hej hej im erik

I'm an eclipsed star

[limboduh]

"Dead forest specter"

Svante and the Specter.

A comic drawn by my friend @hiitol based on my novel “Svante, who didn’t have time anywhere” (unfortunately, only the version in Russian language is available at this moment. URL: https://ficbook.net/readfic/13054210).

[skelesass]

chrisker week 2026 day 2: Mind control

have a VERY rough after work sketch

[pnglove]

[limboduh]

stjärnor för det äppelgrå fölet

[limboduh]

ELECTROCUTION

The disposable camera flashed an instant before the lightning outside the tent. Kennedy winced, sighed, turned over onto his other side, but didn't wake up.

It came out well. His face so gentle and serene, like a dead man's.

Krauser was big and heavy, but he stepped so quietly that even the fabric on the tent floor didn't rustle—only the rain outside. After two steps, he knelt down next to the sleeping Leon and looked through the viewfinder again: dark, with only the little light on the receiver glowing with a dull, bloody gleam, but he knew the shot would capture exactly how his disheveled bangs fell across his forehead. But before the major could press the button, the light reflected off a wide-open eye.

"Jack!.." Kennedy barely had time to cry out before a strong hand pressed him down into his sleeping bag, preventing him from jumping up.

"Not good, rookie," Krauser immediately let go, hid the camera, and flicked his lighter to show that it really was him. "You should always be ready."

"You told me to 'go jerk off and hit the hay,'" Leon smirked in his usual insolent manner and rubbed his neck. "And you sat down to fiddle with your bow. I thought you were keeping watch."

"I am keeping watch," Jack stood to his full height, as much as the tent allowed, frowned, and sighed. "I was testing you."

"On the first point, right?" Kennedy asked venomously, knowing the major wouldn't do anything to him anyway.

Krauser released the button on the lighter, and it went dark again.

As for the "first point," Jack himself had problems. Weakly and dully, he could still feel it, but never in the presence of a living person. The kid's too-pretty face might as well have had a sign saying he only drank tea with girls, and Krauser, as feral as he'd become after nearly fifteen years of service, could see the kid glancing at him in a certain way, but he couldn't and wouldn't do anything about it. A photograph, especially of a sleeping person, didn't count as a living person. Jack stared at the photo paper with its nauseating glare of blind spots, bit his free wrist until it bruised, forced himself to breathe so rarely and silently that he grew dizzy. In the last seconds, he'd jolt as if electrocuted and collapse right where he sat. It was painful, more painful than a flashbang at his feet, as if a discharge had been sent straight through his brain, leaving convulsions in individual small muscles for another minute. But what was far worse was that the same photographs inevitably grew boring, and this camera was the last one.

Jack wanted more.

***

They often joked about him—it's good to be a pessimist: either you're always right, or you can always be glad things turned out well. Krauser was always certain that he would be discarded like spent material as soon as something happened to him, and all that would be left for him would be to wander the streets begging like countless other veterans—and that would be if he was lucky enough to still have legs to wander on. He told everyone that this would definitely happen to him, with no irony at all, like a madman. Believing it so deeply that it happened.

***

The crimson beret melted over his face in sticky, thick blood. Salty, poisonous—it stung his eyes and the small cracks in his skin. In his ears was the wet crunch of his own cartilage, and no creature he'd seen on this mission scared him as much as the fact that he could no longer move his fingers. No fairy tales about recovery, no lying whining about how there was always a way out—it was all over.

Everything was over for him, unless some goddamn miracle happened.

He had been a bad person but an excellent soldier: Krauser felt no remorse about killing people. Composed, effective, perfectly executing the task of "eliminate"—no one ever had any questions for him, and it never occurred to anyone that he did it with such pleasure, that in his time off-duty, he didn't rest but worked as a mercenary.

Now, not even a mercenary anymore, Jack wasn't bound by any humanitarian law, let alone morality, but he didn't even feel regret that while he had been, it had protected him in no way. No one had protected him, including Leon, who, so kind and compassionate, couldn't afford to stop and turn back for a wounded comrade. It wasn't his fault; further on, where the virus still threatened humanity, he was far more needed, but no matter how much Krauser thought that this was the only correct course of events—it stung, he was angry at him, to the brink of total hatred, but he never threw away a single photo of him.

As Leon said, for reasons completely inexplicable, genuinely believing his own words, he could continue to be an instructor for recruits and handle army logistics, but it was easier to fake his own death than to wait for them to find something for him, crippled and useless, to do. After recovering, he found an occupation that at first glance seemed unusual for a man of his past—he got involved with a cult. Why, if his country could betray him, should he himself remain submissive and loyal? It wouldn't have been loyalty anyway; only someone endowed with a higher consciousness could be loyal, and Krauser, if he left everything as it was, would have no consciousness left. Everyone dies once, and it doesn't matter whether you continue to exist aimlessly afterward—but Jack miraculously rose from the dead.

All the time until he met Albert Wesker, he could hardly sleep, not because of the pain, but because when he fell asleep, he couldn't let go of himself, couldn't forget what had happened to him, that he could no longer do anything, that his life was over. He'd close his eyes, hoping to relax a little, to forget, but his own severed arm, the moment he stepped into a place where everything was still fine, would grab him by the scruff and throw him into a nightmare indistinguishable from reality. His life was over, yet for some damn reason he continued to exist.

Krauser couldn't sleep, but he finally went mad when, in rare exceptions to his paralyzed semblance of sleep, it wasn't his own mutilated reflection that appeared, but the one who had been lucky enough to get out of that mission intact.

