[ he attacks like an animal, and that's fine. what he's fighting isn't human either.
this thing's limbs don't work like a normal creature's limbs should work. it cracks itself in two and crumples like a puppet with no strings, all joints and uneven edges. spindly fingers crawl up richie's spine and his torso and his legs and everywhere, in places two hands shouldn't be able to reach all at once. but the punch connects. it crashes right into that jaw and sends the thing's neck off center, broken.
that does not stop It.
the creature giggles maniacally, and pulls at richie's strings. grabs one arm, and pulls too hard. grabs the other, and pulls too gentle. plays with him, even as he's beating the shit out of it. and when it gets bored of listening to richie shriek, to eddie gurgle to death on his own blood, it starts again.
[In this crazed, fucked up Cronenberg moment that stretches out for goddamn years, the thing that comes back to him clearest is Patrick Hockstetter.
Patrick was a weird kid. Patrick was a dangerous kid. You never caught him doing something crazy, and he never took initiative to take credit for himself, but he was wrong somehow. Wrong in the head and behind the eyes, behind that full lipped smile that smacked over his teeth as he opened his pencil case and showed off all the dead flies he'd precision-flicked with his ruler. He would never say anything as he did it though. He was just happy to watch you look.
The teachers had to seat him strategically, because if you put him behind a girl he'd reach around and feel her up. He flunked his grades and put weird answers for his homework, and he had a glassy stare that promised utter vacuity. But he watched things. Watched people closely. His infant baby brother had died in his crib one evening after school. Nobody ever figured out why.
Patrick had been visiting the dump when he went missing. Beverly (Bevvie, Bevvie, oh Miss Marsh where are you when I need your surefire aim) said he'd been approaching an old refrigerator when it happened, when she saw from a hidden distance. You don't mess with those old Amano fridges. They shut tight from the inside. Kids playing hide and seek have died in them. Patrick was going for the fridge when he went missing, and regular kids didn't fuck around with death traps in the dump.
As Richie wrestles this impossible thing, a creature no borisin should possibly become and had no place on heaven or earth, he feels like he's looking up and out of the pencil case. Surrounded by dead flies. Another prize catch, thwap. He feels like he's as useless as a babe in a crib, no matter how hard he hits or hollers, no match for big brother's hands coming down on high. He feels like what had been waiting in the fridge. Whatever Patrick had expected to find. He feels like a thing, a toy, a little yippy animal that can bark and bite all it wants, but at the end of the day it's a game of size. Of power.
His arm comes off like the wing of a fly. Did Creepy Pat ever do that? Richie never hung around him to find out.
It's only a miracle that keeps him alive. He's a fucking healer, isn't he? His mad fervor has been cleaved in two by the pain and he only just remembers how to treat it, with an instinctive spark of magic. Nothing finessed, applied in pure panic. Yae Miko would kick his ass if he did a botch job like that under her watch. But she isn't here and he just needs enough to split. If the thing wants to keep his arm, then Richie's taking the rest of himself for a run.
He scrambles.
Sprints.
His vision is in a tizzy and his glasses almost fly off, his ears are pounding with the force of his heartbeat. His arm drools, the blood not fully staved, painting a sloppy trail to the backs of his heels. I'm over here! Come find me! Catch me if you can!
It can. It can, and It will. It's picking up a pursuit started twenty-seven years ago, and Richie's running too ragged to squeak out this time.
Flies in a case, babies in a crib.
There's no weighted door to slam shut on him, but there may as well be.]
