
Björn ignored the hissing and closed his eyes. Ignored the pain and sobbed.
I'm sorry, he thought to someone who was not there, I'm so sorry.
The liquid was gone. Björn felt...strange. Very strange. His tear-filled eyes flickered up to the wraith, what placed a hand to the man's cheek. Björn's raised to cup it.
"Yesss, my ssssson."
--
Liam heaved a sigh and tossed another pebble into the lake, then raising a fist and beating the ground hard with it. Dead. Dead and somewhere else, all because he'd removed too much soul. All his fault. God ******** damn it. Wait...oh...oh god... Liam clutched his chest and doubled over, shrieking in agony. Something black erupted from his lips and his hands met the grass, body convulsing as he shrieked again. It was like someone had torn his heart and lungs out and set the cavity ablaze. The man ignored Crow's screams, didn't hear, couldn't comprehend. He simply stayed where he was, calming, chest heaving with each painful breath.
"What have they done to him...?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:55 am
The Return
A plot had been bought and a funeral arranged, and now the priest had gone, leaving the muddled gang of mourners to their misery.
The grave itself was not quite a grave, but a hole the grounds-keeper had dug and simply allowed them (with the help of wind magic and telekinesis) to dump the 500+ pounds of dead weight inside. Björn had been wrapped in a sort of burial shroud, stained with his blood, as nobody had the balls enough to clean it off.
Rabid sighed, clinging to Julian like a sad puppy and staring into the grave. Malachi stood beside her, holding Dezzy on one hip and clutching Clemmie's hand. Both little girls had hidden their faces. Emmy, streaks of gold running down ehr cheeks, clung to Hellis, who was entirely emotionally shut-down and staring at nothingness, absentmindedly playing with an arm of Björn's sunglasses. Liam heaved a sigh and tossed a bullet casing into the grave, saluting weakly. God damnit.
Ethan was separate from all the others, looking into the grave with his hair hanging over his face, obscuring it. Lenore had tried to stand next to him but he had shunned her company, so she had wandered over to Ike and looped her arm loosely through his. Crow stood by Liam, staring at the grave through exceptionally blurry eyes. Julian stood by silently, head bowed respectfully.
Watching the ground with one metal finger being nibbled, Eri occasionally looked up towards the grave. And then she'd look quickly back at her feet and nibbled more. No tears. She just looked somewhat confused.
Joe just stood there, staring at the "coffin" of bloodied rags. The inside of his head just swirled with emotions. Anger, for not being there. Sadness, for knowing he could have done nothing. Finally, despair, for this loss. Joe may not have always been able to visit Björn much, but this was all like a heavy cinder block to the chest. Probably worse. All of it was just too much to think about, yet it couldn't be removed from thought.
So Joe stood there, petrified. Occasionally moving to wipe away the tears that creeped from his eyes.
So that was it, then...wasn't it? No more prayers, no more talking. Just...silence. There would be a grieving period, Liam figured, and then they'd just have to move on. But would they ever? Björn's presence was a hard one to get used to, and thusly a hard one to forget. He grabbed Crow's hand and squeezed, trying not to cry and failing miserably.
---
"YOU MISERABLE WRETCHES! CATCH HIM! CATCH HIM BEFORE HE ******** that. Clawing, climbing, good god, he could hear the surface...
Crow squeezed back, knuckling her eyes harshly. Her breath caught in a sob and she choked on it, turning away from the grave and resting her head against Liam's shoulder. Ethan, still standing silently very close to the grave, was white as chalk, looking down with glazed eyes. It felt like he'd never stop grieving. He'd never, ever felt so lonely before, and what was worse was that he wasn't sure if it would ever go away. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed at his eyes in exhaustion, head bowing down further.
Looking up at the other people for a moment, still nibbling. At the sight of Liam, she quickly looked down at her feet, blinking rapidly. Oh, my. No tears. No, no. Still, she couldn't stop them, now that they were apparently allowed. Oh, Björn... She would've done anything if she could have.
