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ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
Entry tags:
May Event - All Too Familiar
May Event - All Too Familiar
Content Warnings: Walking dead, character deaths, potential for gore | Special Thanks to Meghan and Kalineh
It was a fine spring day when mysterious letters began cropping up all over Pumpkin Hollow. Letters whose apparent senders do not remember writing them, whose recipients or discoverers were harmed by reading them. Eventually these mysteries, though still unsolved, come to a quiet halt as stealthily as they began, but not before a mail carrier in a cowboy hat trots out to Elsie’s tree with a letter in hand, unmarked aside from being addressed to her.
Elsie,
River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.
Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.
River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.
Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.
Fond regards,
A friend
Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.
It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!
It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.
Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.
When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.
The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.
Much newer.
Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.
Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!
In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.
Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.
She gleefully rips open that letter, hoping it's another message from her father. It isn't and, at first, she's crushed. But only until she starts to actually read it.
Elsie,
River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.
Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.
River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.
Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.
Fond regards,
A friend
Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.
It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!
It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.
Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.
When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.
The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.
Much newer.
Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.
Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!
In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.
Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.
no subject
"Helga."
She's close enough to rest her palms across the tough, round cheek and slender muzzle of the creature, which twitches reflexively. They trade curiosities, the dappled mare probing Carolina's skin and hair with her nostrils— and her, tracing fingers across the veins set into the horse's sturdy face. A glance over the stable door reveals her belly, swelled on either side. Yeah, she's pregnant alright.
"Better treat her right. No funny business." A warning to the rowdy stallion.
It seems unnatural that a place so harrowed by death should have the privilege to experience life at its source. She hadn't considered it a possibility. Assumed all creatures might be locked in some stasis; a purgatory where natural laws are bent or broken, and neither death nor life are finite. It makes the wonder of standing beside Helga all the more so. Feels herself separated by two degrees instead of one.
"Sure. Uh, what's... What am I looking for?"
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"It's this one over here," he says, using the same hand to give the top of another barrel a couple whaps. "Use the blue bucket. She gets two bucketfuls -- put it in the big bowl next to her trough, and if the hay needs topping off there's more down that way."
The hand points to the bales on the other side of the barn, then poofs away as the spell runs out.
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Carolina looks between the phantom hand and Radar the way a person might a flying bug; with reserved curiosity. “You did that once before. Where’d you learn it? It couldn’t have been Korea,” Said mostly as a joke— one that falls flat without a punchline. Danforth snorts, deriding. He thinks it’s bad too.
Crossing over to the barrel of feed, she does what she’s told. Thin grain spills over the tin lip, hissing. She empties it, goes for a second.
Were they not under siege, Carolina might have found the task soothing. Simple, repetitious movements she could empty her mind to, if only she allowed herself. For now, she trains ears toward the door and partitions a sliver of mental space to feeding Helga.
The mare noses her way into the bucket.
"Seems like a lot to do, all by yourself."
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Danforth, sadly, only gets one bucket of feed because he's not pregnant. Such is life. That doesn't mean he's happy about it, though, and after Radar fills up his dish, he gives him a hard enough shove with his nose to send him stumbling.
"Hey!" scolds Radar. He pushes Danforth's nose back "No, sir, we don't do that! I know you're antsy but you just gotta sit tight and... ugh, I don't know what I'm gonna do with you..."
He trails off into more disgruntled mumbling as he checks the stallion's hay. At Carolina's next comment, though, he looks up.
"I'm not by myself. There's Edgar and Johnny Boy, and Kitty helps out a lot too when she's around." A quiet sigh. "But... it is a lot, yeah. Even if I'm kinda used to it on account of growing up on a farm, I ain't been on one full time in three years."
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"Yeah, I know Fever. She tried to cook me my first week here." Carolina hooks fingers under her tank collar and pulls it to flash the Lichtenberg scar flowering from sternum to neck. "Lightening. It was a spar I agreed to, so I guess I can't complain."
Helga, the sweet lady she is, earns a parting scritch between the ears. "I don't like being at a disadvantage. I don't care to learn magic. I don't need the help. What I want is to resist it." She roams the barn to Radar's side, watching him brawl Danforth over one shoulder. "She's teaching me a few things about endurance."
(Pushing one's body past its limit. If she can take a punch, she can take a strike of lightening. Can grasp sorcery by its neck and strangle it long enough to have earned the upper hand. Maybe it's impossible. A mortal's disadvantage might always set her back. But damnit, she's going to try.)
"Mm. Must feel out of practice."
Carolina recalls the wide, shaggy haired man who'd stood on the opposite end of her rifle, scolding her on hunting techniques. John, if memory serves. Often she'd see the faint shape of him, ox-like in the morning fog, lifting hay bales and tending to goats and cows. There one day, gone the next. Like Caboose.