Leon Scott Kennedy occupied all his thoughts. And the thought that he might meet him again struck Jack with such excitement that he found the strength not to end it all.

***

Jack silently dropped his head to the side, exposing the largest vein. The needle stopped a millimeter from his skin.

"Are you sure, Mr. Krauser?" Even through the thick black lenses, Jack could feel how mocking Wesker's gaze was. It crawled under his skin, dissected him vein by vein, tried to burrow so deep into his brain that nothing would be left of him. Krauser clearly interested him; otherwise, they wouldn't have taken a good half-liter of blood and every possible sample. "Good genes"—he'd heard that fragment of a conversation through the anesthesia, either with someone or with himself. And ironically, the joke about good genes, combined with his German roots, had stuck to Jack like a brand since school. And it was all true about him: tall, strong, healthy—if not for the scars, even his face was good—but that wasn't what interested Wesker.

"NSAIDs contraindicated"—one nearly invisible note in his medical file, which Wesker had bet on and hadn't lost.

"Or is something weighing on you?" Jack saw a restrained, arrogant smile reflected in the deactivated medical panel. "For everything you've done, you should have been executed last millennium—if not under military code, then under civil law. 'Sexual assault of minors with particular cruelty'…"

Jack didn't feel pain well. Not others', not his own. He was angry at himself, looking for some line he wouldn't cross, while Wesker was only looking for his analysis of the PTGS2 mutation.

"Basal plasma prostaglandin E2 levels significantly below reference values," Wesker momentarily left Krauser with his thoughts about what he'd done and turned to the printout. "The hyperthermic phase of viral rejection will be skipped."

Injection or electric chair? Jack had long ago decided for himself that he would choose the latter. But the choice was made for him.

Or was it?

"You're clearly not here to lecture me on morality," the former major smirked, wincing at the touch of cold, tentacle-like fingers.

"And you were so waiting for this, weren't you? To finally clear your conscience and get what you deserve." Wesker quickly grew tired of dry calculations, and it was far more interesting to switch to a living specimen. And Krauser had gotten used to being just a biological unit back in the army. "This injection won't kill you. But to gain one life, you must pay with one death. I know what you want." He pulled Jack by his sewn-on arm, forcing him to stand, and sat him in the electric chair. "Get ready. You will become something better than human." Wesker slid the needle into the vein with a soft whisper and pushed the plunger. Krauser felt nothing. Right up until Albert pressed a button on some panel to the left, and Jack was jolted with such electricity that it felt like his bone marrow was sizzling. Everything flashed before his eyes like the flash of a disposable camera. "Welcome."

***

Injection or electric chair? Or maybe neither? Treating him, and then trying to convince his paranoia-inflamed mind that the treatment had worked—it would be easier to just shoot him. A bullet to the head, and it's done. Easier for everyone.

And someone he didn't know wanted to help him, without even realizing it.

As he heavily knelt before the cult leader, Krauser felt the familiar tickle of someone else's scope on the back of his neck—a feeling that had never failed him since his very first operation. And just a moment before he released his mutated hand, bones outwards as a shield, Wesker regretted the effort he'd invested, and the aim shifted away from him.

He had saved him.

If the major had known what happened back at the tower, he might have silently said thank you, but as he rose, Krauser held onto his bitter rage against anyone who might do anything out of pity for him.

***

Jack got scared when he realized that besides rage, paralysis, and the anticipation of danger, he could feel something else. Something unsettling and prickling, but so warm that he didn't want to get rid of it. That he worried about his rookie, that he cared what happened to him, that he wanted to protect him.

He wanted to split his eyes with an axe into one black wound, making the bones crunch. The boy had thin wrists—he remembered well, he knew, he anticipated the sound they would make when they broke. Flexible as willow branches. He'd fall backward from the blow, blood gushing from his face, he'd grope around helplessly and scream, he'd want to cry but wouldn't be able to.

Leon, when no one was watching them, was very attentive and—unusually for not just a soldier but any man—tender. He'd put bandages on every scratch as if they weren't trivial, always catch moments when he was starting to lose his temper, and even give him his water on long marches. He had such kind and clear eyes that it made your heart ache: he wanted to help everyone, even after seeing an entire city die.

Jack would have had the strength to pull his joint out with his bare hands. Even back when his own hands were alive. Not just wrench his arms behind his back, already showing his superiority and strength, but dislocate them unnaturally so that his elbows bent outward, dangling by skin bruised blue from ruptured vessels. Then cut open the swelling hematoma with a knife and take his limb, pulling it off as easily as a leaf from an autumn tree.

He wanted to do something nice for him—even just buy him ice cream, but that was about all Jack remembered from civilian life. Once, as a joke, he'd sat Leon on his shoulders, lifting him at arm's length like a puppy. The boy got flustered, laughed, and said something about how if they saw each other in five years, it would be the other way around. And it was so bitter that they would part and nothing would remain except those creepy, stained photos and good memories that Krauser wanted to kill him.

He was obsessed with him, but he never did anything to him.

***

Or he didn't remember.

Or maybe he dreamed it?

"I want to cut you," Jack leaned so close to Leon that he could hear his pulse beating in his temple. He snatched the knife in a lightning-fast movement and pressed the blade to his cheek. Sickly sweet as a girl, so unsure behind all those jokes… He didn't even have proper stubble yet, and they'd already thrown him into the thick of it.

"Jack! Let me go!"

There was nothing to grab onto; he had not a millimeter of maneuverability. One breath, one twitch, and he'd be cut.

"Don't be afraid to get close to the enemy," Krauser had always taught him. "They can't hit you if they have no room to swing."

