damned_institute | Nightshift 55: Sun Room

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Nightshift 55: Sun Room

[from here]

Only a couple more rooms and then he was going to eat everything he laid eyes on in the pantry. Even the condiments, at this rate. How much nutritional value did tomato ketchup have anyway? And was he really in any position to turn it down if that was all he could find?

Even with the hunger twisting his stomach and making him feel slightly sick, Wally wasn't quite so bad off that he needed to just rush into the room beyond. His luck had been pretty good so far, well, apart from his speed dumping him into a wall like that, but that didn't mean a thing here.

But the sun room seemed empty, from what he could make out in the darkness and with only a flashlight that had seen better days, so Wally relaxed and headed further into the room, weaving through the chairs and things as he aimed for the cafeteria doors.

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"Huh?"

For a second there, Wally thought he'd seen someone else at the edge of the room, but when he turned back to check, the place was empty. But there was a faint feeling of dread starting to creep up his spine, and since he'd had stuff like that turn out to be important before? He wasn't about to just ignore it.

"Okay, maybe speeding up just a little could be a good idea..." he muttered, taking a few faster steps in the direction of the cafeteria doors.

Speed meant that Wally was moving through the sun room at a pace that should have taken him within sight of the doors in mere moments. Instead the room seemed to lengthen with the shadows: a subtle distortion, areas blacker than they should have been, walls longer, the joint of each corner angling just barely inward and upward. Each step led him deeper into a space that was compressing and narrowing, and then abruptly the muted thud of footfall on carpet gave way to smooth rustle.

The comfortable pile of the rug had transitioned into tightly-woven tatami mats, dusty and dry. Where the doors to the cafeteria had once been were instead sliding paper doors, and to each side was not the soothing green of the Institute walls but smooth off-white plaster.

If Wally were to turn, he would see the same plaster stretching out on either side of the room, and the same tatami mats panelling the floor where the rug had once been. The large open ceiling above still remained, for now, but darkness was creeping rapidly along the edges and seeping inward.

Okay this? Was seriously freaking him out. Wally wasn't sure what the hell was going on, but his every instinct was that it was something really, really not good. The kind of not good that was probably synonymous with 'seriously just run now and save yourself the trouble'. It was giving him horrible reminders of all the times the League had faced really creepy things like that Doctor Destiny and his thing for trapping people in nightmares until they died from whatever he put them through. You know, fun things like that.

But it looked like running wasn't going to be much of an option here; he should have made it to the doors by now, but the room was suddenly a lot bigger than it really should have been and when his foot came down on something that wasn't carpet, Wally stopped immediately.

The room had changed around him and the nerves that made the hairs on his neck stand up under his costume were screaming at him now that not running as fast as he could towards the doors was probably the worst mistake he could make in what was probably his, at this point, rapidly shortening life. Wally ignored them, though. Running now wasn't guaranteed to help at all and could only burn up energy that he'd need soon enough. Instead he turned slowly on the spot, eyes struggling to make out a shape that wasn't furniture in the darkness, and edged a little further towards the door.

"Seriously, if there's someone there, I'd really appreciate it if you said something. Unless you're a monster, in which case I'd really appreciate it if you just left me alone," he tried, though he wasn't expecting it to work. "...why can't the room changing ever mean anything good like 'congratulations, you found a way out of the institute by way of...' Japan, I guess. Could be worse."

Edited 2011-04-03 13:59 (UTC)

As Wally might have expected, the room failed to respond to his polite request to be left alone. The darkness spread until it spanned the entirety of the ceiling, a black mass that stretched all the way across what would have opened onto the balcony above and whispered with movement, faint and barely noticeable. The change was complete, and he was in her space now.

But it wasn't a bad space, at least thus far. The chilly draft that had breathed from the windows of the sun room was gone, replaced by a deadness of air that felt more like late summer than winter. Slowly, as if an eye blinking open, a rectangle of light formed on the tatami mats and then swept wide.

