Topic: We are the wild ones

Unorthodox

Date: 2014-08-10 20:29 EST
"I need this."

"Do you? Do you really? You look like a common harlot."

"There is blending that needs to happen. What? Do you think no one will notice that I am gone? They will all come searching."

"...."

"Don't be afraid. They can't will me away a second time. The world is older. They are older."

"You are older."

"But I have something they don't have. I have patience. We are not all the same, you know? You think my kin and I are sloppy and fucking out of control. Maybe. Maybe we once were. Maybe we still are. But I waited. I waited long, in the dark, gone and banished. Do you think I would be stupid enough to barrel into their arms with out some kind of plan?"

"I want to be here for you. I want to do this for you. You were gone a long time."

"And now I am here. And you are here. And you are going to do this for me because you, somewhere in that corpse, loved me once upon a time. Didn't you?"

"....."

"I remember. I thought of you every minute in that fucking tomb. There was not a moment that I was not encouraged to survive because of you."

"I did love you. I do love you."

"I know you do, sweet, sweet thing. You were always, and will always be, my favorite. Till the end."

"... Will this be the end?"

"Yes."

"Will I see you again?"

Blood splashed. A riot of red against the walls. It pooled so darkly at the tiled floor. Bones clattered in a wet slump inside a saggy carapace.

"No."

Unorthodox

Date: 2014-08-17 20:26 EST
"When do you think they will come?"

Pop. Gum snapped loudly. Her lips were red. Too red, if he had anything to say about it. They were a beacon.

"Possibly never. Possibly tonight. Many of the original Thirteen are gone. Long dead. Ashes to ashes. Few will remember. Few will want to support another war. There is no telling if they will even give a fuck."

"What are you going to do till then? I can't see you just lurking around. You've been gone a long time, and things have changed, but you seem to have a grasp on that given the suit you've chosen to wear. Did you find her on a corner in a red light district?"

Another pop. Her gum was obnoxious to his ears. Her lips, however, were where he sunk his attention.

They were so damn red.

"She caught my eye, you see. And you know how catching my eye can be good, or bad. I think she wanted it. She begged as only a woman who needs release begs. And I gave it to her. I'm not heartless."

An expert of becoming a snake in the grass. She avoided the first pinch of his question but not for long. The gum stretched over her tongue. Reclaimed by teeth.

"I'm not sure what I will do till then. Rest. Explore. Venture out into a world I feel like the Thirteen tried to keep from me. No reason to not attempt to build up my bloodline again. I miss them. I miss being their protector."

"They gave everything for you, m'lady."

"I don't like that. Noelle."

"Noelle? What a ridiculous fucking name. Who picked that out for you?"

"It was hers. I took it a long with what you see. I'm not picky on names. As long as it is me beneath the moniker. Don't pretend you don't want to experience this body, Isaiah."

"It is your lips I am having trouble with."

And she laughed.

Unorthodox

Date: 2014-08-31 19:44 EST
"Isaiah!"

He came with out needing another howl from her. The halls were dark but the room she was in was lit with a navy light glow from the television. He stopped in the doorway.

"What is this?" The volume of the television was turned up. What came from the speakers was a cherished hymn of sound. It made her tap her fingers across a naked knee.

"It's a music video."

"Music? This isn't music."

"It is." He watched the thrashing of the figures on screen.

"People enjoy this?"

"Very much, my lady." He didn't look at the scathing look the feral herald gave. "Noelle."

"I think I just found a way to resume my bloodline, Isaiah."

Isaiah smirked. He brought his cup of coffee to his lips.

Unorthodox

Date: 2014-09-01 20:40 EST
Candle light flickered; trembling tongues of flame painted the old walls Persian orange and saffron. This place smelled of frigid flesh. Of fresh bodies. Of blood that was no longer spilled.

Things had been devoured here.

Empty eye sockets, exposed teeth. A thousand scales rubbing against one another created a constant sound. Roiling, coiling, embedded in a dead heap. The kingdom of Sodom was here as a heap of corpses.