Leon was pinned to the barracks cot by a heavy, hot body. Jack breathed noisily and threateningly, examining his face and neck, every small mole and the speck of dust clinging to him from training.

"So nimble," Krauser loosened his grip for a split second, then painfully drove his knee in its hard armor into Leon's thigh. "I wonder how you'll move…" Jack sliced open Leon's shoulder, along with his T-shirt, with a single touch and pressed his face to the cut, smearing himself in his blood. The boy jerked. "…if I cut off your legs?"

"Leave me alone!" He thrashed, tried to escape, turned his face away just to avoid looking Jack in the eye, but it was useless. "You're crazy!"

Krauser moved his knife hand closer to Leon's ear and bit his neck. The knife trembled, leaving small, inflamed points, and it took a tremendous effort for the major not to drive the blade in to the hilt. Jack was drooling with perverse rage and the desire to lunge at him, to bleed him, to hurt him so badly he'd lose consciousness—but he had to hold back. He had to do everything to keep the rookie alive.

"Let me go!" Short fingernails clawed at Krauser's crooked scars on his forearms. Leon shook his head, unsuccessfully tried to throw him off, and seemed to press even closer.

At some random moment, Jack just let him go and left. They forgot about it because on the mission, there was a far more serious problem than a moment's weakness. At least, they pretended to. Jack knew he wouldn't go unpunished for this. He should have been in the electric chair already.

***

"I died two years ago… That's what they told you, rookie?" Jack, seeing Leon for not the first time that day, couldn't suppress a crooked smile—God knows what it expressed, but Leon could guess it was nothing good.

"You're repeating yourself, Major," Kennedy hid behind his knife and raised his pistol. "And you'll give an encore performance if you don't let the girl go."

"Haven't learned a thing," Krauser waved his hand, and from it, with the wet crunch of breaking cartilage, emerged a crooked cage of bones wrapped in loose, mutated flesh. "Puppy."

Krauser fought without tactics, without any automatic assessment of the combat situation drilled into his head over so many years of service—just pure rage, unclouded by either the virus in his blood or Las Plagas. Rookie Kennedy had never grown up, and could never forgive someone who acted like a traitor and stopped at nothing to achieve his goal. Jack's goal was to once again find himself in the suffocating, hot humidity of the Brazilian jungle—to have everything like it was back then.

And everything was. And Leon was there again. And, disinhibited by the parasite, with no orders or objectives, he wanted to destroy him and could let himself go, not thinking that he was far more fragile than he might appear.

And Leon was there. A few blows in exchange for knife strikes that didn't even cause Krauser pain, and the rookie, breaking wooden barrels with his body, went tumbling.

"Stop…" Leon got up, grabbed his side, and suddenly began to limp. "I believe you, Jack… Let's make a deal, the easy way!"

Leon had become craftier. But just like Jack himself, he hadn't learned to forgive, even though he was sure that was nobility. And Jack had no reason not to fall for it. He had already done everything he could, and looking into his disgustingly honest eyes, he understood that what he had wanted—he would never do now.

"What, rookie, don't learn from your mistakes?" Krauser let his guard down and took a step forward. "I always told you that you'd better…" Without waiting for another greasy comment about his appearance, Leon was behind Jack in an instant and pulled the shotgun's trigger.

His last eye burst, the sounds around him merged into a deafening screech and faded, and again a bright, painful flash flickered before Krauser's eyes, like from a disposable camera.

After all, Wesker had given him a lot. He'd shown him a lot and confirmed his oldest, most obsessive thoughts. Having ended up the only survivor of the electrocution in the world, Krauser could say that his third death felt exactly the same.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[limboduh]

Wesker isn't 'toxic'. He's poison.

[yodaprod]

1979

[yodaprod]

1987

[limboduh]

Responsibility

! Laura is adult in this fic !

"Laura, give me the antifreeze." James, without lifting his head from under the hood, pointed toward the back door.

"Oh, the blue stuff," Laura rummaged under the seat for a bit and found the right bottle. "Just like you on Saturdays."

"Laura!" James snorted in embarrassment and smacked his temple right on the rod holding the hood up. His alcohol problems had suddenly returned when he himself had returned from Silent Hill, and he was genuinely sorry that she had seen it. Him getting drunk again, not even noticing how, again sitting on the floor of the stairwell, promising himself that any minute now—he'd get to his feet, make it to the door, and she wouldn't notice a thing. But she did notice, finding him asleep in the corner when she left for college in the morning. He was so ashamed.

"Old man, you're tripping, we're in the middle of the woods." She threw her hands up and leaned her hip against the door with such an adult, almost comical air. "Afraid Child Protective Services will hear? Hello, I'm not ten anymore, everyone's forgotten about me."

Laura looked like James, which is why there weren't many questions about them, especially since his father had helped them move to a different district. Blonde hair, eyes of that strange iridescent color, the same walk, even the same way of holding a fork. Laura never called him "dad," only "old man" or just "James" when she was sad, but she resembled him so much that for anyone who knew the story of how the surname "Sunderland" ended up in her passport, it raised even more questions.

James got behind the wheel and started the car. The temperature gauge immediately maxed out.

"What's wrong with you now…" he cursed quietly. He killed the engine, sighed tiredly, and got out. "Looks like we're stuck here for a while… Is there at least a service station somewhere along the way?" He pulled a crumpled map from his pocket and tried to remember approximately when they'd passed the entrance to the national park.

"Couldn't you have printed a map from the internet instead of dragging around a hundred-year-old guidebook?" Laura rolled her eyes, opened the door, and sat down with her legs dangling outside. "I'm cold!"

