cold_dry_pieces | |[ 017 ]|

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|[ 017 ]|

I.
It’s cold and wet, which is never a good combination. There’s not enough light to see where you are or what’s around you, but the slightest sliver of white is visible in the corner where the sides of this structure don’t quite meet.

Whatever you’re sitting in... it’s thick, and when you’ve let yourself rest in one place for too long it clings to you, thick dark clots that you can’t wipe off because everything else is soaked through, too. It’s hard to know how long you’ve been here; your stomach’s long since stopped growling and you’re starting to feel a bit dizzy, but there’s nowhere to go. The space seems huge but it’s all the same, there’s nothing to be gained by walking around. No way out.

There’s an unpleasant taste in your throat, like you’ve been sucking on pennies.

II.
The walls of this room are white, but it’s clear someone’s tried to make it seem homey. The bright sun streaming through the windows falls on warm, honey-colored wood. A tiny bed, a small round table strewn with crayons and papers, a chair before it. There’s a small dresser against the wall with an empty goldfish bowl on it.

You know, without knowing why, that they’ll be coming for you again, soon. That they’ll ask you questions, and you know you won’t have the right answers for them. You won’t be punished. You’ll be thanked for being so cooperative. And then they’ll bring you back here, and they’ll leave again, and they won’t tell you all the things you need to know.

III.
The headache is dizzying, and you can’t remember how you got here; but you’re gulping air down like it’s a privilege to breathe. Your shoulders ache, arms bound behind you and out of sight, stretched unnaturally around the narrow surface you’re on. It’s hard to say what it is, you can’t turn your head enough to see and you’re too numb from the cold to guess what it is by feel. Your ankles are bound as well, tight enough that there’s little room for movement.

All you can really do is peer into the shadows and wait.

[ooc; open to all! each thread will be treated as a separate instance, unless otherwise arranged. Feel free to enter into any of the scenarios tho the dream might jump between them after, in no particular order <3 all threads ~~may~~will contain disturbing images/topics. May be slow but will backdate forever. If you’re interested in dream!injury/death/etc (which doesn’t necessarily mean real-world injury but might mean real pain,) please ping me via PM or something~]

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Saya sits in blood, and licks it off her hand, her legs askew. This isn't a nightmare for her, even though there is blood on her clothes. Whatever this is, the space is normal, if she were crawlerling, or a little bigger than one spider.

She stares up into the white, and licks her hand again.

Nothing changes, perceptibly. No one arrives. There's only the sudden realization that you're not alone here, Saya. Faintly-- as though it comes from far away, though the eye suggests it can't be more than... twenty feet, perhaps, to the far wall-- there's the sound of someone sniffling, holding back at the verge of tears.

Edited 2010-10-23 06:04 (UTC)

Saya moves through the blood, quietly, and to where someone is crying. She doesn't know much about children - all of her siblings are older, and on the besides, the most she knows to do with children is eat them.

But this one is crying.

"Are you lost?"

The question, the voice-- it's an interruption, a break in a very old pattern. The intrusion forces a stirring of conscious awareness; and so, once she speaks, there is no crying child.

There's a tall shadow behind her. It whispers, loud only by comparison.

"You shouldn't be here..."

Saya looks behind her, and is quiet for a moment. "This isn't my dream," she says, which isn't acknowledgment, but rather is a statement of fact. She doesn't care, really, if she should or shouldn't be here.

"Hello."

"It isn't a dream."

Of course, it is; but he doesn't dream, so why should it be? And it's more than that, as well. The shadow wavers, shifting a little nearer, lingering just at the edge of solidity. What might be hands reach for her wrists, trying to pin her.

What might be hands don't have to work hard to pin her, because she doesn't fight it. She simply looks up into the darkness, and her smile gets more coy, less easy to interpret.

"Then what is this?"

"A fortunate opportunity."

The whisper sounds a little less certain, though. Something about the way she smiles is unsettling. And it's less fun when they don't fight back.

