I was looking for a breath of life
another taste of divine rush
It seems their terror is neverending; they huddle together with the beast’s stolen words echoing in their ears until a flash of light rips the darkness apart and sends their world reeling once more. Whatever it is (and at this point, they are liable to believe anything) renders them unconscious for a bit. Mary is the first to recover, sitting up slowly to the revelation that their is grass beneath her, not wooden floorboard. It is cool and damp - if there were a breeze she might be shivering. Shay still lays motionless (perhaps assimilating that ticking time bomb makes her a tad slower) a few feet from her, so Mary crawls over and shakes her roughly by the shoulder, whispering frantically, “Shay, wake up.” No response. “Wake up, Shay! Oh, please - “ Shay’s face scrunches up in a rather cranky manner as she groans, “Wotttt?” before a weak attempt to push her away.
After a moment, Shay also sits up and looks around at the dimly lit area. There’s a pounding in her head and her chest feels… tight, somehow. As if it’s straining against something rather restricting. As if she’d bound her breasts too tight. She massages her right temple lightly, trying to put things together. Aaaand… nope, she’s got nothing. “Did ye faint too?” she asks Mary, and when her companion nods, she shrugs. Whatever it was, it seems to have hit the both of them equally (ha, if only Mary could be so lucky). So now it’s time to figure out how to proceed from this point on.
Mary stands and offers a hand to Shay, who takes it, pulls herself up, and brushes herself off. With a deep breath, she examine their surroundings. First, the light - it seems like they are outside, in a garden, and yet there is some sort of… hanging lantern? Orbs the size of a child’s head float a good ten feet above her, creating a general dim light with some bright spots ever five feet or so. In those pockets of light, she can see that the walls are actually very high, dense bushes. The grassy path (hallway? corridor?) stretches before and behind them, ending in intersections at either end, with the choice to go either left or right. She reaches out to touch the walls, wondering if she can perhaps push through them, but as she starts to force her left hand into the tightly wound branches, something grabs at it, sucking her whole hand into the greenery. “Ahhhhhh!! Fuck! Mary?!” she screams, trying to yank her hand away, but it won’t budge. And then there’s a searing pain in her fingertips and she screams even louder. It’s slow and agonizing and feels exactly as if her fingernails are being pulled out (they are, her intuition is spot-on sometimes). She falls to her knees and Mary timidly approaches her, more afraid that whatever is in there will reach out to grab her too, than for Shay’s safety.
Selfish, selfish, selfish. Everyone’s so selfish.
In reality, it isn’t long before Shay's hand is released. When she pulls it gingerly out of the green wall, blood is oozing and dripping steadily from where her fingertips used to be. All five of them are gone, and oozing wounds probably aren’t going to be very helpful in the immediate future. Mary groans and looks away - she's always been squeamish at the sight of blood. The lesson is learned: don’t touch the hedges, don't try to go through the hedges, just play the game. Shay cradles her left hand in her right and stares down at the throbbing fingers, glassy-eyed in pain, but also fascinated with the reminder of her horse-nature. Blood. Not bunny blood. Human blood. Is it…? Does it…? She wants so very badly to just lift the smallest one to her mouth and -
The sound of shattering glass to her right breaks Shay from her reverie, and Mary gasps, cursing under breath. There is a sudden roar and heat, and then Mary is once again tugging at her shoulder, clearly ready to run without her partner. “Come on, Shay, we gotta move!” Without looking back at the flames roaring to life behind her, Shay nods and blindly follow Mary (for once), never even questioning her when she turns right instead of left. But while they head deeper into the maze, Shay continues to let Mary take the lead, giving herself the opportunity to, one-by-one, stick her fingers in her mouth and suck up her own life force. Yummmm… oh god, she could almost purr.