She shifts weight from one leg to the next.
"I'm just over the hill, near the strawberry fields. I jog by most mornings. I could lend a hand."
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Just because Fever doesn't have those intrusive impulses to hurt people anymore doesn't mean she won't. Especially if somebody's literally asking for it, he guesses. "But I get that, wantin' to get better at defending yourself instead of learning the exact same stuff people'll use to hurt you. I've been working with Mr. Sheo like that, figuring out how to keep my ears from really going haywire, y'know? If someone better at being psychic tries to mess with me."
Speaking of being psychic. He hears it like the soft patter of summer rain against the windows, or the hiss of wind through wheat. Indistinct, but unmistakable: John's silhouette against the fog. A sharp pang hits under his ribs that he has to swallow back as he shuts Danforth's stall.
"...Really?" One more mark in the she's a lot like Major Houlihan column: Radar is just as surprised when Carolina's nice to him. "I mean, yeah, if you ain't too busy with your own growing. I know planting season's not over yet and everybody's got a lotta work to do out here."
On to the cows and a white goat sharing a makeshift pen. The goat immediately puts her front hooves on the closest rail and tries to headbutt Carolina in the chest.
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"Mr. Sheo?" She asks, familiar with the man, but without a name to attach.
"I don't grow anything. I moved out here because it was quiet." Away from people, but clearly that's not true. She doesn't say as much, although Radar will hear it for himself. As it turns out, keeping away from people is harder than she'd anticipated, and her attempts to keep her socializing to a minimum have largely failed. She should be exhausting her energy elsewhere. Training, not speaking, not shoveling hay into animal pens and fetching feed— yet here she is.
Because she wants to be. Because days spent alone and slow-boiling in her rage are harder days than when she's with people.
When did she get so lazy?
Goat horns and skull rear toward her sternum. Carolina captures her by the horns, holds her steady but not unkindly, the way you hold onto bike handles, to avoid her bleating wrath. Amused, "Well, hello to you too."
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Not yet, anyway. Radar wouldn't be too surprised if Mr. Sheo turned into a carnivorous butterfly swarm during one of their practice sessions someday.
He's got his back to Carolina as he tends to the cows, so he doesn't realize she didn't say a whole lot of that out loud. "Why would wanting to be around people make you lazy?" he asks. "Especially if you're helping 'em out?"
Greta the goat bleats louder, shaking her head to try and free her horns from Carolina's grip. Not fair! Doesn't the new person know she's just supposed to let Greta headbutt her whenever she wants??
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Carolina sterns silently. Her thoughts get loud. Sheogorath. That thing you met in the woods. The man you shot. Except he wasn't a man and when you shot him he turned into smoke and wings and called you a murderer and laughed in your face. No, not that she is a murderer, that she belongs to murder; tethered on its leash like a compliant dog. An even worse thing to be.
Look inside, he'd said, as if she would ever waste time doing something so pointless.
She doesn't need to look inside. Her insides are fine, and he's crazy—
—And for fuck's sake, Radar is still creeping in her head.
Greta bleats.
"Do you have to do that?" Carolina snaps at him. "Has it occurred to you that not everyone wants their thoughts parroted back at them all the time?" (An honest mistake. He didn't know she wasn't speaking, but she can't bring herself to still her anger, like the goat who thrashes her head and horns in the air, fighting to make contact.)
And bleats.
"I don't want people in my head, seeing my fears, or ambushing me in the woods for no reason. I don't want to be here. I'm sick of feeling like nothing belongs to me—"
And bleats.
She glares down at the beast, exasperated, and lets her go. "Fine. You wanna headbutt me? Knock yourself out."
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"Course it has!" he snaps. "You think it hasn't when I been hearing stuff like that my whole life? Lots of people yell at me about it, you don't gotta start too just because you're having a bad day! I know it stinks being somewhere new and not knowing what to do. Maybe if you weren't so -- so mean about it all the time, well, then maybe it'd be a little easier, that ever occur to you?!"
And naturally, all that gets punctuated by Greta ramming her horns right into Carolina's chest.
Abruptly, like he's the one who got headbutted, Radar stiffens, his gaze going a little distant as he cocks his head.
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Greta's tough skull and horns hit her to the effect of a car inching 10mph into a sturdy brick wall. Carolina doesn't stagger or lose her breath. The spot may bruise but she feels no pain, not with anger raking hot and oppressive down her back, demanding her attention and diminishing the blow to pillow softness. Were Greta a person and not a little bleating goat, she would have certainly struck her back. As it stands, Carolina simply retreats a step backward.
"Ohh," She croons falsely in Radar's direction. "No, you know what, it hadn't occurred to me! Why don't we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya— is that what I've been missing?"
