[Andy, you drag your heels to your Grandma Wynne's house. She and her husband Greg weren't thrilled to take you in, even just for a spell, but your parents had been at their limit. Misbehaviour and too many close calls have worn their nerves thin, and they were already too good at fraying each other's nerves to begin with. Better to sort that mess out without worrying about a second mess with a rebellious streak a mile wide. You try to sneak in around the back way, but Greg steps out the same time as you with today's trash in hand. He drops the bag and raises a hand, threatening to fetch you upside the head if you do NOT hose off your feet in the yard before entering your poor Grandma Wynne's good house, young man. And he may just decide to do it anyway, if the mood strikes.
You clean up, you change, you take a scolding of a lifetime, and you are sent to your foldout cot in the basement, tucked amid packages, knickknacks, disused furniture and old crates. All the stuff you put away to forget about. The guest bedroom on the first floor is for good company.
While you take a seething refuge on your cot, something thumps at the back of the room. A sort of wooden sound.]
[ he hates that bastard greg. he's a prison guard. wynne can be ... nice, but she never disagrees with him, never disagrees with his parents, never argues or causes a fuss or raises a finger. compassion, without cause. right now, the only thing he wants is to go home. to see his mom. he had said sorry for the fires (never very BIG), for the scuffles (he never WON), for the willful independence (he never went FAR) over and over and over, but they never seemed to believe him. his dad only ever looked more and more disappointed, more angry with him. but his mom had cried when they'd dropped him off. the last time he'd bolted, to try and make it back to his hometown, he hadn't made it very far. just to the bus station, where the driver wouldn't let him on because of the fact he was Obviously 11. greg had driven to pick him up and called him every invective on the way home. back to prison.
its difficult to sit still there and be scolded while the only thought that he can hold onto is yves' face, bloated from the water. his leg bounces up and down and he picks at his nails, glancing towards the doors and windows the entire time - as if he could make a break for it right now. maybe this time, he could hitchhike. someone might stop, take pity -- but he doesn't.
instead he slinks down to his cot, in the dark, alone, tripping over his own mess and collapsing into the cot. silently screaming into the pillow before he hears the thump. freezing, keeping his face in the pillow, listening for the sound again.
[It is a six-foot bipedal rat actually, with a flower at one ear and a framed picture of Viktor Arcane clutched to its chest.
No there is no rat. There's only a mountain of junk. Heaps down here, you'd lose a week trying to pin down anything in this mess.
Thump!
It's a little louder this time.
Something shifts. A cloud of dust whips off a lean-to heap at the back end of the basement, and there's the scrape of paper over a cement floor. Something's been knocked loose.]
[ he jumps, this time actually sitting up to look - still sitting stock-still frozen on the cot for a second but ... he can't see anything from here.
glancing up the basement steps to see if anyone else heard the noise, if he was going to get yelled at for making a mess, but when he doesn't hear anything moving around above he'll get up.
might as well put whatever it is back into the pile, so it can't be his fault. ]
[Thankfully, this time no one yells down the stairs. Greg the warden must be snoozing off today's batch of beans in front of the tv, farting up a storm into the upholstery and scratching his belly.
When you reach the fallen item, you realize it's a sheet of paper. Some handwritten thing, but not yellowed or browned at the edges like you'd expect of anything around here. There's not so much as a coffee stain. You don't recognize the writing, either. Maybe an old pal wrote to him sometime.
But picking it up makes your head hurt. Your vision blacks out at the edges. Feels oppressive, like something's trying to swallow you up.
(Take you back.)
Then there's another THUMP, so loud this time it might knock your teeth together. Several bits and bobs fall off the pile, roll or crash to the floor in a clatter that you're certain would wake old Greg up.
And still, nothing happens.
You see now there's a crate at the bottom of this pile. Large and long, nearly big enough to fit a man if he crouched you bet. Printed on the side in a shipper's stamp reads these instructions:
SHIP TO KIRKWALL UNIVERSITY VIA NATHANIEL HOWE
You don't believe you've heard of the place before.]