Bones began to snap. Began to crumble. Ashes to ashes; they petrified to dust and scattered their bonepowder in sighs from the cracks of the boreal walls.

"Have you had enough?"

Isaiah, who enjoyed leaning, did so in the oval lining of the entrance. A coffee mug blown into. Too hot. The steam fit well in this macabre tomb.

Many mouths began to move. They heralded sharp teeth, like sharks, and had no eyes. Fork tongues be damned; they rattled several. Penetrating past dead-man lips, curling as sloe vines around broken necks.

This language was not for the dearly departed. It was for those that had never been birthed properly.

Isiah squinted. The bulk of the beast shifting beneath all the deceased. He rolled his hand to the side. A watch on his wrist glinted more light than the diabolical scales.

"It is just past nine, my la-- Noelle. Shall I get the car ready?"

A single cadaver tumbled down. The eye behind it, wide and the color of an amber dusk, studied him.

"Excellent choice. I haven't been able to drive the Rolls Royce yet."

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-08-15 00:29 EST
December 22nd, 2014

Every step felt heavy.

He aimed to push off on the heel while digging his rubber toes into the corners. Long legs helped keep him at a quick pace. The wind through his hair, on his freshly shaved face. He had shaved specifically for Holly. She had told him once that when it started to grow it lessened his charm. Made him seem less the picture perfect boyfriend. So it was almost every morning for two months now that he would get up specifically to put the razor to his face.

And now it just stung with how the temperature had dropped.

Further into the maze of alleys he went. He thought it smart to avoid the spotlights of lamps lining all around the streets. He thought that the dark would help him blend in with his dark jeans and the black hoodie. Only sign of life coming from the scuffing struggle of his shoes to moistened asphalt from an earlier dusting of snow and a tear away of vapor every time he breathed. Panting like a dog, no, a wolf.

He stumbled down the corridor between the meat deli and the run down laundry mat. Took a quick right through the open drive that separated Mickey's Pub from the Chinese food place that he used to joke about, saying they served cats and dogs. He wanted to take Holly on a date to the pizza place he ran into, the glass of the door trembling when he tripped up on the slippery sidewalk. They had some of the best garlic knots he had ever tried.

To do that, though, he had to keep running.

The streets is where he ended up, further to the outskirts of two main intersections that were dead at this time of night. Empty, void of passing cars which kept the stoplight from changing from red to green. He had to stop here, in the very center of it, his lungs stinging with every gulp of frigid December air he took in. Hands to his slightly bent knees. The rush of his long distance marathon bringing on that flare up of heat to cramp at his thighs.

Breathing in, breathing out. Sweat had formed over his temples and was growing cold as it dribbled down his cheeks.

It was quiet here. The world might have stopped turning because he heard nothing. No city hustle and bustle from the belly of West End. No train howling out that it was on the move. Just dead air. Silence. Not even a hint of white noise.

He suddenly felt vulnerable.

"Hello, Peter. Or do you prefer Pete? Maybe Calhoun?"

So quiet that the snap of gum was like a gunshot.

He really wished it was a gunshot.

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-08-16 02:35 EST
December 22nd, 2014

He never knew how easy it was for his bones to break.

Sick is the snapping sound. Dry twigs being broken in two, maybe more. The pain was shooting into his eyes before spearing through the back of his skull. Nerve endings were fickle things; the sudden crack of his shin was felt not only in his leg but at the base of his spine. That could have been from the immediate way he crumbled with a certain impact to the street. Back of his head met face to face with the cold concrete.

He could smell blood during his painful shriek. A gut wrenching noise he had never heard himself make before. A rabbit screaming in pain. Pigs in the slaughter. An animal in severe discomfort.

The stars looked brighter when he finally opened his eyes. Wide with terror but by default; he knew what was coming. They were mostly wide from the shell shock of injury.

Breathe, you fucking idiot! BREATHE, he thought to himself before she was on him. Fingers gripping into the front of the hoodie. Tearing at the fabric as easy as she had broke his shin.

"I don't want to do this, Calhoun. I really, really don't."

