Mar 20
The Hunting Party 2x07 | Shane Florence Whump
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The Hunting Party 2x07 | Shane Florence Whump
After Whumpee breaks out / is rescued by Caretaker, they eventually build up the confidence to reunite with their loved ones.
Most of them didn’t assume anything overly bad happened to Whumpee. They probably thought they were working overseas or something of the like.
Nonetheless it’s been ages and their friends and family are elated to see Whumpee again after so long. It’s a very cheery and sweet reunion for the most part.
In fact, it’s so heartwarming that Whumpee doesn’t give a full explanation as to what really happened to them. It’s a celebration today, they don’t want to bring down the mood. They come up with a vague story as to why they didn’t make contact.
It’s been so long since Whumpee last spoke with their loved ones that there’s a lot of catching up to do. People go around the table explaining everything Whumpee missed, new kids, marriages, new jobs etc.
Then the penny drops as it comes round to Whumpee’s closest old friend / family member, mentioning proudly where they got a new job.
They work for Whumper.
This isn’t necessarily a malicious thing. Whumper’s organisation is technically a legitimate business/government organisation. Their loved one might not know what happens behind the scenes. They might be too low ranking to be told about the darker parts.
But they still work there. Still went inside that building where Whumpee was being kept, acting all friendly with their coworkers like their best friend/sibling/etc wasn’t being tortured and experimented on beneath.
Or maybe they are aware. Maybe they know all the horrible things that happen there, but they’ve been gaslit into believing it’s happening to willing volunteers. Whumpee was anything but willing.
Does Whumpee break the news? Lash out at the audacity to speak so proudly of their job? Sit and grimace whilst they complain about their annoying manager being torture to work with? Just straight up leave?
Whumpee hates being their whumpers muse. They are the perfect project the perfect thing their whumper loves them and will keep showing them off as "the perfect pet" just to make people jealous.
If you have a lab rat character, please consider the following:
If they've been captured for experiments, why? Is it for medical research? Military research? Ecological? Biological? Pick a real discipline if you can, it shows far more attention to detail and care than just "experimented on".
If they've been captured to be vivisected, why? If it's to see what makes them tick, then vivisection, or an exploratory surgery if you want to be merciful, is a very ineffective way to go about mapping anatomy. More likely, they'll be undergoing MRIs, CATs, and x-rays to map out their body, without risking damaging anything in the process.
Think of some experiments beyond torture. Think back to what you decided the discipline is. If they're studying, say, a dragon for behavioral reasons, it wouldn't make sense to just torture the creature. Get creative, maybe it's a test of learned helplessness regarding an impossible to solve puzzle dangling a tasty drumstick, maybe it's even letting them drive an appropriately sized car.
Real world testing on animals is never done lightly, the chain is roughly "If it must be done, must it be done on a monkey? Why can't it be a dog? And if it must be done on a dog, why can't it be done on a rat? And if it must be done on a rat, why can't it be done on a mouse? And if it must be done on a mouse, why can't it be done on a fruit fly? And if even a fruit fly is an appropriate model, why can't it be done in a simulation?", with only as much life sacrificed as needed, because the committees wouldn't allow anything unnecessary.
Besides, I always find a lot more interest in reading about detailed experiments with inspiration from real science than the generic "cut open by secret government labs".
Whumpees slugging down the road, shirt torn and bloody. They drag a chain from their right leg, they moved staggering and dazed.
A vehicle pulls up, stopping to see if this stranger in the middle of nowhere needs help. They don't notice the chain or blood at first.
They try to approach, but whumpee backs away. They don't know if these people are a part of the group who experimented on them, or good samaritans.
They did come from the direction whumpee escaped from, after all...
Recovering Whumpee who is pregnant, but isn't ready for the baby. Maybe whumpee hasn't even processed it– maybe they leave the planning, and the baby names all to their partner.
Maybe they don't know how they feel about the baby, but they can't tell their partner or caretaker this because whumpee knows how much it means to them. Maybe they were only able to get pregnant from a curse or an experiment, and their partner really wanted to try. Or maybe the baby was just something they didn't really want, but their partner did.
And how could they not, in the heat of the moment? Maybe whumpee thought they wanted this, too.
But now a baby is on the way, and whumpee is feeling even more isolated and mortified at how their body is changing. And the mood swings, the sickness, all just brings round memories of their past that they've been trying to forget. Do they really want this baby?
Maybe whumpee was able to ignore it for the first few weeks, first trimester even. Like how they could ignore their scars just out of view. But now they look down and can see undeniable proof of what they're going through. What they're still on the bridge on even as a baby comes closer and closer to being due.
Would Whumpee snap? Would they break down? Or would they just suck it up, spiralling as they come closer to the due date.
Someone to stay pt. 2
(TW): Human experimentation, child imprisonment, institutional abuse and neglect, severe trauma/PTSD, self-harm, disordered eating/food refusal, violence, death, isolation, dehumanization, and references to suicidal behavior.
Anne had been told to expect resistance.