[ he can probably see It chewing on his arm like a turkey leg as he runs.
what a fucking ridiculous image, right? it's almost hysterical, in the way things get when you're running out of time. it's such a terrible image to have burned into your mind - dinnertime for a clown, the click and gag of blood shooting from an open throat wound. a pez dispenser. an out of place cosplayer at a renaissance fair, just - stupid. the little things a brain finds funny before it loses power and shuts down entirely.
the clown just walks after him. nothing can stop it. richie runs out of the pavilion, bleeding heavily across the ground. he slips on a bit of the blood, and distantly, he might hear guards shouting, people panicking at an armless man running through their peaceful city. there are children crying. he does make it decently far before the clown catches up to him, but there's no running forever. this thing knows how to wait. and now, it doesn't even really care all that much about the luofu, because the bloodlust, the moon rage - it's overwhelming. it wants to eat the rest of richie, crunch right down on all that juicy marrow, drink bloodwine and be covered in it - that is was strength is, tearing a lesser species to pieces.
hoolay slams into richie's back. knocks him to the ground, and settles there to feast. he rips skin from bone, crunches into joints and savors each drop of blood.
but here's the thing - the guards know, now. the cloud knights are aware that this creature is among them, and they do not hesitate. even as hoolay is enjoying his meal, they come together, and richie - the last thing you see before your vision is gone entirely is a man with white hair pulled into a ponytail, with a red ribbon, lifting a glaive to destroy the creature digging into your guts. you won, really. right? the ship is saved. you just had to sacrifice two white men to do it.
richie, do you have any last thoughts before you die? ]
[Well chief among them is one thing: looking at this interloper with his fast fading eyes, Richie has the temerity to squint in disbelief. Didn't I watch you die?
Pretty chuckalicious when you think about it. My god. He should have blown Hoolay a raspberry and ran shrieking out the door from the get go, if help was just around the corner the whole time. Then he wouldn't have had to putz around like a moron and drag Eddie into this.
That's what really hurts. The meat rips from his bones and he sees his own viscera spill out, sees the threads of his muscle and tendon catch in the clown-cum-wolf's teeth, and not one bit of it hurts more than the way Eddie looked as the knife underlined his Adam's apple.
I'm sorry Eds.
The glaive is coming down and the lights are going out, and thank god the sunovabitch is going down with him. But victory tastes like so much ash in his mouth. He wants to sob, and he no longer has the grip on his body to do it.
I didn't think it through Eds. I didn't think at all. I'm so fucking sorry.
And that's all for our show tonight folks! This is Rich Tozier signing off for KLAD 93.5, your number one station for all that rocks and rolls! We play aaaaaall the hits!
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holyspirits) wrote2025-02-16 05:05 pm
no subject
this thing's limbs don't work like a normal creature's limbs should work. it cracks itself in two and crumples like a puppet with no strings, all joints and uneven edges. spindly fingers crawl up richie's spine and his torso and his legs and everywhere, in places two hands shouldn't be able to reach all at once. but the punch connects. it crashes right into that jaw and sends the thing's neck off center, broken.
that does not stop It.
the creature giggles maniacally, and pulls at richie's strings. grabs one arm, and pulls too hard. grabs the other, and pulls too gentle. plays with him, even as he's beating the shit out of it. and when it gets bored of listening to richie shriek, to eddie gurgle to death on his own blood, it starts again.
it rips richie's left arm clean off. ]
cw: a fucked up child doing fucked up things?
Patrick was a weird kid. Patrick was a dangerous kid. You never caught him doing something crazy, and he never took initiative to take credit for himself, but he was wrong somehow. Wrong in the head and behind the eyes, behind that full lipped smile that smacked over his teeth as he opened his pencil case and showed off all the dead flies he'd precision-flicked with his ruler. He would never say anything as he did it though. He was just happy to watch you look.
The teachers had to seat him strategically, because if you put him behind a girl he'd reach around and feel her up. He flunked his grades and put weird answers for his homework, and he had a glassy stare that promised utter vacuity. But he watched things. Watched people closely. His infant baby brother had died in his crib one evening after school. Nobody ever figured out why.
Patrick had been visiting the dump when he went missing. Beverly (Bevvie, Bevvie, oh Miss Marsh where are you when I need your surefire aim) said he'd been approaching an old refrigerator when it happened, when she saw from a hidden distance. You don't mess with those old Amano fridges. They shut tight from the inside. Kids playing hide and seek have died in them. Patrick was going for the fridge when he went missing, and regular kids didn't fuck around with death traps in the dump.
