Still can't believe The Silt Verses is over, what a wild ride that was. I miss all the blorbos we got to meet along the way, but right now I mostly miss Adjudicator Shrue and the amazing performance by Sarah Griffin that brought them to life.
Listening to Shrue in Season 2, a non-binary character played by a non-binary actor, was honestly a big reason I got into voice acting. Being nonbinary myself I felt like I had a wall between me and voice acting, but seeing that other people like me could do it too helped me step over the threshold and actually audition rather than let the anxiety keep winning.
I never would have guessed that my first acting role would be in The Silt Verses Season 3... And that my character would get to meet Shrue.
Thank you so much Sarah, Muna, and Jon. Without you three I don't think I would feel comfortable calling myself an actor today. While Brother Philly is currently the only acting role I've done so far I'm still auditioning when I can and hopefully there will be many more roles I can claim as my own in the future.
One man whispers to another, voice pitched low. They are both standing in a dark, dank basement, the bare lightbulb flickering above them. The pipes creak and groan around them, in tune to the noisy settling of the old building above it. A chair sits in the middle of the room, a figure slumped in it. Chains bind the wrists and ankles, a dirty bag over their head.
“I don’t know,” the other man whispers. “But it’s exciting, isn’t it?”
“Oh, very,” the first man responds. “I do look forward to our experiments.”
“Oh yes.” They both chuckle at this, hoarse and wheezing, eyes sharp on the person in the chair. “Do you think it will wake up soon?”
“Who knows? It doesn’t matter much.”
“Oh, but I do love it when they scream.”
“Oh, yes, yes, a very good point. The screams are the best part.”
Still, the figure remains silent and still. The first man sighs.
“Well, the lab will not be ready until tomorrow evening anyways. Shall we go for now?”
“Yes, I think so. One of the brutes may come down for a bit of fun.”
A noise of disgust is shared between them, and they both head for the rickety stairs tucked away in the corner. More pleasantries are exchanged between them, fading as they head up the stairs, before finally disappearing all together as the door closes.
The body in the chair moves, a wet, ragged sigh escaping them. A shadow shifts in the corner, taking the vague shape of a person. The body in the chair tests the chains around their wrists, then tips their head back with a groan.
“You really need to stop making a habit of letting yourself get captured,” the shadow says. “It’s getting ridiculous.”
“It’s all about the dramatic flair,” the body says, voice muffled by the bag. “Much more interesting to let them think they’ve got the best of me and then rip them apart when they least expect it.”
The shadowed heaves a long suffering sigh, and the chains around the body’s wrists loosen. They make a pleased noise and flex their fingers before slipping their arms free. The body reaches up and removes the bag.
“You’re welcome,” the shadow says to the girl.
She makes a face at the dirty burlap sack, tossing it aside and wiping at blood crusted at the corner of her mouth.
“Gross,” she says. “That thing smells like ass.”
The shadow remains motionless in the corner, unmoving and waiting to be acknowledged. Finally, she sighs and turns to face the shadow.
“And thanks. I guess.”
“Always a pillar of gratitude,” the shadow grumbles. “Better put that bag back on. Someone’s coming.”
“God,” she mumbles, bending to pick the sack back up and pulling it on with a disgusted grunt. “They can’t even give me five fucking minutes to breathe air that isn’t filtered through a filthy bag.”
The shadow fades back into the dark as she slips her hands back through the chains. They didn’t tighten back up, but she doubts anyone is really going to notice. People like the men who took her never notice the little things, too high on their own pride. The door opens shortly after she settles back into a slumped position in the chair, heavy footfalls echoing down the stairs. The man coming down sings The Bargain Store under his breath, and the girl resolves to make sure he really hurts for humming a Dolly song so out of tune.
“Wakey wakey,” he says once he’s standing in front of her. The sack is ripped off of her head and she blinks rapidly, as if suddenly exposed to the light. She recognizes the shitty cowboy standing in front of her as one of the men who had been tracking her. “You awake, sunshine?”
“Fuck you,” she rasps. The man laughs, and she knows that she can play him like a fiddle.
“Words hurt,” he says. He braces his hands on the arms of the chair, leaning forward. His breath reeks, and she can’t help the way her nose scrunches in disgust. “Might wanna watch your mouth.”
The girl bites the inside of her cheek to draw a bit of blood, and then spits directly in his face. He reels back, cursing at her as he wipes bloody spittle from his mouth and cheeks. When he glares at her, she offers him a wide, feral grin.
Shitty Cowboy hits her across the face with the back of his hand, so hard her ears ring for a second. She takes a deep breath to recover, jaw stinging from the impact. He looks much more satisfied after the hit lands, flexes his hand and shakes it out. The girl allows herself a small moment of satisfaction knowing that the impact hurt him as well. His smile bares his teeth, two of them gold capped and the rest of them in varying states of decay.
