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

[foolishwren]

The thing about dust in large quantities is that it's still light enough that it could be anything.

Maybe it's just grit falling from the ceiling, or maybe it's a giant trickle of spiders.

Heather was okay with bugs, but that didn't mean she wanted them on her.

A thin shriek and several crashes sounded from above.

[toothaches]

This tiny capillary of the Boxlands had been pinched off temporarily. It didn't pulse or tunnel back to the attic beyond. The dust and old magic that rested here crackled in the little god's presence.

Meanwhile, back on the ground, Maurice stared warily up at the opening his friend had disappeared through.

"...Does that mean you see 'em?"

[foolishwren]

He received no reply but silence.

And then some scrabbling sounds, and the creak of floorboards.

And the telltale warble of something round rolling across the floor after being dislodged.

[toothaches]

The vampire frowned. Alright, it was time to investigate. He hoped nothing had been hiding up there. He'd heard from someone that sometimes snakes hid in attics since heat rose and made them warmer than the undersides of houses. He wasn't sure how much truth that carried but Heather wasn't talking to him.

He set his jaw and took one careful step up the ladder. Maurice cringed when the step whined loudly under his boot.

"Heather?" Another step. Another loud creak. "Don't you get snakebit up there!"

[foolishwren]

There was another creak.

And then, with no warning, a pair of near-perfectly-circular glowing eyes popped into view in the dark doorway to the attic space.

"Dude, your mom's attic SUCKS."

It was Heather! She wasn't snakebit!

... Her voice did sound a hell of a lot more high-pitched than normal, though.

[toothaches]

Maurice paused on the ladder with wide eyes. He'd seen glowing eyes plenty of time in his life. He himself had them. For an instant he wondered if Heather's strange monsterness simply peeked through sometimes.

But those were not glowy human eyes.

"Uh?" Maurice instinctively backed down the ladder again and kept backing up once his shoes hit carpet.

[foolishwren]

"I feel like the roof's gonna cave in any second, holy shit. Lemme down."

What happened next would not reassure him at all.

Because instead of human hands, or even a pair of giant black claws sticking out of a paw the size of a Christmas ham, what clamps down on the edge of the trapdoor is a set of tiny obsidian goblin claws.

[toothaches]

"Woah!" Maurice threw his hands up and stood his ground. "Woah, Heather, you're doin' the bird thing! Please don't catch my house on fire!"

Though those claws didn't look quite like they could deadlift him straight off the ground like they usually could...

[foolishwren]

"What? No I'm n--"

Here's the hard part about trying to climb down a ladder when A) your pant-legs are now twice as long as your ACTUAL legs, and B) you don't realize that your pant-legs are twice as long as your actual legs: you fall.

With a high-pitched holler, something roughly the size of an eight-year-old comes tumbling down the rungs and hits the floor wit a THUD.

[toothaches]

Maurice's protective streak kicked into overdrive as the small sooty goblin creature hit the floor. He rushed forward and instantly reached out for her, not caring that he'd been worried about being burned just seconds before.

"Oh my God! Are you okay? Why are you--" Really shrimpy.

[foolishwren]

Now that she wasn't actively falling, it was time to FLAIL MADLY AGAINST THE NET OF CLOTH ENSNARING HER.

"OW! What the heck!"

Incidentally, 'what the heck' sounds really silly when it's yelled in a high, squeaky voice.

[toothaches]

Maurice reached and withdrew, reached, and withdrew. He didn't want to get scratched!

"Just--hold still dedgummit!" He found her shirt collar and managed to pop it down over her-- her-- or not. "Your big dumb beak is in the way!"

[foolishwren]

"OW!"

Against all odds, Maurice managed to yank the collar down and out popped... a comically tiny black head with two oversized eartufts and a scruff of blond hair.

[toothaches]

Maurice blinked slowly at Heather. His nerves were already pulled squeaking tight, but there was just...something. The whole monster business. The less-than-pleasant adventures they'd shared in the attic before. The fact that they were MILES AND MILES away from home...the sheer absurdity of it all. And now this. And his mother's house.

He started to snicker.

And then he started to laugh.

He held his stomach and leaned forward, losing his shit over this...this SOOT GOBLIN THING that his friend had become--the friend who could pick him up by his ankles and hide shit from him on top of the fridge.

[foolishwren]

The little blackbird imp thing gaped at Maurice for a moment, beak open in outrage.

"... WHAT! What's so funny? Stop laughing! ... Why are you HUGE?"

[toothaches]

"I'm-- I'm sorry!" He said in between bouts of laughter, but didn't sound very sorry. "I think--I think you went into the wrong attic!"

He sank to his knees and reached out for her claws so he could hold one up and show her.

[foolishwren]

"What do you MEAN, I went into the wrong--"

And then the words died in her throat as her COMICALLY SMALL CLAWS were held in front of her eyes, which went very circular at the sight.

She was silent a moment.

"... What the."

[toothaches]

Maurice's snorting and giggling died away. He was the older brother and he had a job to do. Without asking, he reached out and grabbed up the little bird creature around the middle with one arm and stooped down to fold the attic ladder up to where it belonged.

"We're lettin' all the cold air in here. C'mon."

And he wagged her into the living room where there was more light and a large glass door for her to see herself in. He put her down squarely in front of it.

[foolishwren]

"H- HEY!"

It's her customary response to being picked up unexpectedly, but when she's THIS small, there's even less she can do about it.

But any and all protesting ceases when she's set down in front of the door.

She stares.

".... What the fuck."

[toothaches]

"See what I mean?" He brushed the soot off of his arms. Was he worried? Sure! Maurice was always worried about something. But freaking out wasn't going to help them. Being in his own home helped steady him.

His mom would know what to do.

But did he...really want her to see this? She had a vampire for a son and had seen all kinds of things, but Heather did the spooky halo thing sometimes and he wasn't sure how well that'd fly with Margret Hutch. He shook himself. She wouldn't be back for a while.

"Did you see anything weird up there?"

[foolishwren]

"Wh-- no! I just had a bunch of dust hit me in the eye when I looked up! I thought it was like... spiders and shit!"

She leaned in to squint suspiciously at her reflection, only to startle back when the length of her beak resulted in her INADVERTENTLY PECKING THE WINDOW.

[toothaches]

Maurice puffed out a little sigh and bent down, hands on his knees, and looked into his lack of a reflection next to Heather's.

"Try to change? I mean, if you can make yourself fifteen feet tall..."

[foolishwren]

She went quiet for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut and visibly straining, her bottlebrush tail sticking straight out behind her for a moment.

"... I can't. ... Maurice, I can't!"

A note of panic had entered her voice.

WHAT IF SHE WAS STUCK LIKE THIS?

[toothaches]

Uh oh.

"Don't panic!" He lifted his hands in a sort of shooshing gesture. "Don't panic! I've gotten stuck plenty of times! I think--maybe you just need to wind down. Yeah."

Maurice was the one who was starting to panic.

"You wanna watch some TV?" He abandoned her by the door and rushed to the sofa where he started fishing for the remote between the cushions. "We can watch some TV."

[foolishwren]

Her hair is doing the Ghibli thing.

"TV?! How's TV supposed to help?! I'm like, three feet tall!"