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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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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