Send in three names to my inbox, get back a drabble of them in a horror situation!
How did I see this one coming?
There was no time to stop running—no spare moment for a thought, not a second in which to breathe and make sense of it all—but perhaps if there had been, they would have noticed the clues. They would have noticed the pained, labored breathing, the crimson spots like a trail of bread crumbs guiding the way in through the city as they ran, the grunting and the low moaning and the dry, heaving sobs.
But they didn’t stop. On and on and on they sprinted, dragging her with them, unknowing of why she hesitated, why she had to be dragged instead of just running with them.
Maybe they just chalked it up to her lungs.
"Don’t—" But they didn’t hear her, hurtling through the doors as fast as they could. "—please—" She stumbled and fell, but the others were still on their feet, Cori wide-eyed and panic, running her hands through her short hair as new tears cut fresh tracks down her cheeks. Grave Robber was at least coherent, slamming the door, bracing himself against it.
"What do we do?"
“Fuck! Grab something heavy and drag it over here!”
He was good in command. Cori complied with the demand immediately, even as Kenz pushed herself up against the fair wall with another groan, curling in tight on herself. The doors shook with the force of their sheer numbers, unadulterated hunger and excitement whipping them into a frenzy beyond the barricade they were creating. They ran around throwing whatever they could find in front of the door—chairs, tables, trolleys, dismanteled shelving, whatever they could get their hands on in the lower stocking cellar.
Kenz sat useless, moaning in her agony.
"Shut her up!"
"I can’t; she’s scared stiff! Cut her some slack."
"Not…fucking…scared,” she managed between grit teeth, eyes mashed closed with all the force she could muster. “You…gotta get…out. Now!” They paused then, unnerved. Cori—compassion incarnate—focused immediately on her friend; the ripped, tattered clothing dipped in gore and blood. The bruises, the cuts, the sickly look of them. Most were acquired fighting to get one or both of the pale-eyed survivor’s companions out a tight spot; some were there from before. She was paler than she had been, even Before. She was trembling. Sick and scared (even if she wouldn’t admit it), tired. The world had turned her into an insomniac, if she hadn’t been one Before.
Graves, on the other hand—Mr. Schemes’n’Things, the scavenger—took his time dragging his eyes to her pitifully huddled mass. They first found the scattered splotches of red not tinted with the yellow gleam of preservative chemicals, a zig-zagging line of spots leading to the back room in a frantic beeline, dragging into a poorly painted line where she had fallen her feet and scooted back that way. They traced over the boldening line, watching it grow wider, darker, as it trailed up her body and into her lap, where she cradled it.
A fresh wound where there oughtn’t be one. He was slow to meet her gaze—steady, angry, insistent—but it told him what to do.
"Cori…back away from Kenz." She was halfway between them; something in his quiet tone stopped her cold, turning back to him.
"What?"
"Back away from Kenz."
"Why?"
"—got me," the other girl panted solemnly, lifting the broken arm as best she could. Bone glinted off-white, poking through what had once been supple skin, soaked in the crimson of her life. Tattered skin and sliced sinew dangled in the air, putting on a show for them. There was a purpling bruise on the jagged edges to one side of the wound—the first cause of the bleeding hadn’t been the breaking of the appendage.
Cori felt sick, backing away, denying the sight with a shake of her head.
"No, no—!"
"Put…me…down," she huffed, dropping the gory sight back into her lap, head falling back against the wall.
"No!"
"Cori," reproached the ex-drug-dealer, stepping close, "we have to—"
"No!"
"Please…."
"There has to be another way!" she shrieked, backing up, holding her stomach. She was going to be sick—not Kenz. Please not Kenz. Not the strength of their team, the wily little minx with a batter’s arm when it came to taking the heads off these fucks. Not the unchanging light of the team, able to joke and tease and quip even under pressure, not her rock. Not Kenz. Not now. Not like this. “We-we can save her!” Tears pricked her eyes; the others watched pityingly, Kenz turning her head away into the wall to block it out. “We’ll…cut her arm off, we’ll—”
"No, Cori." He spoke gently, holding her arms and forcing her to look in his eyes. No one was fooled by the delusion of safety, not even Cori. "There’s only one way."
