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aplaceinthedark · 3 months

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UGLY human NATURE

a WITCH story

Word Count: 2.5k+

CW: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, supernatural themes, body horror, depictions of graphic violence, witchcraft, description of digging up a body, owls (listen, don't judge, those things are freaky little fucks)

Nicholas panicked as he tried to assemble the pieces of what had once been his best friend.

Tears streamed down his face as he tried to remember what his Granny taught him about healing, but this seemed to be way beyond the healing point. This was probably at the Resurrecting-The-Dead point, and he knew that there would be nothing in Granny’s vast knowledge or hex books about this.

“What’s dead should stay dead,” Granny had once taught him, in reference to what went on in the woods behind her house. “Those who die in these Woods don't tend to stay dead.” But Granny didn’t know that his best friend, his brother, had been lost to that curse, and Nicholas was not going to lose Noah again.

But it looked like he was going to anyway.

He hadn’t meant to unleash his magic on Noah, but it had acted as a defense mechanism. And Noah… well… he still couldn’t figure out what had happened.

Nicholas had heard the sound of his name being called by a voice he hadn’t heard in a year. That should’ve been his first warning. You don’t go responding to voices coming from the Woods; that was practically Rule Number One in the Appalachian Mountains. Except he would raise hell and haint if it meant bringing Noah home. So he crawled out the guest room window of his Granny’s house and ran into the Woods.

He didn’t call out for Noah. That was a rule he wouldn’t break. But after several minutes of walking, he didn’t need to. There stood Noah, all six foot three inches of him, probably twenty feet away, looking like death. Noah smiled in relief when his dark eyes met his.

They both had taken a step towards each other when Noah had doubled over, crying out in pain, and then something cracked in him. Cracked multiple times as Noah seemed to grow even taller. His limbs snapped and elongated, like he was a tree growing in fast motion. An old nursery rhyme came to Nicholas’ mind as it tried to comprehend what was happening right before him.

The Towering Man will lure you from your home And into the Woods where deep he roams He’ll snap your bones like brittle sticks After drawing you in with his clever little tricks

If you’re good and listen to your mama You’ll have no worries, you’ll have no drama Best keep your eyes upon the beaten path, Unless you want to taste the tree man’s wrath.

Nicholas tried running, but he knew that his legs were no match for this abomination’s long appendages. Before he knew it, he was pinned to the ground, fighting for his life to get free. He managed to get a hand behind him, and suddenly his eyes were blinded by a bright light, and he was assaulted by a splitting headache. The pressure on him disappeared, and he scrambled up onto his feet.

But when he turned around to survey what he had released, he fell back onto his knees.

The creature was back to being Noah, but everything was wrong. Broken limbs, some twisted and snapped clean off. Instead of bones, there were sticks. But that was undoubtedly Noah’s face, staring up at him with lifeless eyes. Play with fire and you’ll get burned; another of Granny’s lessons.

He didn’t know why he was trying to put Noah back together like some kind of twisted puzzle or broken doll. All he knew was that he had to fix this before anyone found out. Tears dripped from his face and splashed onto the mix of skin and bark of his friend.

“Please, come back. I can’t lose you again,” he said. He tried to summon something, anything, to get his friend back. And the Woods answered.

Something was shining on his face. It wasn’t until it dripped down onto Noah’s body that he realized the light was coming from his tears, and where they landed, they quickly dissolved into Noah’s skin. The tears on Nicholas’ hands started to glow as well, and then his hands began glowing. He scrambled to put them on Noah’s chest.

The light spread through the veins in Noah’s chest and through his limbs. With cracking and rustling sounds, the skin mended together, but retained the bark texture. Noah’s iris’ glowed gold, and suddenly his head twisted with a snap to look at Nicholas. His arm shot out, grabbing a fistful of Nicholas’ short hair to pull him closer.

A yelp left Nicholas’ mouth, and for a second he thought that he had made a mistake; that he had let Noah’s quest to kill him continue, but Noah stopped pulling when Nicholas was hovering only a few inches over him. If someone happened to see them, they would probably think that they were about to kiss. Memories of what happened between them a few years ago came unbidden to Nicholas’ mind, and he had to fight the rush of heat to his face.

“You… idiot,” Noah gasped out.

Nicholas laughed as the golden light left Noah’s eyes, and then he fell over, passed out cold.

And that was how Nicholas Ruffilo became the Witch, the practitioner of the Shenandoah Valley.

Nicholas had only ever set eyes on one haint in his life, and that was Noah. The Black Stag didn’t count because it had been a god. So meeting Nick and Joakim was unnerving.

Especially when one was a large, mangy-looking wolf and the other was a literal naked corpse.

“I… uh… hope I’m not too late,” he said, looking nervously between the two.

A few hours ago, he had been mindlessly sketching some tattoo designs for a client, when he felt like his brain was getting lobotomized. At first, it was just one word:

HELP.

It was easy to ignore at first. Just his mind playing tricks on him, probably from the combination of lack of sleep and the blue light of his tablet. But then he heard the voice again, with less pain and more familiarity:

NICK NICK NICK HELP NICK PLEASE HELP.

And with that, he jumped into action.

If that really was Noah talking in his head, then the first place he should look was where he last saw him: in the old oak grove.

Nicholas practically sprinted into the woods, then doubled back because he realized that he might need a shovel, and then he was back on the task at hand. He felt reassured when he saw two figures in the hollow, because why else would two random people meet in this place? Then again, why would these two particular… beings be there at all?

That’s when the dog shifted into a teenage boy, and Nicholas’ heart stopped.

“Nick Folio, at your service,” the boy said, grinning. His teeth were too long and sharp to be normal, but that’s not what unnerved Nicholas.

Judging from the sudden tilting of his head, Nick must’ve been close to knowing why. “Have we met before?” he asked.

“I… Umm…”

“We have a task at hand,” the walking corpse said, though it looked like he had been perfectly fine to let the wolf do all the work.

“Do you even know why we’re doing this?” Nick asked, turning back towards the man.

“I do,” Nicholas said. The two haints looked at him. “There’s someone you need to meet.”

Between Nick’s claws and Nicholas’ shovel, they made quick work of the dirt. Nicholas didn’t have a clue how deep they would have to dig, but after a few feet, he had his answer when a dirty hand broke through the dark earth.

Nicholas threw aside the shovel as Nick shifted back into human form once again, and the two grabbed ahold of the hand and pulled. Eventually, another body emerged and crawled out. It was completely caked in mud, but Nicholas couldn’t help but gape at its head.

For immense branches were sprouting from it, giving the appearance of antlers.

“W… Water,” the man gasped in a familiar voice.

Nicholas was dreading this meeting.

He was tired of Granny trying to set him up with women. Didn’t matter where they were, she would ask anyone that looked even slightly close to his age if they were single. And at the old age of thirty, it embarrassed him to no end. He was also unfortunately raised to be a gentleman to strangers, so when Granny said that there was a “poor girl living by herself who needed help,” he couldn’t help but internally scream at his nice guy heart.

But he was more interested in the fact that this girl had moved into Noah’s old house, despite the warning signs that were placed around the property and told throughout the town. Hell, Granny even told her about the offerings, and who wouldn’t run after hearing someone tell you to chuck a few animal bones into a tithing plate?

So either the girl was stupid, or she was brave - which was another word for stupid, in his mind.

As he got out of his car, Nicholas could sense a familiar presence on the edge of the property. To the unknowing or untrained eye, it might feel like a chill going up the spine, or as Nicholas’ family would say, “like someone walking over your grave.” But he was trained and knowing of what crept through this neck of the woods.