The faint sound of most everyone crying could be heard, ringing in Joe's ears. As it built and grew louder, it just became hard to remain composed and the tears came more easily to Joe. He reached for his pocket and grabbed a few handkerchiefs, bring them to his side and raising him arm slightly, dangling them for those who might need them. He didn't bother wiping his own tears, for he knew they wouldn't stop.
He closed his eyes tightly, just taking a moment to try to recompose himself. Joe only ended up yelling at himself, inside his head. "How could I have not been there?! WHY wasn't I there?!" were only a few of the haunting things that violently echoed inside his mind.
The being that approached the group carefully was and was not Björn. The face was the same, but it was...smaller. Less bulky. Its eyes looked entirely human, thought were still brown, and its hair had streaks of grey. Speaking of hair, its was braided, hang to the ground, and then looped back up to meet his head again. After 20,000 years, hair grew.
Dezzy gasped and pointed. Nobody paid her much attention.
And so it approached, grabbed a handful of Ethan's hair, and pulled the young man's head back, smiling the fanged grin.
"Nice hair. Looks a lot like mine, though."
Head bent back at an odd angle, Ethan stared up, going if anything paler. He could only make a choked, gasping sort of sound, eyes widening impossibly. As his shock-numbed brain processed the crack about his hair, the faintest of blushes tinged the paper-white paleness of his face.
"I didn't feel like cutting it," he said belatedly, voice a thread.
Crow's claws bit into Liam's arm and shoulder as she sought to stay upright, face going slack and jaw hanging open. Lenore and Julian behind her made identical sounds of astonishment.
There was a lot going through Eri's mind. Not any of it was really being paid attention to. She looked at the Björn-thing for a moment, then back at the grave, and returned to staring. Nibble, nibble. And then she apparently decided that the Björn-thing was an apparition. But it didn't stop her from staring.
The sounds of shock and awe, as well as the familiar voice, were all it took to have Joe crane his neck in the general direction of the noise.
It was Björn. Wasn't it? He looked like Björn. He sounded like Björn. He was as tall and most similarly as buff as Björn. But... how? Aside from a few cosmetic differences, it looked exactly like Björn. These questions plagued Joe's mind as he just stared in bewilderment, with moments of confusion floating along his face. He could do nothing but just wonder and fall promptly on his a**. So he did.
Björn snorted and shook his head at Joe while he released his grip on Ethan's hair. He turned back to the young man then, smiling slightly.
"I missed you, kid."
And Hellis suddenly lunged forward, half-missing and catching Björn around the waist. He stood slowly and went up on his toes, grabbing Björn by the back of the head and bringing him down to kiss him hard. Once he let go, Björn's face was streaked with tears.
"Yes, yes, I missed you too. Thought about y'all every day."
"Like...eight-thousand years!" Liam suddenly interjected.
"Trust me, I know, and the last thousand or so were spent fighting and hiding to get back here."
"I love you, man!" Liam shouted as he ran forward, hugging Björn about the waist as it was as high as he could reach. The larger man still clung protectively to Hellis with one hand on Ethan's shoulder.
"OH, GOD!"
And then the children catapulted forward, not noticing that Björn was crying. Not noticing that he was trembling from the cold. He was back!
While the others hung back, unsure what to do, not wanting to intrude on the family's reuniting, Ethan drew in closer, tears streaking down his face. He was fairly certain Björn's hand on his shoulder was the only thing keeping him upright.
"You're shivering," he said, his voice unable to rise above that shock-ridden thread as he looked up at Björn, worrying.
Nibble, nibble. Apparently, the other people could see the not-real Björn. She edged closer to the grave and looked in. Mmhm. Body. Strange.
Well, there was only one way to see. Eri rather calmly walked over and gave a free part of Björn a poke. Well. Solid. That ******** up her current thoughts on the situation. Because if he was solid, and looked like a Björn, and talked like a Björn, there was a fifty fifty chance that this was just a weird dream, or he was really alive.
So, she chose the best option. Eri joined in on the Björn love fest. Hooray!