Shay doesn’t really keep track of where Mary is leading them - left, right, dead end, turn around - left again; she has no idea how to navigate the maze, and clearly Mary doesn’t either. They are moving at a brisk walk, and seem to avoid further traps for a good ten minutes or so. The orbs continue to light their way. Shay’s nail-less fingers eventually start to clot, and the throbbing pain moves into the background. However, the quiet and lack of other obvious dangers make them complacent, and they both step on a hidden metal plate (one right after the other) that causes the ground beneath them to open up and a distinctly metallic/robotic sounding voice to echo out. “Exterminate the human! Dalek Supreme will not be held captive! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!” A whirring sound undercuts its senseless chatter, and before they realize, a metal… thing… is standing before them. The rubber end of the top metal stick keeps waving back and forth while the whisk below it and the second rubber end move left to right. Now Shay may be a little ‘off’ and Mary may be a little daft, but they both know that something that yells ‘Exterminate the humans’ is bad news.
Luckily for them, this Dalek is either dying or a dysfunctional, because neither it’s laser or sense of direction is working very well. It fires a stream of white-blue light off to Shay’s left, hitting the hedge walls and burning a hole through several of them.There’s really no way to get around the metal monster, which is now yelling “STAND STILL HUMANS! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!” Which is both silly and terrifying, because they aren’t going to stand still - although it does occur to Shay that with its sense of direction being so off, they could try to avoid its lasers and still end up being hit. But that’s a risk they’ll have to take. “Zig zag! Back towards the last turn.” And so the two of them take off, ducking and weaving and zig zagging, hoping that the randomly fired blasts from the demented Dalek aren’t going to burn a hole in them either. Everything is forgotten until they’ve gone around several more corners and the metal monster’s ranting is just a noise in the distance. It’s a good thing they didn’t run into a fully functional one that could fly - they probably wouldn’t be here right now.
Shay and Mary pause to catch their breath, hands on knees for a good minute or so. Unfortunately, at that moment the wind suddenly picks up, raising goosebumps on their arms and whipping loose hair around their faces. Thunder cracks and they jump in surprise, look at each other and then to the sky - the only thing that could make this terrible experience worse would be a watery deluge. Shay grabs Mary’s hand and takes the lead this time, saying simply, “Let’s try to find a… roof or somethin’ ‘afore the storm hits.” Not the best logic (they’ve yet to see anything that could give them shelter or a place to hide), but she’s starting to feel desperate to get out of there. The only way to do that is to keep moving. Eventually they would have to stumble upon the exit… As the two women get moving again, the wind continues to increase in speed and strength, and the odd half light from the orbs seems grows dimmer, relegated to now just periodic bobbing pools of light. They can’t really see where they’re going, and the next turn they take dead ends to circular area filled with a waterless fountain and lots of angel statues.
Thunder peals over their heads again, so much louder than before. It sounds like it’s right on top of them - and of course, it is; the sky bottoms out and a downpour hits them with sheets of rain so thick they can hardly see five feet in front of them, let alone any of the orbs. The water falls so hard that it stings their skin and Mary darts towards the fountain, huddling up against the edge to shield at least one side of her. Shay is right on her heels, realizing that there isn’t any other better place to hide. She’s about to hunker down next to Mary when a lightning flash lights up the area and she notices that the angel statues have moved closer… haven’t they? Another flash and - OH GOD - they are NOT in the same poses as before. She screams and steps back, looking frantically left and right - but all the faces are the same! They have fangs and outstretched hands and look as if they want to feast upon the girls’ flesh.”No... 'ow…? Everywhere…” All the statues seem to be converging on the fountain, and if Shay hadn’t seen them in the lightning flash, the girls never would have known what hit them.