If Wally were to turn back again, he would see the sort of glass window to be expected in a house rather than a large building such as Landel's -- and that the paper doors had become plastered over with brown packing tape keeping them shut. Outside the window was bright sunlight, a detail that would likely vie for attention with the sudden thump behind the doors.

A thump, and then scratching sounds -- and then a yowl, the beleaguered and unhappy sound of a cat that had gotten stuck where it did not want to be.

Wally flinched as the darkness spread up to cover the ceiling, wondering if maybe he should have gone with his instincts this time and run for the door while he still had the chance. It was probably only a matter of time before something horrifying leapt out of the darkness and proceeded to eat his face or something, and since he actually liked his face, he'd rather avoid that if possible.

He jumped back, automatically avoiding the square of light in case it turned out to be a horrible death laser in disguise (it could happen!) and only relaxing a little when it was apparent that nothing was happening.

"This is too weird," he complained, in part just to hear the sound of something in this place. "It's night, otherwise I'd be back in my room and not wondering if something's about to eat me, so why is there sunlight there?"

He considered the window, still edging back a bit to the door. "Maybe this really is some kind of dream or something? I'll find a way to wake up and then everything will be back to normal and not super creep--"

Then the doors thumped and Wally jumped what felt like a good foot in the air. His superspeed also kicked in automatically, and he was in front of the door and pulling at the packing tape before he even had time to wonder when his self-preservation instincts had gotten so messed up that when something started rattling around the place, his instinct was to run towards it.

Probably around the same time he'd gotten his superspeed, he decided as he struggled with tape stuck to his gloves and the door.

"Well at least if this is something that's going to try and kill me, I'm not going to be freaking out over where it is," he muttered. It wasn't a very reassuring thought.

As Wally's back turned the black mass covering the ceiling turned as well, shapes slowly shifting and slithering through the seething substance before settling. Strands of darkness separated before weaving back in, tightening and flattening out until -- just as the last of the tape was torn away from the door -- it resolved into a sleek plaster ceiling, considerably lower than what had been the Institute's roof and making the room look downright homey in the warm light.

And what sprang forth from the doors once they were free of tape was nothing more than a plain black cat, yowling in distress and feline displeasure. The animal had stuck a paw around the side of the frame as soon as enough tape had been ripped off for it to be possible, and as soon as it could shove the sliding door aside it did.

A piece of tape stuck to one paw as it raced away from closet -- for that was what it was, a storage closet with a few unmarked boxes -- and it stopped in the middle of the room, emitting another distressed noise and attempting to bite it off.

If Wally chose to look, the closet revealed little more than those boxes. The ceiling inside the closet was interrupted by a latched panel, clearly one of those rarely-used entrances to the attic crawlspace typical of many standalone homes.

He jumped back as the cat emerged, half-expecting it to be some sort of monstrous version set on him by the institute in the name of whatever freaky tests they were running now, but it turned out to just be a normal cat. It was a little unnerving, actually. Not that he really minded when things didn't try and kill him but, this place was almost surreally normal. And that was coming from him.

The room had a ceiling now, and when Wally risked sticking his head quickly into the closet, that turned out to be normal too. Even the darkness around the place earlier was gone as near as he could tell. He didn't even seem to be in the institute any more.

"Did I really get teleported somewhere? And with nothing bad happening afterwards?" he wondered aloud. Maybe he'd stumbled across some kind of portal thing that was a way out? It would figure that there was one that gave no sign or warning of being there. No one would know escape was even possible; it would just be more people disappearing never to be seen again.

"Still, it would of been awesome if I could have at least hit the pantry first before getting teleported wherever I am," he commented. "Not that I'm complaining that much at all."

The cat's cry of distress caught his attention and Wally turned to see it struggling with the tape. "Hey, kitty, lemme get that for you."

Moving slowly so as not to startle it, Wally approached and crouched low, reaching for the cat gently.

The cat stopped its efforts to free itself from the tape when Wally turned and approached, taking a wary, extremely normal step back and watching him warily at first. When it appeared clear he presented no harm, however, the animal padded closer and sniffed his outstretched hand -- right up until there was a sudden rustling noise that came from above.