Not silence like this.
The escort only walked her as far as the outer door this time. After a quick badge check and a reminder about the emergency call button on the wall, he left her alone in the observation room with the glass and the girl beyond it.
Ellie was asleep on the cot.
Or at least she looked asleep at first glance, curled tightly under the thin institutional blanket with her face turned toward the wall. There was a breakfast tray sitting untouched near the slot by the door, the plastic lid still sealed over congealed eggs and toast gone stiff with cold. A carton of milk sweated onto the floor beside it.
Anne stood for a moment just inside the room, clutching the strap of her canvas bag a little too tightly.
The cell somehow looked even barer when there wasn’t someone awake in it. Just the cot, the tray, the sink, the girl. The air-conditioning hummed overhead with a sharp, constant chill that made the back of Anne’s neck prickle.
She set her bag carefully on one of the bolted chairs.
Then, because she had no idea what the right volume for this was, she lifted her knuckles and tapped lightly on the glass.
“Ellie?”
Nothing.
The girl didn’t even twitch.
Anne glanced automatically at the untouched tray, then back at the cot. It was well past noon. Mara had mentioned that Ellie slept through long stretches if no one disturbed her. At the time it had sounded like a management inconvenience. Standing here now, Anne found herself wondering how much of it was sleep and how much was simply opting out.
She knocked again, a little firmer this time.
Ellie moved.
Not much. Just a tense little shift under the blanket, then a hand dragging sluggishly up over her face. She rolled onto her back, blinking into the dim light with a heavy, disoriented frown, and then turned her head toward the glass.
For a second she looked utterly lost.
Her hair was sticking up in flattened, uneven pieces from sleep, and there was a pillow crease scored faintly across one cheek. She stared at Anne like she was having trouble placing her, or perhaps deciding whether she was real.
Anne gave a small, awkward wave.
“Hi. I’m Anne. I came a couple days ago to, um… meet you.”
Ellie pushed one hand through her hair, rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her palm. She sat up only enough to prop herself against the wall, blanket pooled around her waist. Her face held no real expression, but there was confusion in it. Not alarm. Just the hazy uncertainty of someone yanked back into the world before they were ready.
Anne took that as better than fear.
“I thought maybe,” she said, trying to keep her voice gentle and ordinary, “if you wanted, we could talk a little. Or listen to some music. Or read. I brought a few things.”
She lifted the bag a little in demonstration.
Ellie’s gaze dropped to it, then back to Anne, and without a word she lowered herself again and curled under the blanket.
But she didn’t turn away.
That, Anne noticed immediately. The first time Ellie had folded in on herself like a closed door. This time she remained facing the glass, knees tucked up, chin half-hidden in the blanket, watching Anne through the curtain of sleep-heavy hair.
The room was freezing.
Anne had been here less than five minutes and already her fingers felt cold. She rubbed at them, then shrugged out of her sweater and put it back on more firmly, tugging the sleeves down over her hands.
“My,” she said softly, glancing toward the ceiling vent, “it sure is cold in here.”
No response.
She looked back at Ellie. “Are you very cold?”
Nothing.
The girl’s expression didn’t change, but Anne saw her pull the blanket a little higher over her shoulder.
There might be reasons, Anne thought, for why she stayed in bed so much that had nothing to do with laziness or defiance or oversleeping. There were a thousand reasons a person might hide under the covers in a room like this. Cold was only one of them.
“Well,” Anne said, settling into the chair nearest the glass, “I suppose I can tell you a little about myself, if that’s all right.”
Ellie did not answer.
Anne smiled faintly to herself. “I live in a yellow house about twenty minutes from here, though it looks more cream in winter. I have a garden that I’m not terribly good at, but I keep trying anyway. Last spring I planted tomatoes and lost nearly all of them to squirrels, which felt a bit personal if I’m honest.”
Ellie’s eyes stayed on her.
“I like tea much more than coffee, which I gather is controversial in some circles. I read a lot. Mostly stories. I once taught a group of eight-year-olds for a whole year and one of them informed me very seriously that my handwriting looked like ‘a worried bird,’ which I’ve never quite recovered from.”
Still no reply.
Anne let the silence sit without hurrying to fill it, then nodded toward the tray by the slot.
“Would you like any breakfast?”
No answer.
“What are they having you for today?”
Nothing.
Anne followed her own question with a thoughtful little hum, as if they had been having a conversation all along. “It doesn’t look especially inspiring. I can’t say I blame you.”
That earned her the tiniest shift in Ellie’s eyes. Not amusement exactly, but attention.
Encouraged, Anne opened her bag and pulled out a book. Hardback wouldn’t have been allowed, so she’d copied down the approved edition from the list they gave her and brought a soft, already-worn paperback with a creased spine and a watercolor cover.
“Well,” she said, holding it up a little, “I brought this. I thought we might read some, if that’s okay.”
Ellie stared at the book.
Anne waited.
When no refusal came, she opened to the first page.
