Sometimes, people tell me random things and then stories happen. Like that time a friend told me to write a Doctor Who stapler monster. Stuff like that
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Evidently Deviltown, Part 2bendingsignpostJuly 17 2011, 07:14:55 UTC
At the end of the week, she remembers that someone in this flat is meant to be using her mum’s ill-advised purchase.
Then she remembers they haven’t checked on the thing in days.
Cursing under her breath, she unlocks the door and peers in. After the last one, they’ve had a toilet and shower installed, and the stench is fortunately lacking. When she spots where it’s gone, she finds it in the corner, sitting up and piled with blankets.
She enters, shutting the door behind her, and creeps closer to the sleeping figure. This is sleep, not death, as gaunt and pale as the poor creature is. Tufts of brown hair stick up wildly. Freckles stand out like dirt on the skin of its cheeks. They’re cute, those freckles. Not for the first time, Rose wishes they didn’t have to make the Flesh look so much like people. She knows it’s for compatibility reasons, but it does make it so very disconcerting sometimes.
She gives him a basic look-over, watching him breathe, checking his temp, then checking his pulse. That’s where the basics stop, because there’s something wrong with it. Pressure problems, her mum had said. She eases his head to the side, checks the marks on the right side of its neck. Healing up nicely, nothing strange there. They’ve been washed, cleaned, and she’s sure her mum didn’t do that.
Weakly, it groans.
“When was the last time you ate?” she asks. She smoothes its hair down. Her mum isn’t here to remind her that the Flesh aren’t pets. Besides, it’s nice hair.
It rasps something and she realizes that for all it has the shower and toilet, it doesn’t have a cup. That does explain the multitude of really quick showers, though.
“I’ll be back in a second,” she says.
“No,” he says.
“I’ll be right back,” she repeats. “With water, yeah?”
“Run,” he tells her.
She smiles faintly. Smoothes his hair down again. Must have been having a nightmare, poor thing. “It’s okay,” she says, watching him lean into the touch of her hand. It’s sweet.
She gets up, locks the door behind her, and fetches that cup of water, one of the unbreakable plastic ones. She comes back and helps him sip it down. He’s parched, that’s clear enough.
“Slowly does it,” she urges. “Slowly.”
Water dribbles down the sides of his mouth, over his chin and onto the blanket, a barely noticeable flow.
“You haven’t eaten in a week, have you?” she asks. “What should you eat?” She never knows what to feed them. She thinks that’s the problem, as well as the difference between her and her mother. Her mum forgets what makes the Flesh different from people. Rose is fascinated by it.
“Anything,” he says.
She’ll look online, she decides.
“Is anything else wrong with you?” she asks. “You haven’t got a fever, you’re not clammy, but you don’t look too good. There’s something wrong with your pulse.”
“Banana,” he says wistfully.
“What?”
“A banana,” he repeats. “That’d be nice.”
“Okay,” she says. “I can get you that.”
He settles back against the wall a bit more, less sinking into the corner and more sliding into sleep. Thank you, he mouths.
Evidently Deviltown, Part 2.1bendingsignpostJuly 17 2011, 07:16:27 UTC
They’ve never had a polite one, before. She hadn’t realized that happened. It makes her remember her own manners, even if Mickey would mock her for talking to the Flesh this way. So what? Some people talk to plants.
“My name’s Rose, by the way.”
He opens his eyes like they’re heavy, a slow process. They only open halfway before they start drooping shut again. “Nice to meet you, Rose,” he says, voice low, dragging like a weight. “You should run.”
“Oh,” she says, a bit startled. But of course it’s urgent, obviously it’s urgent: he hasn’t eaten in a week. “Right.” She kisses him on the forehead, which is when she knows she’s screwed. Five minutes in the same room and she’s already attached.
“Goodbye,” he says.
“I’ll be back,” she promises. “Bananas and everything.”
“Goodbye,” he says again, like he’s about to die, and that freaks her out enough that she’s out of the flat and jogging through the evening fog to the corner store. They don’t have much of anything at all, even less so for Flesh, so it’s no great surprise when she doesn’t find anything labelled as a banana. There are potatoes, which have the proper ratio of consonants to vowels and in the right order too, though she doesn’t think the similarity will much count.
While she’s there, she grabs an extra few frozen packs. Until her mum’s investment stops looking so anaemic, there’ll be nothing out of him.
She rushes back home, checks online for cooking instructions, and winds up doing what she’s done her entire life: she sticks the food in the microwave. It’s good to know all food works like this.
The brown balls crack open with these unpleasant popping noises and then she realizes she doesn’t have anything to put the remains on. If they’d just stayed as balls, it wouldn’t matter, but now they’re broken, as well as piping hot. She hopes it’s okay they’ve broken open.
