((Wow, nice job Harry.))
It's amazing how much clarity one has when they don't have to worry about the acid and explosions surrounding them. Jake knew what he needed to do. He ran to the hall closet, grabbing a spare comforter before running back to his family and trying to smother the flames consuming his mother. He would grab both his mother and Nick, wrapping them in the blanket and carrying them, or at least trying to drag them, outside and then out of the radius of the storm. If he couldn't get the front door open, he would go through it by any means necessary. An oak door would not prevent him from saving his family, even if he had to throw himself through it to make enough space to get them outside.
You run over to the hall closet, a little surprised when the door rips itself off the hinges and flies at you, only to break in half over your body - you are not moved by an inch, or feel anything at all, for that matter. You grab the comforter from the closet, then run back to your mother, quickly smothering the flames around her - wrapping her and your brother, after you pull him over your way, in the blanket, you throw them over your shoulders - though you are no stronger than you were before, it shouldn't be forgotten that you are a football player, after all, and pretty well-built at that, not to mention fueled by urgency and fear, while your present family are a fairly scrawny and tiny lot - and carry your incapacitated family members - your mother prays along the way that Nick and you can make it through this while Nick himself seems to still be paralyzed with fear - all the way from the kitchen, kicking the front door open as you move out. As soon as you move out into the yard, a bolt of lightning strikes the ground about ten meters away, though you seem unaffected by either the flash or the thunder, unlike your family, who seem to panic for a moment.
You continue onward with them all the way to the neighbors' yard, where the effect still has not ceased, though from here you can see a place beyond the garage where it grows lighter, a boundary, sort of a gray area, where the ground doesn't fume, and you can still see grass here and there - oddly, despite carrying a reasonably heavy load, you don't seem particularly tired right now. If anything, you're more tense and primed for physical activity than before, and break into almost a run as you try to get to safety as quickly as possible, the imperative of survival urging you onward, giving you extra mental strength as hope is visible just forty or so meters away - you reach it within a short period of time, leaving a world of horror behind you, though you still keep running until the weather becomes utterly normal - without rain, without clouds, just the suburbs at dusk, hardly even any wind. Finally daring to put your family on the ground, you look back at the scene you've left behind, and are struck by how profoundly unnatural it looks - a collection of menacing clouds from which incredibly loud lightning bolts shoot every few seconds, the whole area seemingly fuming as it is torn apart by winds, flames and the earthquake that is happening around it. Your house and everything in it, you're sure, should be leveled completely by now - it seems to be the center of the effect, after all. That bitch will-huh... strange, you get the feeling you're forgetting something.
Suddenly, your arm pops out of its shoulder joint painfully, followed by your nose suddenly breaking, a tooth coming loose. Confused, you feel an instinctive urge to
let go, and, not knowing any better, do so as a burning feeling develops in your lungs, after which point further injuries fail to develop, though you do feel a tad exhausted now in an undefinable, never before felt manner.
An interesting thought but how to keep it contained? Also absentmindedly draw a sketch.
It would be easy to keep it contained - the device solves the problem specified, and no more. You do get the feeling it must not be disturbed, however, and this may present a containment issue of sorts, though it can be overcome, you tell yourself without really knowing how. Sitting in the bus, you begin to sketch in your notepad, and without thinking your hand begins to draw a sketch of the machine, scaled down appropriately, of course, but keeping the necessary shape in mind. The thoughts of the machine grow more insistent as you both think and draw, and actually building it becomes more of a seductive idea, despite the obvious impracticality of doing so.
((...Well, i'm not getting any sleep tonight...))
Selina could only whimper, wanting to cry but having run out of tears 3 injections ago. Her mind was beginning to cloud, starting to forget what exactly was going on every now and then, only to be brought back by excruciating agony and abuse.
At hearing him speak of removing her organs, she shook violently, desperate to find some sort of escape!
As you struggle, the man gives you a slightly doubtful look, searching through his instruments with more urgency. Were you a more astute, less frightened onlooker, you would most certainly notice a certain inexperience about the way he operates, the way he handles the instruments looking like he's doing it for the very first time in his life, crippling inexperience mixed with a cocky underestimation of what it means to deftly use a scalpel. Not that this fact would calm you in any way. Or that it particularly matters.
For you see, it becomes plainly apparent when he starts cutting into you that his surgery credentials are limited to perhaps gutting a fish a few times in his life, or maybe watching someone else do it. The results are messy. The smell is awful.
"Stop struggling! It only makes it worse!" he shouts as he accidentally slices into your small intestine while trying to properly sever your kidney. The blood. Oh god, the blood. And the terrible pain, but that goes without saying, really. Your attempts to escape, which you find beyond your willpower to stop attempting, succeed at both throwing off his inept surgery attempts and making him nervous - both of these aren't very good for you, but you are not exactly in a rational mood during the process. A million thoughts of resistance run through your mind as your abdominal cavity is continually butchered, you scream and shriek, and the pain gets only worse - the man periodically has to inject you with the syringes, and keeps the set close on hand to try and keep you alive during the process. Eventually, he seems to give up, and just uses the sedative, which, just as before, makes you instantly black out, the last thing you see before everything clouds and disappears being the exasperated surgeon, breathing heavily and sweating profusely.