As Richie wrestles this impossible thing, a creature no borisin should possibly become and had no place on heaven or earth, he feels like he's looking up and out of the pencil case. Surrounded by dead flies. Another prize catch, thwap. He feels like he's as useless as a babe in a crib, no matter how hard he hits or hollers, no match for big brother's hands coming down on high. He feels like what had been waiting in the fridge. Whatever Patrick had expected to find. He feels like a thing, a toy, a little yippy animal that can bark and bite all it wants, but at the end of the day it's a game of size. Of power.
His arm comes off like the wing of a fly. Did Creepy Pat ever do that? Richie never hung around him to find out.
It's only a miracle that keeps him alive. He's a fucking healer, isn't he? His mad fervor has been cleaved in two by the pain and he only just remembers how to treat it, with an instinctive spark of magic. Nothing finessed, applied in pure panic. Yae Miko would kick his ass if he did a botch job like that under her watch. But she isn't here and he just needs enough to split. If the thing wants to keep his arm, then Richie's taking the rest of himself for a run.
He scrambles.
Sprints.
His vision is in a tizzy and his glasses almost fly off, his ears are pounding with the force of his heartbeat. His arm drools, the blood not fully staved, painting a sloppy trail to the backs of his heels. I'm over here! Come find me! Catch me if you can!
It can. It can, and It will. It's picking up a pursuit started twenty-seven years ago, and Richie's running too ragged to squeak out this time.
Flies in a case, babies in a crib.
There's no weighted door to slam shut on him, but there may as well be.]
no subject
what a fucking ridiculous image, right? it's almost hysterical, in the way things get when you're running out of time. it's such a terrible image to have burned into your mind - dinnertime for a clown, the click and gag of blood shooting from an open throat wound. a pez dispenser. an out of place cosplayer at a renaissance fair, just - stupid. the little things a brain finds funny before it loses power and shuts down entirely.
the clown just walks after him. nothing can stop it. richie runs out of the pavilion, bleeding heavily across the ground. he slips on a bit of the blood, and distantly, he might hear guards shouting, people panicking at an armless man running through their peaceful city. there are children crying. he does make it decently far before the clown catches up to him, but there's no running forever. this thing knows how to wait. and now, it doesn't even really care all that much about the luofu, because the bloodlust, the moon rage - it's overwhelming. it wants to eat the rest of richie, crunch right down on all that juicy marrow, drink bloodwine and be covered in it - that is was strength is, tearing a lesser species to pieces.
hoolay slams into richie's back. knocks him to the ground, and settles there to feast. he rips skin from bone, crunches into joints and savors each drop of blood.
but here's the thing - the guards know, now. the cloud knights are aware that this creature is among them, and they do not hesitate. even as hoolay is enjoying his meal, they come together, and richie - the last thing you see before your vision is gone entirely is a man with white hair pulled into a ponytail, with a red ribbon, lifting a glaive to destroy the creature digging into your guts. you won, really. right? the ship is saved. you just had to sacrifice two white men to do it.
richie, do you have any last thoughts before you die? ]
no subject
Pretty chuckalicious when you think about it. My god. He should have blown Hoolay a raspberry and ran shrieking out the door from the get go, if help was just around the corner the whole time. Then he wouldn't have had to putz around like a moron and drag Eddie into this.
That's what really hurts. The meat rips from his bones and he sees his own viscera spill out, sees the threads of his muscle and tendon catch in the clown-cum-wolf's teeth, and not one bit of it hurts more than the way Eddie looked as the knife underlined his Adam's apple.
I'm sorry Eds.
The glaive is coming down and the lights are going out, and thank god the sunovabitch is going down with him. But victory tastes like so much ash in his mouth. He wants to sob, and he no longer has the grip on his body to do it.
I didn't think it through Eds. I didn't think at all. I'm so fucking sorry.
And that's all for our show tonight folks! This is Rich Tozier signing off for KLAD 93.5, your number one station for all that rocks and rolls! We play aaaaaall the hits!
Richie laughs. One last time.]