It takes some rooting around the flat, but eventually, she finds a shoebox. She takes the lid, deems it sturdy enough, and picks the contents of the microwave out onto it. A couple times, she has to rush to the loo to run her fingers under the tap, her skin burnt by potato steam.
She gets the door open one-handed. It helps she only did up one of the locks when she went. Really, what’s he going to do, the way he is? When she enters, the most he manages is to lift his head and plaintively say her name.
“It’s okay,” she tells him, sitting down next to him. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find any banana,” she apologizes. Mickey would never let her live it down if he heard her now, apologizing to this sad thing, but he’s so sad and weak and she means it terribly. “I’ve got potatoes,” she adds. “Cooked them too. Still hot.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he tries to tell her. There is polite and then there’s this.
“Don’t be stupid,” she says, taking one of the cooling pieces of... of whatever a potato is between her fingers. She regrets saying it immediately, because that’s what the Flesh are. “Never mind,” she says. “Here, eat. Open your mouth.”
He does, taking what she gives him and moving his jaw around with his lips together. She can’t help staring. The only normal bit is when he swallows. She whispers encouragement and he seems to bloom a bit and she is really, truly screwed. Losing him is going to be worse than when the neighbour boy two floors down killed her cat. The boy had only been a, a puppy? A cub? Pups are werewolves, so what are werefoxes? She can never remember, isn’t much interested in being bio-sociologically correct. Anyway, he’d been young and only playing. He hadn’t known Smokey couldn’t stand up to his roughhousing.
When this Flesh dies, though, it’s going to be her fault. She hates the thought of it already. This is why she sticks with frozen. She knows they die either way, but she doesn’t want to have to see it.
She feeds him until he stops eating. “I might vomit,” he warns. It’s almost too gross to consider, all that pulped up plant, like bits of slimy, rotting forest.
She looks down at the shoebox lid, still so full. She’d made much too much. “There’s more when you want it.” She picks up the empty cup. “More water?”
“Molto bene,” he murmurs. It’s something of a surprise.
Re: Evidently Deviltown, Part 2.2bendingsignpostJuly 17 2011, 07:17:31 UTC
“Were you loomed in Italy?” she asks when she returns. “That was Italian, right?”
“Qui.”
She laughs.
He smiles, his teeth so very flat, like a child’s. She’d thought he looks older than her, up until now. With that smile, she’s not so sure. They’re force-grown, anyway, so it’s not like appearance is any indication. It’s not even like it matters.
He holds the cup this time and she folds her hands around his, giving him the support he clearly needs. His eyes shut completely. Gorgeous eyelashes on this one. They stand out against his skin almost as much as the freckles. The only sounds in the flat are their breathing, his small swallows. It’s nice. Soothing.
Which is of course the signal for the front door to open, her mum loud as anything.
He startles, his eyes snapping open and darting to the door of this room. His room, she supposes. The water spills down his chin, dampening the blanket pretty bad that time. She pulls the plastic cup away, puts it down, and he grabs at her hands.
“Rose,” he whispers.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her. It’s staggering, the urgency in those hushed words. The dignity. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s only water,” she insists.
He blinks at her, his brown eyes so uncertain.
“Rose!” Jackie yells from the hall. “What the hell happened to the microwave!”
“I’ll clean it up in a minute!” she yells back, twisting around to shout at the door.
“Rose!” Impatient.
“Mum!” Disrespectful.
He drops her hands.
She looks at him, confused.
He stares at her. Like she’s hit him, or done something terrible. He’s like an aggrieved cat but that look in that face, it makes her guilty, unspeakably so. It’s only because he looks like a person. It’s not fair at all.
She picks up the cup again and he turns his face away, to his right. His eyes remain fixed on hers, wide and round. She puts the cup down when she realizes, feeling a fresh wave of pity. The Flesh are stupid, but that’s not their fault.
“I’m not like you,” she confirms. “I didn’t mean to make you think I was.”
He says nothing.
“Eat your potato, okay?” She nudges the shoebox lid toward him to make sure he understands.
He flinches, or maybe shivers. It’s either fear or the water in the blanket. She knows what it is and she also knows what she’d rather believe. She tries not to be annoyed.
“Okay?” she asks again. She doesn’t move or drop her gaze until he nods. “Good. You can change your clothes tomorrow, how’s that sound?” It’s way overdue.
No answer.
“Good dawning,” she tells him, then closes the door behind her. She locks it up, all the way, just to be sure Jackie doesn’t raise yet another fuss.
“Microwave, Rose,” Jackie prompts from in front of the telly.