“All right then,” she murmured. “I’ll start.”
She read quietly, not performing it, not overdoing the voices or dramatics, just letting the words move steadily through the cold room. Every few pages she glanced up. At first Ellie seemed barely present, eyes half-lidded, body slack with sleep. But as time passed, there were small signs.
Her eyes tracked when Anne turned the page.
When a sentence amused Anne enough to make her smile, Ellie’s brow would knit as though trying to understand why.
Once, during a section describing a summer meadow buzzing with bees and warm wind through tall grass, Ellie’s gaze drifted past Anne and fixed somewhere distant, her expression gone strangely blank. Anne recognized that look too. Not boredom. Memory, perhaps. Or the ache of trying to picture a world that no longer felt reachable.
So Anne kept reading.
She paused once to sip from the water bottle she’d brought and found Ellie watching her mouth with the sharp, involuntary alertness of hunger. The glance vanished as soon as Anne noticed it, but the untouched tray by the door seemed suddenly louder in the room.
After a while Anne set the book in her lap and said, very casually, “You don’t have to talk to me, you know. I don’t mind doing the talking for a while.”
Ellie did not answer.
“I expect people say you should participate.”
Nothing.
“Well, I don’t think you should have to do anything with me except what you can manage.”
The girl’s face remained blank, but Anne had the distinct feeling she was being listened to now in earnest.
So she told her about the little bakery near her street that always burned the first batch of scones on Thursdays. About the blue mug she’d had for fifteen years and stubbornly refused to throw away despite the chipped handle. About the time she got caught in the rain without an umbrella and had to drive home wrapped in a supermarket tablecloth because it was the only dry thing in the car.
None of it mattered.
That was precisely the point.
No questions about symptoms. No careful probing. No talk of progress or compliance or behavior plans. Just small, ordinary scraps of life, offered without demand.
The light in the cell shifted gradually as afternoon stretched on. At some point Ellie sat up a little, blanket still around her shoulders, leaning back against the wall. She said nothing. She did not come closer to the glass. But she no longer looked half-asleep.
Anne noticed, too, that the girl had inched the food tray toward the cot with her foot.
She had not opened it.
Still.
When Anne reached the end of the third chapter, she closed the book around one finger and looked up.
“Well,” she said, with genuine reluctance, “I should probably be going.”
Ellie’s eyes lifted to her at once.
Anne stood slowly, careful not to make the movement feel abrupt. “I’ll come back tomorrow, if that’s all right. I can bring this again. Or a different book, if you decide you hate this one.”
Nothing.
Anne smiled a little. “I won’t be offended.”
She gathered her things, slipping the book back into her bag. For a moment she hesitated, sweater sleeves still pulled down over her hands against the cold.
“I’m glad to have met you properly, Ellie,” she said.
The girl watched her without blinking.
Anne moved toward the door, then paused with her hand on the lever. She didn’t turn it right away. There was a peculiar feeling in her chest, tender and painful both, like leaving a skittish animal who had finally stopped hiding long enough to look at you.
“Bye for now,” she said quietly.
Then she let herself out.
The latch sealed behind her with a heavy click.
Inside the cell, Ellie remained motionless for several seconds, listening to Anne’s footsteps recede down the corridor.
The silence settled back over the room.
The hum of the vent.
The dim light.
The untouched tray.
Slowly, very slowly, Ellie pushed herself upright.
The blanket slid from her shoulders into her lap. Her hair fell around her face as she stared at the empty observation room on the other side of the glass, at the chair Anne had been sitting in, at the faint smudge of a handprint left near the edge where Anne had rested her palm without even seeming to realize it.
No one ever stayed that long.
No one ever came in with stories about gardens and burned scones and chipped blue mugs. No one ever talked to her like she was a person waiting in a room instead of a threat contained in one.
Ellie’s gaze dropped to the food tray.
After a moment, she crawled off the cot, knees and bare feet silent against the floor, and crouched by the tray. She peeled back the lid. The eggs were cold. The toast was hard. The milk had gone nearly warm.
She sat there anyway, cross-legged on the floor in the freezing room, eating with slow, absent bites while staring through the glass at the place Anne had been.
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Whumpee really dreads getting their head shaved. They almost prefer the predictability of the experiments instead. Even if they were cold and sterile and pushed them past their limits just to scribble down the aftermath, there was a point. Whumpee didn't like it or agree with the reason they were chosen but they understood why it had to happen. And if it didn't happen to them, it would just be one of the other subjects and, at least, that way it would be quiet. Whumpee stopped screaming and crying a while ago but the new ones must have been just recruited.
But, when they got their head shaved, the only consistency was when it happened. Anytime their hair was past their ears, they knew it was coming. They could only hope it was the research assistant. They were quick and efficient and didn't touch them more than necessary. They didn't look Whumpee in the eye...which felt so much better than the salaciously sinister gaze of Whumper. They were gleeful every time they entered Whumpee's enclosure. And Whumpee was sure they were just as fucking cheery when they watched back the recording later.
