In general, for a big part, this is torture porn. Morocco mission background for Fear!Au 1/? putting the tag on it because as a whole it’s shippy.
The light shines directly into his eyes, and the chair he’s cuffed to - both wrists and ankles - is securely fixed to the floor. Jack curls his upper lip somewhat. He’s not above appreciating the setup but that’s a missed opportunity for psychological impact. At least the intelligence had been right, for once. It may look temporary but the sickly smell of fear and suffering hangs in the air, speaks of the frequent use of the room. It’s something primal you can’t get rid of that easy, a warning signal from one animal to another.
Behind the light, he can almost see someone’s silhouette, pegs him immediately as the one to oversee the interrogation. The one that will put in the real work comes closer - Jack can almost discern his features - and barks out a question.
“John Morrison, Sergeant First Class of the United States Army, service number...” The first blow comes with a resounding crack inside his head as it throws him to the side in the chair. The tendons in his neck protest against the unexpected and forced stretch. Jack draws in a slow breath. Turns back to the man with a wide smile on his face. “You hit like a syphilitic whore.”
That earns him another two blows, rapid, one after another - the angle all wrong, downwards, more grazing than damaging. Still cuts the inside of his cheek on his teeth.
“That whore your mother or sister?” Jack asks before they can repeat the question. He would laugh for added effect but at this stage he clenches his jaw shut, would be detrimental to suffer a serious injury other than the bullet hole in his thigh this early.
After the round, Jack spits the blood - and something more solid - to the side. Every sensation dulls except for the pulsating pain in his mouth flaring up with each breath, and his tongue feels numb and sluggish, he must have bitten it involuntarily. They speak something. He has to focus to understand, takes him several seconds to process the words. Again, the same question.
“John Morrison, Sergeant First...”
The newest set leaves him slouched forward in the chair, bloody saliva dripping down, the nose probably broken. He feels almost nothing except for thrumming in his ears, listening, waiting, coiled like a spring. A hand grabs his chin and forces his head up, Jack squints trying to pick out features, anything, where - why - and then it clicks, and he offers the interrogator another deranged smile. He leans back and spits into the man’s face, it lands on his cheek. No more questions. The cuffs bite into his skin with each strike. It’s methodical now, his head snapping from side to side. Good, something in the back of his mind notes, that part’s over. Finally, darkness.
He wakes up to the pain that flares up when he tries to move. He spits out the mess of congealed blood and saliva gathered in his mouth out of instinct before he can stop himself - coughs trying to dislodge whatever's stuck in his throat and almost blacks out again. Mistake.
Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. Repeat. You wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it. Flashes and fragments. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.
Jack takes the stock of the damage. His left eye is close to swollen shut. The nose is blocked, feels like stuffed full of cotton. Broken, all right. Right eye fares much better, good the fucker’s not ambidextrous, Jack would prefer to keep some of his field of vision for what’s coming. He moves the swollen tongue along the gums. One tooth’s missing, another’s chipped, and the third one he’s not sure if it’s there or not, or if that’s his jaw broken.
Slowly, with the neck protesting any movement, he slopes forward, to bring his face into the range his left hand has in the cuff. The skin on his wrists, under the metal, is mostly intact - if bruised. It would only take dislocating his thumb to get free of one set. The ones on his ankles are the problem, and they took his earring - no go.
Carefully, Jack traces the line of his chin with his fingers. The hurt hits like a sledgehammer. He almost throws up, his stomach tied in knots with reactive nausea. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. Complicated fracture, apparently, broken, but the bone keeps itself together as long as he doesn’t aggravate it too much. So much for avoiding additional injuries. Jack straightens in the chair with his eyes closed, riding out the new wave of pain. Keep it together. It’s never ‘if’, it’s ‘when’. Everyone breaks eventually. Schooling his breathing, he searches for symptoms of a concussion. It would be easier if he had one.
When door opens, and he notices the bottles of water and the bundled cloth, Jack laughs out loud. He’s still chuckling when the water pours.