Like all the others she’s seen, there’s a distance in his eyes even as he watches her.
“If you’d been a good girl I might’ve played nice,” he says. His smile only grows as he cracks his knuckles. “But I’m thinking a little bit of roughing up won’t ruin you too much for the good doctors.”
“It’s cute that you think you can scare me,” she says. Slumping back in the chair, she tries to look as bored as she feels. He’s not the first to threaten harm, and he certainly won’t be the last.
“I’m thinking maybe a little time with the power drill would do you good.” His lip twitches even as he tries to keep up a smug demeanor. “We can get out the hammer too if you keep giving me lip.”
“Oh please,” she says, “don’t limit yourself on my behalf, you half-baked Kenny Rogers wannabe. You know, chase your bliss and all that. Even if your bliss does happen to be taking power tools to a young woman tied up in your basement.”
The words earn her a strong right hook to the mouth, and she doesn’t bother to stem the flood of curses that spill past her bloodied lips. She spits out another mouthful of blood at his feet, and is pretty certain she bit off the tip of her tongue. The pain keeps her focused, though, and she makes herself take deep, even breaths as he opens up a toolbox in a moldy corner and takes out a cordless drill. The girl has been through worse, she tells herself repeatedly, and keeps the little kernel of fear in her chest from spreading any further. Her fingers curl into fists as he comes back, fits in a bit, and taps a spot just above her wrist.
“Why don’t we just put a nice little hole here, bolt you properly to the chair?” He chuckles, pressing the cold metal tip to her skin. “Make sure to scream as much as you want, sweet thing.”
The girl bites her lip to keep from screaming when he turns the drill on and the bit slowly works its way through her skin and muscle and down into bone. Tipping her head back, she stares directly into the flickering bulb above her head, blinking back tears. The drill finally goes all the way through into the arm of the chair, and Shitty Cowboy turns it off, pulling the bit out and wiping it on the hem of his shirt. Blood drips to the cracked concrete floor, and she tries to keep her breathing from getting too labored.
Just a little longer. A little longer, and she can turn the tables.
The drill is taken to her other wrist, and her nails bite hard enough into her palms to draw little crescents of blood. She breathes heavily through her nose, a trickle of blood running down her chin from where her teeth break the skin of her lip. Shitty Cowboy is openly cackling now, and the glaze to his eyes has only gotten worse.
He sets aside the drill, grabs her chin hard enough to bruise. She refuses to cry, and she can see the anger rising in him. He wants her to break, but she’s been broken for a long time already. His nails dig into her skin, and he leans close, breath fanning over her face and making her want to gag.
“Maybe it isn’t pain that makes you scream, then,” he says.
The girl’s blood goes cold. It’s her worst nightmare all over again, the day these people first found her repeating again. But now, she reminds herself, she is different. Now she isn’t a girl for this man to use and break, to be taken to the limits and then tossed aside to die.
Now, she is a monster.
The darkness in her explodes, overwhelms her. She is Other now, the thing that lurked under her skin for so long and was freed with her own blood. With her own death. The man reels back as the shadows wash over her, as she frees herself from the loosened chains and shifts and grows into something out of the darkest depths of the human imagination. The ink in her arm itches, her own private army of nightmares begging to be set free. But she does not let them. This one is going to be her prey, and her prey only.
“Did you get your kicks?” she says, her many voices overlapping and echoing around the space. The lightbulb flickers and goes out, but her eyes glow in the darkness. “Is this what gets you off? Stalking girls who aren’t quite human but who can’t fight back and hurting them? Forcing yourself on them?”
A whimper is her only answer. She grows further, the legion inside of her reaching out, many limbed and screaming for blood. Her many eyes watch as he tries to find the stairs, tries to escape from the hell suddenly loosed in the tiny basement of an old abandoned house out in the middle of nowhere.
He does not know it, but everyone in the house above them is dead. Her nightmares are soaked in their blood, sinking into her skin like purring, contented cats. The fear feeds her, and she speaks with many tongues.
“The seed planted in your mind is one part of many,” she says. “And you may think it vast. You may think those that control you, that bind your sick thoughts and twist you into killing and harvesting are infallible. But I will let you in on a secret.”
Her talons sink into his skin, and she closes her eyes as he begins to scream. This one, she thinks, she will savor. She will make it last. Draw out the pain, delay death until the last second. Let him teeter on the abyss. Her own blood still drips to the floor, slick and dark as oil.
“Those who seek immortality are only a blink in the universe. However old, however ancient, they will crumble and fall and become dust. But me? I am eternal. There will always be death, there will always be something dark in the shadows screaming for blood.”
She opens her many eyes and shows him. Allows him to see what she is, screams echoing and echoing and echoing as she peels the skin from his flesh and sinks her teeth into his bones.
