Hunting Season Chapter 6
Title: Hunting Season
Author: hobbitgrl
Spoilers: Nothing specific, but through season 3 assumed
Rating: NC-17 (for serious)
Warning: Again with the dark. Not angst, but thriller-serial-killer-raping-people dark.
A/N: This was written in response to the following prompt by
imbettygrable on
milady_milord.
I've deleted the parts of the prompt that give away the ending for any
who didn't see it and don't want to know going in. Also-I went dark on
this and it's only going to get darker. I don't believe in eroticizing
rape because that's dumb, but I'm doing my best not to shy away from
telling the story either. If, at any point, you feel I treated
something inappropriately please
tell me, and know it was never my intention.
Word Count: 2,190
Disclaimer: I own no part of Community or it's awesomeness.
Prompt: 2. Dark!Fic - X
is a sadistic serial killer/rapist. He is a master of deception, having
everybody - well, mostly everybody - under his good guy spell. His
next target...Annie Edison. She's going to be his masterpiece. Jeff (and
bonus points if Britta is his sidekick) has to prove/stop him. Two
condition clauses: a) *deleted* but I'm following it. b) Slater's body has to be found, the work of the killer.
Chapter 1:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/7993.html
Chapter 2:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/8202.html
Chapter 3:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/8632.html
Chapter 4:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/8954.html
Chapter 5:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/9139.html
Chapter 7:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/9518.html
Chapter 6
Jeff woke on the couch with a start. “Annie!” he called. She'd been here, safe. He'd passed out sometime after infomercials started with her wrapped in his arms; how had he not woken up when she pulled away? Jerking himself upright he stumbled around the apartment. “Annie? Annie!”
“Here Jeff,” she said quietly, coming out of the bathroom. “I just went to the bathroom.”
“You scared me,” he told her. It came out more judgmental than he meant it to, but he couldn't think straight-she just needed to trust him, rely on him. She wasn't taking this seriously. It was like she didn't want to believe what was happening to her.
“There's a lot of that going around,” she said humorlessly.
“Not funny.” He saw the phone clutched in her hand and felt his lips press together.
“What is anymore?” she shrugged, following his eyes to her half-hidden phone. “I-I needed to know what he was saying.”
“Why?” Jeff asked quietly. “Why do that to yourself?”
“It's,” she stopped, running free hand through her loose hair. “It's something I can control? I don't even know.”
“What did they say?”
“Just more of the usual.” She tried to brush past him to her bedroom, but he stopped her with a hand above her elbow. He winced as a sharp pain lanced behind his right eye.
“Tell me what they said,” he ordered her.
“Why do you need to know?” she asked, exhausted. “You're not my boyfriend Jeff and you're not my father. This isn't your problem.”
“Don't Annie,” he interrupted her, letting go of her arm and scrubbing his hands through his hair. He had a migraine coming on; he could feel the tension building right behind his eyes. Not a single headache before he started at Greendale-now he seemed riddled with them. “Just don't. You know-you know how I feel about you.”
“Yeah,” Annie rolled her eyes, “because our relationship has always been so clearly defined. Jeff, I don't-can we not talk about this right now?”
“Who's talking about it?” he growled at her. What was wrong with her? It was like he was always saying the wrong thing. When had they stopped being on the same side? “Why are we fighting?” Pain shot across his skull like lightning strikes; he gritted his teeth to keep from crying out.
“Since when were we fighting?” she asked, clearly irritated. Putting one hand against his head he tried to calm himself down, breathe through the pain. They were all on edge. The police had finally released the name of the third victim and it wasn't Slater. Annie was safe. He could protect them; he could get them all through this if she would just stop fighting him. She would stay safe if she would just do what he said.
“I need you to be a little more grown up about all of this Annie,” Jeff snapped at her.
She didn't scream at him or throw anything at him. She just stood there stiffly and stared at him for a very long time. He was braced for the temper tantrum, not for the quiet dismissal she gave him.
“I think it would be best if someone else stayed with me for awhile,” she said. “You clearly need some time alone to...to rest. Or whatever.” Spinning on her heel she marched into her bedroom and slammed the door, the echo ringing through his head as he stumbled to the table and groped in his coat pocket for the pills he stashed there.
“Fuck,” he hissed. He trusted the group. He trusted them all with his life. He just wasn't sure he could trust anyone else with Annie's. Could Shirley intimidate the bastard? Could Pierce fight him off? What if Britta got taken too or murdered outright? “Fuck!”