Both her hands now gripped at his shoulders to hoist him in an awkward slouch. His own hands combing down his leg, trembling as they did.

"YOU BITCH!" Spit flew from his mouth as he cried out. She didn't flinch; she settled before him, crouched, reaching to wipe some of the foam from the corners of his mouth.

"Calhoun, I need you to listen closely." Red lips, so damn red. He focused on their candied apple appearance like some kind of beacon for his mental state. "Because if you don't, I'm going to kill you and leave very little behind for your pack to come pick up. There will be no burial for you. No ritual. You'll be lost and they won't be able to help you. Let me know you understand by saying you understand."

"I -- I und-- under -- stand." Voice still worked. Barely, but he afforded enough to make the woman smile.

Who knew she was able to do such a thing; he wondered if that was a good sign or a bad sign.

"Good. Now. I need you tell me where Luka is. And before you tell me you don't know, remember: I don't have very much patience."

"I don't!" Suddenly he was able to speak relatively well. A surefire sign that he was lying. He tried to dumb it down, stuttering as the salt water in his eyes started to fall at a faster pace. "Please, I -- I don't -- know where he is. Please. Please, they never told me!"

That smile she had been wearing was slowly fading. The red seemed less appealing now. More menacing. More vivid in it's ability to turn rabid.

"Let's try this again. Okay?" Her fingers dug in deeper. They were no longer clawing at the hoodie but had begun slicing past his skin. So easy, like he was made of tissue paper. He could have sworn he felt her prick at his lungs which only made him howl, gasping with globs of saliva stretching with the way his mouth opened wide.

"Where. Is. He?" Each word was uttered plainly, stern, a parent chastising a child.

"OKAY! Okay! I will tell you! I'll fucking -- I'll fucking tell you!"

"Better." Fingers began to retrace their steps by pulling from the depth of his chest. "Much better. Now, tell me where I can find him."

"I'll make a -- deal with you." It was worth a shot. A shot in the dark but a shot nonetheless. He stumble tongued it out, head bowed down. He couldn't look at the red anymore.

"What kind of deal?" She seemed to purr.

He never thought it would come to this.

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-08-16 16:53 EST
Isaiah was not a man easily dissected. He wore his face like a mask that never changed. Didn't bother to paint it in some casual shade of interest in most things. His lips didn't smile often but when they did it was a thin gesture, as thin as his amusement. She had told him once that his eyes reminded her of the same stone she had been prisoner to. He wondered if he could imprison her with a stare.

Unfortunate that it didn't seem to work given how he looked at her now. Laid out across the bed with the only shackles being rumpled sheets. She was a terrifying thing of beauty.

"Isaiah." Groaned, raspy by being half asleep. It was not delicate, not finely tuned. It sounded almost as a whine.

He thought to maybe take back his study of her; terrifyingly beautiful things didn't sound like that. Isaiah did not look away when she surfaced from the shadows on the bed.

"Yes?"

"Where is Peter?"

Isaiah was good at hiding it but to the trained eye one could pick out the valuable sign of a twitch to his brow area.

"I believe he has gone to run some errands." Which was truth. He folded his arms across the front of his chest. Isaiah was not swollen with muscle. He was on the lean side but made up for it in height. Many may have wondered what had appealed to her when looking at him. "Shall I have him come back right away?"

She was toying with a stray thread from the stitching of the sheet she pulled over her front. Isaiah still stared and she was unabashed to admit she enjoyed it. A personal favorite, one would assume, was to keep the man staring.

She wanted him to be afraid to blink around her.

"No, don't bother. Will you run me a bath, then?"

"Of course."

"Make sure it is warm."

"Of course."

"And make sure you use the one's from Friday."

Isaiah finally did blink. It matched well when he bent his head in a quiet acknowledgement. She twisted at the thread and snapped it off, holding it level with her eyes to inspect it.

"Leave the door open so I can hear them when you cut their throats."

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-08-19 15:28 EST
"Isaiah. Call her."

"Before I do that, I think you need to know what a terrible idea I think this is."

"Good thing that I don't care. Call. Her."