"Buh... How...," was all Joe could form, still in a decent amount of shock. He was pretty sure he wasn't doped up in one way or another. He began to get up but stumbled a little before getting all the way up. He just ran at Björn, leaped and aimed for the least person-infested area he could see and wrapped his arms as far around Björn as he could.
"Is it really you?!," he cried as he hugged tighter, the tears from his face still there, but now out of joy.
Oh, God. So much love. Björn tried to stop crying, found he couldn't, and gave up, throwing his arms around the mass of people and kissing the top of someone's head. He was pretty sure it was Eri.
"Yeah, 's me," he nodded, and then turned back to Ethan, remembering he'd made a statement, "Hell's hot, kid. Real hot."
Hellis perked up.
"I said 'Hell is'. Two words."
The young man resumed his cuddling.
"So...yeah...I don't mean to break up the hug-orgy,but I'm ******** cold, and ******** tired, and I could really use a ******** drink."
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Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 7:19 pm
Admission
It was late morning when Julian had finally been able to work up the courage to go home. He hadn't changed out of his scrubs, which he knew made him look conspicuous walking home. And besides the fact, he was sure that bloodstains from two stab wounds didn't help matters. Wishing very badly to find a comfortable closet to hide in for the remainder of his life, he staggered into the house, every thought bent on cleaning up and trying to reason out what he'd done.
He just hoped no one was home.
And nobody was. Not obviously, anyway. It appeared that the house had been abandoned for whatever reason. Perhaps an empty fridge, an over-excited child. Who knew?
Grateful for the quiet but half-wishing Rabid was there to provide some kind of comfort, Julian went into the kitchen, leaning over the sink and feeling very sick. He fumbled for the water and scrubbed viciously at his hands, but it felt like the powdery grit that Yagadath had decomposed into wouldn't come off. He needed a shower. A scalding hot shower.
"Hnngh."
Unzipping the sweatshirt, looking down at the bloody mess of his shirt, he shuddered. It had been blind rage that had made him do it. He'd been threatening Crow...and that poor baby.... another child his twisted parents had sought to bargain off for their own benefit. Yagadath had deserved everything he got. Hot, sick loathing roiled in Julian's gut as he went into the bathroom, stripping off the sweatshirt and going to the sink again, trying one last time to get the horrible feeling of grit off his hands under the scalding water.
And then a person showed themselves. Kind of. The shower curtain peeled back and out peeked a very familiar black-haired head with an eyebrow raised, followed by a smaller, fuzzy one.
"...Julian? Rabid's...not...here...?"
Julian jolted with a strangled curse, whirling around and staring at Björn in unreasonable alarm. His face, already paled, had turned corpse-gray. Too late he tried to cover the bloodstains on his shirt, and he bolted for the door.
And Björn stood without hesitation, leaving Hellis in the tub of water, and met Julian about halfway down the stairs, catching him by the back of the neck. He was quite literally steaming as the water evaporated off of him.
"Woah, there."
"I didn't have a choice!"
The words exploded out of Julian before he could stifle them. He blinked, confused by the desperation in his own voice, and he shuddered under Björn's grip. His head bowed down, face still an unhealthy gray, and he went dead silent.
Björn turned Julian around, grabbing him by the shoulders and craning his neck down to him, brow furrowed in concern.
"Didn't have a choice in what?"
Julian shook his head hard, certain he would finally be sick if he dared to open his mouth. He gestured helplessly at his bloodied shirt, and slowly reached into intangibility to pull out...a syringe. He hadn't dared leave it at the scene in the hospital.
He shuddered again and dropped the syringe.
Oh, good God. It didn't take much more than that to realize that a, Julian had killed someone trying to kill him and b) this person's now non-existence made him feel guilty. Poor guy.
And then came the paternal instincts again. Damn them, and damn them to Hell. He gave a little noise and hugged Julian gently, not wanting to break anything.
"It's okay. I believe you."
Shocked senseless at first that Björn, who he had been so certain had really loathed him, gods knew why, wasn't regarding him with utter disgust, Julian couldn't really do much but stand there for a minute. Something in him broke a moment later, and he hung onto Björn in misery.