He knew in his soul when his eyes met the creature’s, and he leveled a look that said behave. He could hear a chuckle in his mind, one that would unnerve even the bravest hiker.

GOOD LUCK. THEY’RE SOMETHING ELSE.

Noah’s voice was, of course, no comfort. Of course Noah would’ve spied on the newcomer. It used to be his house, after all. But that use of pronouns at least shed some light so Nicholas could be polite.

Nicholas knocked on the door, acknowledging the silver platter that was neatly arranged to the left of the doorway, and waited. And waited.

And then the door opened, and he realized he might need Noah’s warning.

Their dark blonde hair was half up in a bun, the lower half barely reaching their shoulders. It left their angular face on full display, big brown eyes staring up at him. He couldn’t help the thought of how much those eyes reminded him of Noah’s.

He managed to find his words before he could choke on his tongue. “I’m Nicholas,” he said. He punctuated his words with a small lift of the corners of his mouth.

They looked like they were surprised by his appearance as well. “Taylor.”

Something was off with the Woods, and with Nicholas as well.

His body lurches, causing his eyes to pop open. He gulps down a lungful of air to still his racing heart, though he knows it’s no use. Not this again…

Taylor stirs underneath him. "Nn… Nick? What's wrong?” they ask, their voice clogged with the sleep of the dead.

Another nightmare, he wants to say as he sits up, but his mouth is dry and his tongue sticks to its roof. He scrubs his face with a tattooed hand and then rips the hair-tie out of his half undone ponytail. He feels like he’s about to jump out of his skin. He wants to scream. “I need a smoke.”

“Nick, wait–” He doesn’t hear the rest of Taylor's protest as he scrambles out of the bed, pulls some joggers on, and all but runs out the door.

It was chillier outside, despite the sweats and hoodie he managed to pull on over his bare skin. Probably should've put on shoes, he thinks as he lights up a cigarette with shaky fingers.

Normally he would say that the off-ness he was feeling was because of the Woods, but a part of him says that it’s different. He can feel the pull of the Hollow calling to him if he closes his eyes long enough.

It’s only been a few months since the events with the reformed Cult of the Black Stag. Only been a few months since his grandmother was killed. Only a few months since… since he died as well.

A shiver rolls down his spine. He pinches the bridge of his nose, as if he could rid himself of that thought. He had died, but he came back. He was okay.

“Those who die in these Woods don't tend to stay dead.”

He shakes his head vigorously. No, not because of some weird curse like what happened to his friends. Because of his own soul magic, safely stowed away in his partner's own soul by random happenstance. That was different. He was fine.

Ever since that night that Taylor went into the woods and Nicholas healed them, he felt like something was missing from him. He thought it would've returned when Taylor brought him back to life, but he still felt off-kilter. Like a piece of him was still out there in the Woods. And of course, there wasn't anything in Granny's hex books about why he was having these nightmares.

Nicholas looks down at the tattoo of an owl on his right arm. Owls were considered guardians of his family, and so he had gotten one tattooed on him pretty early on; before he knew about his grandmother’s practice. Granny had tutted about it, mad that he had “made a mockery of their protector”, but eventually she acquiesced.

“Really wish you were here, Gram,” he mutters to the tattoo, as if Granny was really a part of him now. She would probably have known what his problem was, let alone how to help him.

The sound of a scream from the Woods snaps Nicholas out of his head. His eyes dart to the trees, but his brain soon catches up, recognizing the sound. He sighs in both relief and annoyance. Just another barn owl; something he's heard plenty of times growing up out here.

But this time, the sound stirs something in him: something akin to familiarity, but unlike the nostalgia of days past. He tilts his head, trying to get a better sense of what direction the call came from, because what if it came from the Watcher's Grove? What if something was going on with Noah while he was–

"NICK!"

He snaps out of his trance, and he quickly realizes he's no longer on the porch. He's standing on the edge of the property, one foot in the woods. And he has no idea how he got there.

He turns around and looks back at the house. The porch light is on now, and Taylor is standing on the steps, Jerry in their arms. Even from where he is, he can see the panic in their eyes.

He quickly jogs back to the house. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he says, quickly kissing them on the forehead. Except now he's slightly even more shaky than before. Jerry squirms as he’s pressed in between them, and meows angrily. Nicholas pulls away.

They both go inside and Nicholas locks the door behind him. Taylor looks up at him with dark, worried eyes, and he groans internally.

There was no way he’s going to be able to keep this from them.

#bad omens fanfiction #bad omens rpf #bad omens au #nicholas ruffilo fanfiction #paranormal au #horror au #fic: the grove of secrets #series: lost in the labyrinth #cw: death #cw: supernatural themes #cw: buried alive #cw: body horror #cw: witchcraft #cw: graphic violence

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galaxywhump · 4 months

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I'm really sorry for this but I could really use some cheering up tonight

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poorlittleyaoyao · 1 year

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David with the Head of Goliath

(not quite there, imo, but it's an improvement on an attempt made a year and a half ago)

#jin guangyao #and I suppose that based on vibes I must also tag it #dispatches from the nieyao dumpster #severed head cw #inshallah the old one will pleeeease stop showing up as a suggested post now that I have untagged it #sidenote: NMJ's hair is completely down when he qi deviates in CQL but is up again when he gets beheaded #which makes perfect sense if he was buried in state and then broke out of his grave as a fierce corpse #but since CQL wants us to think he was Totally Alive until XY beheaded him it raises some logistical questions

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quillkiller · 2 days

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that meme ’something something when i laugh but then i remember (insert traumatic thing) so nothings funny anymore’ but its me reading fics and then i remember i have a dead rat in my freezer so nothings funny anymore

#AGDHSHSHFJSJ #im sorry we gotta laugh at it #what else is there to do #i can’t believe im procrastinating burying and/or cremating my rat #it just. makes me sad. thinking about having to get rid of him #like thats my little guy #<— dead rat in the freezer #me taking out frozen veggies to make noel dinner: hi liam 👋#cw animal death #its just me and liams tiny little corpse and alive noel against the world❤️

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rainbowchewynuggets · 1 year

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TMA Encore #14a

The earth is crushingly heavy. Jon has no room to expand his lungs, nor any air to breathe. His lungs are on fire. He could try to struggle his way out. A knowing voice in the back of his mind tells him that there is a way out. But the voice also says that every movement he makes presses on someone else trapped nearby in the trench of soil. The thought of squeezing the life out of them to grant him a feeling of agency makes him sick. It could be someone he cares about. Someone who doesn’t deserve it. Tense brittle bodies press on him between layers of dirt as he sinks further and further. He keeps his eyes screwed shut as grit creeps through his nose and ears.

The sand slides off of part of his elbow, and his skin prickles in open air. His heart quickens. It could be an escape, or at least a pocket of air. Should he move? Can he risk it? He seriously considers, but too late. His arm is quickly entrenched again.

His blood pressure builds, pressing on his throat. A strained grunt escapes him. The sand around him is shifting, pressing harder. He pulls a little tighter, but the pressure prods at his arm. Something cold grabs him and pulls. He resists, but the force is overwhelming.

The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, staring up into a pale familiar face. It looks like Martin–if Martin had been left out in the cold. His colorless skin doesn’t move an inch, staring down with featureless scrutiny. There’s almost something hostile in it.

Jon tears his arm out of the hand that still holds it and scrambles to his feet. He brushes off the dirt and lets himself stabilize, sizing up his rescuer. This Martin mirrors his gaze. Then, the Martin steps back and walks away. Jon says nothing. His throat is too dry, anyway. He takes in his surroundings.