Screw waiting for Mary, Shay is out of there. At this point, there’s no need for explanation: if one of them is running, there’s probably a very good reason that both of them should be running. Shay scrambles back up, covered in mud and soaking wet, and Mary lunges from her crouch by the fountain. Mary, however, is still wearing a Victorian era dress, and it is is constricting at the easiest of times and excessively difficult to move in when water-logged at the worst of times. She is substantially slower than Shay, and while they aren’t looking, one of the angels catches her skirt. Mary whirls around, stopping the angels in their tracks, and Shay (feeling slightly guilty) comes back to help tear her free. “I dunno wot they are, but you keep lookin’ at ‘em and I’ll pull ya free.” So she huffs and puffs and slips and slides, but it isn’t long before there is a ripping sound, and Mary and Shay tumble backwards. Eh, what’s a little more mud? Luckily, the rain seems to be dissipating and the thunder and lightning no longer send their heads pounding with their booms, or blind them with the light.
When Shay looks back up, she notices that not a single statue has moved towards them again so she whispers in Mary’s ear, “Lets walk backwards slowly and maybe we can get far away enough to run, yeah?” Mary nods and the two girls link arms and take their time walking backwards, step-by-step, until they are able to round the corner and sprint away into the maze again, taking a left and then a right and periodically looking over their shoulders. By then, the rain has stopped and the wind has finally swept the clouds. When the last dark gray wisp is blown away, a beautiful full moon is revealed; what a shame that neither Shay nor Mary will be able to marvel at its radiance for long. Shay stares, transfixed, and first her pupils expand, then the muscles in her body seem to bulge of their own free will. Her teeth suddenly become razor sharp, her jaw elongating to a be more lupine than human. A gutteral snarl erupts from her shifting mouth, reflecting the pain of a drastically changing body and the gnawing, vicious hunger that seems to have taken her body hostage. Shay shoots up a foot or two, shredding her clothes but gaining a thick, auburn pelt and a pair of tufted ears. Talons shoot out from her fingers and toes and all wolf-Shay can think of is HUNGRY and HUNT HUNT HUNT.
Of course, Mary doesn’t stay still when she sees Shay starting to transform before her eyes. Another beast! It’s taken over the one person she thought she could count on in this terrifying nightmare. The thought of losing the only other human in a world full of monsters is enough to send her into hysterics, fleeing blindly down the hedge row.
Shay howls the declaration of the hunt and takes off after her, catching up in no time. Mary never stood a chance. She swipes her claws across her prey’s back, sending ribbons of red splashing onto the grass, while Mary wails in pain and babbles, falling down. She babbles and begs for a couple of seconds before Shay pounces and closes her jaws around Mary’s head, twisting savagely and reveling in the taste of metallic, tangy blood coating her throat. Bones snap and vertebrae are ripped apart, and Mary is very, very dead. Shay has no remorse.
Wolf-Shay devours the flesh, stripping it from her bones and then cracking them open to suck the marrow from inside. When the ground is soaked with Mary’s blood and her skeleton in scattered in an arc around her, Shay is struck with a terrible thirst. It constricts her throat and dries out her mouth with such intensity that again, there is only one thought on her mind. DRINK DRINK DRINK. Luckily, her senses are keener than ever and she is able to follow her nose towards towards sweet, sweet relief. She is able find her way to center of the maze with only a few wrong turns. Once there, she spies a marble bird bath in the center. It is filled with a clear liquid, and without thinking, thrusts her muzzle into the basin and guzzles it down - swallowing and swallowing until almost every last drop is gone.
Ahhh yes… much better. Shay sighs and burps in satisfaction - a very human thing to do. And all of a sudden, she notices that she is rather cold... probably because she's only wearing tattered remnants of her clothes again. Her thirst must have been so all-encompassing that she didn't notice when she lost her lupine features. She looks down at her left hand, that is once again fingernail-less. How... odd. Her tongue traces her teeth and finds them to be normal again, and it's probably her imagination that thinks the canines are abnormally pointy. But she does not cry and she does not wail; people die every day in London, in far slower and more painful ways. It is a fact of life. There will be no remorse here. Better Mary than Shay - and besides, she thinks, Mary was a self-serving bitch.
Shaytan
so many lives
so many pairs of eyes