"He wasn't my father," he said, a note of desperation in his voice. "N-not. Not really. He...I was...he was going to hurt Crow. I couldn't let him do it again. He. He would've made her suffer, he was a monster."
The desperate tone had turned nearly manic now as Julian tried to explain himself, forgetting Björn had already said he'd believed him. A wild half-laugh escaped from him as he looked at the syringe.
"I had to," he said. "I had to."
"I know you had to," Björn nodded, "You did the right thing." And he believed it too, although he was already missing his target of hatred.
Hellis was standing in the ajar bathroom door now, dripping and watching the events playing out before him.
Julian's legs gave out from under him. It just sort of happened, and he was surprised by how he suddenly stumbled against Björn and sank to the floor. It was not grief that gripped him. He didn't know how to feel, outside confused and oddly frightened and quite sick.
OHJEEZE. Being so tall, Björn was forced to go down with with young man, and so sank to his knees and pulled Julian to him, trying to comfort him in every way he knew how, one hand rubbing Julian's back.
"It'll be okay."
Julian nodded mutely, rubbing at his inexplicably burning eyes and trying to hide that he was crying. He didn't know why. He honestly didn't. He'd hated the man the minute he'd seen him raise his hand to Crow.
"The first time I'd met Crow, she was running for her life from Yagadath," he said hoarsely. "The second time I met her, he'd nearly beaten it out of her. I don't care that I killed him. He deserved it."
So why did he feel so ******** sick?
Björn's face contorted further. ******** beat Crow? If he'd known that before Julian'd gotten to him, he would have done it himself. The man sighed and closed his eyes a moment, giving Julian a brief kiss on the top of the head.
"It's natural to feel like you do," he nodded, "It's remorse. You took a life, you feel bad about it. It doesn't matter who it was. I get the same way."
Julian nodded again, eyes still fixed on the floor. Incidents of cutting throats and razing an entire city to the ground while under the influence of pure evil notwithstanding, Julian had really only ever killed two people. It was a terrible feeling to try to get used to.
"Doesn't get easier, does it," he said, not asking, merely stating. He moved as though to stand, but couldn't do it. He contented himself to lean against Björn and tried not to pass out, feeling rather disgusted with how weak he probably seemed.
Relieved that neither man was regarding him with the revulsion he'd expected, Julian simply sat there, silently contemplating a small spatter of blood on the hem of his shirt.
"I sh...I should. I should go home," he managed, finally. "I need to clean up. Before...before Crow gets home. I need to..."
He swallowed hard.
"I should tell her. Later."
Björn let go and pulled back.
"You can get cleaned up here, and be careful who you tell," he said seriously, "What some people don't know...won't hurt them."
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Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 7:53 pm
Desiccate the Living
Julian was deeply involved in studying anatomy, mostly to keep his mind from wandering back to the murder he'd committed less than a week ago. He was poring over aged and new books obsessively, taking extensive notes, sketching out muscles and bones and paths of nerves. He stayed up late and got up early, throwing himself into his work to get some semblance of peace.
All things considered, it was working rather well.
"I wish there was at least something on Vavvian anatomy," he said idly one afternoon, mostly to himself, reading three books at once and taking more notes than was necessary.
Liam wandered by, peering over Julian's shoulder.
"Nobody knows we exist," he said after a bit and dragged a chair over, straddling it backward.
"More's the pity," Julian said absently, carefully sketching the inner workings of a satyr heart from the grotesque picture in the leather-bound, rather evil looking book in front of him. "Just wishful thinking. Vavvians are interesting..."
Finishing the sketch, he moved on to a bigger book, obsessively flipping through it and scanning the pages.
"Hhhn..." he sighed, sitting back and cracking his back. "Need reading glasses..."
A sudden idea struck him, and he glanced at Liam.
"Wouldn't be possible to snag a Vavvian-written book on the species, then, huh?" he asked casually.
Liam shook his head, smiling slightly.
