· · ────── ꒰ঌ· Forty Days and Forty Nights ·໒꒱ ────── · ·
"There is anger in you. You don't want to feel it, do you?"
+18+ Primordial Master List +18+
Edit c.w: graphic description of gore. Depiction of the aftermath and illusion to a lyching.
a/n: been a minute that i put a note in the start. it's a long one. We see how Simon is adjusting and he sees something he isn't supposed to see. Edit: added the warning for a lynching. The actual act isn't happening but the aftermath is shown.
It's month three of this fresh Hell called reality, and Simon isn't doing much better. The first month was spent doubled over in unbridled pain, teeth itching to rip out throats, fingers cutting crescent shaped scars into his palms as he grappled with his restraint. His head felt as if it were cracked open, brain matter, and matted hair sticking to him.
The last thing he saw before he knew he was dying was Johnny bleeding out, the light barely hanging on in his crystal blue eyes. He should have told him he loved him, actually liked how pushy he was to get him to open up. Simon died again, but hopefully, this time for real and not becoming some type of living ghost. He closed his eyes with the hope that whatever was coming next would finally be peace.
His head hurts, though, thoughts running wild, and they aren't his thoughts. In the present, he hears everything. A consistent soft chatter of voices humming in the back of his mind. Sometimes, it's the voice of the little girl that follows Johnny around, her sing-song cadence lamenting about how cool the Scot is. Sometimes, he hears his Captain’s voice, a ping-pong of chastisement and self flagellation on how they all ended up like this. If he concentrated enough, he could hear the insecurities that Price held about not being in command of anything and having to take orders from Aayana or Karma. He's even privy to Kyle, who thinks in disgust about the blood he chokes down at dinner with echoing chants of 'Don't hang yourself. Don't leave your team.' He hears the soft longing of Johnny's thoughts and how he yearns for his real family and how the brats that infest the house remind him of his own host of nieces and nephews.
And that's not counting the other thoughts that drift in and out of his head. The discordant sound of other people drives him crazy. It makes him irritable. It makes him want to kill and make it stop. He's never had the desire to actually want and crave to inflict violence upon others. The voices in his head hold his reasoning and logic hostage. Replacing them with images of bodies cracked open, blood spilling forth and into his mouth. He can imagine the taste as coppery and bitter. Overall, it's unpleasant and devastatingly unsatisfying. He sees fire sometimes when he is resting, eyes glazed over as he idlely listens to Johnny talk about how weird it is to be called Jackie, but it's growing on him. He will lay in his bed, no real motivation to move, and Johnny will curl up next to him, and neither of them mention how there's now no warmth between them. Those are the moments he is able to ignore everything in him and just exist in relative quiet.
Those moments are when he is aware and in the driver's seat of his body. When his right mind is shoved to the back by the unbridled rage and blood lust, he is kept away from everyone for his safety and everyone else's.
These times, like now on this muggy and warm day, he finds himself in the company of William. The grounds keeper of the property and Simon finds it eerie how similar the two of them are. William is just as silent and imposing as Simon is. They share the same build of raw muscle and stature. The only thing is that William doesn't hide his face's disfigurement. He appears to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but Simon knows better. The man is a vampire. His face is littered with scars and keloids that have been with him for all of his life. His left eye is permanently facing another direction, staring off to the side and hidden by a white milky film, his working brown eye in a semi permanent droop. A scar slashes down the left side of his face, and it's jagged and reaches his lips. A small sliver of flesh looks like it was hastily patched up on his lip, stitches maybe, long gone and leaving behind the scarification. Another healed patch of criss-cross keloids peaks just from under William's shirt on the back of his neck, and Simon sees it when the man turns his back to him whenever he is working. It should be noted that William keeps all of himself covered, from neck to the sole of his feet. He doesn't hide his face, but he hides everything else meticulously. Simon respects that and can relate because his skull mask stays on when out in public.
"It's particularly bad for you t'day, isn't it Simon?" William speaks as if he knows what he is going through. "Them noises in ya head." He doesn't turn from his task of feeding the hogs. The pen is kept far from the house, another safety precaution. Humans aren't allowed out here where Aayana has William raise the hogs and slaughter them.
Simon only grunts as he barely acknowledges the question. They are both out in the blistering sun, getting ready to butcher a hog for some gathering that Aayana wants to hold. The idea of the blistering sun is a conundrum because aren't vampires supposed to hate being in the sun? Isn't he supposed to be turning to ash? Even more so, he wants to turn into ashes because he doesn't want to be around a surplus of people for this gathering. He doesn't want to hear extra voices in his head. "Nothin' I can' handle." He talks barely above a whisper.
William pauses his task and observes the hogs that are milling about. Rooting their snouts in the troughs or the ground. Piglets are scampering about picking around the older beasts for scraps. "It ain't all yer blood lust ya know." He says finally after a long moment of silence.
Simon only grunts again. He's got no patience for empty platitudes of comfort. He just wants to enjoy the distance and silence from the house. Working with William, doing hard labor comforts his body and nerves.