Slater was-no, he couldn’t think about that. He hadn’t thought about Slater consistently since the Tranny Dance, but now she was always there on the periphery of his thoughts. He needed to know she was okay. He needed to know Annie was safe. He needed the cops to hurry up and find this bastard. He sat back down on the futon trying to make himself comfortable, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. He'd talk to Britta at school today and they could figure this out. She was on the same page; Pierce kept offering to hire bodyguards and Shirley brought casseroles over, but Britta understood this wasn't something they could wait out. They needed to be offensive and find this asshole before he found Annie. They needed to figure out where this monster was and where he had Slater. Britta had started interviewing neighbors and researching the case as soon as she heard what was going on with Annie. Maybe today she'd finally have a lead. Maybe Annie would listen to Britta and stop messing around with Rich. Maybe they could find Slater before it was too late.
There were a lot of “maybes” with his plan; too many and he knew it. He let his eyes drift shut as the meds finally kicked in, his brow furrowed even as he fell asleep. He hadn't loved Michelle for a really long time. But that didn't mean he wanted her to be dead.
Jeff woke again as the morning sun poured through the off-white blinds in the apartment. Abed was eating cereal watching cartoons turned down low sitting in one of the chairs in front of the TV; Troy and Annie were nowhere to be seen.
“Troy’s still sleeping and Annie left with Britta about an hour ago,” Abed told him.
“I didn’t ask,” Jeff said snappishly.
“You didn’t have to,” Abed replied unfazed. “Your unacknowledged role as the father of our group places undue responsibility on you as our protector and leader. You’ve accepted that responsibility but it’s clearly taking its toll.”
“Are you saying I look like shit?” Jeff asked drolly.
“Something like that,” Abed agreed, turning back to his cartoons.
“Thanks Abed,” Jeff said with a dry laugh as he pushed himself off the couch. He took a minute and stretched, letting all his joins realign themselves with a series of pops and cracks. He was getting too old to sleep on couches.
Making his way to the bathroom Jeff took care of his immediate needs then checked his phone and texted Britta as he pulled his coat on. Can we talk?
“I’m gonna go home and take a shower Abed,” Jeff waved goodbye.
“Cool,” he replied, not looking away from the TV.
I’m with Annie. Shirley takes over in an hour. Britta texted back after a moment.
Meet in the library Jeff told her. Scratching his cheeks and neck, dammit he needed to shave.
Jeff got the shower, but he didn’t make it to meet Britta. Or the class after that. Partly because all the classes at Greendale had been canceled indefinitely, but mostly because nothing mattered once he saw the emergency vehicles swarmming Greendale's student parking lot. A sixteen year old high school girl on her way to her dual enrollment found a body next to the dumpster behind the Gen-Ed building.
There were masses of people huddled, the lights of police cars and ambulances flashed haphazardly on everything they touched, and the tell-tale black SUV’s of the FBI were pulled up, making a horseshoe that did little to repel prying eyes.
He approached slowly, knowing what he was going to find, but refusing to believe it. It could be anything he told himself. It could be another nameless victim he didn’t know and never heard of. That would be awful, but it would be better than Slater. He couldn't wish someone dead, it was unthinkable, but as Jeff approached the crime scene he wished for it fervently-he wished in that moment that it was anybody but Michelle. She couldn't be found be found dumped at Greendale like so much garbage.
But she was. Her body was covered by a cheap white sheet as cameras snapped photos and people in suits wondered around looking important. A white sheet was draped but not weighted down and when a breeze came through it pulled the edge of the sheet up bringing the smell of rotting food and something else-something sweeter and more awful-with it. Jeff saw her then-her eyes were still open and her skin was blotchy with bruises and abrasions. It didn't even look like her except it did. She was naked and her sightless eyes seemed to stare at him, to latch onto his and keep staring even as the cops wrestled with the sheet and pulled it back down across her broken, empty face.
He didn't see his friends; they appeared from somewhere and were suddenly next to him, but he was still stuck, focused on that coarse, white sheet. No one tried to touch him or comfort him and, when he finally pulled his eyes away, he was grateful for that. He'd seen death before, not a lot, but he'd gone to funerals and received phone calls in the dead of night telling him someone he didn't love-but knew he should-was dead. Usually he knew it was coming. One time he didn't.
This was nothing like any of those.
Jeff just stood there. He wondered from somewhere far away from himself if he should be feeling something. He couldn't feel a reaction. He was sad. He had to be sad. But he couldn't feel it. It wasn't like he didn't know this was a possibility. He knew Slater had been missing for weeks; he knew she had never left on her vacation. None of that made the reality more palatable. Some strange, detached Abed part of himself supposed he couldn't have prepared for this. But the rest of him was offended that he didn't feel anything. There was no rage, no sorrow, no heartbreak-just a strange emptiness that made no sense.