"If such a book exists, you'd need to find someone to read it to you. Why not just...autopsy one?" His intentions were not clear but, from the infection in his voice, it was clear he had some.
"Mm, yeah, there's that," Julian said regretfully, knuckling at an eye. He laughed slightly, grinning ruefully at Liam. "Would if I could. A species no one else has studied..."
He sighed again, looking absently into the distance. The research opportunity was painfully tantalizing...and it would give him something to occupy himself with, rather than stew over the irrevocable. He gave Liam a mild look, smiling a little.
"Offering a minion? I'd pay you back. Er, well...you could take one of the donated bodies from the university morgue, overstocked since some nasty highway accident last week..."
Liam's smile grew and he shook his head again, slowly.
"It's much more interesting when they're alive, don't you think?"
Julian looked at his book again, frowning slightly.
"In theory," he said eventually. "Seeing blood flow, how the heart would work...it'd be..."
Julian trailed off as a strange notion dawned on him. He looked at Liam speculatively.
"It would take a while," he said, carefully keeping his words casual and without implication. "Hours. Very precise dissection. Possible removal of organs for measurement and specimens."
Liam's smile just broadened further and he arched a brow, bringing his chin up to rest between his thumb and index finger. Need more be said?
Julian regarded Liam coolly for a moment, mouth scrunching to one side as he thought it over.
"Okay. But we do not, under any circumstance, ever tell Crow. She would kill me with fire and burning."
Liam grinned now. It was a slightly unnerving expression, but it was there nonetheless.
"Mum's the word," he nodded slowly.
Julian nodded once, and hopped up from his chair, rescuing his beaten coat and bag from under a teetering mound of books.
"Alright. C'mon, if we go now we'll have time to get dinner later."
Liam nodded and slid from his chair.
"The digestive system is just as amazing. You owe me food while we're there."
--
It was only once they'd reached the halls of the hospital that Liam began feeling a little...wary.
"How, exactly are we go--room 16, dead--gonna get in there? I don't exactly look like a doctor. Corpse, maybe, but not a doctor."
"I got it covered," Julian said with a small smile, though he looked warily into room sixteen and winced at the sight of weepy family members hovering over a man that was undeniably dead. "Oof. Mister Garret, no one could catch pneumonia at that age and survive..."
Walking casually through the halls towards the morgue, they had nearly reached the double doors leading into the basement when a familiar voice piped up behind him.
"Adyamaur. For heaven's sake, can't you take a damned day off?"
"Sedra," Julian said, looking around and then looking down. A particularly tiny woman glared back up at him, dressed in surgical scrubs. She glared at him.
"New intern," he said pleasantly, pointing to Liam. Sedra glanced at him, nodding once.
"Pleasure," she said, instantly looking back up at Julian. "Don't do anything stupid. I know it's a challenge, seeing as you function on unheard-of levels of idiocy, but please try it."
Julian snorted.
"Sedra U'Maaki, you have no faith in me at all," he said with a grin, waving goodbye and leading Liam along through the corridor and through the double doors.
"Wow," Liam snorted, "Who pissed in her cheerios? Have fun trying to explain why the 'new intern' never shows up again."
"Hnn? Oh, heh, that's just how she is all the time. She's kinda sweet, once you get past the terrifying way she brandishes scalpels at you when you misfile paperwork," Julian said with a wry grin. "Though she'd probably be less bitter if they'd just give her the chief of surgery position...gods know, it'd make working with her less frightening."
He paused, thinking on how he'd have to explain away the lie.
"Damn. That's probably gonna cost me an eye..."
As they approached the morgue, deeply out of place loud rock music echoed down the brightly lit, obsessively clean corridor. Julian sighed and pushed the door open. A gangly scarecrow of a man was singing off-key and bobbing his head as he finished up with a largish corpse, covering it up with a sheet and stripping off his bloodied gloves.
"Andy," Julian called. The gangly man didn't hear. "ANDY!"
