just a flu [1/?]
Hello ♥3♥
After quite a lengthy lurking period I've finally come up with another story that I wanted to post. It's going to be a multiparter, yeeyyy i don't know what i'm doing.
Title: just a flu [1/?]
Author: sgnt_caitsy
Rating: NC-17 for violence and gore (will change)
Pairing: Nick/Ellis
Summary: When a flu isn't just a flu.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Just letting you know I'm pretty much freeballin' here. ;~; Also not beta'd so sorry for any mistakes. Hope someone likes it. c:
just a flu.
The sun was shining high in the sky. It was hot, maybe even the hottest day on record this year. Ellis had already seen Mrs Crabshaw, quite a regular of the shop, collapse on her daily walk past the workshop that morning. It was sad to see such a nice lady in a state like that, crying and sweating on the hot pavement, so he sat with her and shielded her face with his shadow until help came. She blubbered and shook around on the ground until an ambulance with blearing sirens and tired paramedics had carried her away. It was the fourth one he’d seen screaming down the hot top that day, the seventh one he had heard since daybreak.
He wiped the sweat off his face with the shirt he’d taken off earlier and fiddled with the volume on the radio. Nothing but green flu updates, not even a measly song. The shirt felt cool on his skin for just a second, until the heat stole it away again with a whisper of a sweltering breeze. He sighed. It really was a hot day.
Keith walked past him with a swagger and a smile, tapping the roof of a dinged up Bronco Ellis was working on, “Y’know it ain’t safe working without a shirt, Ellis.” Because after all he did know how unsafe it was, there were still the burns and impromptu nipple piercings to prove it.
Ellis heard him laugh his way behind, then under, a small Japanese economy car. He smiled a small smile, just Keith being Keith, and didn’t look twice as he heard Keith squeeze under the engine block. If he’d really looked though he would have noticed that Keith’s eyes weren’t right, the usual placid green was glassy and frantic, never lingering long on one thing. If he’d really listened he would have heard the breathless edge to his laugh that made it almost maniacal, and if he’d really asked why Keith had a heavy bandage on his arm he would have actually worried. Because Keith was sick, he was very sick. The itchy sore that he had taken to biting through the bandage till it oozed was testament to that.
He would have really worried, maybe even asked the boss to close the shop and even volunteered to take Keith to the hospital, but Ellis hadn’t looked and he hadn’t listened and he hadn’t asked and it was just another day in the workshop with the boys. It was a hot day and hot days got to everyone. People fell down in fevers and people laughed breathlessly and people stood listlessly in the middle of the street - empty dog chains hanging from their hands.
He was wiping the sweat from his neck again when a gleaming black Mercedes rolled in. He had to squint and shield his eyes from the sharp glare of sun off the paint job.
A tall man stepped out of the driver side. Nice suit and dark slicked back hair that would have looked good if it wasn’t so ridiculously out of place in a dust beaten town like this. A buxom lady, brunette, slipped from the passenger side - she was laughing and clutching an expensive looking coat to her chest. Ellis thought she was insane, it was nearly a thousand degrees out. The only place she’d be wearing that coat to would be the overcrowded hospital.
The tall man leisurely gestured toward him with fingers ringed in gold, “You in charge here?” There was something unnerving in his stance. It was something like a full body poker face and being under the weight of it made him want to put his shirt back on. Ellis rubbed his stomach uncomfortably.
He didn’t get a chance to reply before the man was tossing the keys toward him, Ellis fumbled them twice before securing them in his palm. The man looked over the rim of his sunglasses and raised his eyebrow condescendingly at him whilst the brunette behind him eyed Ellis’ chest appreciatively.
“I think the brakes are worn, check it out for me, kid.”
Then he was turning away, leaving no room for argument or protest, and hooking an arm through the lady’s - clearly copping a feel of a rounded breast on his way - and leading her into the sun once again. No one noticed how her jaw tightened or how the arm under her jacket ached and ached.
