ghoul dan and the car crash | 1285 words | frosty_mask on ao3
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The rain came pouring down like Noah had just finished the head count and stowed the boarding plank, and the black, shining tarmac was almost completely awash. Dan walked along the side of the road, rain creeping silently through his clothes, just like all the miserable creatures who didn’t make the cut.
Hearing a car surge through the water behind him, he stepped further into the hedge next to him. The car rushed past, narrowly missed splashing him with a huge puddle, and disappeared around the bend. It was far too close for comfort - cars driving right past at one hundred kilometres per hour, or maybe more - but how else could he get home? He didn’t trust himself around people. At least it only splashed his ankles. The cold crept ever-slowly under his clothes.
He was a ghoul now. He’d been forced to accept that, at long last, but that didn’t mean he had to eat. He was still half human, after all - he just needed his human half to win out. If his ghoul parts were starved enough, they would soon become too weak to prevent him from eating normal food. Naturally, starving the ghoul half was easy - he couldn’t… He couldn’t. They were human, like him.
The bend in the road approached, and Dan was on the less visible side. With a cursory glance around, he stepped into the road, intending to cross before any cars came around.Â
No sooner than his shoe had squelched against the ground, though, a car came flying around the bend - far too fast in weather like this, and something about the way it moved wasn’t right at all. It slipped sideways, hydroplaning over the surface of the wet road. The concept had been a lot less scary in the driving theory pdf he never finished reading.Â
The car was a huge, howling, hunk of metal, with only a passenger in the driver’s seat. It slid unnaturally, ignoring all the lines and shapes of the road that usually dictated their movement, until it stopped, abruptly, loudly, in the bushes next to the road.
Frozen, Dan felt his chest shaking in shock. What was he supposed to do now? Should he go near it? The scared animal in his chest kicked against the idea of moving closer to the danger.
As he stood there, however, the scent of the crash slowly broke through the rain. It smelled good. It smelled really fucking good, and his empty stomach growled and he was sure he had never been so hungry.
He… Would have liked to tell himself that they probably had a takeaway, or had just bought ingredients for their dinner - that their food had spilled everywhere when they crashed, and that was what he could smell.
They were injured, and Dan didn’t know if he was nauseous from hunger, or horror, but they were hurt and needed help and there was nobody else around. On a cold rainy night like this? It was just him.
The rain dripping on his phone screen made it hard to use. Wiping it with the inside of his sleeve - which was almost dry - he slowly typed in 112. His voice shook, and his stomach was tight and empty as he told the operator where to send the ambulance. His feet brought him to the wreck almost by themselves. With the ambulance on its way, he shoved his phone back into his pocket with shaking hands.
He knew exactly where they were in the wreck, and how many there were. Before he saw them, he could smell them. It was only the driver, and they had fallen down to the passenger seat when the car tipped sideways off the road. He didn’t need to look.
Grabbing the handle of the passenger side door, he tried opening it, even though it was badly damaged and he wasn’t sure it would move. With a screeching, metallic crunch, the door crumpled and came away in his hand.
Adrenaline could give people inhuman strength, sometimes. Perhaps for a ghoul, though, it shouldn’t be so surprising.
She was in there, hanging from the seatbelt with her arms brushing the passenger seat. Dan got his hands on her - she was so warm - and tried to feel for a pulse in her wrist, but his fingers were numb and cold and his own heart was pounding so fuck it, he was dragging her out. Gripping at her body like claws digging into flesh, he released the seatbelt and grabbed, wrested and pulled her out across the grass. He dragged her away from the wreck, away from the sharp smell of spilled chemicals, so that all he could smell was her blood.
He kept pulling, kept clawing at her and dragging her away, as her blood wafted up into his face and filled every sinus in his skull. She was so light, so easy to pull away, pull apart, and there was so much blood in the air, and on his face, the flavour filling his nose and mouth and it was so, so satisfying. He’d been hungry for so long, but the meat was perfect, it satiated him so perfectly, and his stomach roared for more as he ate.
He couldn’t stop eating. Tearing off another chunk of her arm, he pulled the flesh from the bone with his teeth.
The tender, soft flesh sliding down his throat was so hot, and with the warm blood dripping from his chin, he could almost forget about the rain. He needed more, he needed it, he needed to eat.
She was already dead, so it was okay, right? A frantic, shaking voice in his head told him. Dan didn’t know. He thought she was - hoped she was.
God, what an awful thing to hope for.
They would never get to bury her. He was still tearing, bones bending and cracking under his hands like the passenger side door.Â
Well, you can’t stop now, the same voice in his head assured.
He was so hungry, but if he just didn’t stop, just kept eating, maybe he’d be okay. Maybe he’d be strong enough to save… To save… Who was he saving?
She was already out of the car. He couldn’t save her.
She was already dead. Was she already dead?
A siren rang out through the rain. Blue lights splashed across the puddles.
Dan looked up in terror, his hands still clawing at the pile of gore under him. His face was hot and wet and there was a tingle in his eye that he knew, and that he’d been so sure he would never have to feel again.
There were more bodies. He could smell them. They were even warmer than this one, which was cooling under the rain, but there was something… No. There was something wrong about it. He couldn’t.
What was he doing? He can’t kill people! He can’t eat people!
He looked down at the body. Oh god. He wished he could hate it, but it was making him hungrier. Her glassy eyes looked just past him. His hand twitched - he wanted to try them, to see if they tasted different to the meat.
The ambulance had stopped, though; he didn’t have time. He had to go. He had to go.
It was dark - they probably hadn’t seen him, and wouldn’t see him if he just got far enough away. He dragged himself from the body and pushed through the dripping bushes.
He allowed himself just one glance back. Her eyes were watching him go, frozen in a look of terror. In her last moments, had she been afraid of the crash, or the monster?
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