The man jumped, looking around, and bent over another shrouded body, lifting the sheet to see if it was what had made the noise. Julian clapped a hand to his forehead.
Liam laughed. Loudly.
"I should. I so should."
He liked this weird guy already. Bizarrely-proportioned, listening to good music, and working with corpses. Perfect.
"Nooo. Don't you dare, Andy does not need another zombie incident," Julian said, trying to sound stern but laughing anyway.
"Julian! Jeez, you never come down here, less'n U'Maaki has ya on stiff-duty," the man called Andy said jovially, washing his hands and wiping them dry on his jeans. He was youngish, with thick glasses and a distinct air of one who didn't much care for going into the sun. "Not looking for another coma patient ended up in the wrong wing, are ya?"
Julian laughed again, shaking his head.
"Nah. Showing a new intern around. He wanted to get in practice, but the Schoolhouse is full. Any unclaimed lying around?"
"Lying, sitting, and curled up in the fetal position," Andy said, pointing to a sad little cluster of shrouded gurneys. "Damned mass cult suicides. I was gonna pop out and get lunch anyway, see if I can't sneak into Schoolhouse and steal one'a those little French cookie things they always have for afters."
"Don't steal their food, Andy, the sorostitutes always nibble all of them and spread their mouth-herpes."
"Mm. Delicious, delicious herpes," Andy said dreamily. "Anyway! Have fun," he said to Liam with a grin. "Nobody's gonna make much fuss if ya have a little study-session with our dearly departed Church of the Great Wool Handkerchief or whatever the hell they were."
Liam laughed near-hysterically and entered the morgue without a care, inviting himself to peer in at various corpses. Hmm...too old, too small...too rigor-mortis-ed.
Waving Andy off as he set off cheerily upstairs, Julian wandered into the morgue with a slight smile.
"So. Yeah. That's Andy," he said, turning down the blasting stereo a few notches, so that he wouldn't have to shout. "You can have one after we're done. Go for one of the Does, though, no one with any positive ID."
Going to a clean table, he took a notebook and recorder from his bag and set them on the trolley beside it. He left for a moment and returned with a surgical gown, a visor pushed up on his hair and a mask clenched in his teeth as he awkwardly tied the gown up.
"Okay. Andy's lunches last ages, so we'll be good for two hours or so," he said, donning gloves. "Ready?"
Liam nodded and pulled his shirt off over his head, leaping on the table, starting to unbutton his pants, and then putting his hands in the air.
"We goin' all-out here?"
Busy examining a bonesaw as though debating whether it was necessary or overkill, Julian glanced over his shoulder at Liam and gave a mild shrug.
"Sure. If you get uncomfortable I can give you a cloth to cover up with," he said, dragging the mask over his face and adjusting the visor.
"Pretty sure I ain't gonna freak out on ya," Liam laughed and stripped down. And so he realized that his girlfriend's brother had seen more of him than his girlfriend had...and he laughed as he laid down.
"Have at it, Kevorkian."
Julian smiled a little, though the mask obscured it, and turned on his recorder. He picked up a scalpel, and drew a long line down Liam's chest. He adjusted the recorder's microphone and spoke softly in Rijani, working steadily and stopping here and there to make exploratory cuts, examining with infinite interest.
Nothing out-of-the-ordinary yet. Normal flesh, just like a human's...but no blood? Clearly Liam was holding it back. It was only when the delayed sting of the cuts hit him that he laughed, fitting his head better into the corpse-hold.
"Yenno, they should make these things more comfortable."
Julian gave a snort.
"I'll be sure to pass the request onto Andy," he said mildly, peeling back a layer of skin and making a small notation in his notebook. "He'd probably knit something for you."
He pointed at Andy's office on the other side of the morgue, a brightly lit room with a mound of yarn and an unfinished blanket huddled in one corner.
"Alrighty. Gonna break your sternum, hope you don't mind," he said then, putting the scalpel down and picked up the neglected bone saw, turning it on and cutting carefully. Feeling distinctly creepy for a second, wondering what Crow would do to him if she knew what was going on, he rummaged around for clamps. "Hnn. Here a second ago..."