Isaiah left the room with his fingers curled tightly at the tongue of his tie. Not unlike a noose when he felt it squeeze at his throat. He imagined that it was her hands that were putting so much pressure at his windpipe.

Deep breath in, slow to usher it out. His nerves were burning hot when the phone was lifted to his ear. It rang for what felt like an eternity.

"Hello?"

He was quiet. That voice commanded it with out meaning to.

This is a bad idea.

"Hello, Nim. This is --"

"Isaiah. I know who you are. What do you want?"

Trying to clear his throat to reclaim some small sliver of confidence.

"I was instructed to call you on behalf of my mistress. She would like to inquire about meeting with you on neutral ground, if you would be so inclined to accept."

Silence again but this time more from the other end. The one he spoke to didn't need to breathe unlike Isaiah who did so with a structured countdown.

"Why?"

"I think it would be best left to her to explain rather than myself."

The other end laughed. It pooled into the phone, slithering through his ears. He was not comfortable in the slightest with how it delicately tore into his psyche.

"Oh, so she wants a word but can't call herself? Your mistress seems to think that I still play by the old world rules. Is she too busy to contact me herself?"

"Actually --"

"Never mind. I'll indulge her if only because it's been so long."

That sigh of relief was louder than he anticipated.

"Very well. Where would you feel comfortable meeting her?"

"South of downtown, there is a club. DV8. Midnight, no earlier, no later. Tell her that she's not welcome to poach there, either."

When the line went dead, Isaiah turned. He stared at the phone within the cup of his palm.

He idly wondered if he should bring the umbrella; it felt like it might rain.

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-09-04 15:23 EST
There were dragons here.

They lacked scales but came as giants wafting in smoke. Opium hovered with wide maws, all open, swallowing faces whole while devouring the bad parts of all those corrupt skulls. They weren't picky. They did not loom over specific prey. All that laid within the quiet, soft red of this haven were taken on a far away trip once they let the dragons in their lungs. Chasing their vaporous tails were fleshy fingers, rolled back eyes that lost their color. The whites were as blinding as bleached bone.

"Remember, no poaching." Isaiah didn't feel the typical spell of the serpentine hoses all attached to the hand crafted towers. They expelled a substance that could not contest to what he felt with Butchers blood on his tongue. He ignored the prowling hands of half naked women that scaled his legs. They were like sirens trying to bring him to his knees.

"Yeah, I get it. No poaching. It would be easy, too easy, to do it here." Her lips were as red as the lights in this wide room of pillows. They blended, made them seem less menacing.

This place was a sinners version of heaven. Butcher had no place here; she couldn't contain the small bit of recklessness that wanted to leave them all in pieces. Show Nim that this was child's play.

Above, they could hear the clubs bass rumble through the ceiling. Where they were at was an off limits society. This was the heart of the beast while the rest was just a fake skin for the public to fall for.

Butcher felt fingers touching at the back of her bare calf.

"I think this one likes me."

Isaiah managed to rescue the thin line of his mouth before it could smirk. A slight woman, emaciated seeming from wasting away in the throes of the dragon's den, half concealed in slumping clothes, motioned them over. Weighted, sagging in wide sweeps of silk and sheer fabric, was a makeshift wall to separate the sheep from the wolf.

"Let's hope this one likes you, too." Isaiah murmured it aside to Butcher when they began moving forward.

Blood Sutra

Date: 2015-09-21 14:40 EST
She loathed the Western monsters.

Versions of them, multiplying like diseased rats, clutching onto their ridiculous customs that kept them vying for higher positions. They never really left their humane debates of politics behind with their last shred of breath, did they? Those that she met were mutated husks that smelled of centuries old flesh, crooked in their words just as they were with their hunched spines.

She loathed the West.

Two women gently clawed up her crossed legs as she sat. One to each side, mumbling incoherently against the cool skin revealed there. Just like them, she was barely covered up in thin gauze of robes. Drooping over bones, across valleys of flesh. Soft lipped, lily's of the East that seemed to hunger for whatever the Thrashing Dragon had provided them. Doll eyed in their glossed over stares that barely seemed to register the newest arrivals.