"Of course you're cold," James looked Laura over as if seeing her for the first time that day. Not much had changed, except her denim jumper had turned into a skirt, and in James's opinion, far too short for a decent young lady. "I told you to dress properly. We're not going to a disco."

"And you're so attached to your old military tunic that I don't even know if you have living skin underneath."

James knew that she knew. He'd heard her footsteps, her breathing, and the quiet creak of the unlatched door through the wall of water noise from the shower.

He wanted to snort, but the ailing car did it for him.

"There has to be some mystery in your life," James said thoughtfully, staring at the engine and waiting for it to cool down.

"And here I thought you'd start grumbling about how 'looks aren't everything.'" Laura dressed very provocatively, and James, knowing in advance that arguing about how bad that was wouldn't fix anything and would only make her fight with him, did nothing about it. "Of course they're not everything, but only when you've got something even better! Mary used to say you were totally unremarkable, but I can't even reach the pedals in your jalopy." She had also stopped growing early and was very upset about it. James, for his part, worried that with this style, she was trying to compensate and look like Maria.

Laura casually kissed him on the cheek and got back in the car to warm up. There was nothing in it, really, but something invisible crept in that made this innocent touch so vulgar that no random witness would ever think he was her guardian, rather than some world-weary, much-older guy. And it was hard to argue with that.

Laura complained that she was cold, but the weather was incredibly pleasant, and James—rare for him—breathed so easily, as if he bore no guilt at all. Silent Hill always tested a person with guilt, but what guilt was there on Laura? She had just been a child back then. A child isn't to blame for being born, but he's always blamed for everything bad, and you don't actually have to be guilty to feel that guilt.

Laura, contradicting herself, told strange things about her mother—things that either didn't add up or were worrying. Sometimes that her mother was still in school when Laura was already fully conscious, sometimes about some strange arguments with her father who, it turned out, wasn't Laura's father at all… James tried not to dig too deep. And not to let on that he'd already understood what really happened back in Silent Hill.

And now Laura looked and acted like a perfectly normal modern girl, but James could see how deeply and irreparably broken she was. After Silent Hill, no everyday problem—the kind that usually sent even her toughest peers into hysterics—affected her.

"I don't give a shit, old man," she would just shrug and pop another piece of gum in her mouth. "Thanks for talking to his dad, but come on… You think some little wannabe gangster at school trying to corner me can compare to prostitutes with their mouths sewn shut?"

It turned out that after meeting James, she had started seeing those creatures. And the mannequins, and the prone figures, and—Pyramid Head. It's just that they—except for him—didn't see her.

"Why did you lock me in, then?" James asked suddenly, starting to fiddle with the radiator.

"I was scared," the girl didn't try to hide it. "I thought you'd do the same thing to me that you did to Mary. You had the same look she described."

"What did she tell you?!" James snapped upright instantly, tensed, and clenched his fists, boring his gaze into Laura. She immediately pulled her knees up and covered herself with her arms.

And here we go again.

"Laura…" he called softly, barely audibly, took a couple of steps toward the back door, and knelt in front of her. "Forgive me. I will never lay a hand on you, I swear."

Angela was far from the first, but only the second he had let live. So long ago it felt like another life—driving through West Virginia, he'd picked up a dead-drunk girl from some rural party. She laughed, came on to him, spilled her remaining beer all over his car, and chattered about how this was her last party in this shithole, and soon she was moving to Los Angeles to become an actress.

James couldn't remember how many "last parties in this shithole" he'd seen, and at some point, he was overcome with such a causeless, dark, poisonous rage at everyone who still hoped to climb out of the pit of their own lives that he even stopped caring about the paranoia that had haunted him ever since he'd hidden the body of some nameless tourist who'd overestimated her strength on a hike.

At first, she wanted him.

"If you don't stop, we'll fly off the road and die a very nasty death in a burning car."

She teased him, joked about the first rule of the hitchhiker's code, touched the zipper on his jeans, and drunkenly slurred something like "aww, don't be mad, mister."

"How do you know?" She laughed as if high, smacked her gum, and ran her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck.

"I'm a rescue worker," James snorted, actually thinking that getting involved with this girl had been a bad idea. "And more often than you'd think, I see mutilated corpses tumbling out of burning metal wrecks."

"Really?" She was so drunk she wasn't even scared, just tapped her fake nails on his belt buckle. "Is your uniform nice?"

"Enough." James pulled onto a dirt road and stopped the car. "Either you stop, or you walk." He couldn't believe he was losing control himself, and he didn't want to believe it was because—she wasn't fighting him off—she wanted him.

And at some point, something went wrong. Probably the girl sobered up and realized what was happening, but it was too late. She begged him to pull out, even started fighting back… And whereas before he just hadn't cared about anything, now with some incomprehensible, monstrous malice, he wanted to hurt her so badly it would be worse than death.

He had already pulled out long ago, and she was crying, curled up in a ball, holding her stomach. James watched her, smiling inhumanly, and suddenly noticed a strange birthmark on her elbow. He'd forget her face, but this… James didn't know why he attached any significance to it, especially since he didn't perceive any of it as real.

"You got lucky," James said arrogantly and coldly, not even knowing what had come over him to mock the already destroyed fate of a random girl. "Someone else had it worse. You know what happened to the girl who was wandering around the campsites alone?" He squatted down with an expression as if he were about to step on her like a bug. "I did the same thing to her as I did to you, then poured boiling water on her face, watched her scream and choke, and then strangled her like a kitten."

James still remembered the smell of cooked skin and the crunch of a spine chopped through with a firefighter's hatchet. Her lower half had turned out to be much prettier than her upper half, and for some reason, James found it amusing to find a second one like her and sew them together. Two holes instead of one. Wouldn't that be funny?