He’s standing on a piece of flooring beside what used to be part of the prison exterior. Martin just pulled him out through a window. The sand shifts down solidly as if the window weren’t there. The area around him is dark and hazy like a humid cave. Dingy light trickles in through the ceiling high above and quickly diffuses. It’s hard to see beyond the assembled chunks of stone that clutter his immediate eyeline.

Jon follows cautiously behind Martin to a patch of amber light over mesh wire–only because Martin proves that it’s sturdy enough to stand on. Jon swallows and starts to ask a question when Martin shushes him. He looks upward. So does Jon, reluctantly.

A shaft above them looks like it was burrowed out through layers of wreckage. Something long, black, and spindly blots out the light for a moment, accompanied by echoes of screeching metal. Bits of rock rain down around them.

Martin heads off in the opposite direction as the creature above them. Jon follows. This Martin doesn’t seem as intimidating as he first thought. Mostly just tired and fidgety. Still, he doesn’t follow too close. He tries to get Martin’s attention, to ask him questions only the real Martin would know. The man only returns a quick glance back at Jon before continuing.

The atmosphere finally lightens, revealing a room filled with fog. Ghosts of bulky forms and tilting pillars pass on either side of them. A far away clamor overhead gets Jon’s attention. Martin stops as it grows closer.

Be ready to run, Jon tells himself wearily.

The scraping of metal hinges and breaking of heavy objects compete to be heard over a monstrous voice that shakes Jon to his core. Another voice answers, but he can’t understand it past the prevailing sound of tumbling boulders and spokes. Jon throws himself back as they arrive from out of the haze above them and break cleanly through the mesh into the void below. Martin makes no adjustment to his position, his head turned skyward to face the falling debris.

Jon sees an iron rod the width of his thumb bury itself in the front of Martin’s shoulder. Martin stifles a yelp and manages to stay on his feet. He wraps a hand around it and removes it. The bar clatters loudly on the mesh. Only then does he turn to Jon, who is sat down, stupefied. Open confusion crosses Martin’s face.

Martin: Jon? You’re alive?

He asks as if seeing him for the first time. Jon’s jaw moves somewhat, unable to make words. Martin awkwardly slaps a hand over the wound in his shoulder.

Martin: Don’t freak out! Don’t freak out! I can explain.

The detached demeanor is gone so fast that Jon can’t help feeling a little slapped. He snaps up and charges over.

Jon: Martin, what the hell?!

Martin: It’s not as bad as it looks, I promise.

Jon ignores him and tears his cold hand away to see the puncture. To his utter surprise, he finds nothing there. Not even a blood stain.

Martin sheepishly explains his method of subverting the Fears’ influence in their new domain. As long as he’s not afraid, he can’t really be harmed. Jon doesn’t like to think that’s right, remembering the cuts on his arms that aren’t there anymore.

Jon: That’s insane.

Martin: Yeah, but it’s working.

Jon pushes his hair back. He does his best to express his bafflement and exhaustion, but he looks nothing but relieved. Martin stifles a smile.

Martin: Uh, actually, could you do me a huge favor? I think there’s one in my back.

Jon turns Martin around and sees another rod sticking out. He cringes.

Jon: Oh, god.

He shuts his eyes and pulls. It hits the floor with another loud clang.

Tim and Sasha want to find a way out.

They want to find Jon and Martin first.

They search.

Sasha finds a new area.

The way is locked.

Tim finds a way to open it.

They search.

Something terrible happens.

They can’t continue.

They go back.

Tim and Sasha want to find a way out.

They want to find Jon and Martin first.

They search.

Tim finds a hidden passage.

Something terrible happens.

They continue.

Sasha finds a new area.

Sasha hears Jon and Martin nearby.

Something terrible happens.

They go back.

Tim and Sasha want to find a way out.

They search.

Tim and Sasha get separated.

Tim gets injured.

They go back.

Tim and Sasha want to find a way out.

Something terrible happens.

Sasha gets injured.

Tim gets injured.

They go back.

Tim and Sasha want to find a way out.

They go back.

Tim and Sasha want to find Jon and Martin.

They move forward.

Sasha finds a new area.

The way is locked.

Tim finds a new area.

Something terrible happens.

They go back.

Tim and Sasha want to find Jon and Martin.

They move forward.

The way is locked.

Sasha finds a way around.

They continue.

Tim finds a new area.

Something terrible happens.

They continue.

Sasha finds a new area.

Something terrible happens.

They get separated.

They continue.

They find each other.

Sasha finds a hidden passage

Tim finds a new area.

Something terrible happens.

They go back.

Tim and Sasha want to find Jon and Martin.

They move forward.

The hellscape is silent and eerie. Everything feels far away, leaving Jon and Martin to talk quietly to each other as the area around them grades from mangled prison to mangled tunnels.

Jon recounts his ordeal being chased by the voices of their friends in the concrete forest. The coercion of the whole exercise is obvious upon retelling. He apologizes for being suspicious of Martin all the same. Martin listens solemnly and accepts. He, himself, had chosen to be cagey earlier rather than risk giving Not-Jon any information he didn’t already have.

Jon: You thought I was a spy?

Martin: Kind of.

Martin tells Jon about the fake death snare in the entry area. It’s sickening to hear, yet Jon finds himself hanging on every word. He stops himself from asking for details, not trusting the desire.

Jon: You said you haven’t seen either of them since?

Martin: I looked for a long, long time. There’s just no sign at all.

Jon sighs worriedly.

Martin: I’m starting to think it’s that way on purpose. I tried to go back the way I came, but the arrangement of this place is nonsense. When you just popped out in front of me as I was exploring, I found it… suspect.

Jon nods.

Martin: I’ve mostly been trying to get the lay of the land and track Not-Jon’s movements. It’s weird. It doesn’t seem like he’s actually all that focused on us. As long as I’m steadfast, everything mostly leaves me alone. It’s--I dunno--reactionary. Like he’s just leaving the place on autopilot while he does other things.

Jon: He sought me out.

Martin: Well, he doesn’t like you.

Jon: True.

Martin: When he’s not trying to get away from Not-Martin, he goes somewhere up in the very top. Like there’s something he wants. I mean, I don’t have a full picture of what the apocalypse is supposed to look like, but doesn’t this all feel shaky? Small-scale, y’know?

Jon: I suppose.

Martin: Based on the arguing I’ve overheard, I think he’s stuck in his own domain. The rest of the world is out there, and he’s trying to dig his way out. That’s why the walls keep shifting down.

A thought immediately stirs in Jon’s mind. Something about the tunnels collapsing. It struggles to form fully, but it compels him to agree with Martin.

Jon: It might explain why he’s not after either of us at the moment. Kind of a poor omniscient, if you ask me. Unless he’s still planning something.

Martin and Jon decide that if they can’t find Tim and Sasha, they’ll have to free them from the hellscape before anything happens to them. Martin has observed that Not-Martin can’t get Not-Jon to stop, only distract him temporarily. He summarizes the conversation he had with him before–about how their mortality functions and the possibility that Not-Jon is going to have to die. Jon is magnetized to the idea. He replies that Not-Jon might actually be vulnerable by that logic. He could see into the creature somewhat as it stared into him.

It was scared. Really scared.

Not-Jon has been deeply shaken by his transformation. He feels like he’s losing all control as everything spirals back to the outcome he was trying to avoid. He knows he’s on the cusp of leaving Not-Martin with all the hunger because he’s already so weak. However, he refuses to give up on salvaging the situation. He can’t be stopped, but he could be killed.

Martin concedes. It doesn’t sound like a guarantee, but it’s better than what they had before. Neither of them are reluctant to put Not-Jon out of his misery at this point. They’ll have to figure out what to do about Not-Martin, though.