[ the thing about places like this - alone, cramped, in the dark, is you start to imagine things. it happens all the time. it must be what a prisoner in solitary feels like, turning shapes on the walls into friends and shadows in the corner into enemies, simply to have something to occupy a racing mind. that happens a lot. a mind racing, faster faster faster than he can catch it, so full of absolutely everything that it feels it might overtake his body, his skin, and burst forth onto the floor if he doesn't find a way to exorcise it. a mania, all-consuming. running. but the mania is easier than the other beast, at times.
that's what picking the paper up reminds him of. the other beast. he's young. it hasn't happened often. but he's felt the gentle touch of it at his mind already. a void, quiet and smothering, equally all-consuming, but this time it doesn't tell him to run. it whispers to lay down in the dark and never, ever get up again. a gnawing hunger. he drops the paper like it burns his hand. the thump again rattles his teeth in his jaw and makes him shake his head - no more thinking about that.
as for this box. curiosity killed the cat and all. is there some way to open it ... ? ]
[The paper flutters to the ground, but there's something sticking in the back of your mind. Funny, did you think it had writing on it before? The one on the cement now is completely blank.
Enough about that.
This crate looks to be nailed down, though not with the strongest stuff. You could grab something with a bit of leverage, wedge it beneath the lid. Just clear some of the junk off the top and you could spring it wide open, you wager.
And isn't there an old tire iron by the stairs? You've knocked it over more than once in your restless pacing. That'll do the trick quite nicely.]
[ maybe the whos, the whats and the whys also wanna know whats in this howe crate.
glancing over at the stairs again, but when he hears nothing, he'll start moving some junk off the top - tossing it to the side. who cares if he makes a mess. it's his space to make a mess in if he wants to. ]
He may move the junk, and without much ceremony at that. They must be fast asleep. Really early, even for them, but that's old age for you.
At last you have the crate unveiled. There's writing on the other side as well, this one quite a lot more faded.
ARCTIC EXPEDITION June 19, 1934
Which is even more baffling. Since when did Grandma Wynne have anything to do with an Arctic exploration? And certainly Greg hadn't. He's too unambitious and dim to do anything exciting. In fact, would either of them have been alive at that point?
You take the tire iron and wedge it into the negligible space between the lid and the crate. You pump it. Gain a quarter inch on the corner. Pump it again.
Then there's such a calamitous THUMP that you might be excused for dropping the iron altogether.
A second THUMP follows and the lid pops up at the right end by more than a foot. A thick, woollen arm juts out and snatches at you with claws as big as chain links, curved and pointed to slip into unwary skin, hook it closer.
[ oh well oopsie daisy this is absolutely what he deserves for fucking around in shit he shouldn't have. he definitely does drop the iron - immediately - and start trying to scramble backwards as fast as he can. What he doesn't do is scream. if he screams, they're going to wake up, and they're going to see he's caused a mess and then things will get even worse. adults are not there to help you. no adult has ever helped him with anything--
he'll slam backwards into another pile of junk as the monster's claws catch at his leg, shoving a hand over his mouth to stifle a whimper of fear and - pain? maybe it's all too adrenaline fueled right now to even feel pain. ]
[There's an almighty snarl to go with the swipe. Wretched caged beast, silent until the moment the top was cracked on the crate and now it won't stop bellowing. Something like a dog or a bear, all vengeance and snapping growls and roars.
The claws swipe clean through your pants and rake the flesh of his calf, four shallow, precise stripes that send up blood hot and sharp on the musty basement air. But it doesn't hook you.
That's why it has to reach again, a second, ape-like limb shooting out to snatch two-handed at that morsel, aiming to catch an ankle and drag you in for dinner.]