The cat flinched and suddenly stood stock-still, head flicking upward and eyes pinpointed on the ceiling. Despite its apparent alarm it seemed otherwise unafraid, tail twitching gently from side to side and back fur still lying sleek and flat against its body. The tape was forgotten, however, the animal focused entirely on whatever the sound had been.

Another rustle came, very soft, and then an abrupt loud thump. Silence followed, but the cat's gaze tracked slowly across the ceiling in the direction of the closet, as if it could see some species of movement through the plaster and wood. A low, almost rumbling noise emitted from the cat's throat -- like a drawn out growl without any other indication of threat.

The rustling noise made Wally freeze, his heart rate temporarily taking a leap up into the realm of 'way too fast' before falling back to a more human standard again. Okay, so, not as alone as he'd thought. And maybe not as safe either, since he didn't see any reason to get his hopes up considering how the institute usually was.

Just don't panic, he reminded himself. Don't let it know that you know that it's there. Just in case that helped somehow and whatever it wasn't hadn't figured out he was on edge already.

Wally took advantage of the cat's distraction to neatly hook the tape away from it as though the animal's wariness were the only thing stopping him, then he stood up and turned around slowly. He wasn't all that surprised to see that the area was still the same as it had been before, and he flicked a quick look between the cat and the closet.

"...I am so going to regret this," he muttered to himself under his breath. But all the same, he slowly walked towards the closet again and pulled open the door. At the very least, he should see if there was anything useful in there, right? ...yeah, that excuse didn't even sound convincing to him, and he was the one making it.

"First sign of danger and me and puss in boots back there are out of here," he grumbled.

As soon as the door slid open fully, the cat shifted: where it had been completely harmless in intent before, it rose to its feet and arched its back with unnatural speed, mouth gaped open in a grimace from which issued forth a yowl that belied its small size. The sound was piercing and ceaseless and the cat's eyes flashed with a brightness that ill-matched the soft, warm afternoon light falling in from the window.

If Wally turned to look, the animal he had rescued would be there for only a blink's worth of time -- another blink and there was a boy, blue-pale and black-mouthed, lips pulled back from his teeth in the same unchanging yowl -- and another blink and he too would be gone and only an empty room remaining.

The only break in the smooth walls was the window, and were he to try that it would prove immovable. The only option, now, was the trapdoor in the closet. The ceiling above was silent now, but the air hung heavy with promise.

The yowl that came from the cat was, to put it lightly, pretty freaky. It didn't sound like the kind of noise that any animal should make, and Wally spun around in a blur to star at it, the closet momentarily forgotten.

Which meant there was no way he could miss the cat suddenly becoming a kid that was corpse-pale and making that same, horrible yowling noise. It startled him enough that Wally took a step back towards the closet without really thinking about it, but before he could recover or say anything to the boy (cat?), it was gone and the place fell silent again. After the noise, it seemed almost too silent, and Wally had to concentrate to make his breathing stay steady and his heartbeat relatively normal.

"Okay, I take it back. Something is definitely trying to mess with me here," he said thickly. He swallowed, the sound loud in his ears and backed away from the closet. There was no way he was going in there now.

The window got his attention now, and Wally struggled with it for a few long, frustrating moments before giving up and just trying to break the thing with a gloved hand. But his fists just bounced off and was eventually forced to give up, shaking an aching hand absently as he turned back to eye the closet.

"Uh-uh, no way. I'm not going in there. I've seen horror movies enough to know what happens next. Some kind of horrible guy in a mask is going to jump out at me with a knife or a chainsaw or something. So you know what? I'll just stay here and he can come get me where I actually have room to move around for a change."

The room wasn't particularly helpful with answering his thoughts on the subject.

What felt like a good ten minutes (but was probably more like one) of oppressive silence and boredom passed before Wally shifted uncomfortably. While the plan was good in his head, the fact was that there was nowhere for him to go and he was pretty sure that whatever horrible face-eating monster was waiting for him was more patient than he was. And while maybe he could just stay here and hope he'd get yanked back to the institute eventually, he wasn't even sure where he was or if that would even happen now. Maybe he'd just be stuck here until he either starved to death, which didn't feel like it would take too much more effort really, or faced whatever had brought him here.