TLC BLC 01 055 JPM which is in one of the ‘asides’ for ‘Synchronicity’ is the final personnel number ‘original Jack’ had assigned while on contract with the PMC.
TLC - Talon Corporation
BLC - Blackwatch PMC
01 - Team 1 (under Gerard Lacroix’s personal leadership)
055 - individual personnel number on Team 1
JPM - John (originally Jackson - which I’m retconning) Percival Morrison.
The initial plan for the callsign was to have Jack repeat it after the Apparition during the escape sequence from the underground facility to gain few seconds of confusion from regular Blackwatch personnel before they figure out the callsign is invalid.
It got scrapped because the better flow was just having Jack go into ‘proficient killer’ headspace, and that way the Apparition remains more ambiguous and malevolent towards Jack.
(Additional trivia: Both Jack and the Apparition draw a reaction from the Beast. Reaper does not react to the Apparition.)
The second (yeah, it’s the second ‘introduction’ :3) of the ‘ghosts’.
(…)
I said that all sounds like madness
Why have a life and then not be alive
Why have a mind and then choose to be blind
What you call wisdom is the fear that you hide
(…)
Inhale. The savaged body his fingers are buried in grays and crumbles apart. Count to five. Specks of ash float in the air. Exhale. The blood and scraps of flesh flake off his hands and join the ash in the dance on the currents. Count to five. Smile. Fracture. Fall. A future banquet for worms.
Inhale.
Black ash clogs the air and clogs his lungs. The fractures propagate and the clock is broken.
“Just like they had trained you, Sunshine,” the Beast whispers against his temple and Jack nods as the tension slowly flushes down his spine leaving a dull tug in his side as it leaves. He slips fingers under the jacket and winces. The bandage is wet, the stitches must have ripped under the stress. He’s bleeding, again. “We will take care of it, soon.”
“Yes.” Probably more morphine, the faster the better. He’s dying, the bullet in the gut and the radiation poisoning, an invisible race of what will kill him first — if he’s even alive anymore. His mouth is full of bitter cotton. Jack shakes his head. “Soon.”
He backs several steps to the Patten lying on the ground and picks up the rifle he does not remember discarding during the skirmish. With the thing dead, he can cross the plaza instead of trying to sneak through the rubble and making a detour. The display window with the red umbrella thrust through it looks promising.
Jack grits his teeth and moves forward. With the butt of the rifle, he smashes the jagged remnants of the glass on the high windowsill and then climbs inside, into the gloom and unnatural chill that makes the goosebumps break out all over his arms. The overlay of his visor flickers on and off. It’s a movement at the edge of his vision, a flicker in the air, a sound just below his range of hearing.
He tries to ignore it and walks to the stairwell, half-collapsed but still scalable. The twisted strands of rebar make it difficult to maneuver but clinging to the wall he manages to climb to the second floor. The silence is not just ambient; there is a substantial lack of sounds. Cold prickles bite into the back of his neck, a sense of impalpable presence flitting in and out of his awareness.
“Come out, come out.” Jack breathes out through clenched teeth.
“Whoever you are,” the Beast hisses into his ear. “Come out, come out…”
“Wherever you are.”
The cold slams into him and Jack almost loses his balance. The barrel of his rifle swings wildly as he tries to follow the strange distortion moving erratically in the air.
ffffffffffffffffffffff yeah :3 the plane, finally, finally, and completely differently than I wanted to do it earlier but still. also callback to ‘warcrimes’ (or ‘crimes against humanity’ this time). Oh, by the way, you know it’s pretty hard to light civvie brand of jet fuel on fire?
"Goddamn fucking morphine," Jack murmurs. His vision is focused and swimming at the same time. His breath coils around his tongue with a taste of rusted iron. "If you're my guide, I'm fucking lost."
"Oh, Sunshine, did I ever aspire to such a title?" The barbwire lull of the laughter pierces his ears together with the roar of the fire, and the smell of burning plastic and artificial fabrics suddenly becomes dominant. The plane.