[ at this point, as he’s dragged bodily across the floor on his back, he is going to start screaming. not in fear necessarily but— rage. fuck this! what a stupid way to die! stuck in greg’s cold, cramped horrible basement. trapped down here, never seeing the sun again. no one is coming to his rescue.
scrambling for the iron, for anything, to start wailing on the creatures arms and if he can’t find a weapon he’ll start thrashing with the kind of violent desperation of an animal in a cage. the kind of kicking and twisting and biting of a creature that will escape or hurt itself trying, impervious to pain. ]
The tire iron is in reach. It raps across the beast's knuckles with a force backed by spite and pure adrenaline, but it's not enough. You're sliding closer, the hem of your shirt dragging up your back so the bumps of your spine skitter over unforgiving cement. The thing lets go with one hand to swipe at you as you kick, and it sinks two claws into the calf of your other leg, a quarter-inch apiece.
Your thrashing rips them loose and more blood splatters beneath you, slides around and stains the floor like a finger painting as you kick and squirm and holler at the top of your lungs. Fight for your life. It's lifting your foot. It's yanking it towards the lip of the crate, and you can see beady, hateful yellow eyes in the shadows beneath it. Locking glares with you. Marking you.
BAM BAM BAM.
The door to the basement rattles under the force of the knocks, but Greg is an asshole and throws the damn thing open anyway, just to holler down the stairs.]
QUIET DOWN THERE! [He snaps from atop the stairs and around the back wall, blind to the horrific sight just a few steps down.] IF YOU DON'T STOP THAT HOLLERING, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO WAIL ABOUT!
[The grip on your leg vanishes. Poof, gone.
The lid on the crate is sealed dead shut, every nail in place. The text on the side has changed.]
[ he is being murdered down here and greg is just doing this shit!!!!! great caretaking guy!!!!!! if he’s dead in the morning that will really stick it to him. that’s the comforting thought he has when he’s bodily dragged across the floor.
its harrowing, seeing his own blood splashed around the floor - he’s a kid, he’s scraped a knee or an elbow or knocked a baby tooth loose, drops of blood that fade and are forgotten. but this is different. this feels like something vital is being stolen and if he doesn’t get free, it WILL kill him. even after the monster disappears, after he’s alone in the dark with only the sound of someone sobbing (definitely not his own) as quietly as they can.
it takes him a long minute to gather his wits enough to move again, shakily sitting up. he’s not so much stopping to examine the box as much as pile anything he can get his hands on on top of it again - if he catches the words he’ll read them. ]
[It's hard all right. The first time you get hurt in a way that sticks, that a Band-Aid and a kiss from mother won't smooth over and you begin to wonder what else can break. What else will bend until it cracks and refuse to get back into place?
You sort the basement out. The blood is disturbing and the smell claws at your nostrils, and the pain in your legs is fierce. You should probably wrap that up soon, just in case.
It's as you're replacing a crapped out transistor radio that you notice the stamp on the crate has changed. The message is short and simple.
YOU DON'T BELONG HERE ❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚❚❚❚
Except it's not the name you're hiding now. It's something else. Something you've never heard in all your life, so why is your gut in such a twist?
The radio crackles, and the Platters croon out a sombre tune.
Oh-oh, yes I'm the great pretender Adrift in a world of my own I've played the game but to my real shame You've left me to grieve all alone...
There's a mad cackling ringing out over the music, a viciously gleeful voice that comes through clear as day.]
Knock knock, Anders! Knock knock, guess who, you sad sack of shit!
You better go on and git now, Anders, or else the going will get GOOD, you bet it will! I'll kill you like I killed Yves, and I'll kill little Jenny and Del too! Just you wait, buddy oh boy, we'll have a real gasser! We'll have a laugh! Just you wait you stupid fuck!
[The laughter rises, high and hard as Tony Williams laments his own foolishness on a a lonesome tune. Static sparks again, and the radio cuts out. Dead once more.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
holyspirits) wrote2025-03-09 04:46 pm
Andy
You clean up, you change, you take a scolding of a lifetime, and you are sent to your foldout cot in the basement, tucked amid packages, knickknacks, disused furniture and old crates. All the stuff you put away to forget about. The guest bedroom on the first floor is for good company.