So far, so...well. Bad. Nothing exciting, and nothing even exceptionally painful. Flesh wounds. Eh.
"Feel free."
A moment's more rummaging yielded the elusive clamps. Victorious, Julian turned back to Liam and set to separating the ribcage.
Just like surgery, he thought, as another pang of discomfort nagged at him. ...without anesthesia. Besides, not like I'm torturing him. He volunteered.
Why Liam had volunteered was beyond his reasoning, however.
There were a few moments of plain discomfort as the ribcage strained...and then it popped open. Liam gasped and his chest arched hard, and then he gave a little noise and relaxed slowly, jerking with each breath, eyes half-closed and rolled back in his head. And he was...grinning?
Ah. So that was why. Julian eyed Liam's expression in morbid fascination for a moment before looking down again, picking up the scalpel. He paused, adjusting the overhead lamp and looking at Liam's innards with something quite akin to awe.
"Wow..."
"Sorry," Liam finally managed to whisper.
Vavvian innards were...interesting, to say the least. The hearts were abnormally large, and the entirety of Liam's blood seemed to be pumping in a continual circle around his, avoiding the rest of his body, save his brain. And yet he was still alive? No kidneys, no liver, no pancreas of any such silliness, two lungs that led separately to the gills, and a pair of entirely useless intestines.
Highly-evolved creatures, these were.
"Don't be," Julian said eventually, tearing his eyes away from the the lungs and resisting the temptation to start cutting into it. "No...you're enjoying it, that's what's...wow, Liam, I didn't know you had two hearts..."
Trailing off for a beat, he started speaking rapid-fire Rijani into the recorder microphone as he scribbled notes, he wished bitterly that he'd thought to bring his camera along. Contenting to sketch quickly, he examined the intestines and cut experimentally into one, peeling back the wall of tissue to look inside.
Entirely clean. Nothing had ever passed through said intestine. Ever.
"Mmhm," Liam nodded, slowly gaining control over himself again, "And watch." And the hearts began pumping at odd rhythms, blood circulating now to both arms, and only the arms. He wiggled his pink fingers at Julian.
"Woogedy."
Julian watched with distinctly childlike interest, scribbling page after page of notes almost giddily.
"Never seen that kind of control over body function before," he said, marking down lines and dashes in a manic attempt to map out the heart rhythms. He went on in Rijani at length, closing the hole he'd made in the spotless intestine and moving on to poke at a lung.
"Careful. You take both'a those away and your living specimen becomes very quickly dead," Liam nodded, "D'you have any food 'round here? Got 'nother trick for ye." He tried to sit up, found that amazingly painful, and decided to lay back down before he lost control.
"Oops! Right, right, I'll leave those alone," Julian said quickly, quickly drawing away his scalpel with a morbid twinge of disappointment. At the question, he glanced 'round towards Andy's office. "Probably. One second."
A few moments of rummaging in the office yielded a box of gummy bears, a bag of pork rinds, and fruit roll-ups. Julian returned with his dubious offerings, shaking his head slightly.
"Can't for the life of me understand how he can live off this crap," he said, sniffing at the pork rinds investigatively.
Liam wrinkled his nose. Ugh. Whatever. Food was food. He stole a gummy bear and popped it in his mouth. Chewed, swallowed, and pointed to his chest. The colored bit of gelatin could actually be seen in a small bulb beneath his heart. The flesh was clear there, and the thing dissolved...and some kind of clear goo rushed through previously unexplained tubes in his arms, wrists, and...sweet Jesus. The goo pooled in his hands and he held one up to Julian.
"Body absorbs what it needs, excretes the rest. Much cleaner than you humanoids, I must say. Like...fish-mucus. Kinda gross, but not as gross." He kept his hands cupped so as to not accidentally spill unexplained fluids. THAT would be a bit hard for Julian to explain away. He thought for a moment.
"OOH! OOH! Another trick. Smother me."