One wing is broken off and missing, the other is buried deep in a collapsed building. The fuselage is smashed into three neat pieces - the tail rests sideways on the street.
The inside of the craft is still on fire and the asphalt is soaked in the fuel. No bodies. No blood. The luggage is strewn around. No body parts. Nothing. There's a ripped in half pink suitcase in front of him with a small plastic hand sticking out of the bundled clothes.
"Who's there? Please!" A woman. Jack turns towards the voice and a greenish silhouette swivels there with its hands outstretched as if fumbling in the darkness. A child cries. "Please, say something!"
"They're all dead," Jack whispers taking a step back.
"Yes, they are, and it was us who killed them, Sunshine, or did you forget?"
Notes: After hitting brick wall, restructure! So, that one’s a bit of Frankenstein’s Monster. Introducing: Remnant, references to past happenings that were supposed to be referenced much, much later, and morally (VERY) questionable actions (if you get the reference). Jack’s still high on morphine.
Previous parts under this one link: gyromitra-esculenta(.)tumblr(.)com/post/173374189022/synchronicity-15
Jack grimaces when from behind the APC a figure shambles out, a man in a stained dress shirt with a suitcase held in his right hand. Something unsettling in how strangely his neck twists to the left.
"I wonder, Sunshine," the Beast teases, "fight or flight?"
***
(…)
And all I see is war path ahead of me
Each and every step I welcome readily
And if my lack of fear bring the death of me
Let the spirits of my ancestors envelop me
(…)
His fingers still grip the rifle, the knuckles white on the dark surface of the gun, and he still stares into dark crimson eyes. The last words reverberate between them – him and the Beast – the talk of ashes and charred bones left in their collective wake somehow does not sound like merely a pretty metaphor anymore. Jack swallows back another question and slowly lifts himself off the floor.
The walker is gone in the minutes that had trickled by and he tries somehow to justify its lack of awareness of his own position – was he shielded by the structure or was a single signature not worth the hassle, or, maybe, the interference had messed with the mech’s systems?
There is also a different possibility, one that now is not as far-fetched as one would imagine otherwise, and he knows it’s the morphine talking as he glances back to the Beast.
"I’m dead, aren’t I?"
"Now, what makes you say such a thing, Sunshine?" The Beast tilts its maw to the side, playfully contrarian – yet under the light timbre something darker lurks with the intensity of razor-sharp fangs biting into the nape of his neck.
"This is limbo. Tartarus. The ceaseless punishment," Jack shakes his head, picks up the pace.
"Do tell me, Sunshine, how does one escape from such a predicament?" The Beast now keeps his stride slinking forward at his side, the words simultaneously mocking and paternalistic.
"One doesn’t."
"One doesn’t unless one has their own guide," the Beast chortles.
"I don’t remember ever being so goddamn fucking vague."
"Goddamn fucking morphine," Jack murmurs. His vision is focused and swimming at the same time. His breath coils around his tongue with a taste of rusted iron. "If you're my guide, I'm fucking lost."
"Oh, Sunshine, did I ever aspire to such a title?" The barbwire lull of the laughter pierces his ears together with the roar of the fire, and the smell of burning plastic and artificial fabrics suddenly becomes dominant. The plane.
One wing is broken off and missing, the other is buried deep in a collapsed building. The fuselage is smashed into three neat pieces - the tail rests sideways on the street.
The inside of the craft is still on fire and the asphalt is soaked by fuel. No bodies. No blood. The luggage is strewn around. No body parts. Nothing. There's a ripped in half pink suitcase in front of him with a small plastic hand sticking out of the bundled clothes.
"Who's there? Please!" A woman. Jack turns towards the voice and a greenish silhouette swivels there with its hands outstretched as if fumbling in the darkness. A child cries. "Please, say something!"
"They're all dead," Jack whispers taking a step back.