"...this really sucks," he complained, just so any monsters around the place knew his stance on the matter. With that done, he ventured into the closet, opening the trapdoor and pulling himself up into it.

The room below had been brightly-lit from the one large window, but that daylight only barely extended into the crawlspace above. Wally would find that he would need his flashlight in order to get a proper look at his surroundings -- but once lit, the place would look no darker than a typical attic might have. There was a thin layer of dust coating the frame of the trapdoor, a few cardboard boxes in storage in the corner, and cobwebs abounding.

Still, something in this space felt chillier than the room below had been, despite being directly above it, and any light that fell into the space -- flashlight or the weak remnants of sunlight -- seemed to flicker just a shade too much to be natural. Even a flashlight beam would seem unusually weak, almost as if the batteries were fading.

Nothing other than Wally moved, not even the faint breeze that sometimes became more prominent in less-insulated parts of houses. Dust would gather on his hands and knees, for the crawlspace was indeed just that and the ceiling not quite high enough to accommodate his full height, and each shuffle of his body scraped loudly through what should have been a muted air.

Now and again, there came a sound almost akin to a breath, very faint and very rough -- less breath than rattle, perhaps, but never loud enough to identify and seemingly emerging from a different direction each time.

"Well that figures," Wally grumbled, giving his flashlight a thump with the heel of his hand for all the good it did. The moment he'd turned it on again, it had started flickering and fading, because obviously what tonight needed was the batteries giving out as well. If he ever found himself in a mess like this again, he was going to make sure he had spare batteries on him.

Assuming he actually ended up back in the institute again after this.

Giving up his attempts to get the flashlight to work properly, Wally tried to quietly work his way further into the attic, wincing at every loud scrape and bump that he ended up making despite his attempts and trying not to think about how much of a mess his costume was going to be after this. He hoped either the institute or somewhere nearby had dry cleaning, otherwise he was going to be less like the Scarlet Speedster and more like the Muted Brown Speedster. It didn't have the same ring to it.

He stopped the first time that weird noise started, trying to pick where it was coming from in the darkness - mostly by shining his flashlight all over the place - and straining his ears to hear it again.

"Hello? Someone that is hopefully not a monster? Hello?"

Edited 2011-04-10 04:40 (UTC)

The noise ceased when Wally spoke the first time, then repeated in a faint echo of itself around the perimeter of the attic, the source always in the unlit part of the room until -- with a full shine around the space -- it was coming from all directions, fainter and louder and at different depths. The cobwebs fluttered lightly and then rent to shreds as a sudden gust of wind tore through the attic, slamming the trapdoor shut with a bang that echoed through the musty space. A fainter smash echoed it: the closet door below whipping shut in turn.

Beneath the whoosh of air was the rattle, louder now and still encroaching from all directions without any sign of source. The shadows lengthened much as they had downstairs, a spill of darkness hiding the trapdoor from sight in a second before continuing in Wally's direction, only the faintest gleam of leftover daylight indicating where the exit was.

The rest of the shadows grew and -- as they expanded, insidious and endless -- they shifted, until rather than lying flat against the walls and the floor they moved like living things across surfaces. Wherever Wally moved or looked, they would be unavoidable, reaching toward him until tendrils touched his feet and knees and any other part of him in contact with the floor.

It was human hair, thick and black and immeasurably strong, coiling around his limbs and seeking to trap him even as the guttural croak broadened and grew louder still -- and then, from amidst the dark strands clutching and climbing over spandex-covered flesh, a single hand reached out and grabbed onto Wally's bicep. Pale enough that even in the weak light it was bright, blued at each fingertip, the hand gripped with enough strength to be painful.

Blackish blood oozed sluggishly out from underneath the fingernails, some torn and partially peeled back from their beds.

His head jerked around at the slam of the trapdoor, and Wally mentally kicked himself for thinking this was a good idea. Yeah, go into the obvious trap because it's better to get things over with sooner rather than later. He was a superhero, he knew what he was doing.