Their surroundings grow narrower and clearer as they reach pathways leading upward.

Sasha: Think you can make it?

Tim: I think I’d be better off growing an extra foot first, but I’ll give it a try.

Tim takes a step back, sprints, and clambers up a plaster wall nearly twice his size. He scrubs his hands against the floor of the next story up and pulls himself over the lip. Sasha jumps to clasp his hand, and he pulls her up to join him.

Tim and Sasha are deep inside the interior of the island. They had lost all concept of direction hours ago. After fighting, fleeing, and clawing their way through gauntlet after gauntlet, they’ve made it to a region where their nightmare encounters are further apart. They take the chance to rest before restarting their search for their Jon and Martin. They need it. Both of them are ragged.

They pause among the shattered halls of the Institute.

Tim: You think he needs a lot of oil for all those arms?

Sasha: I’m sure he does, and I’m sure he’s not using any. My ears are still ringing.

They chuckle.

They had encountered their grotesque warden some time ago. Even now, miles deep in the folds of the enigma, he follows them in spirit. Might as well laugh at it, however difficult. Tim’s idea.

It’s a nice distraction. Neither of them dare think about what comes next. The onslaught of terror had forced them to measure their survival in moments. Looking back at all those moments strung together to bring them this far is elating. But they can’t look ahead. Can’t wonder where all this could possibly lead until they find the boys. It just isn’t practical. Sasha’s idea.

They’re shoved back to their feet before long by the sagging of the ground underneath them. The path ahead continues to sag as it branches upward. Tim and Sasha are hurried to stay ahead of it, having to make their decisions on instinct. Left. Right. Left. Left. The middle one. Right. Left. The warped hallway degrades to exposed wood to paper to a tight ventricle of pulp.

Tim feels his feet lose traction. He careens forward, propelled by Sasha’s body. They jam together in the limp paper tube as the path behind them fully tears away. A thundering mass of paper, then wood, then stone and brick fall inches from the soles of their shoes. The two of them are dumped out as the dust settles.

They don’t go far, landing hard on the pile of brick. The fallen path has exposed their trajectory: a long winding branching track strung back and forth across a deep red cavern. The entire thing, every step since they began their journey, has torn out of its fastenings and now slips down into the gloom. Sasha can only tear her eyes away when she feels Tim nudging her.

The mess of bricks had the fortune to spill out onto an outcropping in a wall that looks like someone made chewed meat out of a building. The paper shaft ahead of them continues, and there are several narrow ridges they could take down to other platforms. But they instead become fixated on part of the wall that came down with the tunnel. It left a craggy cone-shaped hole behind.

As they approach, they can smell fresh air. A twinkle of sunlight peeks in the distance between more layers of rubble. Tim and Sasha instantly dig at the brick and stone. The hole widens marginally. Sediment and iron mix with the fresh air. Just as the hole widens enough to crawl into, the ground under their feet suddenly comes away, as if yanked.

They fall for what feels like years.

Sasha wakes up and finds herself staring ruefully from the bottom of yet another hill. The foulness in the air she had all but forgotten pours heavily in her lungs. Everything hurts, but not as badly as before. She works her way to her feet. Turning, she sees Tim sitting nearby at the edge of the peninsula that apparently caught them in their descent. He’s facing away from her, his shoulders hunched tiredly.

Sasha: Well. That sucked. I guess we’ll get started again.

Tim: We can’t.

She swallows her despair so as not to lose her nerve.

Sasha: We’ve done it once. We can do it twice.

Tim: Sasha, come look at this.

Sasha wills her legs to show her what’s beyond the edge of the cliff.

Tim is staring into an acre-wide pit filled with bodies. Their bodies. Many are broken and torn in obvious ways. The injuries are precisely consistent with their journey so far. He points to a pair among those in the most recent layer. They have bloody fingers.

Sasha is repelled.

Sasha: It’s just a scare. It doesn’t mean anything.

Tim: How’d we survive that fall, Sasha?

Sasha: Come on. The Things upstairs wouldn’t want us dead. We can’t give them anything that way.

He looks at her with urgency, letting the thought he’d been sitting with propel to the surface.

Tim: They’re hardly getting anything from us at all. They want the whole planet. If they kill us and make us into their ghosts, they can send us out to do their dirty work.

Sasha: That’s what Not-Jon is for.

Tim: Maybe he’s not doing it fast enough for them. He may be screwed up like them, but he hates them. He wants to do the right thing, so he tries to stop them from using us. He threw everything at us he could to keep us from getting out, and then showed us the landfill of failed tries when we found a way around him.

Sasha: Or to just stop us from escaping. We almost had it!

Tim: We weren’t supposed to escape! We were supposed to be looking for Jon and Martin! That was the plan, no distractions, right? And it was working. But we couldn’t help ourselves when we saw that opening, could we?

Sasha hesitates.

She can’t deny that he has a point. This isn’t the first time they’ve fallen for a false exit–they should know better. She retraces their route through the paper tunnel. The odds that they wound up at the one part attached to the wall seem uncomfortably slim. More memories surface. Drowning. Crushing. Burning. She had pushed them away before as intrusive thoughts brought on by close calls. She isn’t sure now. How many times, indeed, should they have died by this point?

She desperately wants to argue with him. She wants to prove that she hasn’t already been replaced. The more she searches, the foggier it gets. Tim reads her face.

Tim: I’m not sure, either. But if we’ve come this far to keep them from having their way, we can’t risk it.

Sasha: We shouldn’t even go after Jon and Martin, should we?

Tim frowns.

Sasha buckles to her knees. She and Tim sit in silence.

With nothing else to draw his attention, Tim notices a variance in the color of the ruddy ground. Something plasticky is wedged in the crags just under the cliff. One of the crappy old handheld tape players from the supply closet. He reaches for it, careful not to fall in with the rest of the dolls. It’s heavy. Through the clear plastic window on the front, he finds that it has a cracked cassette inside.

Martin and Jon come to an intersection of paths in the wet grey stone that surrounds them. Things are closer and clearer than they have been in a while. Unsettling noise comes from each option, a promise of danger. Martin takes a breath.

Martin: *rhetorically* Any preference?

Jon: *definitively* Second from the right.

Martin looks at him with wider eyes. Jon had told Martin about the glimpses he’d been getting from the Eye, but this is the first time it had done anything but make both of them more nervous.

Martin: You can see where he is?

Jon nods shortly.

Jon: Both of them. They move around, but they’ve been over this way for a while. This is the best way through. Our other options here are… nasty.

Martin considers. Avoiding the nasty stuff kind of defeats his immunity, but he supposes that Jon wouldn’t make it alive. He accepts, and they move on.

They approach the sound of rushing water again. The hollow ends at a T-junction with a giant water pipe. Fluid spews down into a hole that’s been punched into the rock. There are speckles of erosion everywhere.

Jon picks up a long piece of stone from a place where the wall is cracked. He holds it out to the current, and the rock forcefully melts. They both step back.

Jon: I didn’t realize. We should turn around.

Martin: Is there another way through that won’t kill us?

Jon: … No. We can look for something further back.

Martin doesn’t move.

Jon: Martin.

Martin: Well... I was hoping it wouldn’t be this way. Should have known better.

Jon: No. We’re not going in there.

Martin: Jon, we both knew we might not be getting out of this alive. You said yourself that was on the bill from the start.

Jon: I lied! I was never willing to let any of you get hurt. Me? Maybe. But not like this.

Martin. That was before. We’re on Their rules now. Our mortality’s a handicap. And death is-- Well, we... we could use it if we’re not afraid of it, and it’s just about all we’ve got left.