"Yes, they are, and it was us who killed them, Sunshine, or did you so conveniently forget?" The Beast seethes with smug satisfaction. "Only ash and charred bones, no evidence and no witnesses," it hisses as it focuses the glare of its crimson eyes on him, like he is a mere insect under its scrutiny, "this is what remains in our wake. This is," it bares its fangs in a feral growl as it punctuates every word, "what we are, what we were, and what we are to become yet again."
"No," Jack backs further, a stumbling step after a stumbling step, away from the encroaching darkness that swallows him only to spit him out in a green-lit hell. "No."
His fingers move over the panel covered with a delicate synthetic mesh designed to evaporate on blast. A child cries. The explosive arms without a sound. The goggles give him fleeting vertigo with a split-second delay of the processed image.
"Please, say something!" The woman moves in his direction, slightly off to the side, and Jack evades her. The carpet muffles his steps. "I know someone's here!"
The child is still crying. A man screams in anger somewhere down the corridor.
"One. Two. Three. Boom," the Beast intones with a static of bad reception raising in the background - its voice morphs into that of a newscaster, "...that Mehdi Benjelloun has just claimed the responsibility for the bombing for..."
White noise. Everything drowns in white noise. The clock is ticking. The hands do not move, do not even strain, and the room is white.
"Mr. Morrison," the psychiatrist whose name he cannot recall smiles, the kind of impersonal smile one could expect from a professional detached from the situation. "Did the change in the prescription have any adversarial effects? Any notable differences you have experienced regarding your frame of mind?"
The Beast stings behind his teeth, scrapes the sides of his throat, looks through his eyes.
"No. Can’t think of any. Can’t…" Jack turns his gaze to the tree in the painting hanging above the vibrant ficus to his left, to the maelstrom of the painted sky behind it. The rapid strokes of the brush give it an illusion of a slow deliberate motion. "Felt worse for the first week but I don’t think I really thought about killing myself since then."
"That’s good to hear," the man types something on the keyboard.
"You redecorated."
"Excuse me?"
"This picture, it’s new. It’s different from the one before."
The doctor looks at him quizzically, maybe even slightly alarmed. The Beast whispers of danger, a hissing kind of murmur seeping into his thoughts.
"And what do you see in the picture, Mr. Morrison?"
"Morbid landscape with a tree," Jack swallows, eyes darting to the other side, searching for a route of escape from some undefined peril that now sits heavy on his shoulders. Its claws dig deep enough below his collarbone to draw blood that seeps through and stains the fabric.
"Visual hallucinations. This merits additional evaluation." The man extends his hand under the desk and the Beast roars in fury, it roars as everything is white noise again.
The white room. The chair is covered in dark rust, no - not rust - old dried blood, cracking and flaking off. The infernal ticking thunders louder and louder until he wants to scream just to drown it away.
"Getting lost in your own head again, Sunshine? We can't have that, not yet," the Beast whispers. "Inhale." Inhale. "Count." Count to five. Count against the ticking. Don't lose focus. "Exhale." He exhales, slowly pushes the air out of his lungs. "Remember..."
"Remember my training," Jack repeats opening his eyes - when had he closed them? The plane is yet again in front of him but in the meantime, he must have passed it. The cockpit looks almost intact - if not for the missing panes of glass and something still sparking inside.
He's hunched behind a concrete barrier - it seems the street had been closed off to the traffic before. Jack leans to the side to observe the plaza. There are several cars and a bus, one unmarked APC lying on its side. Recreational area primarily. He can see a bright red restaurant umbrella halfway thrown through a display window. A lot of bodies on the ground he can safely identify as Blackwatch personnel.
Jack grimaces when from behind the APC a figure shambles out, a man in a stained dress shirt with a suitcase held in his right hand. Something unsettling in how strangely his neck twists to the left.
"I wonder, Sunshine," the Beast teases, "fight or flight?"
The man turns away and Jack mentally reconstructs the area mapping the best route. He licks his lips, runs his tongue over the chapped skin. Changes the grip on the Patten and moves hunched - eyes darting between the man and the ground - trying to find safe footing. Seconds he measures in breaths trickle by as he makes his way towards an overturned cart painted with happy pastels now greyed with settled ash.