What is he...?
Carolina glowers, steps forward. "What— why are you making that face?"
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An enormous thump rattles the door of the barn. Radar jumps, scrambling backward like even a couple extra feet between him and the door will save his hide. Shakily, he puts a finger to his lips and gestures for Carolina to stay quiet; all the color's drained out of his face.
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It's as though a switch is flipped; she swaps anger for confident resolve and their argument falls away under the anxious shuffling of hooves and chicken feet. This is what she was made for. The only thing she was made for, and like hell she'll let a couple zombie idiots take them down.
Carolina signals him. Her voice is a whisper over her shoulder. She fixes her aim on the offending noise. "Get behind me and stay there. Whatever it is, we'll lead it out through the back and into the open. Away from the animals. Okay? We'll be fine."
Because I say we'll be fine.
Thump, thump— the drumming of several bodies. Or one cumulative large body; she won't know until the door is busted.
no subject
Does.
Don't talk. He can hear us. Oh, he wishes more people on the island could hear what he was thinking, too. Danforth's backed up to the farthest corner of his stall, nostrils flaring and eyes wide; the bull tries to lumber a few more steps forward to get between Radar, Carolina, and the door, before Radar puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
"It's three Yoricks." Barely more than a breath. "And -- "
Thump. Thump. He's shaking harder behind Carolina, unable to make himself say the rest.
cw for mild descriptive gore
And what? —She almost says; doesn't. Doesn't need to. 'What' barrels straight through the barn door, entourage of Yoricks at his heel. He totters on crooked legs, calves sloughed open, arms like something fed through a machine. He turns his collapsed-gourd head in their direction and stares through empty eyes. Carolina wouldn't have recognized him were it not for the young man's glasses, shattered in their frames and perched on a yellow-purple face. Radar.
Greta beats her horns against her wooden keep and sounds a war cry. Two dozen chickens scatter to safety— if there's any to be found.
She takes a step backward.
"The door. Now."
cw: more description of gore/injury/war wounds
Just.
Just not any with his own face.
"Oh god oh god oh god oh god -- " He really is saying it like a prayer, not an oath, keened so high it's a wonder anybody but the Radar leading the pack can hear him at all. He stumbles backward. Can't look away from the huge caved-in dent in its skull. When the Radar-zombie jerks its head toward them like a dog hearing a call, something goes crack in its neck as broken vertebrae grind against each other.
They have to move. (He's gotta hold it together.)
Radar bolts for the back door, and behind him, Radar gives chase.
no subject
The smell is nauseating. Worse, she thinks, than any post-battle display. (What she wouldn't give for the filter set inside her helmet, clearing rot from the air before it's had the chance to make her gag.) She clamps her jaw shut. Her eyes water a little. Keep it together. Make it through the door. Easy.
Radar bolts. So does Radar, and so does she. The trio of Yoricks scramble close behind. One scales the side of a stable, horses whinnying frantically, and hurls himself through the air onto Carolina's back. They collapse together. Radar and his pair of Yoricks trample past, make it through the door. No. Fuck no. Carolina snarls and thrashes. Flips Yorick onto his back with ease and drives her hunter's knife through his eye. He goes limp.
She's on her feet in seconds.
Out the door.
Click, aim, fire— the second Yorick drops.
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It doesn't work. If the reanimated corpses have already overcome death, overcoming injuries that would incapacitate anything else is easy. Despite its broken legs, the zombie-Radar's moving at a near sprint as it lunges to seize the back of Radar's shirt.
They both go down into the dirt. The living Radar scrambles back, too terrified to make a sound, as the dead Radar bears down on him. Worse than the injuries, it's the hate twisting its face that makes Radar want to scream, if he could only get his voicebox working. He's never looked like that before. He didn't think he was capable of it. What could anybody ever do to him to make him hate them that much? Oh, god, please --
He hears massive, thudding footsteps from the direction of the gate as Johnny Boy abandons his post to charge toward them. But he's too far away, even all that magic powering him won't propel him to the barn fast enough, Radar's gonna die and it's gonna be something wearing his own face that kills him --
no subject
This isn't happening. Isn't going to happen. She vaults forward, past the third Yorick and pivots her body to fire a clear shot through his chest. Aim for center mass. Mind your position. Ribcage, blood and yellow-green tissue explode in a rotten corona from his spine. He drops, struggles. Not dead yet but significantly slowed. Dragging himself on broken nails through dirt in his pursuit. That's fine. Crawl all you want. I'll deal with you later.
She takes aim— curses. The shot's not clear. Any bullet she puts through Radar might tear through and enter his still-living counterpart. Then she'd have two problems on her hand. Three, actually, if that giant thing lumbering toward them is as protective as it's making itself out to be.