While you take a seething refuge on your cot, something thumps at the back of the room. A sort of wooden sound.]
no subject
its difficult to sit still there and be scolded while the only thought that he can hold onto is yves' face, bloated from the water. his leg bounces up and down and he picks at his nails, glancing towards the doors and windows the entire time - as if he could make a break for it right now. maybe this time, he could hitchhike. someone might stop, take pity -- but he doesn't.
instead he slinks down to his cot, in the dark, alone, tripping over his own mess and collapsing into the cot. silently screaming into the pillow before he hears the thump. freezing, keeping his face in the pillow, listening for the sound again.
maybe it's just a rat? ]
no subject
No there is no rat. There's only a mountain of junk. Heaps down here, you'd lose a week trying to pin down anything in this mess.
Thump!
It's a little louder this time.
Something shifts. A cloud of dust whips off a lean-to heap at the back end of the basement, and there's the scrape of paper over a cement floor. Something's been knocked loose.]
no subject
glancing up the basement steps to see if anyone else heard the noise, if he was going to get yelled at for making a mess, but when he doesn't hear anything moving around above he'll get up.
might as well put whatever it is back into the pile, so it can't be his fault. ]
no subject
When you reach the fallen item, you realize it's a sheet of paper. Some handwritten thing, but not yellowed or browned at the edges like you'd expect of anything around here. There's not so much as a coffee stain. You don't recognize the writing, either. Maybe an old pal wrote to him sometime.
But picking it up makes your head hurt. Your vision blacks out at the edges. Feels oppressive, like something's trying to swallow you up.
(Take you back.)
Then there's another THUMP, so loud this time it might knock your teeth together. Several bits and bobs fall off the pile, roll or crash to the floor in a clatter that you're certain would wake old Greg up.
And still, nothing happens.
You see now there's a crate at the bottom of this pile. Large and long, nearly big enough to fit a man if he crouched you bet. Printed on the side in a shipper's stamp reads these instructions:
VIA NATHANIEL HOWE
You don't believe you've heard of the place before.]
no subject
that's what picking the paper up reminds him of. the other beast. he's young. it hasn't happened often. but he's felt the gentle touch of it at his mind already. a void, quiet and smothering, equally all-consuming, but this time it doesn't tell him to run. it whispers to lay down in the dark and never, ever get up again. a gnawing hunger. he drops the paper like it burns his hand. the thump again rattles his teeth in his jaw and makes him shake his head - no more thinking about that.
as for this box. curiosity killed the cat and all. is there some way to open it ... ? ]
no subject
Enough about that.
This crate looks to be nailed down, though not with the strongest stuff. You could grab something with a bit of leverage, wedge it beneath the lid. Just clear some of the junk off the top and you could spring it wide open, you wager.
And isn't there an old tire iron by the stairs? You've knocked it over more than once in your restless pacing. That'll do the trick quite nicely.]
no subject
glancing over at the stairs again, but when he hears nothing, he'll start moving some junk off the top - tossing it to the side. who cares if he makes a mess. it's his space to make a mess in if he wants to. ]
no subject
He may move the junk, and without much ceremony at that. They must be fast asleep. Really early, even for them, but that's old age for you.
At last you have the crate unveiled. There's writing on the other side as well, this one quite a lot more faded.
June 19, 1934
Which is even more baffling. Since when did Grandma Wynne have anything to do with an Arctic exploration? And certainly Greg hadn't. He's too unambitious and dim to do anything exciting. In fact, would either of them have been alive at that point?
You take the tire iron and wedge it into the negligible space between the lid and the crate. You pump it. Gain a quarter inch on the corner. Pump it again.
Then there's such a calamitous THUMP that you might be excused for dropping the iron altogether.