“Yeah, I know,” she answers, feeling oddly defeated. She’d liked it when he’d talked.
Still, it’s not like she hasn’t any experience in this sort of thing. Smokey had been a wary stray. She can’t imagine this’ll be much different.
Stopping for the night/morning here. We'll see if it's still buzzing in my head when I regain consciousness.
Then she remembers they haven’t checked on the thing in days.
Cursing under her breath, she unlocks the door and peers in. After the last one, they’ve had a toilet and shower installed, and the stench is fortunately lacking. When she spots where it’s gone, she finds it in the corner, sitting up and piled with blankets.
She enters, shutting the door behind her, and creeps closer to the sleeping figure. This is sleep, not death, as gaunt and pale as the poor creature is. Tufts of brown hair stick up wildly. Freckles stand out like dirt on the skin of its cheeks. They’re cute, those freckles. Not for the first time, Rose wishes they didn’t have to make the Flesh look so much like people. She knows it’s for compatibility reasons, but it does make it so very disconcerting sometimes.
She gives him a basic look-over, watching him breathe, checking his temp, then checking his pulse. That’s where the basics stop, because there’s something wrong with it. Pressure problems, her mum had said. She eases his head to the side, checks the marks on the right side of its neck. Healing up nicely, nothing strange there. They’ve been washed, cleaned, and she’s sure her mum didn’t do that.
Weakly, it groans.
“When was the last time you ate?” she asks. She smoothes its hair down. Her mum isn’t here to remind her that the Flesh aren’t pets. Besides, it’s nice hair.
It rasps something and she realizes that for all it has the shower and toilet, it doesn’t have a cup. That does explain the multitude of really quick showers, though.
“I’ll be back in a second,” she says.
“No,” he says.
“I’ll be right back,” she repeats. “With water, yeah?”
“Run,” he tells her.
She smiles faintly. Smoothes his hair down again. Must have been having a nightmare, poor thing. “It’s okay,” she says, watching him lean into the touch of her hand. It’s sweet.
She gets up, locks the door behind her, and fetches that cup of water, one of the unbreakable plastic ones. She comes back and helps him sip it down. He’s parched, that’s clear enough.
“Slowly does it,” she urges. “Slowly.”
Water dribbles down the sides of his mouth, over his chin and onto the blanket, a barely noticeable flow.
“You haven’t eaten in a week, have you?” she asks. “What should you eat?” She never knows what to feed them. She thinks that’s the problem, as well as the difference between her and her mother. Her mum forgets what makes the Flesh different from people. Rose is fascinated by it.
“Anything,” he says.
She’ll look online, she decides.
“Is anything else wrong with you?” she asks. “You haven’t got a fever, you’re not clammy, but you don’t look too good. There’s something wrong with your pulse.”
“Banana,” he says wistfully.
“What?”
“A banana,” he repeats. “That’d be nice.”
“Okay,” she says. “I can get you that.”
He settles back against the wall a bit more, less sinking into the corner and more sliding into sleep. Thank you, he mouths.
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“My name’s Rose, by the way.”
He opens his eyes like they’re heavy, a slow process. They only open halfway before they start drooping shut again. “Nice to meet you, Rose,” he says, voice low, dragging like a weight. “You should run.”
“Oh,” she says, a bit startled. But of course it’s urgent, obviously it’s urgent: he hasn’t eaten in a week. “Right.” She kisses him on the forehead, which is when she knows she’s screwed. Five minutes in the same room and she’s already attached.
“Goodbye,” he says.
“I’ll be back,” she promises. “Bananas and everything.”
“Goodbye,” he says again, like he’s about to die, and that freaks her out enough that she’s out of the flat and jogging through the evening fog to the corner store. They don’t have much of anything at all, even less so for Flesh, so it’s no great surprise when she doesn’t find anything labelled as a banana. There are potatoes, which have the proper ratio of consonants to vowels and in the right order too, though she doesn’t think the similarity will much count.
While she’s there, she grabs an extra few frozen packs. Until her mum’s investment stops looking so anaemic, there’ll be nothing out of him.
She rushes back home, checks online for cooking instructions, and winds up doing what she’s done her entire life: she sticks the food in the microwave. It’s good to know all food works like this.
The brown balls crack open with these unpleasant popping noises and then she realizes she doesn’t have anything to put the remains on. If they’d just stayed as balls, it wouldn’t matter, but now they’re broken, as well as piping hot. She hopes it’s okay they’ve broken open.
It takes some rooting around the flat, but eventually, she finds a shoebox. She takes the lid, deems it sturdy enough, and picks the contents of the microwave out onto it. A couple times, she has to rush to the loo to run her fingers under the tap, her skin burnt by potato steam.