But suddenly, between one step and the next, the feelings were there on the edge of his consciousness; he could feel them rushing at him through the cracking dam he didn't know existed and he knew needed to be home before it all broke free. Annie-how could he forget about Annie even for a second? Annie was with Britta. He would text Britta once he was in his car and driving away from here, away from all these people and their stupid gossip and camera phones. Two girls giggled somewhere and suddenly he was immersed in rage, and something else, an emotion he couldn't even name. He needed to get clear of it all.
“Jeff! Jeff!!” someone screamed from behind him. He took three more steps. “Jeff, wait!”
He stopped letting whoever it was catch up. He couldn't just run to his car and peel out of the parking lot-well he could-he stopped that line of reasoning before he gave into it.
“Jeff,” Britta said again, gasping for breath as she caught up to him. “Jeff-“ she stopped when she saw his face. He had no idea what she saw there, but he could take a guess.
He said nothing.
“Annie took off with Rich,” Britta told him.
“What?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
“She was with Shirley and I went to the bathroom,” Britta said shaking her head. “By the time I came out they'd seen the body, and Shirley let Rich take her. I guess he said he was taking her home and he'd stay with her until one of us got there.”
From somewhere far away Jeff wondered idly if this qualified as a “killing rage.”
Turning from Britta without a word he got in the Lexus. Britta managed to jump in the passenger side as he shifted into reverse and swung out of his space. She pulled her door shut as he flipped it to drive and peeled out, tires squealing.
Britta didn't bother asking him to slow down or yell at him for nearly killing her. She just fastened her seat belt and gripped her door as he tore around corners and changed lanes violently, weaving through traffic and accelerating through yellow lights. They pulled up to the apartment in record time and Jeff didn't even bother to U-turn and park on the right side of the street. Pulling the car mostly to the side he jumped out, locking it as he ripped the door open and ran up the stairs three at a time.
He pounded on the door. No response. He pounded again. Still no response. Lifting his foot he kicked once, twice, three times and the door caved in on itself, tearing from the hinges and hanging by the deadbolt.
“Annie!” he hollered, making a circuit of the apartment. Coming back to the door he met Britta, standing, frozen in the ravaged doorway. “No one's here.”
Author: hobbitgrl
Spoilers: Nothing specific, but through season 3 assumed
Rating: NC-17 (for serious)
Warning: Again with the dark. Not angst, but thriller-serial-killer-raping-people dark.
A/N: This was written in response to the following prompt by
imbettygrable on
milady_milord.
I've deleted the parts of the prompt that give away the ending for any
who didn't see it and don't want to know going in. Also-I went dark on
this and it's only going to get darker. I don't believe in eroticizing
rape because that's dumb, but I'm doing my best not to shy away from
telling the story either. If, at any point, you feel I treated
something inappropriately please
tell me, and know it was never my intention.
Word Count: 2,190
Disclaimer: I own no part of Community or it's awesomeness.
Prompt: 2. Dark!Fic - X
is a sadistic serial killer/rapist. He is a master of deception, having
everybody - well, mostly everybody - under his good guy spell. His
next target...Annie Edison. She's going to be his masterpiece. Jeff (and
bonus points if Britta is his sidekick) has to prove/stop him. Two
condition clauses: a) *deleted* but I'm following it. b) Slater's body has to be found, the work of the killer.
Chapter 1:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/7993.html
Chapter 2:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/8202.html
Chapter 3:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/8632.html
Chapter 4:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/8954.html
Chapter 5:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/9139.html
Chapter 7:
http://drgirl11.livejournal.com/9518.html
Chapter 6
Jeff woke on the couch with a start. “Annie!” he called. She'd been here, safe. He'd passed out sometime after infomercials started with her wrapped in his arms; how had he not woken up when she pulled away? Jerking himself upright he stumbled around the apartment. “Annie? Annie!”
“Here Jeff,” she said quietly, coming out of the bathroom. “I just went to the bathroom.”
“You scared me,” he told her. It came out more judgmental than he meant it to, but he couldn't think straight-she just needed to trust him, rely on him. She wasn't taking this seriously. It was like she didn't want to believe what was happening to her.
“There's a lot of that going around,” she said humorlessly.
“Not funny.” He saw the phone clutched in her hand and felt his lips press together.
“What is anymore?” she shrugged, following his eyes to her half-hidden phone. “I-I needed to know what he was saying.”
“Why?” Jeff asked quietly. “Why do that to yourself?”