Taking notes so quickly the pen flew out of his hand at one point and he had to go running to find it, Julian gave Liam a look that said clearly this was the equivalent of getting a diamond-encrusted magic puppy for his birthday.
"It's so efficient," he said ecstatically, doing squiggly sketches of the tubes. He was considering asking to take a sample of the goo as a specimen when he suddenly balked. Smother? Oh...but...but the last time he'd done that...
The sudden unwelcome memory of Yagadath crumpling dead onto the floor was coupled with the vivid recollection of Liam thrashing and dying by Julian's hand, and he had to take a second to collect himself. He was glad his face was obscured by the mask and visor.
"Okay," he said, cupping his hand over Liam's nose and mouth warily. After a beat he pinned the gills down as well.
Liam shook his head, placing one of Julian's hands over his nose and mouth and the other in his 'hair'. He had no problem covering his own gills. And so, nose, mouth, and gills covered...his lungs still inflated? What?
"Huh! How did...but... Liam, how'd you do that?" Julian asked, the momentary disruption of traumatic memories instantly forgotten. It didn't make any sense at all, and it thrilled him to be faced with such an interesting puzzle.
And Liam just nodded up toward Julian's hair-hand. Wait, what?
Julian regarded Liam blankly for a second before it clicked.
"Gill filaments," he said slowly. "Your hair...wow. Jeez! That's...Liam, that's so ******** cool!"
Liam laughed.
"'S why it doesn't grow," he shrugged, "You cut it, it stays cut. Much more effective under water, though. You can see the bubbles n' s**t. Now, that's all I have to show you. You may go back to prodding."
Nodding vigorously, filling up ten pages with notes in a space of five minutes, Julian set to cutting and prodding again. There were a few specimen bottles on the trolley, and he cut a small sliver of intestine off and examined it very closely before sticking it into the waiting container.
"Tch. Wish we could've done this sooner," he said, mostly to himself nearly an hour and an extra twelve pages of notes later. His liking for Liam, which had hovered around polite civility for close to two years, had skyrocketed into admiring affection in a short space of time. "Feel like wrapping up?"
Liam gave a nervous little breath and nodded.
"Sure. Just don' drag it out too long."
Julian just nodded, cheerily slicing open a lung and taking fifteen minutes or so to do a quick diagram and take another sample.
"Well, that'll do it," he said, screwing the specimen bottle's cap back on tightly. "Which leads to the question, how do we fix the absolute trainwreck I've made of your organs. And skin. And muscle tissue."
He paused, looking at the mess speculatively.
"Gods, Crow would bash my head in with a baseball bat for this."
Liam gave a weak laugh.
"Your choice. Stab me through the heart or remove the brain. Up to you."
Julian hadn't counted on this part. In all truth, he hadn't even thought that it would come to killing Liam again. With a slight shiver that he was careful not to let Liam see, he raised the scalpel again.
"Heart, then," he said, keeping his voice calm even as his insides suddenly began to roil. "We can go get dinner after I clean up."
And without another moment's hesitation, he stabbed Liam through the heart.
Liam sat up suddenly, giving a painful-sound cough. Clearly Julian hadn't thought too hard on seeing his body deprived of blood in deciding to...remove the blood. The color slowly drained form his face. Painfully slowly. It was that discomfort again, and a tear or two ran down Liam's cheek. ******** then his eyes closed. Fingers scrabbled at the table a moment...and then?
"Well, that was fun!" Liam took a hesitant poke at his still-erect body before starting to get dressed, "Your treat, right?"
Flinching but making himself watch, Julian took a few more notes before the newly-resurrected Liam popped out from under the table.
"Yup," he said, stripping off his gloves and pressing a hand to the old body's face. Fire blossomed and crawled all over the corpse in unnaturally controlled paths, burning white hot and tidily destroying the evidence of the past few hours activities. "Anywhere you like, excluding fast food."
Liam pointed.
"That is so ******** cool...and hold on. I wanna pick a new baby first." And so he went back, searching through the body bags until he found that perfect someone to minion-ize. A "doe", just as Julian had instructed.
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