dazlious | Call me animal.

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Call me animal.

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.

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Your defiance will cost you dearly, Maurice.

Heather laughed louder.

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

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.

"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'.

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."

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."

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."

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.

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."

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!"

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.

After a moment or so, Heather rolled onto her feet, still chortling.

"Ohoho MAN. That was classic. Hey, wait! Wait up!"

She loped after him, tail bouncing jauntily behind her.

Maurice was displeased to find himself as sore about the tussle as he was so he gripped the backpack straps a little tighter and looked straight ahead.

Briars coated the ground like a brown rolling fog and the vampire had to step high to avoid getting his jeans caught. Occasionally an old glass bottle would burst beneath their feet or the scratching of leaf litter on tin could be heard. And as it had been back at the pond, the sounds of wildlife seemed do be distant--as if they were heard from outside a large bubble that had formed around them.

A strange god was in their wood.

Finally a new shape emerged from the woods--high and circular. For a moment, in the gloom, it looked like some primitive, otherworldly gate. But it was just an old hay feeder turned up on its side. A couple of trees no bigger around than Heather's human wrist grew up between the rungs and anchored it in place.

At first Heather picked her way through the brambles with care-- but it soon became apparent that her big dinosaur feet were fairly impervious to the thorns (which didn't reach high enough to poke at any tender spots), so instead she tromped along with a merry crunch crunch crunch.

"... Whoa. Hey Zilla, what's that?"

The vampire brushed the hair out of his face and squinted ahead.

"Looks like a round feeder..." As they got closer, the structure did not burst into flames or give off any eerie chanting. "Me and my brothers used to climb these when we were kids."

He put out a hand and picked at the rust that had built up on the edges of the thing. He gave it a little shake and instantly regretted it when a shower of small insects from the saplings fell on him. He swore and swatted at his shirt. CATERPILLARS. HORRIBLE BABY CATERPILLARS.

"God!"

As the shower of caterpillars descended, Heather at least had the decency to let out a squeak and hop backwards with her giant paws covering her beak. She might be a god, but even gods don't want to wind up covered in tiny squirmy things.

But, because she's Heather, it doesn't take her long to start laughing.

And she does.

Maurice hissed and spat and swore as he brushed the tiny wiggly babies off of him. He dragged his claws through his hair and frowned into the woods.

"I oughta stuff you in this thing and roll you into that gully..." His threat faded out though because he noticed something else. He quickly forgot his insect problems. "Oh, man, Heather, look!"

He pointed through the gloom and there through some trees and behind a tangle of dead bushes was a small wooden house. Its windows were long gone and the door on the other side hung by a lone hinge. Piles of ancient rotting firewood lay all around it as well as bits of metal, glass, and other trash.

Maurice set out at once, determined to be the first one to reach it.

Her throat swelled in a croaky chuckle. Those were some big words after getting owned to the point of saying you believed in Spice Girls, Maurice.

"Sure, Zilla. Sure."

But any further gloating was cut short by the vampire's discovery, and she cocked her head to get a better look at the abandoned house.

"... Whoa."

Maurice would get his wish, as she didn't try to get ahead of him as they approached the house. Instead she stalked along behind, curiously.

Hand on the doorframe, Maurice leaned in curiously. He kept an ear open both for Heather and for anything (like angry possums) that might be inside the old house. The front door opened into what looked like a den or a living room and only a few pieces of furniture were left--an old table, a couch that had already been rendered down to a frame and springs, and what was left of a cabinet. The room was full of dead leaves and dirt.

"I guess we found who left all that garbage..." Maurice sniffed the air. No fresh blood...no dead animals. An old woody sourness hung in the little house though. Something told him that it was moonshine but he'd given up the memory of how to make the stuff years ago. He could no longer recall how it smelled in certain stages.

"Kinda stinks in here..."

A faint orange glow fell across the old wooden walls as Heather poked her pointed head in over his, eyes wide and curious.

"Whoof. Yeah. Who d'you think lived all the way out here, anyway? I didn't even see a road."

Whoever it was, they didn't seem to be around anymore, that was for sure.

"Maybe...there used to be one." Maurice took a few ginger steps into the house. Leaves crunched under his boots. "You know...if this place isn't a haunt for drug dealers or somethin' we could turn this into...man, I don't know. A hide-out!"

He really wanted to say clubhouse but there were only two of them and two wasn't exactly a club.

"You think?"

She squeezed partway into the building behind him-- although when she tried to go all the way through the door, the crooks of her wings bumped the frame. She'd have to get down on all fours to get through. ... Or turn back, but she didn't want to dig out those extra clothes so soon.

"It doesn't look like any drug dealers have been around... or like... ghost hobos."

Maurice shuddered all over.

"Don't even talk about ghost hobos, man." He leaned around another doorway. There were only two other rooms in the house: a bedroom and what looked like a pantry.

"...This place has no toilet. It is old..."

"There's probably an outhouse behind it somewhere. Or somewhere that one used to be."

Alessa had some vague, dim memories of houses way on the outskirts of Silent Hill that didn't have any plumbing. Barely any of them had been lived in, though. They were just relics of an older time.

The vampire walked deeper into the house. Beds in old houses sometimes had money hidden in the mattress! Or they did on old TV shows. He leaned down and started plucking at the springs with his claws but started to notice something.

No shadow over him.

He leaned back around the door frame and grinned at the blackbird.

"What's the matter? Can't fit?"

The glowing orange eyes narrowed to slits at him from across the room.

"YOU try being this big and getting through tiny wilderness-hermit doors."

She scooted a little further in, but most of her hindquarters and swishy tail were still on the other side of the doorway.

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