Jack stops to take another look at his surroundings. Crumbled building blocks the nearest street - he could climb over the rubble but the prospect is risky especially if he wants to avoid meeting the civilian or whatever else the man with the suitcase actually is.
Slowly, as the figure disappears behind the APC, Jack raises. Maybe he can circle him. A blink, and the man stands before him in a cloud of swirling black ash. No. Not a man anymore. Something that used to be human. The lower jaw is missing, the eyes are white, the broiled skin sloughs off the meat.
The creature shrieks with an unearthly tone; the wave of sound hits with a multitude of stabs and knocks the breath out of him. Jack falters and almost drops the rifle, scrambles to regain his composure.
Twisting tendrils of purplish light lash out but not towards him, no, to the side, and with growing dread he sees a body dragged upwards with the entrails flopping from under the vest, and limbs swinging in disjointed tugs like a ragdoll shaken erratically by attached strings. It raises the gun and turns towards him. Jack ducks behind the collapsed decorative gazebo. Bullets thunder against the cement.
A shriek again, his vision darkness for a second, and another body joins in the puppet dance. Shots spray wildly in a wide swipe rising clusters of dust where they hit.
Jack emerges quickly from the side and aims at the closest enemy. Two shots send the helmet flying, the third one shatters the brow, and the glowing tethers snap as the body hits the ground.
It’s not enough, the strings spring out from the creature anew and latch onto the fallen cadaver, sink and dig into the flesh, and bring it upright again.
"A resourceful abomination, isn’t she?" The Beast rumbles with glee, its presence growing, enveloping him, and mucous darkness shifting against his skin. The taste of mildew and rot steals into his mouth. "She tests our patience. We will kill her."
"We will kill her," Jack echoes as yet another puppet joins the fray.
"We will grind down her bones between our teeth," the Beast purrs. Claws rest over his hands, and then he runs between the bullets sailing with deadly grace through the air.
The Beast keeps his pace; the loud empty thumps explode in the sudden eerie silence as its paws hit against the pavement rising up clouds of ash. It bares its fangs, its maw low to the ground, and then it jumps through the motionless air swamped in the iridescent afterglow.
The Beast’s jaws close around the creature’s neck with a nauseating crunch. It turns and twists thrashing its head from side to side until meat, tendons, and bones separate. Mutilated head rips off and freezes midflight in the air.
With a snap, the movement resumes. Hunks of meat hit the ground with wet squelches, the violet tendrils dissipate, and the risen corpses fall over once again.
The Beast roars triumphantly, and Jack, with his hands buried to the elbows in the creature’s clawed apart chest smiles mirroring its expression: all teeth and savagery.
Hm. Seems my tumblr’s still broken (shadowbanned under new rules or something), can’t msg peeps. I’m kind of, maybe, still alive. Roughish draft of not-really-I-guess safe for work canon divergence for fear!au into questionable area of questionable ‘monster’ erotica. There’s a lot of heavy subjects implied or referenced. Again, this is not Synchronicity canon, and it’s divergence from a certain point of plot so the beginning is slightly edited for readibility, and that’s as far I got at the moment.
He cannot draw breath, he is choking, the hand at his throat holds him up against the wall, the claws dig into his neck. His legs try to kick out instinctively, hit nothing – no, not nothing – something pliant, almost as unsubstantial as the air itself, so unlike the unyielding pressure threatening to crush his windpipe.
It’s torture, and torture he is familiar with, the knowledge how to withstand it until the breaking point, how to circumvent the questioning, how to give up certain information and squirrel away the vital parts of it.
Jack stares into the crimson eyes. His fingers gripping Reaper’s arm are ashen in color, with a purplish tint. Over the roar of blood in his ears, over the angry wail, someone shouts at him in French, then in broken English, the exact words lost to the rising noise. Tell them what they want to know. Tell them what you want them to know.
He is afraid. Afraid for his life, afraid of dying before the conclusion. But Reaper, he fears him not. No, not him, because Reaper still needs him. Still needs the surrogate for that person he is futilely searching for.
