✦ HE CAN SCARCELY HEAR HIMSELF THINK. he'd wake in the morning with tinnitus, with his heart still following the erratic thump thump thump of the music — tuneful buzzing, mostly, with the occasional outburst of dj drillbit eeeyeayyyyh! — teddy's whole body would feel tender and exhausted. the febrile atmosphere of the nightclub would have repulsed him without the drink, and thank the lord for the drink. seventeen dollars for a murky, mostly-ice, glass of swill; he took to it like root to rainfall, let it dull his senses enough to enjoy the night despite the stale, sweaty state of the bodies constantly rubbing against him.
it helped a little with the shock in front of him. helped with the fresh, steaming gore, the indecent swathes of red, and the girl.
“i killed him but, now there’s a mess.”
teddy had the silliest urge to bless himself, and on remembering he was not catholic by any persuasion, soothed the compulsion by white-knuckle gripping the nearest solid near him — a railing. air. he'd gone to the open rooftop for air. lord, he could smell the viscera. the railing kept him upright, while the adrenaline sobered what it could.
“i can see that,” as if he had alighted on undignified nudity and grunting instead of a crime scene, “i can fucking see that — what the hell for? who is this?”
the body had a face, and the face had a missing eye. the surviving eyeball was dull and blue, half covered by a shock of red hair; he knew that hair and he knew that eye. he followed the length of the corpse to a red jacket he recognised from — all through the night, actually, always a half-step behind him, always close enough to be breathing into his drink or smelling his neck and shoulders. he followed the lines of the body, right to the indecorously bent limbs, and a cold clot seemed to form in his lungs as he realised; the arm ended in a claw, where a human hand ought to have been. a claw. he looked at @brlsqe in fresh alarm.
“sweet jesus,” he breathed in hard as his brain cleared forcefully, and regretted it from the smell of blood, “how the hell did you do this? what if he hadn't been — one of those!”