He wished he'd known then how this would turn out, because there was no way his powers were able to deal with something like this.

He started trying to shuffle back the way he came, towards the trapdoor and the faint gleam of light that promised an escape, but everywhere he looked there was the same thick, black stuff moving and reaching towards him, and just as he tried to get himself to move faster it caught his feet and legs and wrapped around them.

"Get off!" he yelled, kicking out instinctively and struggling to free himself. His powers were all about movement, and being restrained against his will was never something he enjoyed. A flutter of panic started in his chest as the stuff - hair? What? - ignored his attempts to fight back and tightened around him. His powers were useless like this and he didn't have a weapon - stupid, stupid move there - so he'd be at the mercy of whatever was going on here. And he got the feeling it wasn't really big on mercy.

Then an arm shot out of the mess and grabbed him, sending his panic up about six levels. It was grabbing him hard enough to hurt, it was corpse-pale, and it's nails were bleeding. There was no way in hell it was a good thing and Wally would be more than happy to fight it off.

If he could just get an arm free from the mass of hair pinning him down.

Even as Wally struggled, the hair tightened its hold; indeed, the more he kicked and flailed, the more easily he entangled itself amongst its dark strands as they crept over his limbs and took hold of his torso. The hand clutching his arm pulled, as if physically trying to tug itself forward by virtue of its grip on him, and as it did more hair fell away from it with a jerk. Upper arm followed, blue-pale and smeared with blood, and the death-rattle that had echoed so faintly before swelled to a painful volume.

Because Wally was right about one thing, in the end: what was here, in all its sound and fury, was not big on mercy. It was rage that had soaked through the very foundations of this house -- whether it was physically present or not -- and had bled right into the bones of the Institute, festering upon itself until it rotted with fury.

That fury soaked the air, now, a powerful rage that was nearly palpable -- almost as much as the second hand that tore out of the black hair and snatched onto Wally's other arm with the same bleeding grip. Slowly, the rattle increased, and both hands crawled up over his flesh as if yanking --

And there, twitching free of the masses of hair, there was a shape. Indistinguishable of any detail other than a very vague, broken humanness, it tilted what might have been a head to the side at an impossible angle, then jerked it in the other direction, featureless face fixed firmly in the direction of Wally's own.

There were times when seeing what it was that was attacking him was helpful, it could give him a target to aim for or make the instinctive fear of the unknown, of all the possible things it could be, that much less. But this? Was so totally not one of those times. The last thing Wally wanted right now was to see that featureless face staring at him from out of the snarl of hair holding him.

"I liked you a lot more when you were just creepy noises," he said, fear motivating him, as always, to make quips and jokes in the face of danger (in this case very literally in the face of as well). It was that or start screaming and that wasn't exactly the kind of thing that looked good. 'Superhero screams like a frightened child when faced with a creepy hair-monster-thing.'

It was too bad that jokes weren't exactly going to get him free here, because as much as Wally kicked and fought, his mouth was about the only thing he was capable of running, and that wasn't going to do much. Not unless the thing had a secret weakness for panicked humour. Giving up wasn't an option either, though, so he strained against the hair wound around his legs and the fingers digging into his arms, hoping that maybe this time it would do something.

As might have been predicted, the figure made no noticeable response to Wally's one-liner, bracing itself upon his upper arms now and pulling closer. The masses of hair began almost to sort themselves out, making it clear that it all originated from this one figure, even as it wrapped his feet and calves in thick oppressive layers of hair. The strain in his muscles prompted a tighter constricting, enough that there was the threat of ripping through the material of his suit if he moved too much.

And still the head of the shape moved closer, almost peering into his face before finally the hair in front of her face parted: enough to reveal one wide eye, expression almost as perplexed as it was angry. Beneath it gaped open a mouth, lips as pale and dead as the skin of the hands still holding Wally captive, and behind it was nothing but darkness.