Isaiah seemed hesitant to go any further while Butcher took the reins at settling in front of Nim. The dim lighting brought on a hazy element to them all, making them appear creamy.

"You have ten minutes." She had no urge to stretch out this meeting any longer than needed to. Nim's hand gently began to comb through black hair. Black as night, starless, thick as a snakes belly.

"How willing would you be to part with it?" Butcher didn't hesitate; the first question launched out with a half smile. A crescent shape that bordered on Cheshire.

"It? Be more specific, Shaitan. Or are they calling you something else these days?" Feigning a clueless nature wouldn't work long. That name, however, was debuted in the fashion of prodding at a beast who had been asleep for far too long to remember it's way around these places.

Isaiah flinched with annoyance hearing it. Butcher seemed unable to react at face value.

"Butcher. Noelle Butcher."

"Butcher? That's fitting."

"You know what I am talking about, Nim. You're not as good at playing dumb as you think."

Fingers creased tighter, gripping a handful of hair not her own. The girl to her right didn't wince. The mythical dream state of opium keeping her sedated at the feet of Nim.

"What makes you think that I would ever give that up to you? Of all people? You're not even human; of all things. Better yet, what has you so enthralled with it that you would think coming here is a good idea? For either of you?"

Attention shifted between Butcher to Isaiah, and back again. They were out of their minds. The madness was real in the slow dying blood that she could smell in their veins. A sludge of what once flowed freely, a shadow of itself when it had rotted out of revenge.

"Because I have something to trade for it."

Nim laughed. A chilling sound. Boiling water turning to ice.

"Trade? What would you have to fucking trade me, Shaitan? You've been gone a long, long time, and you're weak. Weak, and stupid."

Red lips. Even a viper should be wary of that color. Her smile grew ten fold and bordered on lunacy.

"The bones of Olan."

Dead air. This world within a world, below the ground, asphyxiating in smoke and great ferocity, went still. Nim went still.

"Olan the Black."

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-09-21 18:05 EST
"How did you know that would work?"

Isaiah drove through the network of the city, dodging the heavier traffic that congested the streets as the bars let out. Prime time prey lined up like pretty samples; he wondered what Butcher would enjoy more, blond, brunette, or a red head?

The lights that glossed over them both seemed stifled when dragged across Butcher. Snagging on the seams of a plastic shell. It was sleek enough to catch eyes but dying under the circumstances. Feeling like it was too tight at times. Her posture in the passengers side was lax even with the earlier tension still fastened to how Isaiah postured himself.

"Calm down, Isaiah."

"I'm not sure that is possible given you've just made a deal with that woman. How did you know it would work?" Again, repeating his question from only a moment before.

"Everyone has something they want. Everyone is willing to make a deal to get it. It wasn't hard to guess she would give up the stone in a fair trade. We both leave happy."

"Yes, but, how?"

"Isaiah, I don't need you questioning how I obtain anything. I'm starting to think you just want the gory details to jerk off to later."

"As insulted as I am that you would think I'd find --"

"Isaiah."

"-- that kind of comment true to the type of man --"

"Isaiah."

"-- I am --"

"Isaiah!"

"What?"

"Look." She had been pointing out the side of her window, keeping it afloat on the breeze brought on by the speed they were going. Isaiah was slow to actually be baited to glance but when he did, he almost slammed on the brakes. The car veered off a long the road till it jumped a curb and stayed at a standstill.

Above DV8, the place they had just been at, swirled a large tube of dark outlines. Twisting at a medium pace, thousands of images that were lined like thin bodies all clawing in an unseen veil.

"Seems she was impulsive enough to start it." Butcher drawled the words. Her eyes hungrily devouring the sight that would put all her plans in motion.

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-09-22 12:04 EST
He looked like an ox blooded man. His head was too square, shoulders too broad, chest too barrel. Everything about him screamed thick, impulsive, a natural disaster in skin. Where a five o'clock shadow should be there was more of an eight o'clock beard, sewn tight through the jawline and up into his side burns. While the rest of him was a monster it was his eyes that were small. Beady things, almost black like the color had been stained away. In his collection of shirt, pants, and shoes, nothing stood out to be name brand, and was worn with no care in judgement.