"No college, no Los Angeles, no acting career," he stuck two fingers inside her, pulled them out immediately, and smeared the murky white fluid across her face. "What a shame."

Laura swung her legs, shivered from the cold, and rubbed the strange birthmark on her elbow.

"And the fat guy couldn't do his stand-up somewhere closer?"

"Laura! We've discussed this a hundred times: stop talking about Eddie like that. It's not nice. You don't like it when I call you a brat, do you?"

"Maybe I do like it," she narrowed her eyes seductively and stood up. She rose on her tiptoes, hung on his neck, and gave him a wet, obscene kiss on the lips. "Oh, come on, old man, don't you want to relive your youth and discipline me a little?"

James held her firmly by the waist. He had already slept with her. Right before they left the house. He always forgot that—but somehow, not this time. He remembered breathing hotly into her ear, holding her shoulder with his teeth, and listening to how good she felt with him. There was no scarier feeling in the world than knowing that the two of them needed no one else on earth.

"Okay, enough." He let the girl go with difficulty and got back behind the wheel. He turned the key, and—by some miracle, everything was fixed.

A bad sign.

***

"Hey, look!" Laura shook James's shoulder and pointed at a shabby wooden sign. James had been praying the whole way that she wouldn't notice it, but it didn't help. "Silent Hill! How did we..?

Everything was completely normal. Hell, maybe he'd dreamed it all after a sleepless night behind the wheel?

"What, want to visit your old stomping grounds?"

Laura, of course, did.

James felt like he was driving so slowly he could have walked faster, and the sights of that Silent Hill—terrifyingly similar to the one where he'd walked with Mary—had eaten into his mind so deeply that they seemed like cardboard scenery, turning inside out the last thing that still made him human. And he had to accept that something to say goodbye to himself.

He had taken Laura away from here never to return to Silent Hill; in a place disfigured by his sins, where nothing was holy, she remained the last ray of sunshine, and he… He had lived a decade in feigned calm and, somehow unable to bear it, destroyed the last thing that remained beyond the bounds of his morality.

There was no justification for such a thing, no way to dress it up in pretty words. He fucked his daughter. And it never even crossed her mind to go to the police to send him to the electric chair.

"Laura…" James forced out, trying to muster a smile ready to say for him that everything was fine. "Why don't you go to the store? I'll stay here—if I turn off the engine, it won't start again… Get me some mineral water, I'm thirsty."

There was a hole here. Now it's gone.

Now it's gone.

The hole in the ignition was plugged with a rusty key.

Now it's gone.

But it would appear again…

The engine coughed.

Now it's gone.

You can't close a wound like that; you can only drown in it.

Now it's gone.

James let go of his hands, let go of the clutch.

Now it's gone.

The crack of branches, the clang of a crushed bumper.

A splash.

It's always

There.

[miamaimania]

Surrealism at its finest, the 1980 Citroen Pyramid concept car: a marriage of industrial design and architecture.

[limboduh]

Hyperfixation is a symptom of ADHD. ADHD is a real disorder, but "hyperfixation" is a term used to describe any passion. Stop making any strong interest into a disease.

[limboduh]

s.t.a.r.s. kibble

Wesker feeds them this on Fridays. Rebecca rolls her eyes. Chris happily ate her portion.

[limboduh]

I'm only a metal machine

[limboduh]

Little bird

"My God, James!" Mary gasped and clasped her hands together like a startled bird. "Let it go, you're hurting it!"

James was carefully holding a small foam bird in his fist. It fluttered, squeaked, and turned its head.

"It doesn't hurt, look, I'm not crushing it." James smiled condescendingly and affectionately and stepped closer. Mary stepped back; he stepped toward her. "Listen to its little heartbeat."

Unlike animals, birds loved James. While cats had to be fought out of trees and dogs pulled from sewer grates, birds would land on his hands willingly.

"I'm so boring they probably think I'm a statue," James would joke. He'd smile harmlessly, then snatch a sparrow before you could blink. Mary would beg him not to do that and even cry, but James stubbornly didn't understand why—or understood all too well—and kept bringing her little birds in his palms.

"Mary… You look so beautiful today." Everyone said this stopped after the fifth date, but year after year, James would pull her favorite candies, carousel tickets, and trinkets she'd once lingered over in shops out of thin air like a magician.

"My God, James, again?" She laughed in embarrassment. "I swear, I look exactly the same as yesterday."

"No, you don't." With genuine admiration, he took her hands, spun her around, and caught her in his arms, pressing her back against his chest. "Look."

James looked at their reflection in the hotel window and tried to peer inside the glass, where a blurry brushstroke of shadow lay beneath her heart.

"Look how beautiful you are." James discreetly slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a clenched fist, offering for Mary to guess what was inside.

She had a jewelry box filled with little ceramic puppies, and every week it grew by another dog, a crocheted rug a quarter the size of her palm, or a tiny toy bone.

They stood frozen in a beautiful fairy tale, and Mary seemed afraid to take even a single step away from the self that had once met James near the school; young and already so serious—the little woman he'd fallen in love with was never supposed to change.

"Do you like it?" James opened his fingers, and Mary saw a small porcelain chickadee sitting in his palm.

Mary was silent longer than usual, and—James could feel it—she tensed up. Mary didn't like that something had changed.

"Yes," she nodded and clutched the bird in her hand. James squeezed her shoulders tighter, unable to get enough of how beautiful she was, resisting the burning pain of knowing she hadn't liked the gift.

"She looks like you. So delicate and light."