Martin exhales, having successfully dragged himself through the sentence.

Jon: You should be afraid. Not-Martin might act like he’s on the side of reason, but there’s clearly as much wrong with him as the other me. Think about what this could do to you!

The anxiety Martin had been pushing down since the talk in the security chamber boils high in his chest. It isn’t the anger in Jon’s voice that disheartens him but the genuine concern in his face. He is suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to listen. He doesn’t want any of this. He wants someone to tell him it’s okay to stop.

Jon waits, trying to appear resolute.

Martin’s face loses its softness.

Martin: We have to accept it, Jon.

Jon gives in to impulse and decides for him. He takes Martin by the hand and pulls him back the way they came. Martin’s ice cold fingers numb his own.

He refuses to let this get any worse. He searches through the Eye for Tim and Sasha, but it still won’t show him. He tries harder, despite the prickling discomfort. It takes him a minute to realize that his deadened hand is clutching nothing.

Martin isn’t behind him. He’s nowhere that the Eye can see, in all the cavities in the stone around the one Jon is standing in. Jon stares into the rushing acid.

Could he survive if he jumped? If he mustered the detachment that Martin talked about, maybe he could catch up to him. Save him from whatever he’s about to try to do alone. But he can’t. He knows he can’t. His skin burns. Anger, guilt, and powerlessness rush through him. All he can do is go back and be reabsorbed by the hellscape.

A drop hits his neck with a sizzle. He quickly wipes it away. Another one plinks down on his arm from the eroded stone roof before he can put it down. To Jon’s surprise, the liquid isn’t eating through his skin. It’s evaporating, leaving his skin untouched. It’s so cold here, he hadn’t discerned his temperature growing exceedingly hot. Desolately hot.

The Eye made sense, but not this. He could have been marked–at most–by the door knob, if that even counts here. He shouldn’t be able to use it. It doesn’t work like this. What did he do wrong?

Jon approaches the wall of the passage. He extends a hand, and the cement recedes at the command of the Buried. Jon looks dejectedly at his palm. He can still feel the burning. The grit and filth in his pores. The wind whistling in his ears. The cuts all over. The mortifying terror or being hunted and loathed. He rubs his eyes as a white-hot streak of fire walks across his face.

He has to keep going. Or it will all have been for nothing.

Jon opens a way for himself and steps through.

————

First

So, I’ve decided on a solution to my second big problem. I’m going to finish posting the text with longer chapters and way less art. Maybe one panel per. Hope that works. Thx! :)

Index

#the magnus archives #mag200 spoilers #magnus pod #tma fancomic #tma encore 14 #tma encore 14a #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #sasha james #tim stoker #cw buried alive #cw tapophobia #cw impaling #cw violence #cw falling #cw blood #cw death #cw burning

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pizapalint · 5 months

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buried alive #1: the window

the first "issue" of my silly little webcomic!!! enjoy! if you do indeed enjoy this, more will be coming eventually™. hooray! also, if you'd like, check out its website at https://buriedalivecomic.cfw.me/ !!

#webcomic #buried alive comic #spooky #halloween aesthetic #monsters #zombie #cw: gore #monster #halloweencore #halloween #undead #gif #animated

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girlhelpicf · 6 months

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#the magnus archives #the hunt #the eye #the flesh #the buried #the end #this got taken down from tiktok for community guidelines violations SHOU ZI CHEW YOULL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE #cw mild gore

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1rakus · 6 months

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btw if u wish succession was more like hannibal i STRONGLY recommend you watch the new fall of the house of usher series. fantastic really

#cw gore murder medical malpractice animal death drug use being buried alive unreality addiction #not done yet but since i know the story its based on theres probly incest also

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koolkat9 · 1 year

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Sabaton has their new song lyrics in the premier for there new video 1916 and all i can imagine is one of the nations being buried in the trenches because they think they're dead and just ugh. Right in the feels.

I mean they probably went through that at some point. Though I think a lot of the soldiers eventually caught on to that they're fighting alongside personified nations. Like although I don't think humans know what their personification looks like (unless you work for the government or something), they know nation personifications exist in their world.

I think they'd be debriefed on the fact that "hey, don't freak out if Arthur Kirkland comes back from the dead. He's an immortal nation person." But in the chaos of war, mistakes are made and a nation may be buried along with the rest of the dead (because there was a lot of death in WWI). Not to mention if they die in the enemy trench during a trench raid.

Anyway. I like to think Matthew often volunteered for trench raids. He was good at them after all, always silent but deadly, intent on keeping his loved one and his men safe. But that isn't to say he couldn't have gotten caught one day and killed by a German soldier and buried in a shallow grave in No Man's Land.

I wrote a fic once where Arthur stayed up waiting for Matt to return. In that fic Matt does come back to the trench, injured, but alive. But this ask makes me wonder: what if he died out there instead?

Arthur wouldn't start worrying properly until the rest of the men returned without Matthew. Though, it's not like Arthur can do much. So instead he makes himself sick with worry, unable to sleep( not that he was getting much sleep before), barely eats, takes double duty on watch. Waiting for his son to come back. Because he at least knows Matthew will eventually.

And Matt comes back eventually, still looking like a corpse, but alive. At least he gets to go on leave for a few days and recover.

But going off the idea that Matt dies on his own side and accidentally gets buried with the rest of the dead men, Arthur is able to be more active. Clawing at the dirt himself until his son is safe again.

This goes for any of his kids. But I got Royal Red Bros brainrot lol

#hetalia #hws #cw buried alive #hws canada #hws england #headcanons #hetalia headcanons #royal red bros

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aplaceinthedark · 3 months

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CONSUMED by the DARK

(a TOWERING MAN story)

Word Count: 2.9k+

CW: supernatural themes, religious sacrifice, body horror, animal cruelty, being buried alive

Pain. Fear. That’s all Noah could feel right now.

He clutched at his side, trying to staunch the blood flowing from the stab wound. Whatever cultists that stabbed him had thankfully not stabbed him deep enough. They had been aiming for the heart, but he twisted just in time.

“Noooo-ahhh!”

He whimpered at the sound of his name being called. He couldn't tell what direction it had come from. Whatever freaks they had out here were searching for him, and they were using his loved ones' voices. Some of them he hadn’t heard in years. Those he could care less about, but when he heard his best friends’ voice, crying out in pain for him, he wanted to curl up and wait until they found him, finishing him off for good.

That's when Noah stumbled face first into another tree, adding more blood to his body. He had entered the woods with a flashlight, but it was gone now. He was stumbling blindly, with no moon to guide him. Why did the gods decide to coincide the summer solstice with the new moon? Whose great idea was that?

Where was the end? How far into the woods was he?

“Noooo-AAAHH!”

God, they had to be close. He could barely run anymore. His fingers were ice cold despite the warm blood slipping between them. His foot caught a loose root, and he fell face down in the dirt. His cry of pain surely would alert them to his location.

Indeed, a low glow lit up the back of his eyelids as he lifted his head. Through bleary eyes, he could make out the dull red glow. Except it wasn’t a cultist standing before him.

Its pelt was black; blacker than the darkness surrounding the two. Noah was certain he would’ve been able to track it in complete darkness. The dull red glow, though, lit up the hollow, and he could see that it came from its antlers. He couldn’t count how many points the stag had, mainly because they seemed to twist and turn in on themselves. Like oak branches, he thought.

Noah could only imagine what he looked like: covered in blood and dirt, leaves and sticks caught in his shoulder- length hair as well as his clothes. Despite the circumstances, he felt like he wasn’t worthy to be caught in the thing's presence. The stag dug at the ground with one of its massive hooves. Noah was tall, but this beast had to be more than twice his size.