This was her man.

"Isaiah, get our guest something to drink."

Isaiah thought his glare from the door way would go unnoticed. He sometimes was a silly man, smart enough to deactivate a doomsday device but unable to direct his possessiveness anywhere else. Butcher had to repeat herself. She hated repeating herself.

"Isaiah, I said, get our guest something to drink."

"Right away."

The boulder of a man across from her dwarfed her in comparison. His shadow utterly looming, and for good reason. It was part of his gimmick. The charm of a beast that made the crowd part on instinct. She couldn't help but wonder what kind of scars he held, inside and out, but her smile was there to help circumvent her motives.

Isaiah was purposefully loud in the kitchen, a domain she rarely sought. Her culinary skills weren't superb; she knew how to snap necks, not baste a chicken. The noise went on for a few moments, with her staring at the monolith of a man and him staring back at a whip-spined woman. Her features began to grow annoyed, tick by tick, till she launched a yell over her shoulder.

"Stop fucking sulking! I'm not replacing you!"

No hair to sweep back but she did the gesture. A gentle preen to the shaved side of her skull, collecting her composure.

"You'll have to get used to Isaiah if you want to work for me, honey. And I'm too tired to go into the specifics, that little cat and mouse game that I suppose you thought I would play. Let's cut to the chase. Who told you I was here? And just who do you think you are?"

Half sung, half snarled. A b?te noire that used sex appeal as a weapon.

"Peter."

"Peter sent you?" She hadn't laid eyes on him in what seemed like weeks. Her best guess was that he had wallowed back into the normal shallows of the world, taking her deal and running for cover. The hunt for him hadn't been put into motion because there was little need for it. Waste not the energy for insects. "Where is Peter?"

"No."

His voice was the shadow of a mountain. It was thick, roamed where it pleased, possessed the feel of a titan who had long been sleeping.

"I am Peter."

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-09-23 15:35 EST
It all happened so fast. In the blink of an eye she had been cornered, caged by the jagged hills of sinew she had been admiring, snuffed out by the pale wall her shoulders were pinned to. He did it with the force of a god. Inhuman enough to quake the solid structure of the haven. Her outline cracking paint and sheet rock with the impact heard well outside the walls. This type of violence was based off judgment; his face shadowed by the way his head tilted, every ounce of his strength trained in putting down the dark parts of this world. She had seen it once before but never been the springboard for it to bounce off from. Fingers became blunt ribbons to tie off the stem of her throat, crushing the wind pipe with a crackle of air bubbles, of blood clinking around like loose change.

He kept her there with out a twitch in his bicep, a flex of his wrist, settling her like a mantle piece that he would soon toss aside. A piece of junk to join the bones he had buried. He stifled her instinct to retaliate while she was busy stewing in her own pain. It had to be immense for a woman like her. Pretending to be an animated corpse when he knew there was a sliver of something alive behind her eyes, coiled as a dormant leviathan in a locked chest she used as a heart.

"Did you think I'd stay quiet when you threatened my host?" He wanted to know, so he asked. Only a breath of curiosity located in the foreign rubble of his tone. When she attempted to utter a response, his fingers tightened, already summoning up a wreath of bruises to her waxen skin.

"Are you frightened, Shaitan?" A bear toying with a snake. His grin was not of maliciousness but devout to this evaluation. "My host made a deal with you. His decision to do so was based on fear. I will not uphold such a contract made with you."

Isaiah watched from the entrance way to the kitchen, fisting at two cups of tea. He had chosen silver needle white knowing it was a favorite scent to Butcher. Any action seemed to be under the petrified state of his stance on the matter. Briefly, he made eye contact with the behemoth who had shattered the quiet moments before when he had chosen to defile his mistress. Calhoun wore a question on his lips. What will you do, Isaiah?

Isaiah had no question to aim back at the Promethean, taking a sip of tea that carefully obstructed a small, manic smile.