One hand wraps around both of her wrists, bigger than it ought to be with the flexible logic of dreams; the other grabs her by the throat, as he considers.

"Why are you here?"

Saya doesn't stop smiling, even though the hand is on her throat. To begin with, he can't kill her, not in a dream, and Saya doesn't believe in revenge for intention. There is no act here.

"I'm here to make you uncomfortable. And you are, aren't you?"

Even his intention is instinctual; bred, not born. Or born here, if you count it that way (as he does.) Born in blood. But she's right; there's something wrong, and he doubts, shadow fingers flickering uncertainly over her throat, tracing about to find a pulse.

As tempting as she is, she shouldn't be here; here is not where this sort of thing happens. He doesn't let go so much as he dissolves, and when the shadow parts the blood is gone, leaving her in the white-walled room.

A little boy is sitting at the table, using crayons to draw overlapping red and blue trees.

She is bloodless now, as she walks across the white-walled room to where the boy is drawing. Red and blue trees, overlapping: Saya recognizes a circulatory system when she sees one, being intimately familiar with various kinds.

"What are you waiting for?"

"Doctors," he answers promptly, dispassionately. He glances up at her fearlessly, wide-eyed and... well, seemingly like any other child... then turns back to his work. Satisfied with the intricate tracery of lines he sets the crayons aside and starts to fold the paper as one would a fan, into narrow, even strips; once they're blocked out he begins creasing the edges in earnest.

"You're not one of them."

Saya shakes her head. "No," she says. "I'm not a doctor." She reaches down, and sketches a heart with a red crayon - not a cartoon heart, but a real one, with veins.

"Why are you waiting for doctors?"

"Dunno," he answers patiently, looking with interest at her drawing. He pauses in tearing the first strip off his circulatory system to turn the heart upside-down and regard it for a moment, head cocked to one side.

"They're supposed to help. But I don't think I'm sick. And they won' tell me where my brother is."

She offers it to him, and gives him a purple crayon to do what he likes with it. "I would very much dislike it if someone didn't let me see my brother," she tell hims, her eyebrows raising a little.

"What's your brother's name?"

He draws a loose and wobbly circle around it, starting from the bottom and veering off straight down before the lines meet, but when she asks the question it distracts him so the wax stick slides, scrawling at a haphazard angle across the page and onto the desk.

"Dexter," he answers with a sudden urgency. "He's only little. I'm supposed to take care of him."

Saya does not fiddle. She watches him, instead. There are things that children say, that adults do not, and in dreams, the difference is especially pronounced. "Why do you have to take care of him? Don't your parents take care of the both of you?"

"Our mom took care of us."

He looks away, and returns to his first paper, neatly tearing away another strip.

"She said I have to look after him now 'cos she's gone."

He doesn't look sad, not in the least. Sad hasn't gotten him anywhere, so he's given up on feeling.

Saya's smile is coy, but she raises an eyebrow. "And now you're here alone." She folds her long fingers.

"Are you afraid?" Fear is an emotion Saya understands on a peripheral level. She experiences fear, of course, when she is in water, but when she's not it's difficult for her to connect the emotion as something she truly understands.

"Afraid of what?"

He looks up at her again, with eyes far older than a little boy's eyes ought to be. With what he's seen, what he's lost, there aren't many horrors left to the imagination.

Her smiles widens, almost shows teeth, but not quite. The flash of white is from the next words she speaks alone.

"I like you."

"Okay," he answers, with a child's simplicity. His attention turns back to dissecting his paper.

In the visitor corridors criss-crossing thru the sleeping accursed, Luke picked out one of the faint whafting scents to follow back to its - this source.

Keeping to the nightmare's periphery, he carefully leaned into its scape and was greeted by a familiar copper tang.

For the moment, for all intents and purposes, this is a big, empty box; there's nothing but the blood, and familiar though that is it's probably not particularly appetizing. Here and there in the clotted mess is a small, dark, indistinct bulk. Beyond that, there's nothing. There's no one. Just four corrugated steel walls, and a small sea of death.