You dream, unlike the previous time, of angels. Your dream is one without beginning or ending, and without merit or meaning, but it soothes you nevertheless, until you wake up once more, noticing nothing at all out of what has become the ordinary state of things. The basement is here. You are here. The man is here. The
tools are here. And this is how it will remain. Your gaze is drawn to the abominable mess on the floor - blood and... other contents of your body, all mixed together. The man looks composed now.
"Okay, you're finally awake. So, thing is, organs regrow. All of the ones I checked, which is to say everything except the, like, heart and brain. The stuff does seem to work slower when you're under-"
He has an idea, his eyes widening. He quickly gets the hammer.
"Now, hold still! I had a thought!"
Using the claw part of the hammer, he quickly plies three of your front teeth out, holding your mouth open forcibly, then, in a process that takes five minutes, pulls out a molar with a set of pliers. And then injects you in the cheek with a syringe - this time you can feel the teeth regrow with your own tongue, and it feels distinctly unnatural.
"Aha! Teeth included! That could come in handy."
He then deposits (well, shoves) all the tools, completely unwashed as far as you can see and in no particular order, back into the instrument case, and sighs.
"So, I guess that's it for today. I think I found out a lot of the more important things, so that's good. Want anything to eat, maybe? Drink?" he asks, checking over his injection supplies.
Even knowing that there is no more air Steven opens his mouth and attempts to breath but all he receives is a choking mouthful of dirt which fills his throat.
Silently he begins screaming in his own mind at the universe to just let him have one more breath and to get him out of this goddamn hole, neither of which seem likely to happen.
after a few more moments when his consciousness begins to fade and his panic is at its highest something in his mind snaps and somehow his body responds.
You do seem to have found out in the hardest way possible that all those people who have stated that possibly the worst thing that can happen to them as a human being is to be buried alive were, unsurprisingly, completely right to think so, with the winning combination of asphyxiation, isolation, pressure, powerlessness and more coming together in one package. And just when the panic hits a high point, things go incredibly strange. They say a man experiences all sorts of strange things as he dies - visions of the afterlife, their life flashing before their eyes and more. But if this is what the afterlife looks like, you need to have a few words with the local pastor, because you are completely sure that he has failed to mention the... things. You have no idea what they are. But they're massive. Godlike. Completely alien to anything you know of.
And then it cuts out as you return to the airless depths of the earth, what was seemingly your final resting place... and it's almost as if every last one of your emotions found release at the same time, a chill running through you as raw energy is released from your skin, a blast wave emitted from your flesh sending the gravel and dust flying upward and sideways all in one go, the truck getting upturned, one of the skinheads sent flying up in the air. A powerful boom rings out through the neighborhood, with you at the center of it, lying at the bottom of a now-open grave ten meters in diameter, the dirt beneath you compacted into a hardness comparable to concrete.
You breathe in deeply, then exhale, knowing true happiness for perhaps the first time in your life as your entire body experiences a simultaneous feeling of exhilaration and invigoration.
"Yeah, so I've heard...do you have any idea why? Was it a cape fight? Or is it just a short day for you guys?"
I wasn't willing to go just yet. I knew I should. I knew I should be looking for them, trying to find their friends and see if they knew where they might have gone, but...I was scared of what I might find out. They were probably just pulling a prank, or we had some mix-up in the schedule; obviously there was a mix-up anyway, since I hadn't been told it was a half-day or whatever for them, but...well, a big sister had to worry anyway, didn't she?
"Uh, we had a test, and we were done about half an hour before the end of class, and it was too late to start learning something new, so they just let us go. It happens... sometimes, I guess."
Another parahuman? Incredible. Two triggers in the spce if a gunfigh wasn't entirely unheard of but it was rare enogh that Carrie had heard of only a couple of instances.
She looked at him, and at his knife, then towards her mother gaping wounds in the throat and leg. Not bullet wounds."So you're the one who killed her, huh?" try as she might carrie couldn't bring herself to be angry. It could be the shock or it could be the fact that she is separated from her body.
She returns. Throws up and motions to the nearest and least shocked officer. "Parahuman... Still needs medical attention. Not entirely bulletproof."
The officer does not reply. Instead, she gives you a suspicious look as you explain this to her, instantly compromising your image of an innocent pre-adolescent girl who isn't at all mixed up in this whole business. She doesn't ask you anything as they cautiously begin to restrain the man on the ground, but her look holds within it a great deal of questions.
(I'm confused as shit to what happened.)
Alex would close his eyes as he waited for the police to detain him. He would hold his wound, but he was careful not to directly touch it.
They do so, moving slowly as usual - everything feels so slow, you think. It's just a smidgen slower in actuality, you reassure yourself, but nevertheless very noticeable as you focus on it. Everybody around you seems a bit, well, retarded is what you guess the word is, though not in the developmental or intellectual sense or anything. A more polite way to phrase it would be that you're just ahead of the curve a bit. As they pick you up and start guiding you out of the warehouse very carefully, your eye is drawn to a girl who seems to be looking at you. What's she doing here?
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Topic: Worm: Edwardstown (Read 135647 times)