Ellis grit his teeth as he tossed a, “don’t scratch the paint job,” over his shoulder. He’d never met a man that instantly rubbed him the wrong way. The heavy chested blonde tittered with laughter. He felt like putting a boot through the windshield and leaving the sun to bleach the leather seats he knew would lie behind the glass. Oh they’d bleach, sure as hell, ‘specially on a day like this.
Another ambulance wailed high over the midday sun and Ellis watched them walk away until the shopfronts swallowed them up.
He turned away muttering, “Jeez, I hope I never see that asshole again,” and Keith laughed so loudly that the he choked, snarled, on the sound.
{... CEDA urges citizens to be diligent in their personal hygiene and to check yourself or loved ones into your local hospital should you experience symptoms of green flu...}
Ellis slipped back into the shade and flipped the sound down on the radio - they didn’t need it depressing what little customers were coming in that day.
It was just a hot day and hot days got to everyone.
---
He ran. He ran hard. His lungs burned. His chest ached. There was something wrong with the world now, it couldn’t just be here. Just couldn’t. He was sure of it. Something like that. Their skin, their skin was falling - rotting - off...
It was still dark when some of them had broken into his house, smashing through the glass windows in the front room. They screamed and screamed like their own skin was killing them, and in a way it was, as it slipped messily from their thrashing limbs. He could understand some of the words, he’d never forget them, and, God, they were only children.
Ellis knew one of them, one of the ones in his house. The frilled nightdress was familiar from when he’d seen little Sally from next door wander down to the mailbox yesterday. She told Ellis she had a fever and mummy said she could stay home from school but she had to stay inside. Now her eyes were erupting with pus, her pretty nightdress ending in ragged stumps where her arm used to be - the skin split open like her limbs had just decayed and slid off. Ellis wanted to help her, but God he didn’t want to touch her. He wanted to hit her - get her away from him - push her into the ground and bury her.
She was screaming the Lord’s Prayer at him, or something like it. The words that foamed from her bubbling lips weren’t anything like the ones he was taught at Sunday school. She was dying, beating at her head with her ragged arms like a drum. The other one wasn’t much trouble, it had simply rolled on his floor in a brief seizure before stopping and Ellis hoped, prayed, it wasn’t her younger sister Josie.
Jesus Christ, they were only kids.
His arm bumped roughly against the alleyway he swung out of, the moon was out in full - casting iridescent shadows over the bodies that swayed dangerously to and fro on the street to the beat, beat, beat of his bare feet on the road. They looked like drunken sailors. They were everywhere, just standing under the moon in some kind of hellish mass. Noises, they made noises too, like whispers in ancient tongues. Spoke words that didn’t fit inside their mouths.
This was his neighbourhood in a nightmare dreamscape.
Some of them looked at him, their downturned faces hanging blackly from their necks like the freshly hanged. Most of them shuffled on, several retched on themselves and two of them rushed him. Ellis ran, puncturing the skin of his thighs on the dumpster that loomed out of the darkness. He spotted a shovel - lying forgotten near a stack of abandoned milk crates. He picked it up. Turned around and swung. He heard a meaty thud and something like the scattering of leaves. Teeth on his arm - Ellis yelled and kicked hard. His foot connecting with the stomach of a shadowy man (ghoul, zombie, what the hell was happening?) and sending it to a boneless sprawl.
Ellis felt the tears in his throat, felt his nose running. He lifted the shovel. He brought it down on its head, then again and again till its face was no more than a splattered mess. The shovel swung back round again when he felt hands on his back. It connected with no fuss and killed with no difficulty. Ellis could barely stand the noise it made as the next one died - nothing had ever sounded so alien to him. He cried, dropped the shovel, and slid to the ground, witnessing the shovel carving through black and white faces again and again behind his eyes.
Two children had died in his house tonight.
The ground was covered in shards of broken glass that dug into his bare knees, but the only thing he could feel was the phantom teeth in his arm and the flutter of Sally’s nightdress under his feet. Footsteps echoed up the alleyway to him and he felt wet tracks on his face. The shovel was back in his hands and he was standing again, facing down something that the world had yet to comprehend. Ellis wondered if he’d go to hell as he swung the shovel again and again, or if he’d died in his sleep and he was already there.
end part one
comments extremely welcome
After quite a lengthy lurking period I've finally come up with another story that I wanted to post. It's going to be a multiparter, yeeyyy i don't know what i'm doing.
