Call me animal.

[phantastus]

WHO: Heather Mason and Maurice Hutch (OC)
WHERE: Dogtrot, Texas
WHEN: Just easing into spring.
WHAT: What probably would have been a night spent loitering around the drug store and breaking bottles in the alley like generic malcontent youths takes several unexpected turns when a vampire hunter interrupts Maurice while waiting for his friend from up north.
RATING: Probably PG. CW for violence, mild body horror and transformation.




awsum
ill be outside where the rentareel used to be

Maurice had put out the call and now he was in his place, hands in his coat pockets. He hadn't seen his friend for a while now. One thing or another would come up (said things including worrying mothers, various injuries, and plain bad weather) and now that at least the weather had calmed its bad self down, the world was ready to be trampled again.

And what a night for it! It was clear with chilly breezes sneaking around buildings and down alleyways. An orange moon hung low on the horizon and kept the clouds far on the edges of the horizon. It wouldn't rain for two more days. Spring was coming. The tiny green shoots had just barely started poking out of the ground where there was enough actual soil instead of the red clay of Dogtrot. Crispy dead leaves still hung in the corners where the buildings met the sidewalk. Easter candy all but overflowed on super market shelves.

The vampire thought of all the things they would do once Heather got there. They could graffiti the old building marked to be torn down the following week since it was technically not illegal anymore. They could eat pizza at Tod's until they were sick. And DRANKS. And Sega. If Meranda hadn't taken over the sofa for the night. An outlet in her room had blown (or so she said) so she spent a lot of time on the sofa during her WoW raids.

Something interrupted his thoughts. He had lived in Dogtrot for years now and not a lot surprised him. He knew the local vampires, he even knew a local spook or two. He knew the drug addicts and the few homeless and what they sounded like. What he heard on that empty chilly street was none of those things.

"Quack quack!" It was mechanical. Grainy.

Maurice lifted a brow and tugged his phone out wondering if Meranda had passive-aggressively changed the ring on it again.

"Quack quack!"

"The hell...?" It wasn't his phone. Maurice pocketed it and looked all around. The quack came from an alley across the street between a now defunct QUICK CASH and what was going to be a shiny new laundromat. Maurice looked both ways and ventured forward into the gloom.

The garbage can at the end of the alley quacked. Maurice screwed up his face in thought. Broken toy that suddenly came back to life? Stranded cyborge duck?

Up above on the rooftop, a long and lean and very crafty hunter was watching his prey fall for his trap hook, line, and sinker. His father had been a hunter--a normal hunter. Deer, ducks, rams. He had watched him make odd noises to get the attention of the deer. A whistle or a click to make them stop in just the right place. Sometimes to even lure them in.

Humans were the most curious animals that he knew of and though the thing in the alleyway wasn't human (not in the slightest) he had to watch it in fascination and amusement before he made his move.

Maurice peered into the trash. There was an old Talkboy straight from the eighties in the trash quacking away.

"Oh, man, sweet!" It was all his! He reached for it. Something dressed in full army camo descended upon him and drove a thin knife into his shoulder. Maurice screamed like a wildcat and the fight began.

Comments

[toothaches]

"I'm fine." Maurice peeled himself away from the tree and leaned over as well, hands on his knees. "Couldn't see the forest for the trees, I guess." He sniffed. "Smells like somebody's been burning trash out here."

They were either going to have to go around, over, or through.

"...I think I see part of an old stove down there."

[foolishwren]

"Who'd come out all this way just to dump garbage?" Heather snorted, though she didn't dispute him. How else would all that junk have gotten out here?

Testing the slope with one taloned foot, Heather tilted her head, then started to slide down into the gully.

"Wonder if it still works!"

[toothaches]

"Uuuuh, probably not." Maurice watched and waited until there was enough space for him before following. He dislodged quite a few rocks since he didn't have giant stork legs and wound up landing on his ass in the end.

He pulled a thankfully unbroken bottle out form under himself, gave it a sniff, and tossed it. Medicine. The vampire climbed to his feet, gave the oven a little kick as he passed it by, and started to slowly climb up the other side of the gully.

"Why don't you stick your hand in there and find out?"

[foolishwren]

"Why don't I stick your HEAD in there and find out?"

She bent slightly, placing her oversized hands on her relatively scrawny knees to take a closer look.

"It's probably full of earwigs and shit."

Not particularly eager to expose the mass of pincher-bugs she was now imagining, she started to follow Maurice up the other side.

[toothaches]

Maurice experienced a full-body shudder.

"Eeuugh, don't even talk about earwigs." Maurice hated bugs. All bugs. ESPECIALLY spiders. But man, earwigs were some special kind of scary. He'd only seen one once and that was enough.

[foolishwren]

A wicked grin stretched across her beak.

"Why not? You scared?"

Heather wasn't a big fan of earwigs specifically but she didn't share the insect-related squeamishness so commonly attributed to her gender.