James felt her heart flutter and pressed closer. Without ulterior motive, just lost in thought; he buried his face in her temple and closed his eyes, while his grip grew stronger, his gaze predatory, and…

"James…"

That "James" he heard every night, and it was so quiet and firm that he froze the moment she said it.

Mary had been refusing him since school. "We're too young. What if our parents find out?" "We're not ready yet. What if something happens?" "I can't right now." Later, she started saying, "It's a sin," and James grew wary. He questioned why she'd started thinking that way and what this strange church she attended was, but nothing changed—even when nothing was left of the church but ashes.

"Sorry," James muttered and took a noisy breath, trying to calm himself.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

James's breathing, puffing and loud, resembled less and less a human's, mingling with a metallic clanking.

"James," she repeated, boring into him with a stern gaze through the reflective window glass, and he let go, stepped back, and dropped his hands to his sides.

At one point, she had refused him with the words, "I'm afraid of you," and he never touched her again. Never.

There was no way to know whether he treated others so brutally because he was denied the most important thing, or whether the magnificence of that most important thing deflected his ever-present brutality away from her.

But his Mary was a saint. You couldn't treat her like that.

***

Prison—that's where he belonged. Not just a traitor, but a criminal, a murderer, a killer. No matter how much he did, no matter how much he hid, no matter what he did—he would end up here. He had to end up here.

He wandered through the corridors without even turning on a flashlight, ran his fingers over the rusty bars, and sat down on the floor of an open cell.

He sat, staring into the darkness.

Thinking.

Blaming himself.

James felt as if cool rainwater were pouring over the top of his head.

"Darling…" A familiar voice echoed off the moldy walls and struck him in the back.

Instead of responding, James squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

"Darling…" Mary ran a cold finger from his ear down his vertebrae beneath his collar. "Where have you been?"

James was shaking as if with a high fever.

"Mary… I…" He couldn't utter a single word, but he knew what she was asking, and what she would feel if he lied. She always knew, even nodding routinely at "Just sightseeing," pretending she truly believed that was why he disappeared for weeks on end to God knows where across the country.

James opened his eyes, and before them was nothing but the murk of thick, dirty stagnant water. They were drifting a couple of meters from the bottom, and all that was visible around them were shipwrecks and the grimaces of smiles with crooked teeth of those who had gone down with them.

"Darling… I forgive you," whispered a gentle girlish voice directly inside his head. Mary, naked and lifeless, held James from behind, crossing her thin arms over his chest, and where her fingers touched his heart, the water bubbled like boiling liquid. "Now you will love only me… That's all I ask of you."

Mary had sinister eyes. They looked into his, submissive and confused, right through his skull, and when sharp bird claws dug into his scalp, James screamed, choking on the murky water.

"Forgive me… I beg you, forgive me," the suffocating waters of Toluca pressed down on his skull, and it was useless to cry into the abyss from the tears of the dead.

She placed a prickly, sharp crown of bird heads, wings, and shanks on his head. Broken, dislocated at the joints, they seemed to fuse with James's skin and beat against his skull, leaving painful scratches directly on the bone.

"You are only mine, James. My little bird." She dissolved, surrounded him, tormented him with heat and cold, and the bird claws, having pierced his skull, wriggled their talons inside his brain as if alive, until he couldn't even scream. "James, my God… What are you doing here?"

Climbing those stairs in heels was quite an ordeal, and Mary's legs ached so much she had to hold onto the wall.

"Mary?!"

James woke up. Still sitting on the cold floor of the cell, watching through the bars as the shadows from a small tea candle played across Mary's face.

"I searched everywhere. You were nowhere to be found. The last place left was the prison."

"I…" He couldn't come to his senses or catch his breath, coughing painfully until he saw stars; it felt as if he were inhaling dirty lake water instead of air. "I needed to think. Sorry."

James, admitting it honestly, sometimes feared Mary. And with good reason—just that commanding, icy stare when she was angry was enough.

"Spend the night? At our place? No. And what the hell are you thinking, messing around with an officer's daughter?" His father looked up from his newspaper and twirled his finger by his graying temple.

"I love her. It's serious between us." Back then, no one believed young James that his one-in-a-million teenage "together forever" would actually come true. "I've met her father and uncle. Mary says they like me. Dad, please, let me. I promise nothing will happen."

"Your choice, of course. I see you're not a kid anymore…" Frank rubbed the bridge of his nose, clearly not expecting this kind of trouble so early. "Ah, fine. If anything happens, you'll be the one dealing with her family." He waved his hand and buried himself back in his newspaper. "Bring your Mary. Just behave yourselves! But know this: if your mother finds out, she'll kill you. And me, for allowing it."

His father was right. And army upbringing had made Mary—maybe not a soldier in a skirt—but an iron lady, whose insides didn't so much as quiver at the thought of going alone into an abandoned prison with a single tea candle in hand.

"Shall we go?" Mary gently tugged his elbow, and James struggled to his feet.

She would have found him if he'd been in Hell itself, just as those fanatics in her church had promised.

And him?

[limboduh]

Pills

"Listen… There's always a way out."

According to James, who said it like a curse every single day, there was always a way out. His own ways out were only the fire escape and — the greatest luxury in this office—the internet. And also a private graveyard of all those who'd said "I'm fine" and then showed up in the news the next day.

"Eddie… Eddie, right? Tell me again where you are right now. You said you were standing on a roof, but I need an address or some landmarks."

James, pressing the receiver to his ear with his shoulder, rustled quickly through the pages of a nearly expired crisis center directory. This one closed last year, that one's under renovation, and good luck getting to the next without a car…

"I… I can't take this anymore! Nothing's ever going to get better… I'm a fat, useless piece of shit who doesn't deserve to live! I weigh a goddamn 190 pounds! Everyone just laughs at me!"