If it were the only nightmare, he would linger. But other mysteries beckon and he withdraws back into the corridor.

She doesn't know why she's there. Who brought her, who caught her. And she's frightened. Mara's been protected her entire life and in this horrible City... she's never felt so exposed.

She just prays that the next person she sees is a rescuer, not... not anything else.

Whoever or whatever appears next is certainly no rescuer. He appears as just a sliver of shadow, tall and vaguely human, with burning eyes better suited to some nocturnal creature than a man.

In his hands-- one might say its, but something about the profile suggests masculinity-- is a long knife, gleaming in some impossible light. The blade is slightly curved, like a steel Cheshire smile.

"Please, sir, get me out of here."

She has to fight to keep her voice even as tremors start to travel through her body. Is this a memory? Is she remembering what happened to her finally?

Is she going to have to relive it?

He doesn't answer; he only advances, lowering the blade so the flat brushes against her skin. The metal is barely any warmer than the room.

He bends to his work, still in shadow, and turns the knife with a flash of light. He cuts her-- shallow, straight lines, perpendicular to the edge of this workbench-- at regular intervals of a little less than a foot. Not deep, not dangerous; markings for later work.

As soon as the flat of the blade hits her, she starts pleading. "Don't hurt me, please, let me go - I won't tell anyone, I promise..."

But by the time he actually breaks skin and the blood starts to flow, she's crying trying to jerk away from the sharp steel.

It wouldn't be a nightmare without some blood, would it? He's patient, he's exacting: these are not conscious concerns for him, so they translate effortlessly into the dream. What he does is what he must do. This is why so few curses really bother him-- he's all too familiar with compulsion.

But it wouldn't be his nightmare if he accomplished his task; and after the third or fourth even, shallow slice, the blade vanishes from his hands... and the bonds vanish from her wrists and ankles. He takes an uncertain step back.

It takes a moment to understand that the bindings have disappeared, but as soon as they do, Mara rolls off the table. But her numb limbs can't hold her yet and she falls to the ground, pain springing from every cut.

She isn't much of a threat, but it's unexpected; and it's enough to send him into an animal panic, fumbling for a door. There isn't any, though; this room's bare steel, seamless and inviolate. So the shadow stands uncertainly in a corner.

Mara scrambles in the opposite direction, cowering and shivering, still feeling the blood drip down her back.

"Let me g-go, p-please..."

He doesn't approach her or answer that, staring dumbly from across the room at the trickle of blood.

The knife reappears from whatever pocket of dreamery swallowed it, considerably closer to her hands than his.

She grabs the knife and holds it out with shaking fingers.

"St-stay away from me!"

There's a rustle of nervous laughter, like dry leaves on concrete. He whispers.

"Are you planning to use that?"

Her hand is slick with blood and it's difficult to keep the knife in her shaking hand.

"Only if you t-try to... try t-to..."

What was he trying to do, anyway?

"If what?"

The shadow deepens a little and starts across the floor, towards her.

With a shriek, she lashes out with the knife, swinging wildly, all her training forgotten in the haze of panic and fear that surrounds her.

There's as much resistance as one would expect flesh to have, as insubstantial as the eyes might suggest he is. And indeed, the shadow bleeds... More profusely than one might expect, from an uneven and rather shallow cut. It spills from his side, more vividly red than the waking mind could perceive, accomplished by a hoarse roar of shock and rage.

Now, when the walls are turning to mist, might be a good time to run.

Mara takes that opportunity, running as fast as she can in the opposite direction.

And, lucky her, that's all this nightmare has in store. If she stops and turns at all she'll see nothing but blood rushing after her, and growing ever more distant, the pinprick fires of a predator's eyes, until she's too far from this dream to see anything at all.

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she's welcome to non-fatally wound him if you'd like~

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