The rattle focused, finding locus in the her ruined throat, and her head lilted sharply to one side before snapping over as if to examine him from another angle. A long pause while the rattle droned on, fading in and out of loudness --

And then as if a sudden decision had been made, the hands on Wally's arms subsided suddenly into thick coils of hair wrapping into the same place -- and reappeared just as abruptly on either side of his face, touch tender as a curious child's.

At least it was tender for a moment, before blunt fingernails (oozing with a brackish blood, long past the point where a heart might have moved it) dug into the exposed skin of his cheeks as if trying to tear right through. And tear it did, except with no noticeable wound: her fingers sank through flesh and landed, with the pleasantly pungent taste of rot, on his tongue.

"Listen, lady, I don't go in for this kinda thing on the first date, and especially not when the first date is you jumping me in a dark attic! Let go!"

But despite the yelling the woman - at least, the little he could see of his face implied that she was female, you know, other than being a creepy hair monster and everything - ignored him, and his struggles only wrapped him up tighter. It reminded Wally of meeting the girl with the insanely long blonde hair the night before, except she'd actually been willing to talk to him and let him go after catching him in her hair.

...he really hoped the next night didn't involve people with a lot of hair catching him in it, otherwise he was going to think this new guy had a fetish and there were some things he really didn't want to think about.

Wally blinked, and the hands digging painfully into his arms disappeared, leaving behind the same thick hair that was keeping his legs from kicking too much, and reappeared at his face. He tried to jerk away from them automatically, not liking where this was headed at all.

"Hey! The mask stays on! Hands to your--Ah!"

The protest turned into a yell of panic and disgust as suddenly her fingers were somehow in his mouth and he could taste decay and foul blood and Wally thought he was about to throw up what precious little food he'd eaten that day. She must have put her hands through his cheeks but he hadn't felt anything, and the idea combined with the taste assaulting his tongue made him yell again and thrash wildly. He felt part of his costume tear from it all, but the hair still held him tightly and he was starting to panic even more.

He didn't care what it took, he had to find a way to make her let him go. Now.

For all the panicked cleverness of Wally's commentary, Kayako's response remained the same: the endless croak, loud enough that it seemed press physically onto skin, and the same curious expression. With it was the weight of anger, of a furious loss that bled through the air like the taste of dead blood onto his tongue. Slowly, brokenly, the pale face twitched closer, as if to examine more carefully the response to her touch.

It was a touch that was unavoidable, now, with her hair wrapped around much of him and her fingers trapping his lower jaw. Skin, loose in death, caught between his teeth and stuck, but her bones and her body were possessed of invincible strength; with a pressure that was paced and deliberate and impossible to fight, those hands pulled down with grips like vices. Any attempt to escape would be met with a flare of the hair from which the hands emerged, following his face and exerting an inexorable power as it tugged his lower jaw away from his upper until it ached.

But that panicked flailing had forced give in some of the hair, and as if in reprimand more slithered over his limbs, coiling into a tighter grip until the warm red of his suit was subsumed entirely under faintly glistening black.

Strands split between the fingers of his right hand and tightened into a punishing hold on each, and then -- almost casually -- with one sharp yank dislocated his fourth and littlest fingers. Further along the same arm the thick skeins of darkness constricted more closely in turn, bending the bone of his lower arm as if threatening to snap it.

If there were a message, it would be this: struggle would make things worse for Wally. The look on Kayako's face might have been complicated, but the curse here was no more than the simple complexity of a grudge, a curse born in powerful fury and doomed to repeat it over and over.

Talking was pretty much impossible now with the vice-like grip the monster, or whatever she was, had on his jaw, leaving Wally to struggle as much as he could, his heart pounding inhumanly fast in his chest all the while. He didn't know what to expect when that only made even more of the thick, black strands wrap around him, making sure movement was more of a distant memory than an option that might lead to escape.

Then pain shot through his hand and he cried out despite the fingers and the blood and rot in his mouth. This thing had done something, broken his fingers or dislocated them or something, he couldn't tell too much beyond the fact it hurt a lot and he couldn't get away or even move that much with the suffocating snare of hair and the fingers in his mouth.