Before Noah could contemplate any further, it spoke, not aloud, but in his mind:

CHILD OF THE VALLEY, WHY HAVE YOU COME TO MY COURT?

Noah flinched at the harsh tone. It was guttural, like a scream that came from the gut rather than the throat. He sputtered, unsure of how he even managed to get to that spot. He told the stag so, through chattering teeth as the coldness of the hollow finally caught up to him.

The stag tilted its head, the glow of its antlers moving as if filled with liquid. Like blood. The movement almost seemed… human-like. It unsettled Noah even more.

I THINK YOU KNOW WHERE YOU TRULY ARE, NOAH SEBASTIAN DAVIS. YOUR KIND HAVE TOLD THE TALES OF THE WATCHER OF THE WOODS FOR A LONG, LONG TIME.

Noah flinched again at those words that sounded like a parent coldly scolding their child. To be honest, until recently, he never had believed in those tales of darkness roaming the Shenandoah Valley. Then, when what happened with the Folio kid happened, he started to believe it more and more.

“Please… please help me. I-I’ll do anything,” he pleaded, feeling a fresh spurt of blood despite his numb fingers. It wouldn’t be long now.

THERE WILL BE A PRICE.

“I… I don’t care. I- I’ll do any… thing.” He didn’t want to die here, alone in the woods.

GIVE YOURSELF TO ME. BECOME THE INSTRUMENT OF MY WILL, AND I WILL FREE YOU FROM THE PAIN OF YOUR HUMANITY.

Noah could barely speak at that point, so he merely nodded. The Watcher made a sound, and the world went black. With one last steady breath, Noah spoke his final words:

“I think I've had enough… enough now.”

And that was how the young human, Noah Davis, died and became the Towering Man.

The search parties were few. That didn’t surprise him. Ever since he and Nicholas were made to be the boys who cried wolf, the people in town were quick to make excuses for his disappearance.

"He was a troubled boy.”

“He probably just ran away."

“Kids these days. He’s probably lying face down in a drain in the city right now.”

If he could feel anger, it would be at the woman who had claimed to love him. The woman who had turned out to be just like the rest of them. She was the reason for the state that he was in. She was the reason why he had died and sold his soul. After that, she only fueled the rumors that he had run away. Even with Nicholas trying his best to combat the rumors, it was only him against a town of five thousand.

Nicholas tried his best to keep the search parties going, but when you live in a town that values old superstitions over the life of a 21-year-old, it’s hard to do anything. Noah wanted to tell his friend that it was okay, to ease Nicholas’ pain and anxiety, but he was forced to watch as Nicholas continued to put up missing flyers and stay up late at night to wait for Noah to come home.

But after a few months, even Nicholas seemed to give up. His family convinced him to move to Richmond, and for a while Noah would only see Nicholas every once and while, when he would visit Granny. And Noah was forced to do nothing but watch from the treeline.

During the day, he would root himself near Granny Ruffilo’s home. He tried to resist the Watcher’s pull, even at night when he was demanded to collect the offerings left by the cult: mostly blood and wine. Except on the nights when the moon was darkest, then he couldn’t resist the voice inside his head.

Noah wanted to scream out whenever he would see Nicholas through one of the windows; scream at him that he was right there, outside of that window, just past the treeline. Except Nicholas wouldn’t be able to hear him, even if he could use his voice.

And Noah’s heart - or whatever counted as his heart now - turned black.

He watched Nicholas move on. Seasons passed, and so did Noah’s feelings. By the time June came back around, he had pretty much given himself over to the Watcher’s will. He accepted the fact that his best friend would no longer be saving him.

The night before the summer solstice, Noah was summoned to the Watcher’s Grove. Some would joke that it could be a courtroom, except the Black Stag was too proud of itself to share its power. All it needed was its minions, which it was surrounded with now.

THE TIME HAS COME, CHILD OF THE VALLEY. YOUR GOD DEMANDS ONE LAST THING OF YOU.

Noah thought he was being rewarded, being given his human body back. Like some kind of horrific Cinderella, he just needed to explain to Nicholas everything that had happened; that he had made a deal with the devil that he couldn’t take back. The Watcher knew that the first thing Noah would do was run to Nicholas, and he planned accordingly.

Noah should’ve realized his mistake. When he called for Nicholas, he should’ve realized it when he felt his bones shift in response. He should’ve realized it when he felt his body stretch and grown when Nicholas came out into the woods. It wasn’t until Nicholas’ face twisted in fear did Noah realize the Watcher’s plan.

Nicholas was to be the Watcher’s next Vessel, and Noah was to bring him to the Watcher.

Except the Watcher had underestimated Nicholas. See, it turned out Nicholas was a part of an old bloodline of Practitioners. Usually, it passed down onto the women, skipping a generation if need be. For some reason, instead of picking his sister, the practice chose him. It did so not long before this incident, so Nicholas was still learning the extent of what he could and could not do.

So when Noah reached out for him with a thorny hand, Nicholas accidentally blew him apart. But Noah had died in the Shenandoah Valley, where dead things don’t stay dead.

Nicholas crafted a body made of sticks, leaves and mud, and bound Noah to it. It nearly killed both of them. It wasn’t the best; Nicholas had just learned how to manage his practice, after all. Noah had a body again, and this one wasn’t under the control of the Watcher’s will.

And he would use it to his advantage.

“I’m gonna fuck up that deer god.”

Their plan wasn’t perfect at all. Nicholas was going to pretend to be captured, the perfect Vessel to be sacrificed. That way, hopefully they would have the element of surprise.

Which of course, wasn’t how it happened. Leave it to him to underestimate how good the Watcher was at reading minds.

YOU THINK YOU CAN STAND AGAINST A GOD?

the Watcher of the Woods asked. The cultists stood around them in a circle, not getting too close, but ready to jump in at a moment’s notice.

YOU, A SCARED LITTLE BOY AND HIS LITTLE WITCH, AGAINST SOMETHING OLDER THAN THE DIRT YOU STAND UPON? OLDER THAN THE STICKS IN YOUR BODIES THAT YOU CALL BONES?

Was Noah scared? Absolutely, even though he couldn’t really feel it. But for once, he didn’t let his fear show, like he did when he faced the Watcher the first time, a year and a day ago in this same grove.

This time he was ready.

With Nicholas helping him, his concentration divided between bolding off the Cultists with a warding barrier and aiding Noah, Noah found he was evenly matched with the Black Stag. He had learned the deity's tricks over the past year, and could counteract them easily. Noah acted as an almost perfect counterbalance to the darkness: whenever the Watcher would throw decayed dirt edged with frost that was colder than the universe, Noah would ruin it with life and nature and warmth.

The Watcher of the Woods even tried to take Nicholas out of the equation with a malediction, but Noah wouldn't let it. With a roar that could shake mountains, Noah charged forward and grabbed onto the Stag's twisted antlers. Under his grip, they were bitterly cold, almost turning his fingers instantly blue. The stag tried to rear back to shake off Noah, but he only tightened his grip until his knuckles cracked.

“After all that you've put me through? After all the hell you created for these hollow souls? After all the lives you've torn apart for your sick enjoyment? You think for one second, I'll let you destroy one more? You think that this makes you a god?”

Noah's eyes flared green, lighting up the darkness in his eyes, as with a loud growl, he spoke:

IF THERE'S A GOD, IT'S FUCKING ME!

And with a twist, Noah tore off the crown of bloody bones with a mighty crack. At first, he thought the sound had come from his body, but when the red in his vision faded, he saw the head of the Black Stay on the ground, separated from its body.

