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]

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?"

[foolishwren]

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.

[toothaches]

"Nobody made you turn into stork-zilla you know! I'm going to find all this hidden hobo money and keep it all for myself!"

He disappeared around the corner again, chuckling darkly to himself. He knelt down onto the floor and peered under the bed. More leaves, stray bits of wood, dirt, a couple of dead mice that were more or less fused to the floor. Nothing that looked like hobo treasure.

Maurice carefully pressed his hand down on the mattress and made the old bedframe squeak.

"Hmm...Maybe a bed's too obvious..." And then he thought about where he was and what he was doing. He was down on his hands and knees near a spooky old bed. He remembered the last time he was near a crappy old bed. Maurice felt his unbeating heart drop into his stomach. He fell back on his ass, rolled over, and scrambled back into the main room on his hands and knees looking as if he'd seen a ghost.

[foolishwren]

She let out an irritated chuff but didn't holler after him.

He could keep the hidden hobo money, it was probably covered in syphilis or something.

Instead she focused on slowly wriggling further in. She had worked her hips past the frame when he came scrambling back in.

"--What? What'd you find? ... Was it ghost hobos doin' it?"

[toothaches]

Maurice scrambled onward but caught himself between the birdbeast's ankles before falling flat on his stomach.

He puffed his hair out of his face and grunted. He almost wished it was ghost hobos doin it. "No, just memories...there's nothin' cool here. Besides us, I mean."

[foolishwren]

"... All right, memory man."

Letting out a grunt of her own, she finished worming her way in through the door and dusted herself off with her overlarge hands.

"Well if there's nothing cool here, all this was fairly anticlimactic."

[toothaches]

Maurice let out an ugly snort. "You want something climactic? Go crawl under that bed and get sucked down into crayon and dustbunny warrior Hell. I am not in the mood to play Borrowers."

He clambered out into the open and stood up again, re-checking his backpack and making sure none of the zippers caught on anything.

[foolishwren]

"I'll pass."

Still, it seemed weird that there would be NOTHING out here.

Just in case Maurice managed to miss something in his FRAIDYCAT FIT, Heather started to shuffle around, the tips of her wingfeathers dragging on the floor behind her.

[toothaches]

Maurice wrung his hands together as Heather finally fit inside the house.

There wasn't a lot of room for a bird abomination like Heather to move around. Things creaked and bugs crept through the debris. Spiderwebs caught in her feathers and fur. There were a couple of sealed metal tins thrown in one corner. They were the size of a man's palm, circular, and whatever paint or labels they'd had were long gone thanks to rust.

There were beams near the roof that were a little too small to be called rafters but two things rested on them--a mason jar filled with what looked like dirt and a key that looked like it belonged to some kind of vehicle.

"Heather...Heather, come out. Let's keep exploring, there's nothing here."

[foolishwren]

"Hang on, will ya? It's gonna take me like three whole minutes just to turn arou-- OW!"

In standing up straighter, there was a thunk as she bumped her head on those 'rafters' hard, jostling the jar and sending it down to the floor.

[toothaches]

The jar smashed. Glass scattered across the floor with the leaves and twigs and the carcasses of old bugs. The dirt that had been in the jar plumed in the small space, revealing what had also been in the jar.

Teeth.

Flat teeth, sharp teeth, hollow teeth, teeth with holes, gold teeth, black teeth...


Maurice's face appeared around the door frame. "If you die in there I'm not coming in after you!"

[foolishwren]

Clamping her hands down over her head, Heather gave it a heavy shake, wincing.

"Ow, what the hell, who put those there..."

Blinking, she withdrew one hand and looked at the big heavy claws to see if there was any blood--... and then past them, down at the floor.

And stopped.

".... Uh... Zilla?"

[toothaches]

"What?" Maurice went back on his own word and took a careful step inside. In the dim light he saw the teeth. "Oh, gross."

The teeth began to move.

"Oh, God!"

They quivered and suddenly, all at once, as if yanked by some powerful magnet, stood on their ends and began to slowly turn, drilling themselves into the ground.

"Hey, Heather, how about we, uh, GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE?"

[foolishwren]

Heather's lamplike eyes grew from slits to perfect circles in the gloom.

"Shit!"

She had no reservations about complying with the vampire's suggestion-- but as she awkwardly scrambled on all fours to get through the door, the unsurprising once again occurred.

"--Zilla! Zilla, I'm stuck!"

Heather, you are a giant monster now. GET CREATIVE.

[toothaches]

Maurice couldn't peel his eyes away from the teeth. Some of the smaller ones had already disappeared into the floor, leaving fine piles of dust around the holes.

"Wh--change! Change back! Get smaller! Something!"

Unconsciously he reached out for her enormous claws with his own much, much smaller claws.

[foolishwren]

Heather scrabbled at the red dirt, tearing up great clods of earth in her panic.

But the old house was rickety and the entire doorway had probably been a buffet table for termites at some point. There was a loud creak and a gunfire-snapping of splintering wood as Heather finally broke free, taking out half of the house's facade with her in the process.

[toothaches]

Maurice wheeled his arms and stumbled away from the house. Wood creaked and whined and with the front door frame destroyed the entire structure began to slump sideways like a soggy cardboard box. A few mice abandoned ship before it was too late.

"Heather!" Maurice was torn between fussing over her then and there or trying to drag her huge shaggy ass further away from the demolition site. He tugged on one of her big clawhands anyway.

[foolishwren]

With the doorway still around her middle like a bizarre modern-art skirt, Heather clawed and clambered her way away from the house as fast as she could, her wings beating the air haphazardly.

"I'M COMING! I'M COMING!"

[toothaches]

Once Heather had put a little distance between herself and the house, Maurice moved behind her to both push her giant furry ass and to keep an eye on the crumbling shack. Even though he knew it was his imagination, he could swear he still heard the eerie soft drilling of those teeth spinning down into the earth.

This had been a terrible idea! They had to be cursed or something now and it was all his fault!

"Are you hurt?"

Maurice's brain lit up with sudden memory. He too had broken a door in a similar manner but it had been a doggy door. The wooden frame had scratched him up but he hadn't had a layer of fur and or feathers to protect him.

[foolishwren]

Twisting her head almost all the way around to stare over her shoulder in alarm, she shakes it back and forth.

Because no, aside from the bump on her head, she's not that hurt.

"What the hell WAS that?"

[toothaches]

"I--dunno. I dunno! Nothin' I've ran into before!"

He didn't feel like a very good world-walker then.

Once they were far enough away from the house that the creaking and snapping of old wood couldn't be heard over the sigh of wind through the pines, Maurice stopped pushing her and stooped with his hands on his knees.

He really hoped they weren't cursed or something.

[foolishwren]

"It was teeth. They stood up all by themselves!"

Heather started to get to her dinosaur-like feet, before remembering the WHOLE FREAKIN' DOORWAY around her waist and starting to try and snap it off.

"Rrgh!"

[toothaches]

Maurice shielded his eyes with an arm so that he didn't get a faceful of splinters.

"I think when it comes time to head home we should just go the long way around." He looked up at his friend for a long moment. "The sooner we teach you to fly, the better."