OOM - The Labyrinth Part I

[theresnodoor]

There is boredom. There is restlessness. There is anxiety. And there is recklessness. Stages of reactions following the common phrase of There's nothing to do. If left alone for too long, this condition can result in conversation, conflict, experimentation, explosions, discovery, and death.

Among others.

But sometimes, Fate steps in. Someone looks down and notices the ever-increasing stages and says, Hey. That looks kind of dull. Let me help you out there.

The common reaction to such politeness is gratitude.


Well into the stages of boredom, Rachel opens her eyes and finds herself not in her bedroom, her apartment, or even the Bar's couch. Instead of soft fabric, there are hard, rough stones beneath her back. Instead of open space, the walls are close and dingy and the ceiling is low. And when she sits up, sharp and sudden, she is staring out of an archway that leads into the darkest of dark hallways, despite the flickering torch on the wall.

Blue eyes dart in every direction and not a single one of them makes sense - including the other person, crumpled on the stones nearby.

Comments

[tobeclosetohim]

"From castle to haunted house?"
It's generic. Not asking Rachel.


She's raising the rifle again.
That could be anything at all.

[theresnodoor]

Rachel isn't answering. She switches the torch to the hand nearest Jo - which goes unnoticed while the rifle is being adjusted. If she has to drop the thing to morph, it's not going to be Rachel having a problem with light.

As they edge forward, the torchlight falls on more stones, more stones - another archway. The little room it frames is without torch, but with the light Rachel holds, there is a small piece of furniture in the corner, dark wood incongruous with all the stone.

[tobeclosetohim]

A cupboard. A rattle, shaking cupboard.

"And the hint is we're supposed to open that."

Her tone is a scoff toward the darkness around them.

[theresnodoor]

Rachel frowns at it.

"Maybe you're supposed to shoot it."

This gentle leading in one direction or another is familiar and in the worst way possible.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's edging toward it. Even as.

"Or we were supposed to choose a different direction the first time."

[theresnodoor]

"Wait."

Jo's hands full of the rifle and Rachel holding the torch. She steps in front of the shorter woman and to the side, next to the cupboard. Shares a glance with Jo before reaching out to the handle of the little cupboard.

She'll open it on a signal, to give the gun a clear shot.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo nodded. Settling into where the door would open.

[theresnodoor]

Rachel nods once, holding eye contact, and yanks the handle hard.

[tobeclosetohim]

Her mother stumbles out of the cabinet suddenly.

Clutching her stomach. Blood on her hands.
Coughing up more of it, calling out her name.

[theresnodoor]

Startled into action - the human woman, wounded, knowing Jo's name - Rachel straightens immediately and very nearly drops her torch. But a sharp glance at Jo stops her cold.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo lowered her rifle, moving forward. "Mom?"

Impossible. But not. She'd heard the rumor.
From Sallie. About her mom being in the bar.
But the blood. That much blood.

She was striding forward to her, forgetting the gun.
Her heart pounding. Chest rising faster and faster.

[theresnodoor]

Rachel freezes at that word, staring. As they stumble into each other. Blood dripping onto the--

No.

Blood drips off the woman but it doesn't hit the floor. And the cupboard, when she looks at it, could not possibly have held a woman that size.

"Jo..."

[tobeclosetohim]

Doesn't hear her. Isn't listening.

"What happened? We just got here."

Doesn't know what to do with her hands.
All the blood drenching her mother's shirt.
She doesn't have needles. She needs supplies.

[theresnodoor]

Right.

Well.

Rachel steps forward and holds her torch to the stumbling, bleeding woman's back.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo screams profanity, but the Bogart only turns on Rachel now.

[theresnodoor]

But Jo screams. Only Jo. Rachel has just a moment for grim satisfaction before the bleeding, stumbling woman changes shape.

It is short, though it remains on two legs. Two hands, though weak and flimsy, too many joints. The face human-shaped, at least, two eyes though bright green.

But it's skin is dark, almost black, and wrinkled like too much time spent in bathwater. The green of its eyes rings its mouth and the way it moves, body held forward and balanced by its stubby tail, is more bird or dinosaur than human.

And the blood. It kept the blood. Not wounded and clutching, but in splotches over its hands, shining in its grinning mouth.

And it whispers, in a singing, taunting, giggly little voice:

"Found youuuu."

[tobeclosetohim]

And then it's not her mother.
Not her mother. Her mother isn't dying.


The fear still a sharp, fast beating ache.
Whatever it was used her. Her mother.
The air she sucks in is frigid. Livid.





Is something else, talking to Rachel in a taunting voice.




She doesn't hesitate before shooting this time.

[theresnodoor]

The thing made a noise and turned back to her, shifted back into Ellen's face and body - but missing the gaping wound, blood on her hands and in her teeth, lips pulled back in a wicked smile.

And Rachel, who had stumbled back against the wall, hands still trembling, saw that shift.

It wasn't real. If it was real, it wouldn't have shifted back into Ellen's mother.

It's not real.

And with a cry, she grips the torch in both hands and swings hard at the creature's (current) head.

[tobeclosetohim]

It pierces through her into her.

Her mother's face. Wounded.
Guilt. Infuriating guilt.

But it's harder to fire at her mother's face.
Her brain says to shoot, but her finger trembles.

[theresnodoor]

But it wasn't just the fire that struck. It was the torch itself.

Dazed, perhaps, it turns back to Rachel. But it still has Ellen's face, even as it's lower half shifts to the dinosaur legs, the stubby tail protruding toward Jo, too tall and too large and entirely too human.

It's not the Drode but whatever it is got in her head and found what it looked like and taunted her.

There's no time to morph. With another yell, Rachel swings at its head again.

[tobeclosetohim]

Half her mother. Half something entirely else.

Fucking with them. Messing with their minds.
And just what the hell is it for Rachel?


That can wait. When it looks away, she grits her teeth and fires.

[theresnodoor]

If it changes again, Rachel doesn't notice. Before the rifle shot has stopped ringing in the room, the torch comes crashing down onto it again.

[tobeclosetohim]

It shifts. More Ellen. More Drode.

More Ellen. More Drode. More Ellen.

And both of them kept hitting it.

Until it seemed to stagger back confused.

Falling down against the fall, hands human and not.
Dissipating suddenly into silver steam. Rising upward.
Going straight through the ceiling and leaving them alone.

[theresnodoor]

And Rachel froze in mid-swing, staring up as it went.

Anyone with rules about the dead can shove it. Her heart is in her throat and she can't get enough breath, whether she needed either of them ten minutes ago is irrelevant at the moment.

[tobeclosetohim]

There's a lot of gasping going on in the little room.
Jo's hands may not uncurl from the rifle for a long time.





But. She notices it first. There's another noise.

It's like wind? And something else. Falling water?