For a moment, there was only her broken sobbing. Sighing, Grave Robber sent her away into a far corner of the room, telling her to cover her ears. She shouldn’t have to witness the death of her best friend; it wasn’t right. It was better that he took care of this; Kenz had never liked him, anyway.
There was a pipe from the old cooling system jutting out of the wall; it would do. He hefted it silently, approaching the girl. Light was rapidly fading from her eyes; to guess from the state of the wound and how far they had come, she would have died from blood loss by nightfall, anyway.
"If it’s any consolation, Kenz…I always thought you pretty great. Even Before." Her eyes opened slowly, like they were glued together; a tear ran out.
So much for looking tough.
"Right…back…atcha." Her head fell back with a hollow thunk; that was it, then.
It never failed to surprise him, how much gore the human head actually contained. Most of Kenz’s ended up splattered against the dual walls of her little corner, sight of her last heroic stand. He had never been so close to tears since the beginning of this New Plague.
It was better this way; Kenz was not someone he would have wanted to meet again. This felt like mercy; at least, he told himself that.
♚ - Graves falls asleep on Kenz, how does she react?
"Toldja I never lose," she said, giggling slightly, slurred in her speech. No one could drink her under the table; it simply wasn’t possible. She turned her head to face him, only to see he had passed out on her shoulder. “Oh, yuck." She pushed his shoulder—to no avail.
"Grave Robber, y’gotta get off me. I gotta go t’bed," she whined, pushing him again. He rocked a little, but otherwise didn’t budge. “Dammit, I knew this’as a bad idea…." She glared at him sleepily, but couldn’t conjure fucks enough to move. “Try any funny bus’ness an’ I’ll…punchya or somethin’." But she settled more easily on the couch but leaning in to him and closing her eyes, drifting off to sleep.
"G’night, douchey-doo," she giggled before caving in completely.
"Stop yourself, grey. Stop right there. We have this discussion every few days and you don’t listen. We are not a thing. Stop trying to get me in his pants!"
Once upon a time - thenecromerchant [ I know you've done one for a GraveRobber.. but.. * shrugs* ]
I FINALLY FIGURED OUT WHAT I COULD DO SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG!
Once upon a time, in a world so full of hate and grime and disgust you could choke on it if you breathed in too deep, a princess was stolen from the castle of her mother and brought up to be Queen of the Thieves. With each passing day that she was groomed to ascend to this throne, more and more bitterness took root in her heart, until a hateful flower of lies and regret bloomed there, soaking in the rays of men’s admiration and turning it into vile contempt instead.
The princess lived for many years with this flower in her heart—a weed in truth, a flower in her warping vision—until one day, when she grew sick of her training, she ran away. The flower wilted some but did not die, and the princess, rather than become Queen of the Thieves, became merely a thief, taking only what she needed to live. She fell in with a lesser court of thieves and traveled with them each day and each night, performing small tasks in return for their protection, for there is some honor among thieves.
One night, a particularly silver-tongued young thief lured the princess away from the others to sample the wares of the shadows, a dark and gloomy realm to which the princess never traveled, for fear that it’s dirt would clog her senses and breathe new life into her flower. As her companion sampled that which the shadows had to offer him, the Prince of Death came to the princess, unknowing of who she was.
"You are very beautiful," he murmured, eyes raking over her. The flower twitch and came back to life.
"I am not for you," she spat—and she left with her flower once more at its task, taking the admiration of men and turning it to inner disgust. Night after night, the princess was cajoled into joining her friend in the shadows; night after night, the prince would tell the princess how lovely she was; night after night, the flower would whisper that his protestations of her beauty were lies bred in filthy desire, false accusations and sweet nothings meant to turn her from royalty to prostitution. Night after night, she believed only the flower in her heart.