“It's,” she stopped, running free hand through her loose hair. “It's something I can control? I don't even know.”
“What did they say?”
“Just more of the usual.” She tried to brush past him to her bedroom, but he stopped her with a hand above her elbow. He winced as a sharp pain lanced behind his right eye.
“Tell me what they said,” he ordered her.
“Why do you need to know?” she asked, exhausted. “You're not my boyfriend Jeff and you're not my father. This isn't your problem.”
“Don't Annie,” he interrupted her, letting go of her arm and scrubbing his hands through his hair. He had a migraine coming on; he could feel the tension building right behind his eyes. Not a single headache before he started at Greendale-now he seemed riddled with them. “Just don't. You know-you know how I feel about you.”
“Yeah,” Annie rolled her eyes, “because our relationship has always been so clearly defined. Jeff, I don't-can we not talk about this right now?”
“Who's talking about it?” he growled at her. What was wrong with her? It was like he was always saying the wrong thing. When had they stopped being on the same side? “Why are we fighting?” Pain shot across his skull like lightning strikes; he gritted his teeth to keep from crying out.
“Since when were we fighting?” she asked, clearly irritated. Putting one hand against his head he tried to calm himself down, breathe through the pain. They were all on edge. The police had finally released the name of the third victim and it wasn't Slater. Annie was safe. He could protect them; he could get them all through this if she would just stop fighting him. She would stay safe if she would just do what he said.
“I need you to be a little more grown up about all of this Annie,” Jeff snapped at her.
She didn't scream at him or throw anything at him. She just stood there stiffly and stared at him for a very long time. He was braced for the temper tantrum, not for the quiet dismissal she gave him.
“I think it would be best if someone else stayed with me for awhile,” she said. “You clearly need some time alone to...to rest. Or whatever.” Spinning on her heel she marched into her bedroom and slammed the door, the echo ringing through his head as he stumbled to the table and groped in his coat pocket for the pills he stashed there.
“Fuck,” he hissed. He trusted the group. He trusted them all with his life. He just wasn't sure he could trust anyone else with Annie's. Could Shirley intimidate the bastard? Could Pierce fight him off? What if Britta got taken too or murdered outright? “Fuck!”
Slater was-no, he couldn’t think about that. He hadn’t thought about Slater consistently since the Tranny Dance, but now she was always there on the periphery of his thoughts. He needed to know she was okay. He needed to know Annie was safe. He needed the cops to hurry up and find this bastard. He sat back down on the futon trying to make himself comfortable, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. He'd talk to Britta at school today and they could figure this out. She was on the same page; Pierce kept offering to hire bodyguards and Shirley brought casseroles over, but Britta understood this wasn't something they could wait out. They needed to be offensive and find this asshole before he found Annie. They needed to figure out where this monster was and where he had Slater. Britta had started interviewing neighbors and researching the case as soon as she heard what was going on with Annie. Maybe today she'd finally have a lead. Maybe Annie would listen to Britta and stop messing around with Rich. Maybe they could find Slater before it was too late.
There were a lot of “maybes” with his plan; too many and he knew it. He let his eyes drift shut as the meds finally kicked in, his brow furrowed even as he fell asleep. He hadn't loved Michelle for a really long time. But that didn't mean he wanted her to be dead.
Jeff woke again as the morning sun poured through the off-white blinds in the apartment. Abed was eating cereal watching cartoons turned down low sitting in one of the chairs in front of the TV; Troy and Annie were nowhere to be seen.
“Troy’s still sleeping and Annie left with Britta about an hour ago,” Abed told him.
“I didn’t ask,” Jeff said snappishly.
“You didn’t have to,” Abed replied unfazed. “Your unacknowledged role as the father of our group places undue responsibility on you as our protector and leader. You’ve accepted that responsibility but it’s clearly taking its toll.”
“Are you saying I look like shit?” Jeff asked drolly.
“Something like that,” Abed agreed, turning back to his cartoons.
“Thanks Abed,” Jeff said with a dry laugh as he pushed himself off the couch. He took a minute and stretched, letting all his joins realign themselves with a series of pops and cracks. He was getting too old to sleep on couches.
Making his way to the bathroom Jeff took care of his immediate needs then checked his phone and texted Britta as he pulled his coat on. Can we talk?
“I’m gonna go home and take a shower Abed,” Jeff waved goodbye.
“Cool,” he replied, not looking away from the TV.
I’m with Annie. Shirley takes over in an hour. Britta texted back after a moment.
Meet in the library Jeff told her. Scratching his cheeks and neck, dammit he needed to shave.