Title: just a flu [1/?]
Author: sgnt_caitsy
Rating: NC-17 for violence and gore (will change)
Pairing: Nick/Ellis
Summary: When a flu isn't just a flu.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Just letting you know I'm pretty much freeballin' here. ;~; Also not beta'd so sorry for any mistakes. Hope someone likes it. c:
just a flu.
The sun was shining high in the sky. It was hot, maybe even the hottest day on record this year. Ellis had already seen Mrs Crabshaw, quite a regular of the shop, collapse on her daily walk past the workshop that morning. It was sad to see such a nice lady in a state like that, crying and sweating on the hot pavement, so he sat with her and shielded her face with his shadow until help came. She blubbered and shook around on the ground until an ambulance with blearing sirens and tired paramedics had carried her away. It was the fourth one he’d seen screaming down the hot top that day, the seventh one he had heard since daybreak.
He wiped the sweat off his face with the shirt he’d taken off earlier and fiddled with the volume on the radio. Nothing but green flu updates, not even a measly song. The shirt felt cool on his skin for just a second, until the heat stole it away again with a whisper of a sweltering breeze. He sighed. It really was a hot day.
Keith walked past him with a swagger and a smile, tapping the roof of a dinged up Bronco Ellis was working on, “Y’know it ain’t safe working without a shirt, Ellis.” Because after all he did know how unsafe it was, there were still the burns and impromptu nipple piercings to prove it.
Ellis heard him laugh his way behind, then under, a small Japanese economy car. He smiled a small smile, just Keith being Keith, and didn’t look twice as he heard Keith squeeze under the engine block. If he’d really looked though he would have noticed that Keith’s eyes weren’t right, the usual placid green was glassy and frantic, never lingering long on one thing. If he’d really listened he would have heard the breathless edge to his laugh that made it almost maniacal, and if he’d really asked why Keith had a heavy bandage on his arm he would have actually worried. Because Keith was sick, he was very sick. The itchy sore that he had taken to biting through the bandage till it oozed was testament to that.
He would have really worried, maybe even asked the boss to close the shop and even volunteered to take Keith to the hospital, but Ellis hadn’t looked and he hadn’t listened and he hadn’t asked and it was just another day in the workshop with the boys. It was a hot day and hot days got to everyone. People fell down in fevers and people laughed breathlessly and people stood listlessly in the middle of the street - empty dog chains hanging from their hands.
He was wiping the sweat from his neck again when a gleaming black Mercedes rolled in. He had to squint and shield his eyes from the sharp glare of sun off the paint job.
A tall man stepped out of the driver side. Nice suit and dark slicked back hair that would have looked good if it wasn’t so ridiculously out of place in a dust beaten town like this. A buxom lady, brunette, slipped from the passenger side - she was laughing and clutching an expensive looking coat to her chest. Ellis thought she was insane, it was nearly a thousand degrees out. The only place she’d be wearing that coat to would be the overcrowded hospital.
The tall man leisurely gestured toward him with fingers ringed in gold, “You in charge here?” There was something unnerving in his stance. It was something like a full body poker face and being under the weight of it made him want to put his shirt back on. Ellis rubbed his stomach uncomfortably.
He didn’t get a chance to reply before the man was tossing the keys toward him, Ellis fumbled them twice before securing them in his palm. The man looked over the rim of his sunglasses and raised his eyebrow condescendingly at him whilst the brunette behind him eyed Ellis’ chest appreciatively.
“I think the brakes are worn, check it out for me, kid.”
Then he was turning away, leaving no room for argument or protest, and hooking an arm through the lady’s - clearly copping a feel of a rounded breast on his way - and leading her into the sun once again. No one noticed how her jaw tightened or how the arm under her jacket ached and ached.