"I don't reckon she even knows she's lettin' ya feel her. She hasn' hada new bloodied young'n in decades that could read thoughts an' feel folk's memories..." The good eye slides over to look at him, and there's no pity. Just understanding. "I ain't no good use of help'n ya wit the issue. Yaya, though, she's got it in her best interest to help you."
"What 'm I supposed to about these thoughts?" He asks.
"I 'spect ya need to learn to block 'em out. It can't be good for you." He trudged on to his next task, and Simon followed. They now have to pick out which hog to slaughter.
Simon, while he's been a butcher, has never done the process from start to finish. He's a bit interested in how they go about picking the right one. A new skill for his new lifestyle. "Do you have the same issue...with the rage?" He takes the risk of prying for information. For the knowledge that it isn't just him as the only brute holding onto his fraying humanity and self-control to not split flesh open and suck life out to fill his bottomless existence.
"I never had no blood lust in the hundred f'years I beens alive. All the anger an' any rage done been whipped outta folks like me... broken in for work so I don't push back." He doesn't say much more on himself, and that leaves Simon confused. He sees this man and sees himself. "Yaya is the one who overcomed her own blood lust. She tore herself right on out of it an' right in the middle of it too." He sounds almost in awe as he speaks of Aayana. "Was nothin' but God that saw her through them forty days and forty nights. Nothing but the spirit that stopped her dead in her tracks on the forty-first day."
The hog that William points out is male. More brown than pink, and William says he's big enough to feed everyone at the gathering and to send people home with leftovers. He mentions that Aayana hates wasting food and the scraps will be given to those with dogs. While it's not his cup of tea, William says he will help Aayana prepare the intestines for chittlins. Simon gags at the thought of anyone eating that, but he's had blood pudding, and he liked it, so who is he to judge?
"Aayana seems..." He trails off, not wanting to be rude. Everyone here seems to love the elusive woman dearly. He understands it, she is polite and from what Johnny says, actually funny in a dry kind of way. He's seen her laugh and talk with the people who come and go, and with children, she's as soft as she can be. With Karma, she is stern, especially when the man is arguing his case to let Simon learn how to feed from a person and to use him as practice, (she barely wants Price biting Karma from what she says). The few times Kyle mentions her, it's with annoyance and a begrudgingly sense of respect. John, while he won't say it out right (and he may struggle with it privately), likes how she tells him what to do.
William, though? He looks at Aayana like she hung the sky and all of the stars and planets in it. He is the only one to call Aayana 'Mistress' or 'Yaya' (Simon compares it to the same way he holds Johnny is such high regards). And he knows to be careful with how he speaks of her, so that he doesn't accidentally cause issues (Price has given them all plenty of warnings about respect).
"Yaya is young for a vampire. Born a vampire. It's all she's ever known. And she's had to control her rage and blood lust since the day she cut her fangs in that there house." William looks off towards where the property line is overgrown.
In that direction is the shack that him and his team found when following Kyle out for a late evening walk (it almost felt like they were scouting the area, as they took up their familiar formation). The shack was old, with vines creeping up the sides. Roof partially caved in, the few steps leading up to the door sagged in the middle. The rush of emotions that Simon got from that shack had been enough to make him angry, hurt, small, and scared. Those feelings he hadn't felt since his father had beaten his mother while she begged for him to leave the kids alone. It was visceral and scathing, and he couldn't get out of the thousand yard stare, not until Johnny had held his hand and pulled him back from the turbulent forces swirling in him.
"Come on." William says, "The quicker we slaughter this here hog, the quicker we can hang it to bleed out. It ain't no quick process."
Simon lays awake when he should be resting. It's late in the evening, and he's been out in the sun all day helping William. The ruthless gnawing of violence calls to him, and under it is pain. Since William had said the feelings and thoughts weren't all his own, he's tried deciphering who is who. He can tell the bubbly emotions and thoughts belong to Johnny. He's happy that Simon made it another day without snapping and that he joined everyone for dinner even though he didn't want to. The feeling of disgust and exhaustion belongs to Kyle, and thoughts of fresh human blood plague his feelings about morality. It has never been clearer that he hates the taste of animal blood, but he can't bring himself to drink human blood. His morality won't allow it. Just beyond that is John and some rather confusing feelings that he knows he is not supposed to know about. Those feelings of insecurity laced with guilt mixes with lust and fear and a deep seated satisfaction of not feeling hunger. He feels Karma next to him, and the lust is mirrored, Simon feels like he just walked in on his parents.
He finally closes his eyes as they are too heavy to stay open. Phantom fire licks at his skin. He's frozen in place. This time, when his eyes pop open, there is smoke.
Thick, black, heavy smoke hangs in the air and blots out the setting sun. Everything is bathed in a haze of red, and the feeling of violence permeates the air. In front of him is Aayana. She's kneeling. Her brown dress is covered in dirt and stained with blood. Simon looks off to the side and sees a pale pink rope of sorts that leads to a small white sheet. The white sheet is spread out, lovingly placed on top of whatever it is hiding. His eyes follow the rope back to Aayana, and he sees that she is holding someone. Her body is still and the person she holds lays limp, decay starting to rot her. It then dawns on him what he is seeing. He is seeing Aayana holding the corpse of a woman, her brown skin covered in her own blood, the swell of her stomach torn open and the the pale pink rope isn't a rope but an umbilical cord, and under that sheet is a baby.