Jeff got the shower, but he didn’t make it to meet Britta. Or the class after that. Partly because all the classes at Greendale had been canceled indefinitely, but mostly because nothing mattered once he saw the emergency vehicles swarmming Greendale's student parking lot. A sixteen year old high school girl on her way to her dual enrollment found a body next to the dumpster behind the Gen-Ed building.
There were masses of people huddled, the lights of police cars and ambulances flashed haphazardly on everything they touched, and the tell-tale black SUV’s of the FBI were pulled up, making a horseshoe that did little to repel prying eyes.
He approached slowly, knowing what he was going to find, but refusing to believe it. It could be anything he told himself. It could be another nameless victim he didn’t know and never heard of. That would be awful, but it would be better than Slater. He couldn't wish someone dead, it was unthinkable, but as Jeff approached the crime scene he wished for it fervently-he wished in that moment that it was anybody but Michelle. She couldn't be found be found dumped at Greendale like so much garbage.
But she was. Her body was covered by a cheap white sheet as cameras snapped photos and people in suits wondered around looking important. A white sheet was draped but not weighted down and when a breeze came through it pulled the edge of the sheet up bringing the smell of rotting food and something else-something sweeter and more awful-with it. Jeff saw her then-her eyes were still open and her skin was blotchy with bruises and abrasions. It didn't even look like her except it did. She was naked and her sightless eyes seemed to stare at him, to latch onto his and keep staring even as the cops wrestled with the sheet and pulled it back down across her broken, empty face.
He didn't see his friends; they appeared from somewhere and were suddenly next to him, but he was still stuck, focused on that coarse, white sheet. No one tried to touch him or comfort him and, when he finally pulled his eyes away, he was grateful for that. He'd seen death before, not a lot, but he'd gone to funerals and received phone calls in the dead of night telling him someone he didn't love-but knew he should-was dead. Usually he knew it was coming. One time he didn't.
This was nothing like any of those.
Jeff just stood there. He wondered from somewhere far away from himself if he should be feeling something. He couldn't feel a reaction. He was sad. He had to be sad. But he couldn't feel it. It wasn't like he didn't know this was a possibility. He knew Slater had been missing for weeks; he knew she had never left on her vacation. None of that made the reality more palatable. Some strange, detached Abed part of himself supposed he couldn't have prepared for this. But the rest of him was offended that he didn't feel anything. There was no rage, no sorrow, no heartbreak-just a strange emptiness that made no sense.
But suddenly, between one step and the next, the feelings were there on the edge of his consciousness; he could feel them rushing at him through the cracking dam he didn't know existed and he knew needed to be home before it all broke free. Annie-how could he forget about Annie even for a second? Annie was with Britta. He would text Britta once he was in his car and driving away from here, away from all these people and their stupid gossip and camera phones. Two girls giggled somewhere and suddenly he was immersed in rage, and something else, an emotion he couldn't even name. He needed to get clear of it all.
“Jeff! Jeff!!” someone screamed from behind him. He took three more steps. “Jeff, wait!”
He stopped letting whoever it was catch up. He couldn't just run to his car and peel out of the parking lot-well he could-he stopped that line of reasoning before he gave into it.
“Jeff,” Britta said again, gasping for breath as she caught up to him. “Jeff-“ she stopped when she saw his face. He had no idea what she saw there, but he could take a guess.
He said nothing.
“Annie took off with Rich,” Britta told him.
“What?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
“She was with Shirley and I went to the bathroom,” Britta said shaking her head. “By the time I came out they'd seen the body, and Shirley let Rich take her. I guess he said he was taking her home and he'd stay with her until one of us got there.”
From somewhere far away Jeff wondered idly if this qualified as a “killing rage.”
Turning from Britta without a word he got in the Lexus. Britta managed to jump in the passenger side as he shifted into reverse and swung out of his space. She pulled her door shut as he flipped it to drive and peeled out, tires squealing.
Britta didn't bother asking him to slow down or yell at him for nearly killing her. She just fastened her seat belt and gripped her door as he tore around corners and changed lanes violently, weaving through traffic and accelerating through yellow lights. They pulled up to the apartment in record time and Jeff didn't even bother to U-turn and park on the right side of the street. Pulling the car mostly to the side he jumped out, locking it as he ripped the door open and ran up the stairs three at a time.
He pounded on the door. No response. He pounded again. Still no response. Lifting his foot he kicked once, twice, three times and the door caved in on itself, tearing from the hinges and hanging by the deadbolt.
“Annie!” he hollered, making a circuit of the apartment. Coming back to the door he met Britta, standing, frozen in the ravaged doorway. “No one's here.”