[toothaches]

"I'm not scared of them, I just hate them. I hate them like I hate Spiceworld."

He dug his fingers a little more deeply into the rocky dirt as he climbed and plopped his arms over the edge of the hole. Rocks kept falling away from his boots. He looked like a cat failing to scale a garden wall.

[foolishwren]

Heather stopped climbing.

Oh no he didn't.


There was an ominous silence... and then an enormous shaggy black arm wrapped around his neck in a headlock.

[toothaches]

Maurice grunted and swore under his breath. Finally the toe of one boot found purchase against a tree root. He started to heft himself up when--

"Gack!" The sudden pressure surprised him so much that he didn't even realize what he was in trouble for. He just scrabbled at the dirt and grass on the gully's edge. "Heather! Heather let go, I'm gonna fall!"

[foolishwren]

Not to worry, Maurice.

The other arm promptly wrapped around his middle, ensuring that if he DID lose his balance, he would be caught by the asshole creature currently assaulting him.

"No one disses Spice World!"

[toothaches]

He pawed and pushed at her claws. She was getting soot ALL OVER HIM. He wouldn't be silenced though. He twisted his head around so that he could yell in her big stupid bird face.

"Spice World is a shitstain on the underwear of cinema!"

[foolishwren]

That did it.

He was gonna look like a dalmatian puppy trying to hide from Cruella deVille by the time she was done with him.

With a screech of war, she let herself fall against the side of the gulley-- on top of him.

ENJOY THE SOOT, MAURICE.

[toothaches]

Maurice opened his mouth to screech back but then the edge where the land leveled out rammed into his gut.

"WHOOF! Hhh--!" He couldn't suck in air. The vampire fought and squirmed and tried to reach down to bite the bird beast's arms no matter how sooty they were but his neck wasn't quite long enough.

This...this was about eleven different shades of unfair. He kicked behind him, aiming for a shin or a knee or anything.

[foolishwren]

Cackling, Heather promptly rolled over with him, planting a giant hand right in the middle of his hair and messing it around thoroughly.

"Say 'SPICE WORLD RULES'!"

[toothaches]

Maurice started to shout something back but then she touched his hair.

The vampire made a noise that was some sort of shrill, primitive holler that would have chilled the blood of any nearby explorers. Luckily there weren't any. It still echoed off the trees though.

And then he rasped, "Never."

[foolishwren]

Your defiance will cost you dearly, Maurice.

Heather laughed louder.

"Oh YEAH? Well NOW you have to say 'I believe in Spice World'!"

[toothaches]

He just kept kicking behind him. HE KNEW SHE HAD KNEES SOMEWHERE.

"You are squishing the sandwiches!" Maybe his own well-being wasn't of concern. He was dead after all. But the sandwiches! Maybe they would buy him mercy and keep him from having to utter blasphemous phrases.

[foolishwren]

"Guess you'd better say it then!"

No Maurice, she would not be reasoned with.

She had been given a great and terrible power, and that power was 'suddenly being bigger than you'.

[toothaches]

After he'd struggled himself into what amounted to a sweat for a dead person, he sagged in her grip. He panted in ragged growling breathes. The only way they were going to keep exploring is if he said...the unsayable.

BLASPHEMY.

It was for the sake of the sandwiches. He had to think of the sandwiches.

"I...tolerate...Spice World."

[foolishwren]

When he started to speak, the soot-black creature restraining him stopped actively wrestling and tilted its head. Waiting.

.... BOOOO MAURICE THAT DOESN'T COUNT.

Her grip tightened.

"Nuh uh. You gotta believe."

[toothaches]

Maurice clenched and unclenched his fists. He wanted to turn into a bat and fly away but THE SANDWICHES. Why did he have to be the mom with the big purse?

"I acknowledge Spice World."

[foolishwren]

If he turned into a bat and flew away, Heather would probably EAT both the sandwiches. So his instincts were right to warn against that course of action.

She gripped him tighter.

"Believe." was hissed ominously into his ear.

[toothaches]

This playfight was starting to hurt a little bit. He didn't need to breathe but he was sure that if he did it would have been getting difficult. He hissed through his teeth and looked ahead, beyond the ravine, at all the unexplored woods. They would stay unexplored if he didn't give in.

He would say it, but his heart wouldn't be in it. He would know DEEP DOWN IN HIS SOUL that it wasn't true.

"I...believe in Spice World."

[foolishwren]

Like the words held some sort of magic, she let him go and rolled away. You couldn't say she wasn't a beast of her word!

But any relief was probably short-lived because she was cackling triumphantly and uproariously as she lay there on her back in the dirt.

"You SAID it! I can't believe you SAID it!"

[toothaches]

Once he was released, Maurice tumbled backward into the ravine again. He swore and kicked at branches and old trash before climbing back up onto level ground. He brushed himself off and set off stalking ahead, jaw set, shoulders hunched.

POUT POUT POUT.