One night, the prince did not call her beautiful. She waited all night long for him to say the words, but he spoke not, keeping only his intent gaze on her.
"Will you not speak to me?"
"I will not; you do not want to hear what I have to say."
And for a time, the princess was content with his silence. When the next night he spoke not to her, and the night after that, and the night after that, the princess thought she and her flower had won against his vile ways, and that she would be freed at last from the horrible filth of this world. On the fourth night, unknown to the princess, her flower wilted again in her heart; and, seeing this change in her poor pale eyes, the prince approached again.
"Will you speak with me this night?" she sneered, turning from him. He placed one hand on her shoulder and his lips to the back of her head, violently thrusting his free hand into her chest from behind. With a firm, sure grip, the prince tore out the weed and its roots, stopping only when all was clutched in his hand. He threw the poisonous thing away as the princess collapsed to her knees with tears in her eyes.
She did not speak for the rest of the night, and she did not follow her smooth-speaking friend back into the shadows the next night, or indeed any other night thereafter.
But she did venture once more into the prince’s realm a fortnight after being given her freedom.
"Will you speak with me now?" he wondered aloud, looking at her. She shook her head, placing one hand on his bicep and her lips to his cheek in a soft, silent kiss, while with her free hand she thrust into his chest and touched his heart, ripping away some part of it and standing back to hold it before his eyes. Rot and corruption, the loathing and seething disgust for humanity, a buildup which had blackened his heart and hardened it enough to leave the princess with her necessary scare, gone now forever.
"We are even," she announced. He was silent for a moment before agreeing, and—taking her hand in his—he lead away from the shadows and the night, from the lies and the bitterness and the corruption, no longer royalty in the realm of man.
Some say the pair stalk the night, each ripping some ugly part of man from his breast and reminding him it was not always there; others that they died in each other’s embrace, too wounded and wide-eyed from the missing chunks of their heart to live in a world so caked with dirt and grime and lies.
Speak your mind,
Like I care.
I can see your lips moving,
I've just learned not to hear.
Don't waste your time.
--Evanescence, "Made of Stone"
"Asshole," she muttered under her breath, the first word she had said since being led down the alleyway, turning away from the sight. Just because her junkie-ass-sort-of-friends decided to waste their time getting high on the street supply didn't mean she had to suffer through it with a smile on her face. Honestly, she would have left Nio to stagger home alone if he said two words about coming out to do this, but he had said instead that she should join him for celebratory drinks on a job well done. 45K, not bad for a bunch of newbies, and though they could always do better...well. Every victory against the big corps out there deserved some sort of celebration.
Since when had "drinks" become code for "zydrate"? She moved to lean against the wall, tired, unwilling to watch him make a mess of himself as he flew up to the moon without her. It was insult to injury that his dealer of choice was one of the lowliest of the low, one of the men that made her sick to her stomach to deal with. The infamous Grave Robber, renowned for such wonderful acts of intelligence and humanity as sleeping in dumpsters, disturbing the dead, shooting up little kids, and occasionally opening baiting GeneCops by shouting in secluded cemeteries. This was ridiculous. Why was she even here waiting around for this fool? She could just split, it wasn't like he or the dealer were currently capable of doing anything anyway.
But leaving meant facing her empty apartment again, the silent seconds ticking by until she got to leave it the next morning, the hollow thunk of her shoes on the floors not enough to drive away the loneliness, the crushing desolation of the place. I need new friends; the old ones suck. She'd just wait for Nio to come down enough to be safely moved...somewhere. Her place, probably, since he lived on the northwest pocket a long shot away from it all. She closed her eyes and willed time to pass by quicker, flinching a little on reflex when the gun went off behind her, the quiet hiss of the hypodermic sinking into Nio's flesh disturbing in its own sinister way.