Ellis grit his teeth as he tossed a, “don’t scratch the paint job,” over his shoulder. He’d never met a man that instantly rubbed him the wrong way. The heavy chested blonde tittered with laughter. He felt like putting a boot through the windshield and leaving the sun to bleach the leather seats he knew would lie behind the glass. Oh they’d bleach, sure as hell, ‘specially on a day like this.
Another ambulance wailed high over the midday sun and Ellis watched them walk away until the shopfronts swallowed them up.
He turned away muttering, “Jeez, I hope I never see that asshole again,” and Keith laughed so loudly that the he choked, snarled, on the sound.
{... CEDA urges citizens to be diligent in their personal hygiene and to check yourself or loved ones into your local hospital should you experience symptoms of green flu...}
Ellis slipped back into the shade and flipped the sound down on the radio - they didn’t need it depressing what little customers were coming in that day.
It was just a hot day and hot days got to everyone.
---
He ran. He ran hard. His lungs burned. His chest ached. There was something wrong with the world now, it couldn’t just be here. Just couldn’t. He was sure of it. Something like that. Their skin, their skin was falling - rotting - off...
It was still dark when some of them had broken into his house, smashing through the glass windows in the front room. They screamed and screamed like their own skin was killing them, and in a way it was, as it slipped messily from their thrashing limbs. He could understand some of the words, he’d never forget them, and, God, they were only children.
Ellis knew one of them, one of the ones in his house. The frilled nightdress was familiar from when he’d seen little Sally from next door wander down to the mailbox yesterday. She told Ellis she had a fever and mummy said she could stay home from school but she had to stay inside. Now her eyes were erupting with pus, her pretty nightdress ending in ragged stumps where her arm used to be - the skin split open like her limbs had just decayed and slid off. Ellis wanted to help her, but God he didn’t want to touch her. He wanted to hit her - get her away from him - push her into the ground and bury her.
She was screaming the Lord’s Prayer at him, or something like it. The words that foamed from her bubbling lips weren’t anything like the ones he was taught at Sunday school. She was dying, beating at her head with her ragged arms like a drum. The other one wasn’t much trouble, it had simply rolled on his floor in a brief seizure before stopping and Ellis hoped, prayed, it wasn’t her younger sister Josie.
Jesus Christ, they were only kids.
His arm bumped roughly against the alleyway he swung out of, the moon was out in full - casting iridescent shadows over the bodies that swayed dangerously to and fro on the street to the beat, beat, beat of his bare feet on the road. They looked like drunken sailors. They were everywhere, just standing under the moon in some kind of hellish mass. Noises, they made noises too, like whispers in ancient tongues. Spoke words that didn’t fit inside their mouths.
This was his neighbourhood in a nightmare dreamscape.
Some of them looked at him, their downturned faces hanging blackly from their necks like the freshly hanged. Most of them shuffled on, several retched on themselves and two of them rushed him. Ellis ran, puncturing the skin of his thighs on the dumpster that loomed out of the darkness. He spotted a shovel - lying forgotten near a stack of abandoned milk crates. He picked it up. Turned around and swung. He heard a meaty thud and something like the scattering of leaves. Teeth on his arm - Ellis yelled and kicked hard. His foot connecting with the stomach of a shadowy man (ghoul, zombie, what the hell was happening?) and sending it to a boneless sprawl.
Ellis felt the tears in his throat, felt his nose running. He lifted the shovel. He brought it down on its head, then again and again till its face was no more than a splattered mess. The shovel swung back round again when he felt hands on his back. It connected with no fuss and killed with no difficulty. Ellis could barely stand the noise it made as the next one died - nothing had ever sounded so alien to him. He cried, dropped the shovel, and slid to the ground, witnessing the shovel carving through black and white faces again and again behind his eyes.
Two children had died in his house tonight.
The ground was covered in shards of broken glass that dug into his bare knees, but the only thing he could feel was the phantom teeth in his arm and the flutter of Sally’s nightdress under his feet. Footsteps echoed up the alleyway to him and he felt wet tracks on his face. The shovel was back in his hands and he was standing again, facing down something that the world had yet to comprehend. Ellis wondered if he’d go to hell as he swung the shovel again and again, or if he’d died in his sleep and he was already there.
end part one
comments extremely welcome