It makes Simon feel rage and feel sick, but it's not his own.
William is there too, a quiet specter, watching as he takes off his shirt. Simon does a double take as he catches a glimpse of the scars and keloids that criss-cross and stretch across his back. They are everywhere on him, connecting and diverging like rivers and streams. Some are raised others are flat, all of them hint at the time he comes from. William places the shirt over the woman's body, he makes no move to budge the catatonic Aayana.
"It's been forty day's Yaya." He says quietly, "We gotta run, leave this place."
Aayana doesn't move from her crouched position. A sob escapes her and she hugs the body close to her. "Billy this wasn't supposed to happen." She barely is able to get the words out. "I told her and Zachary to leave with us. They didn't listen."
"...Yaya, Miss Abilene won't want ya to hold on to her like this. We gots to bury her and Zachary proper." William sounds close to begging. "You've beens here fora whiles now Yaya...please."
"I can't leave Abi like this... these people, these monsters didn't even make it quick." She screams and Simon feels the heat if a thousand suns in that desperate wail of anger. William frowns and sighs at the outburst. He can tell that the man wants to pull her away, but he keeps his distance.
"Do you want me to bury the baby next?" He decides on focusing on that instead. Even at the mention of the baby under the white sheet, his voice shakes.
"Bury them both together." Aayana rocks back and forth, "Put them next to Zachary, theys still a family. They would want to be together."
The next scene that Simon sees is fire, an entire town set ablaze. The flames reach up into the morning skies. People are screaming, buildings falling into themselves. An entire town being destroyed. Men, women, and children lay sprawled out in places. Throats ripped wide open, bleeding out. There are shadows moving about, hunched over bodies that are split open, claws digging into flesh. Simon feels the anger and hatred and blood lust gripping onto him. Up ahead he sees Aayana, standing over a man. His blue eyes wide with fear, blond hair caked with sweat, soot, and blood. He has soiled himself in his fear and he begs.
"Please we didn't know!" He shouts as she descends onto him. First Aayana rips him open, entrails spilling out everywhere. Her normally brown eyes are a light with pleasant black rage and Simon can feel the relief. He feels the relief when she bends his arms and legs to break them. Righteousness courses through him when he sees her aim her fangs and sink them into the man's neck. Right in the spot where the change is initiated. The man is screaming for mercy.
"You didn't give neither of my lovers mercy when you lynched them." Her voice floats through the air. "I will make you watch me eat your wife and boy. Eye for an eye." She stands slowly, ignoring the whimpers of pain and how the man begs for her to leave his family alive.
Simon isn't sure how he missed the two extra bodies that were frozen nearby watching the scene. Mother and son, holding on to each other, shaking in fear. There is a war of anger and remorse that he feels in his own chest. Aayana walks slowly to the two and she stands there watching them. The mother is trying to shield her son and Simon feels fear but it's not the woman's, it's the boy. He can relate to the unimaginable fear and its not him relating, it's Aayana.
"You shouldn't be here Simon."
Simon's eyes shoot open and he's back in his bed. He's panting, his lungs taking in air he doesn't need. Just what type of fucking night terror did he see? Sitting he runs his fingers through his hair and feels the soft cool silk sheets under him, anything to ground his mind. The voices are back, people's thoughts though less of them now seeing as it is late and sleep or rest claims people. There is the squeak of the bedroom door, and it makes Simon instinctively tense up for a threat.
She looks like a ghost standing there, the dim hallway light wrapping her in a halo, bleeding through her linen night dress. It's the first time Simon has been openly approached by Aayana. Her head moves side to side as she surveys the room's inhabitants. Kyle and Johnny are deep into their rest, piled on top of each other, limbs tangled together. She motions for him to follow when she leaves and he does.
She takes him to her sitting room and offers him a seat. If she is angry about what he saw, she doesn't show it. Her face is carefully composed and she watches him. The silence stretches between the two of them, great like an endless chasm. After several long minutes she finally speaks. "Simon...why didn't you tell me you were suffering with your gift?"
He's surprised at how soft and concerned she is about him. She sounds apologetic and her lips turn down into a frown. "I didn't want to bother you."
"A vampire that has that gift can go insane if not taught how to control it. Your resting and awake periods must be awful. Never mind the blood lust that comes with it." She adjusts herself in her seat and looks out the window. "Vampires who have been exposed to intense traumas in their youth tend to manifest this rare gift...first lesson is how to meditate."
He nods his head, "and then?"
"Let's learn to meditate, that will help shut out other people's thoughts, feelings, and the blood lust that comes with the stress." She smiles at him. "After that, we can go from there."
Simon isn't sure about this working. But he hopes it works. He can't afford to lose his mind just yet.