Even as his vision swims, Jack reaches out. The flesh of the cheek under his touch is moving, changing, never in the same shape or physical state, brings out a memory of newly hatched spiders clustered together, of blowing cigarette smoke at them and watching them scramble apart and then back close again.
“I see you,” he mouths as black crawls at the edge of his sight, the wet stringy darkness threatening to pull him under the surface and to never let go. “I’m not afraid of you.”
There is a shift in the pressure, the twitch in those dark claws buried in the flesh of his throat.
“I see you,” Jack repeats, “for what you are.” His eyes close. He cannot keep them open. “You are not a monster.”
The bark of the tree with the ‘J’ and ‘G’ carved into it bites into his back, the hand at his throat is warm and gentle, human, familiar, as is the mouth over his lips and the scratch of facial hair. The kiss is slow, languid, and all-encompassing - there is safety and comfort.
When he opens his eyes, Jack can breathe, takes a big lungful of air and exhales it loudly. He is back in the ruined corridor under the flickering light. The claws on his neck are lax and flesh under his own fingertips is solid yet cold.
Reaper, with his head inclined to the side, observes him. His face has a shape now, a man’s face, skin tinted grey stretched over the bone and in places coming apart to reveal the underlying decomposition, spare bristles of facial hair framing broken lips.
“He loved you, didn’t he?” Jack whispers hoarsely while his hand still rests on that face. “He loved you, and you loved him back, didn’t you?”
He licks his lips tasting blood. Hemorrhage from mucous membranes, something he's getting used to. His vision is colored red and blurry.
“They took him from me,” Reaper speaks. The black smoke that spills from his mouth diffuses in the air like ink in the water. “They will pay for what they did to him.”
Like a broken record, Jack thinks, but isn’t that a truth coming from the man reliving all those moments that had pulled him in, the flickers of gentleness, and the flashes of suffering, the darkness, the tree, the grass, the airstrip.
“You have to see him. I’ll,” Jack's voice breaks over the words, “help you find him. See him.”
Reaper’s head slowly tilts to the other side, the crimson eyes don’t leave his face. The tip of a solitary claw travels up his neck, over his Adam's apple, stops under his chin and digs into the soft skin below.
"Will you now?" In Reaper's words, there is a hint of accusation and focused anger tinged with something that sounds almost like a desperate plea at the same time.
"You will, Sunshine, won't you?" The Beast languidly curls around his neck and cups his cheek - sneaks into his mouth like a finger tugging at his lower lip - and Jack cannot help the muted whine that slips between his teeth as the taste of blood and sweet rot spreads on his tongue.
Lingering touch combs through his hair - the grip is light yet firm, tilts his head back - and the claw ghosts over the faint lines of the scar across his throat. The smell of burnt meat and fat comes and goes with each hurried breath.
"Yes, Sunshine, only ash and charred bones," the Beast murmurs seductively. "We are death, we are strife, we are what remains when all else is slaughtered in our wake. We survive."
"You promised to take him with you," Jack swallows against something hard scraping the back of his throat, a painful irritation - familiar - his muscles seize weakly against the intrusion.
"I did, didn't I?"
"Didn't I, Sunshine?" The Beast coils around his wrists - its tarlike substance heavy and oily on his skin; the intoxicating taste of mildew and iron trickling down his throat and the musty bittersweet fragrance of fermented fruits overtake his senses.
Reaper comes closer and the claws flit over his cheekbone, and it is the first time Jack thinks about their peculiar texture, the strange spongy hardness ending in cruel points. He lifts his hand to cover them with his fingers. Maybe, he doesn't mind to be the stand-in for this person who died when the plane touched down. No, he doesn't mind. It has never been about him.
With slow purpose, Jack tilts his head forward and to the side. Reaper's lips are cool and swollen, the tongue cold and slimy, and from under the hood where his other hand found purchase wet and stringy (just like the darkness that even now - especially now - threatens to pull him below the surface) hair slip out.
Mul gwisin, Hana said.