She gets the door open one-handed. It helps she only did up one of the locks when she went. Really, what’s he going to do, the way he is? When she enters, the most he manages is to lift his head and plaintively say her name.
“It’s okay,” she tells him, sitting down next to him. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find any banana,” she apologizes. Mickey would never let her live it down if he heard her now, apologizing to this sad thing, but he’s so sad and weak and she means it terribly. “I’ve got potatoes,” she adds. “Cooked them too. Still hot.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he tries to tell her. There is polite and then there’s this.
“Don’t be stupid,” she says, taking one of the cooling pieces of... of whatever a potato is between her fingers. She regrets saying it immediately, because that’s what the Flesh are. “Never mind,” she says. “Here, eat. Open your mouth.”
He does, taking what she gives him and moving his jaw around with his lips together. She can’t help staring. The only normal bit is when he swallows. She whispers encouragement and he seems to bloom a bit and she is really, truly screwed. Losing him is going to be worse than when the neighbour boy two floors down killed her cat. The boy had only been a, a puppy? A cub? Pups are werewolves, so what are werefoxes? She can never remember, isn’t much interested in being bio-sociologically correct. Anyway, he’d been young and only playing. He hadn’t known Smokey couldn’t stand up to his roughhousing.
When this Flesh dies, though, it’s going to be her fault. She hates the thought of it already. This is why she sticks with frozen. She knows they die either way, but she doesn’t want to have to see it.
She feeds him until he stops eating. “I might vomit,” he warns. It’s almost too gross to consider, all that pulped up plant, like bits of slimy, rotting forest.
She looks down at the shoebox lid, still so full. She’d made much too much. “There’s more when you want it.” She picks up the empty cup. “More water?”
“Molto bene,” he murmurs. It’s something of a surprise.
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“Qui.”
She laughs.
He smiles, his teeth so very flat, like a child’s. She’d thought he looks older than her, up until now. With that smile, she’s not so sure. They’re force-grown, anyway, so it’s not like appearance is any indication. It’s not even like it matters.
He holds the cup this time and she folds her hands around his, giving him the support he clearly needs. His eyes shut completely. Gorgeous eyelashes on this one. They stand out against his skin almost as much as the freckles. The only sounds in the flat are their breathing, his small swallows. It’s nice. Soothing.
Which is of course the signal for the front door to open, her mum loud as anything.
He startles, his eyes snapping open and darting to the door of this room. His room, she supposes. The water spills down his chin, dampening the blanket pretty bad that time. She pulls the plastic cup away, puts it down, and he grabs at her hands.
“Rose,” he whispers.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her. It’s staggering, the urgency in those hushed words. The dignity. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s only water,” she insists.
He blinks at her, his brown eyes so uncertain.
“Rose!” Jackie yells from the hall. “What the hell happened to the microwave!”
“I’ll clean it up in a minute!” she yells back, twisting around to shout at the door.
“Rose!” Impatient.
“Mum!” Disrespectful.
He drops her hands.
She looks at him, confused.
He stares at her. Like she’s hit him, or done something terrible. He’s like an aggrieved cat but that look in that face, it makes her guilty, unspeakably so. It’s only because he looks like a person. It’s not fair at all.
She picks up the cup again and he turns his face away, to his right. His eyes remain fixed on hers, wide and round. She puts the cup down when she realizes, feeling a fresh wave of pity. The Flesh are stupid, but that’s not their fault.
“I’m not like you,” she confirms. “I didn’t mean to make you think I was.”
He says nothing.
“Eat your potato, okay?” She nudges the shoebox lid toward him to make sure he understands.
He flinches, or maybe shivers. It’s either fear or the water in the blanket. She knows what it is and she also knows what she’d rather believe. She tries not to be annoyed.
“Okay?” she asks again. She doesn’t move or drop her gaze until he nods. “Good. You can change your clothes tomorrow, how’s that sound?” It’s way overdue.
No answer.
“Good dawning,” she tells him, then closes the door behind her. She locks it up, all the way, just to be sure Jackie doesn’t raise yet another fuss.
“Microwave, Rose,” Jackie prompts from in front of the telly.
“Yeah, I know,” she answers, feeling oddly defeated. She’d liked it when he’d talked.
Still, it’s not like she hasn’t any experience in this sort of thing. Smokey had been a wary stray. She can’t imagine this’ll be much different.
Stopping for the night/morning here. We'll see if it's still buzzing in my head when I regain consciousness.
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AND THAT I AM GOING TO COMMENT
JUST AS SOON AS I CALM DOWN
AND RETURN FROM DINNER AT MY UNCLE'S
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