A second THUMP follows and the lid pops up at the right end by more than a foot. A thick, woollen arm juts out and snatches at you with claws as big as chain links, curved and pointed to slip into unwary skin, hook it closer.
Closer to the crate.]
no subject
he'll slam backwards into another pile of junk as the monster's claws catch at his leg, shoving a hand over his mouth to stifle a whimper of fear and - pain? maybe it's all too adrenaline fueled right now to even feel pain. ]
no subject
The claws swipe clean through your pants and rake the flesh of his calf, four shallow, precise stripes that send up blood hot and sharp on the musty basement air. But it doesn't hook you.
That's why it has to reach again, a second, ape-like limb shooting out to snatch two-handed at that morsel, aiming to catch an ankle and drag you in for dinner.]
no subject
scrambling for the iron, for anything, to start wailing on the creatures arms and if he can’t find a weapon he’ll start thrashing with the kind of violent desperation of an animal in a cage. the kind of kicking and twisting and biting of a creature that will escape or hurt itself trying, impervious to pain. ]
Fuck off! Fuck off fuck off fuck off!
no subject
The tire iron is in reach. It raps across the beast's knuckles with a force backed by spite and pure adrenaline, but it's not enough. You're sliding closer, the hem of your shirt dragging up your back so the bumps of your spine skitter over unforgiving cement. The thing lets go with one hand to swipe at you as you kick, and it sinks two claws into the calf of your other leg, a quarter-inch apiece.
Your thrashing rips them loose and more blood splatters beneath you, slides around and stains the floor like a finger painting as you kick and squirm and holler at the top of your lungs. Fight for your life. It's lifting your foot. It's yanking it towards the lip of the crate, and you can see beady, hateful yellow eyes in the shadows beneath it. Locking glares with you. Marking you.
BAM BAM BAM.
The door to the basement rattles under the force of the knocks, but Greg is an asshole and throws the damn thing open anyway, just to holler down the stairs.]
QUIET DOWN THERE! [He snaps from atop the stairs and around the back wall, blind to the horrific sight just a few steps down.] IF YOU DON'T STOP THAT HOLLERING, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO WAIL ABOUT!
[The grip on your leg vanishes. Poof, gone.
The lid on the crate is sealed dead shut, every nail in place. The text on the side has changed.]
no subject
its harrowing, seeing his own blood splashed around the floor - he’s a kid, he’s scraped a knee or an elbow or knocked a baby tooth loose, drops of blood that fade and are forgotten. but this is different. this feels like something vital is being stolen and if he doesn’t get free, it WILL kill him. even after the monster disappears, after he’s alone in the dark with only the sound of someone sobbing (definitely not his own) as quietly as they can.
it takes him a long minute to gather his wits enough to move again, shakily sitting up. he’s not so much stopping to examine the box as much as pile anything he can get his hands on on top of it again - if he catches the words he’ll read them. ]
no subject
You sort the basement out. The blood is disturbing and the smell claws at your nostrils, and the pain in your legs is fierce. You should probably wrap that up soon, just in case.
It's as you're replacing a crapped out transistor radio that you notice the stamp on the crate has changed. The message is short and simple.
❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚❚❚❚
Except it's not the name you're hiding now. It's something else. Something you've never heard in all your life, so why is your gut in such a twist?
The radio crackles, and the Platters croon out a sombre tune.
Adrift in a world of my own
I've played the game but to my real shame
You've left me to grieve all alone...
There's a mad cackling ringing out over the music, a viciously gleeful voice that comes through clear as day.]
Knock knock, Anders! Knock knock, guess who, you sad sack of shit!
You better go on and git now, Anders, or else the going will get GOOD, you bet it will! I'll kill you like I killed Yves, and I'll kill little Jenny and Del too! Just you wait, buddy oh boy, we'll have a real gasser! We'll have a laugh! Just you wait you stupid fuck!
[The laughter rises, high and hard as Tony Williams laments his own foolishness on a a lonesome tune. Static sparks again, and the radio cuts out. Dead once more.]