James told everyone he worked in an office, and they all thought he was just a clerk. No one ever considered that some rescue workers don't run around with hatchets fighting fires around the clock—or that even guys like him sometimes have to pick up that hatchet.

"Eddie, listen to me. You deserve to live. Everyone does. The people who tease you don't do it for any objective reason; they just latch onto something. Teenagers can be very cruel, and that doesn't mean something is actually wrong with you."

"Those are just empty words! You probably have a piece of paper up there that you're reading this from! If we met on the street, you'd make fun of me just like the rest of them! Everyone hates me!"

James already knew exactly how the voice trembled in those who were truly ready to say goodbye to life. It was like a strange crackle of radio interference, always the same, no matter the person's timbre, and you couldn't hear it with your ears. James couldn't brag to his colleagues that he had a perfect record with no deaths, but when it came to pointing out who wouldn't survive until the team arrived, he was never wrong.

"No papers, I promise," — the only papers he had were that damn directory. And there was nothing useful in it except the number for a psychiatric hospital — "but you really need medical help. You're in a bad state, Eddie. So bad that you might not even realize it right now."

"It'll only make things worse!" — The receiver rustled with frightened gasps. — "Those head-shrinkers… It's poison! I saw what they did to my sister!"

Some people even accused James of cynical indifference, but without bursting into tears or knocking over office plants, he endlessly agonized over those he couldn't help. And sometimes it was so hard to think that another life might slip through his fingers that he had to resort to lies.

"I'm sorry that happened to her, but listen to me, Eddie… You can trust these people. Specifically them." — James quickly scribbled the address and phone number of the clinic and slid it to the intern at the next desk over. The intern immediately started dialing. — "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but I was treated there myself. Don't think we're all made of iron here; anyone might need help." — James was lying, but he lied so convincingly that Eddie fell silent. — "They helped me once when I was in complete despair. They'll help you too. You just need to trust them and not secretly spit out the pills in the toilet."

"Oh, sure… They'll just lock me up in a nuthouse anyway! I shot his damn doggo!" — Something clanked on the other end. — "They're all so kind around here, they'll kill me for it and think they're heroes! It's not like it's some 'hu-man be-ing'," — Eddie said this with such disgust that James thought the kid might throw up — "a human being is always at fault, because he's a human being! Go ahead, call the cops for animal cruelty!" — Eddie fell silent, just sobbing, and James was starting to think he might actually have to head out with the team, things were that bad. — "Animal… cruelty…" — His voice became quiet and rhythmic, and through the receiver, James could hear his thoughts churning and seething. — "What about me? This mutts always say… 'Fat pig'… 'Piece of pork'…"

"Eddie, can you hear me? Please, focus. Listen to my voice. Help will be there soon." — James silently cursed why priests got to keep the secrecy of the confessional while he had to report every little thing to the police, even though he personally ignored this rule so often that if management paid closer attention, he'd have been fired long ago. — "You said you shot a dog. Do you have a weapon with you right now?"

"No! I mean… Yes…" — James's voice had such an effect that Eddie accidentally blurted out the truth. — "A revolver… It… It's my stepdad's…"

James gestured something to the intern, who wrote it down.

"Do you like it? The revolver." — James had found out everything he needed and was just stalling for time until the team arrived.

"Yeah… Yeah. With it, I don't feel powerless, and besides… The trigger pull is so heavy that none of my classmates could fire it, even if they took it from me."

"Okay," — James's voice sounded so kind and casual, as if he weren't an operator at a crisis hotline, but an old, older buddy. — "Do you like playing Doom? I like."

"Not really… The guys who bully me go to the computer club." — Eddie looked down, and his heart raced. Maybe… Maybe things really could get better? — "I like beat-'em-up games… I have a Genesis at home."

"Imagine how great you'll play when you get help? I'll tell you a secret—if you get treatment, even your reflexes get faster." — James knew he'd found something that worked and kept pushing. — "And you'll become much more confident. You're strong, Eddie. You can do this. I believe in you."

It was such a small thing, such a cliché that anyone could say, but Eddie suddenly fell silent and cried. A noisy gasp—and he took a step back.

"Thank you… Thank you."

***

Eddie didn't dare call the crisis line for no reason. He didn't want to cause trouble, and besides, he had no energy. For over two months, he'd been meaning to leave the house, but by the time he put on his socks, the day was over; then he had to shower and try to force down some food so he could take his pills. After visiting the hospital, he truly didn't want to die anymore, just as James had promised, but only because he had absolutely no strength for anything.

He scoured the website of the local branch and checked the schedules. On the day he'd planned to kill himself, three people had been on duty: lucky for him, one was a woman, which ruled her out; another Eddie found on Classmates, and it wasn't the right James, of course.

And this particular James was apparently supposed to finish at five today.

"See you tomorrow, James!" — A red-haired guy in glasses clapped James on the shoulder, and they parted ways. The workday was over.

Eddie sat on a bench in a cramped square that everyone leaving the crisis center had to pass through.

"James" , and Eddie knew he hadn't been mistaken. Average height, an old military jacket… How was it that James looked exactly as Eddie had imagined him while they were on the phone?

Some might call him plain, but few people had such an expressive face without any striking features. Slightly slanted eyes, calm and kind, almost glassy; his walk so steady…

"Wait up! I just remembered…" — Just as Eddie was gathering the strength to stand up, the red-haired guy in glasses caught up to James, and they continued talking about something.