"They drowned you," Jack whispers into the broken mouth. "In that darkness, they drowned you, but you survived."
"Isn't that what we do, Sunshine?" The Beast playfully nips at his ear. He can feel the brush of the fangs almost piercing the skin, almost arches into the sensation.
"Months. Years. Forever." The other set of claws digs into his side not unlike the Beast's own claws when it scraped out the bullet from the inside of his stomach. He feels the abhorrently warm blood soak the fabric; the wet cloth clings to the skin, and the claws move agonizingly slow - continue their way upwards ripping him apart. It's something like pain but not entirely, something much more intimate than anything he remembers ever experiencing. Something liberating, in how he places his very existence into the hands of someone who has no reason to care for it in the least.
Jack continues the neglected kiss even as he hears - feels - the bones crack - little splinters ricocheting inside, the taste of iron more prevalent than ever and his breath stolen away. The lips pressed against his own now are freezing cold and leathery in texture. The Beast noses against the skin of his exposed neck.
McCree released Reaper from the Tomb, a fleeting thought, the Tomb where they drowned him. It would only make perfect sense that right now he is kissing a long-dead corpse.
"Do not nitpick, Sunshine," the Beast chortles in good humor, nibbles in a warning on his jugular.
"I'm not," Jack manages to choke out when Reaper's teeth pull lightly on his lower lip. It's charred bones and ash, burnt meat and fat, the smell of cordite and accelerant, it's screams and chaos. Something wails, screams almost like a human in the jungle of broiled green leaves. The knife slowly scrapes against the bone, the grating kind of sound, as they dig out the bullets. No witnesses, no evidence. Cold lips move down, along the line of his throat, and Jack tilts his head back out of his own volition now, observes the black ash rising in the currents, swirling and clogging the air. An efficient solution, he thinks, even as the cool air on his exposed body makes him shiver involuntarily. "Was it him, or was it me?"
"Does it matter, Sunshine?" The Beast fawns at the side of his face, pushes almost like it wants to crawl under his very skin - ridiculous. It's always there, always were.
"I guess not," Jack agrees and the darkness, wet and stringy, finally pulls him under, into the hypnotic lull of a slow heartbeat.
The pain does not come back gradually; it hits like a speeding truck with broken brakes hurling off a bridge and Jack almost folds in half gasping frantically for breath. The movement multiplies the sensation of something foreign moving inside his gut. His fingers lose all feeling as he tries to press on the wound through the jacket.
His mouth is numb and cold, and the lack of discernable taste makes him gag.
“Safe place, Sunshine, close,” the Beast murmurs wedging its maw under his chin in an almost caring gesture. “Get up.”
“Can’t,” Jack manages a failing whisper. The clock is ticking. The hands do not move, do not even strain, and the room is white.
“Mr. Morrison,” the psychiatrist smiles, the kind of impersonal smile one could expect from a professional detached from the situation. “Did the change in the prescription have any adversarial effects? Any notable differences you have experienced regarding your frame of mind?”
The Beast stings behind his teeth, scrapes the sides of his throat, looks through his eyes.
“No. Can’t think of any. Can’t…” Jack turns his gaze to the tree in the painting, to the maelstrom of the painted sky behind it – the rapid strokes of brush giving it an illusion of movement. “Felt worse for the first week but I don’t think I really thought about killing myself since then.”
“That’s good to hear,” the man types something on the keyboard.
“You redecorated.”
“Excuse me?”
“This picture, it’s new. It’s different from the one before.”
The doctor looks at him quizzically, maybe even slightly alarmed. The Beast whispers of danger.
“And what do you see in the picture, Mr. Morrison?”
“Morbid landscape with a tree,” Jack swallows, eyes darting to the side, searching for a route of escape from some undefined peril that now sits heavy on his shoulders, its claws digging deep enough to draw blood that seeps through and stains the fabric.
“Visual hallucinations. This merits additional evaluation,” the man extends his hand under the desk and the Beast roars in fury, it roars as everything is white again.