She abandons her gun, makes fast for Radar's attacker. Everything is so out of place she doesn't know what she's grabbing, only that she's got hands somewhere, wrenching fabric or maybe skin as she throws the entirety of her momentum backwards— and takes him with her.
no subject
Oh. There's Carolina, and there's him, whirling around with a snarl to try and grab her by the neck with shattered fingers. What's he doing? Stop, he can't say through his stuck throat. Please. Don't do this.
Closer to the barn, Johnny Boy seizes the third Yorick by one arm and hurls it against the wall like a ragdoll. It splatters apart, a bug on a windshield. Radar's gaze lands on one of its dismembered legs as it drops: contusions, abrasions all over, three -- no, four -- open fractures. It's easier when you just count up the injuries and don't think too hard about the person attached to them. That can happen later.
no subject
Radar's hands are on her before she can bat them away. Broken fingers lay claim to tied-up hair. Her throat keens against his palm as he attempts to crush her windpipe. There's nothing to the face save for blind rage and loose musculature; spit and lymph from the flapping jaws that wish so desperately to find her shoulder. Carolina plants her hand at its forehead and pushes with all her might to make distance— find her escape— only to feel her hand sinking. His forehead depresses.
Okay— you can use this.
One, two, three hard strikes to Radar's face. The hand on her neck remains. His anger, unending. The world around her totters, flickers— television screen on the brink of signal lost. She can't black out. Not now. Again, again, again— she sucker punches. His neck snaps backward. Blood and grime fans. Nasal cartilage crumples and shreds her knuckles and she doesn't stop— no, never.
But that hand keeps squeezing...
cw: dismemberment
Because it's no longer attached to Radar.
Johnny Boy, having finally reached the pair, closes his stone fingers around the dead Radar's ragged shirt collar and yanks backward. Its arm splits in two along one of its fractures as gangrenous flesh tears like damp paper. Just as swift, Johnny Boy catches Radar's neck in a headlock and twists.
The snapping sounds in its vertebrae, this time, sound a heck of a lot more final.
He lets the body fall and wordlessly turns to the living Radar. That Radar... well, he's not doing much. Just standing there, shivering ever so slightly, face bloodless and eyes focused on something too far away to see. Johnny Boy's great stone brow furrows in concern; he steps closer to put a hand -- so gentle now, when it held such violence earlier -- on Radar's shoulder.
no subject
Just like that, the hand falls away. Air floods her open mouth like water— torrents down her throat, esophagus; runs through veiny bronchus and bloats her from the inside out. Too little and too much. Her body aches with it. She thinks briefly of Maine. Wills the image away soon after.
Something large and stone-pale moves across her mottled vision, toward Radar— reaching. Shit. Carolina scrambles to her feet—
To find he's placed a feather-light hand on the young man's shoulder.
Whatever it is, it must be an attendant.
Protected him, obviously— so relax.
Carolina steps carefully toward him, leveling Johnny Boy a look that speaks to her allyship. Hands raised. Slow, deliberate movements. A friend. Or... something like that.
Her hand finds Radar's upper arm.
"Hey. Let's find you somewhere to sit, okay?"
cw: emeto
There's a body on the ground. Traumatic amputation. Multiple closed fractures. Broken neck. Crush injuries on the... oh, he knows there's special words for front and back and each side of the head but he can never remember them. The doctors will once they get here. Where's his clipboard? He should start filling out the paperwork for the morgue truck while he's waiting.
The body's wearing a smashed pair of glasses he ought to get too in case the family wants them. Radar takes a couple steps closer, starts to bend down --
Oh.
Everything snaps back into focus, too bright, oversaturated like a picture with the colors all wrong. His breathing starts to go funny as he stares down at himself with his caved-in face and blood all over his shattered glasses. Not a body. Him. Him. Like his mom would see him if he came home in a coffin.
"Excuse me a minute, sirs," he says, just as calm and distant, before he walks a couple feet to the side, puts his hands on his knees, and promptly loses his lunch all over the dirt.
no subject
Radar wretches, and Carolina isn't surprised. What else is a person meant to do? How do you brush off the stench of your own maimed body; forget the slack features and wet, empty eyes you call your own? Radar wretches like he's attempting to eject his consciousness, and she's inclined to believe he has. Up and out. Bile first. Then consciousness. Then, clinging to body by frayed threads, the soul. Up and out and gone. Awareness abandoned. March back into house with no recollection of what was seen or felt or heard.
The air sours. She gives him a minute, alert at his side. Considers a hand on his shoulder— hovers in her indecision— retreats.
Fuck.
"Hey," quiet and non-startling. "There's a hay bale in the barn. Come on. I'll help you."
Get him away.
Get it away from him.
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