They talked, and Eddie watched from the sidelines, overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration. Or rather, what was left of them.

And watching from the sidelines wasn't so bad. James was handsome, truly handsome, someone you wanted to look at. As for Eddie himself… He no longer looked like himself. If before he'd simply been a large, sturdy young man, now you couldn't even tell his age—or even his gender. A bloated, ugly thing; he hadn't smashed the reflection only because it was too much effort to raise his arm.

He looked and felt disgusting, but he truly didn't want to die anymore. Maybe it hadn't all been for nothing? There were people in the world like James.

"Hello!" — He nervously adjusted his cap and averted his eyes. — "I wanted… To say…"

Iwantedtothankyouthankyouyousavedmylife

Eddie wasn't even sure he'd uttered any of that. Eddie hadn't even gotten up from the bench.

"…Alright, see ya, say hi to Leon!"

The rescue workers finally parted ways. The chance was lost. And anyway… Was there any point to any of this if Eddie saw everything as if through a thick fog? But maybe… Maybe he would recognize him?

As he passed the bench, James gave Eddie an indifferent glance and went on his way. Maybe Eddie just got scared because he needed more pills?

***

"I'm telling you, if you don't stop… James, for fuck's sake, if you don't stop by tomorrow, I'm not covering for you anymore!"

Leon was hauling a dead-drunk James on his shoulders. Again. On the other hand, what else do you do with your best friend in trouble? This time, not even from a bar, but just from a nearby courtyard, because something had gotten into James's head again, and conveniently, a tiny bottle of gin had turned up in his pocket.

"Hey, Big Mac! Got a light?" — James called out to some chubby guy in a cap. — "Yeah, you, fatso! You deaf?"

"Can't you be a little more polite, sir?" — The guy didn't react at first, telling himself it wasn't directed at him. That he didn't look that disgusting yet.

Eddie's head had long been filled with a dense, suffocating fog, where — if he'd still had any interest in his own existence — it wouldn't even be clear whether he was alive or dead: a thick, enveloping film that made it so even getting beaten didn't hurt so much anymore.

"No…" — the man drawled, barely moving his tongue. Eddie turned around, and his heart sank. — "No, I can't!" — …maybe it wasn't him after all? — "Got a lighter?"

It was definitely James. With James nearby, the fog collapsed at his feet in a foul puddle, leaving him defenseless and defenselessly sober.

"What are you staring at, you fat pig? I'm talking to you…" — James looked so pathetic that if Eddie hadn't memorized his voice and face so carefully, he wouldn't have recognized him. He let out a strange laugh, tripped over the bench, and sprawled on the sidewalk like a rag doll.

And he had promised. He'd told him he wasn't disgusting at all.

"James, fuck you, get up!" — Leon hissed, hoisting his friend back up. — "Some rescuer you are…"

"W-Wait!" — James got up clumsily, already forgetting about Eddie, picked up a battered fire hydrant cover from the ground, and put it on his head. — "Those bitches won't put me on the team, won't pay me, but surprise — when it's time to crawl into a burning building for some little cunt — it's Sunderland!" — Leon was dragging him away as fast as he could, but James was on a roll. — "So I'll just walk around like this until they grow a conscience!" — The drunken laughter inside the metal pyramid echoed with a terrible clanging boom, and Eddie, belatedly frightened, even covered his ears. — "And you!.." — James suddenly stopped and pointed a finger at the guy, though it was a mystery how he could see anything from under the cover. — "Lose weight, or once you'll be just leaved to fry if something happens." — Leon was already mortally embarrassed for his friend, but silencing him seemed impossible. — "No stretcher would hold you!"

Something that had been holding Eddie's nerves together finally snapped.

The figure with the pyramid on its head, swaying drunkenly, disappeared into the fog of some dirty alleyway, which for Eddie all merged into one ugly gray brick. Everything around congealed into a single disgusting lump, and it was as if a needle had been jabbed right into that lump, causing it to collapse.

He was the one who had promised Eddie he wasn't ugly and never would be. This was the same James he'd admired as a savior, the one person he'd felt any last living emotion for, who had told him to take that poison, knowing he was lying.

None of it was to help him. It was so he wouldn't cause any trouble. The paranoia — so he wouldn't leave the house. The photophobia — so even thinking about it hurt. The muscle that had melted away before his eyes — so he couldn't raise a hand against anyone. The face that had spread into a bloated pancake — so no one would want him. The thoughts, dulled and crushed by that poison — so he wouldn't even want himself.

When the red pyramid was out of sight, Eddie reached into his backpack and threw the pack of pills into the trash can.

It was all so he could never stand up for himself again.

How had he not seen it before?..

If someone could kill the human being inside him, why shouldn't he kill that someone himself?

***

"…Weren't those your words?" — Eddie bared his teeth, and his eyes, burning with icy fire, were terrifying to look at. — "Weren't you the one who mocked me, like all the rest?"

Eddie fired, and James just barely managed to dodge behind a pig carcass hanging from a hook. Incredibly fast, silent, and strong, he was at the other end of the room in an instant and fired again.

"Eddie! Listen to me!.." — He had said this once before, and once before had lost his trust. There was no point in lying and pretending he would never have bullied him.

With a terrible calm, James sighed and gripped the pipe tighter. Eddie probably didn't have a single reason not to shoot him.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/81850141

[limboduh]

[lazypapers]

It Was Just One Simple Question...

[limboduh]

Everyone is so focused on Simon's dick piercing headcanon but forgot that there's a 90% chance that medical metal in his body is dentures. That's also very sexy, trust me. (C'mon, seriously, intimate piercings on a combat mission???)