There were numerous cries of disbelief around him. Some might have tried to attack him, but with one look, they stopped. Noah held up the antlers that were still in his hands.

DON'T EVER COME BACK, YOU HEAR ME? IF I FIND OUT YOU EVEN TRY TO START THIS SHIT AGAIN, I WILL COME AFTER ALL OF YOU! YOUR FAMILIES TOO, IF I HAVE TO!

And they scattered like roaches.

Noah and Nicholas stood in the grove, alone and quiet. The corpse of the Black Stag had decayed fast; even the bones and antlers had rotted away. Noah shook his hands until the decay was gone. All that was left was the skin of his palms had been burned black.

“Now what?" Nicholas said, breaking the silence.

“I don't know. I don't feel any–”

There was a sudden shifting beneath Noah. He looked down in surprise to see that the ground had swallowed his feet. He was sinking.

And with one last raspy chuckle, he heard the Black Stag mutter in his mind:

THERE MUST ALWAYS BE SOMETHING TO WATCH OVER THE WOODS.

Nicholas tried to pull him free, but when Noah was up to his waist in the ground, he pushed Nicholas away. “But I just found you!” Nicholas cried.

“Don't worry, I'll be back. Just listen for your name.”

And the earth swallowed Noah up, and darkness claimed him once again.

He felt the suffocating weight of the ground pressing on him from all sides, the darkness so absolute he didn't know which way was up or down. A weird feeling spread through him, like a panic attack but… absent. Like he should be having one, but it wouldn't come.

That's when he realized his eyes were closed, but when he opened them, he was faced with something much worse.

Something fell into his eyes, and when he opened his mouth to scream, it fell in there too. The taste gave him his answer to where he was.

Dirt. He was buried underground.

Still, he didn't feel panic. He struggled against the dirt, trying to claw his way free, but his limbs were numb and weak from disuse. There was no way he was going to get out of this without some help.

Naturally, he called for the person who would help him without question.

NICHOLAS.

He felt ridiculous. How was Nicholas gonna hear him? How did he even get buried in the first place?

There was no time for questions or memories. He had to dig himself out somehow.

He willed his arms to move, his legs to kick. Either he was so weak, or buried so deep, he couldn't move a muscle. He tried to remember what he was taught about being buried alive. Don't use a lighter; breathe short little gasps to prolong the air. That was if he was buried in a box, though, and he didn't need to worry about breathing. He hadn't needed to for a long time.

He didn’t know how long he was there, buried deep beneath, barely moving despite his mind shouting at his limbs to just move already! He had almost given up when he felt the earth shift somewhere near his head. Were those voices?

It sounded like great amounts of dirt were being thrown around, like when a dog digs for a bone. It stopped for a moment, a new voice joining whoever was above. Then the digging continued, but with the rhythm of what might be a shovel.

When the weight got lighter, Noah used the last of his strength to move his arm. Without the weight of the dirt pressing down on him, his hand burst up from the ground. There was a shout, and suddenly two pairs of hands grabbed onto his arm and pulled him free.

“I came as soon as I heard your call. In my head,” Nicholas said.

The other two, Joakim and Nick, had heard it too. If there were others like them, they didn’t show. But Noah didn’t care. These were his friends now.

This was the Circle of Omens and Thorns.

And that’s how Noah Sebastian became the new Watcher of the Woods, the King of the Shenandoah Valley.

Something was wrong with the woods, and it was driving Noah crazy.

As he peers over the top of the mountains from his perch on Stony Man Mountain, he feels the Appalachian Spring air sweep through the trees, barely ruffling his long hair. He mindlessly twirls a braid around his finger, thumb rolling a bead around as an anxious tic. A chill runs down his spine, and he knows it’s not because of the wind. The Spring season up here is a lot like a joke; he’s seen wildflowers poking through big heaps of snow before. That wasn’t stopping him from shedding his shirt, like now.

He likes to come up here, despite it being a popular stop on a hiking trail. At night, no one will bother him; not even Folio. He knows that when Noah goes up Stony Man, he doesn’t want to be disturbed.

Except he’s still disturbed, just in a different way.

He lays back on the ground and closes his eyes, taking a deep breath as he curls his fingers through the dirt and grass. He grounds himself to expand his consciousness through the Valley.

He can feel the way the trees seem to curl in on themselves, like an old man wrapping his coat tighter around him as he trudged on through the bustling air. His skin crawls as he feels roots wind their way through the soil, touching something so foul it fills his throat with black mud and he gags, but can’t move. The black mud chokes him, whispering in a familiar voice that promises nothing but venom and sweet lies.

He wrenches from his reverie, coughing and spitting despite nothing is in his mouth other than cold air and saliva.

Something has returned to the Valley. Something dark, and something… black.

#bad omens fanfiction #bad omens rpf #bad omens au #noah sebastian fanfiction #paranormal au #horror au #series: lost in the labyrinth #fic: the grove of secrets #cw: supernatural themes #cw: religious sacrifice #cw: animal cruelty #cw: body horror #cw: buried alive

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drowning-in-cacophony · 7 months

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Grave Mistakes

For @flashfictionfridayofficial Prompt 222: An Empty Grave

[Summary: three shovels, one victim and a handful of warnings] cw: potential murder, vague allusions to being buried alive

Shovel against mud, rhythmic and at a decent pace. Maybe one erring on a quicker speed, but that could hardly be blamed, could it? Nothing about this situation screams dwell in it.

Of course, the only problem with speeding up on this part means that the next comes faster too. And that’s another thing to want to speed through.

“It’s a mistake,” she says to the dirt. It’s stirred up from their boots, from the light shower of last night. A wet clod presses irritatingly close to her mouth. The cuffs are pinching even with her hands held perfectly still.

The diggers ignore her, though she feels their uneasy energy like a whip of lightning through the air. If she could see, she’s sure she’d collect at least two nervous glances over, with wishes that they’d gagged her blistering in their eyes. The last digger, the one who won’t give her a second glance, the one who’s focusing on this like she’s just collateral, he’d been the one to forget the gag. Maybe he’d felt guilty, and wanted her last breaths to at least be slightly less uncomfortable. It doesn’t matter what she says or screams, after all: nothing should persuade the diggers and no one’s going to hear her.

Still, she persists. Too nice for her own good, maybe.

“I don’t think you guys understand what you’re doing. You’re thinking this is an easy way to dispose of me, but it’s not going to go the way you think. I know where you took me.”

“No one’s going to be looking for you,” one of the men tells her, brusque and low. The last digger, the only one who thinks he can handle taking someone’s last words, knowing they’re the reason the words are limited.

She sighs heavily. “That’s not what I mean.” They’d done that part well, making sure she was completely isolated, making sure there were plenty of reasons for an absence. It’ll be a week before anyone thinks to look; by that time she should be long gone. She’d applaud them that, if she had her hands free.

None of them ask her what she means. They just keep up their digging, sharp shovels parting thick soil with their brisk pace. It’s six feet down to the coffin, but they’re motivated enough that they’ll hit it with more than enough time to cover all their tracks. She flicks her eyes up in their sockets, sighs again.

“Look, I don’t want you guys to kill me, but that’s not what I’m trying to dissuade you from. It’s mostly that what you’re trying to do is going to end up doing really bad things. It’s not worth it.”

“Shut it,” another man hisses. His voice betrays a hint of anxiety, though not at anything she’s saying. It’s the fact she’s talking, reminding them all that she’s a sentient being. Someone who thinks and breathes and does all that other amazing things; someone they’re going to extinguish as easily as a candle flame. Just because they’ll do it doesn’t mean they’ll embrace it wholly.