And he was afraid that he was probably going to die here, which really sucked because while Wally hadn't really thought about the possibility in too much detail before arriving in the institute, he'd always had vague expectations that if he had to choose, it should be doing something heroic. Or at least that he'd go out fighting, preferably on his feet. This? Wasn't anything like what he'd have come up with.

But at least he could try and stick to the 'go out fighting' part, if nothing else. Sure, he may be wrapped almost head to toe in hair with some of his fingers wrecked and some kind of zombie monster thing had her hands inside his mouth, but he could still... struggle and thrash about a bit. It had to be better than nothing, right?

As Wally continued to struggle, the expression on the spectre's face shifted, eyebrows furrowing across her bloodied forehead in something that looked like irritation before smoothing out into something more purely angered. Her grip on his jaw tightened, thumbs digging deeply into the tender flesh underneath his jawbone even as her nails -- some broken, some sharp and ragged -- scrabbled past his tongue to dig into his gums.

The hair tightened further, strands coiling away from his damaged arm to focus on the other, bending it further even as the gleam of the trapdoor grew slightly in brightness, as if someone below had pulled open the sliding screen of the closet.

Perhaps the one benefit of Wally's struggle had been that as the hair secured a firmer grip on him, it had tugged him closer to the trapdoor -- but on the other hand, quite literally, it was possible he might not notice. The threatening hold of her hair on his arm had slithered from threat to promise, and finally when he failed to stop struggling it twisted --

With an audible snap, the bone broke. A sharp wrench twisted it until a shard of bone speared through the surface of his arm, ripping through flesh and skin and cloth until it jutted out at a grotesque angle. Blood spattered, some of it landing to blur with the sluggish dark stuff on her face and the rest landing in fat droplets over Wally's body.

As if satisfied, she loosened her hold on that arm slightly, expecting no more struggle, and redoubled attention on his face. The rattle swelled and grew louder as she leaned even closer, the hair that was actually on her head sweeping down to caress the sides of his head with an almost gentle touch.

The grip on his jaw was really beginning to hurt a lot, and Wally was afraid that this thing was going to try ripping it straight off, which only made him struggle harder to get away. If it was going to try killing him one way or the other, then he really didn't see why he should stay still for that.

Then the hair locked around his arm twisted and he didn't so much hear the bone snap as feel it, the sound merely an added extra he could have done without as the broken bone wrenched further and tore through muscle. He was pretty sure he felt his costume give as well, but it was hard to tell what was the pull of material and what was the pull of muscle tearing.

Wally screamed, the sound warped by the hands gripping his jaw and his whole body going rigid in shock and pain. There was blood, his blood, on the woman's face as she leaned in closer, and he wasn't sure what she was going to do now, just that he was pretty much guaranteed to not like it.

Not like it or despise it, the fact remained that time and space were changing again -- or rather shifting, the air and the architecture of this house in this place variable with the wax and wane of the power of her fury. There were others below, voices subsumed under the susurrus of hair upon hair upon hair and the soundless seep of blood over skin, blood over blood, meeting and mingling and sinking into the bones of what remained of her broken body. Subsumed but present, and the barrier sealing this time from that weakened as she turned her attention upon the destruction of this in this most pain-soaked of her territory.

There was a warble in the man's scream, now, giving something of satisfaction to the curse that sought his suffering; as the pressure on Wally's jaw increased the distension of it made the sound more guttural, more akin to the staccato-sharp rattle of her own death-noise. Hair settled more heavily around his body, obscuring the full length of her damaged one and weighing him down as his struggles inched him over the trapdoor.

Blood-caked nails tore through the delicate flesh of his gums, and then both hands wrenched with a preternatural strength at his jaw, dragging it down and away from his skull until it unlatched free with a small wet pop of dislocation. The death-rattle swelled to crescendo as fresh blood seared through his mouth and dribbled over her fingers and his skin, hair hissing in movement and head twitching to the other side with a movement akin to triumph, an expression akin to sorrow.

And then the trapdoor beneath him splintered open and he tumbled down --

[[into the thread below]]

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Nightshift 55: Sun Room

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NOW WITH VISUAL AID

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