It’s obvious to her that it’s all their first times. Probably bedazzled by the money, enough to rationalise things. One person for that much? It must have been a no brainer to them. One measly person, one night of work. One person they don’t even know. Still, murder’s no joke. Agreeing to it is one thing. Having the person in hand is another.

They’ll still do it, though. Money tends to smooth out all apprehension at the trigger line.

“I just think you ought to consider-”

“Shut it, or I’ll make you regret it,” the nervous man threatens, soundly decidedly less nervous by the second. The wooden handle of the shovel hits menacingly against a meaty palm; there are no protestations against such actions.

So she acquiesces, if only because it’s a fruitless endeavour. Clearly they’re not going to listen. Clearly, there’s only one port of action. Time passes with mud slung to one side, until she hears the always familiar clang of shovel against coffin lid. She can’t help herself but offer one last warning.

“One last chance,” she calls out, before they can start scraping away at the thing, before they’ll open it. “Try something else. You don’t know what you’re going to do.”

“You just want to avoid this death.” The last digger. “I’m sorry, but that’s not happening. No matter what you say.”

“Obviously I want to avoid dying,” she drips all the incredulousness she can into her voice, “but seriously. You don’t want to open that coffin.”

“We’re not interested in your advice.”

She closes her eyes for a second. “Fine. It’s your funeral.”

“No – it’s yours.”

The last of the dirt is excavated, and a man’s boots thud down into the hollow to start pulling up the lid. Something creaks and groans like wood.

“It’s empty,” one of the men says confusedly.

She sighs, one last time. Already a cold chill’s started creeping up her cheek from the soil.

“No. No, it’s really not.”

The men don’t listen, obviously. They keep the coffin door open – though at this point, shutting it wouldn’t change a thing – and likely crane their heads closer, baffled by the presence of an empty grave where there should have been bones. While they make their mistake, she gets a head start on trying to roll away until she can somehow get to her feet.

It’ll be who can run away the fastest who’ll survive, after all.

And when the screams inevitably begin to pierce the air, they’re right – no one hears.

#flash fiction friday #flash fiction #short story #writeblr #anna's writing #word count: 936 #cw murder #in the sense that a character is intended to be murdered via being buried alive in a coffin #the title's a bit of a double meaning #grave mistakes - it's a 'grave' mistake they're making #and grave mistakes - it's a mistaken grave; one they shouldn't have picked

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vocesincaput · 5 months

Text

OPEN STARTER: Izzy Hands

Each and every night for over a week, a seagull would land upon the makeshift at the head of a grave. Until one night, the top layer of earth began to shift, the disturbance in the soil growing more and more until fingers could be seen clawing out.

Frantic fingers became hands, became arms until finally the mans face appeared with gasps for air. Coughing up dirt that had filled his throat and nose as he dragged himself out from beneath the ground to lay sprawled out on the ground beside where his body had once led.

Confused, delirious, Izzy managed to sit himself up enough to cough up the rest of the dirt before looking around. It took a moment for his eyes to focus. Nothing around him looked remotely familiar. Not the coastline, not the rundown looking cabin behind him... not until his eyes fell upon what sat at the head of where he climbed out of.

The wooden leg the crew made for him.

Izzy frowned as he looked at it, noting the piece of wood attached to it. His brow furrowed and he looked down at himself and then at the earth he just dragged himself out of. The realisation was slow until suddenly the memory of it came rushing back to him, making him close his eyes and hold his head.

He had died...

He had died on the Revenge's deck with Ed over him. It was still a little bit hazy but he remember what had happened. But it just made the former first mate more confused and he looked down at himself. How was he alive? How was this possible?

Izzy's mind ran through so many things all at once before settling on Ed and the crew... He could only imagine what they must be going through with all the hell Ricky seemed to want to bring down on them all.

Izzy didn't even think about how they would coping with his death. If they had not buried him at sea like anyone who lived their life upon it deserved and instead an unfamiliar location with none of them around... he must not have meant as much to any of them as he thought that he was starting to. Sighing at the thought, the former first mate ran his hands over his face before looking back out over the view, lit by the pale moonlight.

If they had buried him in such a place, they were all better off not knowing he was alive once more. They must have made their peace with it if they had abandoned him in a grave, they didn't need to know. And so after removing the piece of wood from his wooden leg, Izzy strapped it on and struggled to his feet before heading off into the night.

Izzy was alone now. He couldn't go back to life he had once lived, not if everyone was to believe he was still dead. He had to start anew.

After walking through the night and into the early hours of the morning as the sun rose on the horizon, Izzy encountered two people asleep beside the burnt out embers of a campfire. Moving as quietly as he could, he slid a knife out of the sheath next to one of them before making quick work of killing both and hiding their bodies. Returning to their campfire, the former first mate got it going again slightly before changing out of his dirtied and bloodied leathers into some of the clothing he found at the camp.

Knowing that he would need to look different if he was going to go unnoticed, Izzy sat beside the campfire and took the knife once more. Slowly and carefully cutting off his hair until it was in a far shorter style than he had ever worn. The feel of it strange beneath his fingers as he ran his hand through the short strands. He smirked sadly before carefully using the knife to shave off his beard. Leaving just the moustache.

Afterwards, he ate some of the food supplies and tried to think of a plan to do next. As if was lost in thought, Izzy's eyes settled upon the golden unicorn leg.

That... was definitely something that was going to have to change.

Even after having buried where he had and feeling abandoned and unwanted by the crew, Izzy couldn't bring himself to just throw it away. So, he worked at removing the leg from the harness and placed it into a bag that was sat next to where one of the men had been sleeping. He then took a piece of wood from what he assumed was supplies for the fire and began to whittle and carve away for a few hours until it resembled something that would work as a leg. Attaching it to the harness, Izzy thought about how he had had to relearn to do most things with the unicorn leg and sighed.

He couldn't dwell on the past. Not now.

After packing what supplies he could into the small bag, Izzy headed off again. Walking for far longer than he should with his wooden leg until he came upon a small village. After talking with a man in the inn there, giving him the name of Hes (short for Hesikia, a family name), he managed to get a room in exchange for work in the inn.

Some time passed and Izzy settled in at the Inn. Working various jobs around the place, mostly repairing what he could. Whenever any people would come in that he knew were pirates, Izzy would slip out of sight. Giving an excuse that it brought back memories of how he lost his leg after his former home had been attacked by pirates. Even with his shorter hair and no beard, he knew some may still recognise him and would definitely recognise his voice.

It was the middle of the day and Izzy was working on repairing a chair leg whilst sat at the back of the inn, mostly out of sight, when he heard a voice that made him still completely. Breath catching in his throat.

He knew that voice...

Swallowing, the former first mate looked out from where he was sat. Instantly recognising who it was. Cursing under his breath and knowing that he could easily be seen and possibly still recognised, Izzy got up and, as carefully and quietly as he could, began to make his way to the door that led to the backstairs up his room. He needed to get out of there for a few hours. Out of sight until the familiar face had left.

Making it up to his room, Izzy closed the door and moved over to the window. Glancing out to check if he could sneak out onto the small balcony and away. He was just about to climb out of the window when there was a sharp knock at his door.

#ic #muse: izzy hands #verse: izzy hands : new life #non rp blogs do not interact #non rp blogs dni #non rp blogs will be blocked #non mutuals do not interact #death mention cw #cw death mention #buried alive tw #tw: buried alive #tw buried alive #//please continue in a new post #//as it helps me keep track of things easier #//so apparently Hesikia is another possible name he was known by alongside Basilica #//please do not feel as if you need to match the length #//i got carried away with 1164 words.... lol #open starter: izzy hands #open starter

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