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100 words of Patching Up a Grumpy Monster
May. 20th, 2020 08:22 pmJenny woke to her entire world tipping over, sending her sliding off her bed and crashing to the ground with a whump. She tried to get up, chest burning, but it righted itself just as abruptly and knocked her back down. For a moment she kept still on the floor, still winded from the impact, one hand gripping her mattress, the other the bookcase under the gunwhales. She shifted her grip from the paperbacks to the shelf, hoping for more security while she got her bearings.
Okay, so she was on Orion’s narrowboat; that explained the movement itself, if not its cause. Normally when he got back from patrolling his canals he tried to keep the rocking to the minimum. So what was happening?
A whispering noise filled the air, but it wasn't words: something rubbing against something else; a low, endless susurration. Not the sort of thing you wanted to hear in the middle of the night. Jenny glanced at the clock on the wall, and saw that it was only just past two in the morning. Orion and Nine had told her they wouldn't be back until dawn, something about an encroacher on their territorial boundary, which was apparently a very big deal when you were a genius loci. But if it wasn’t them, then...?
The thought chilled her to the core. She tried to scramble to her feet, but a deafening scream sent her back to her knees. Slapping her hands over her ears didn't help. The air itself seemed to vibrate around her, caught in a reverb so alien it felt like her brain wanted to crawl down her throat and take cover in her rib-cage.
“Shhh, you’ll wake Ten,” Nine said. Her words were clear through the din, as though she was on a different frequency, and it sounded more like she was scolding a hyperactive child than whatever was shaking the fabric of reality itself.
The telling-off seemed to work: the sound dulled down to breathy whimpers, each still filled with that awful reverb, but quiet enough for Jenny to gather her wits. Definitely quiet enough for her to recognise Orion’s voice when he whispered, “Why couldn't you just dump me in the canal like I asked you to?”
“You want to make her sick...?”
A silence, then: “You think the bites are contaminated?” It was followed by another horrifying screech.
“See,” Nine said, “they're all gooey. Look: ewwww.” She drew the word out like a little kid might. There was a splattering thud noise, like toy slime being thrown against a wall. “Can’t get it off my fingers.”
“Then stop sticking your fucking fingers in it!” Orion gasped.
“We could stick a towel in it?”
“I don’t need a towel!”
“But you’re leaking.”
“It’s my bathroom, I can bleed to death in it if I want to!”
What the hell was going on? Jenny made a second attempt at pulling herself to her feet, battling both her bruised ribs and the way the reverb in Orion’s voice made her bones feel as though they were softening inside her. She clicked her fingers experimentally. They seemed solid enough, so it was either her imagination, or she was sensing a different aspect of reality... Christ, her world had changed since she’d found out that her twin brother hadn’t been the victim of a senseless murder, but instead a human sacrifice to create a minor deity.
The same minor deity who was currently defending his right to bleed to death in his own bathroom.
“Grumble-bum,” Nine said.
“Just give me some peace and quiet, and don’t turn the pumps on. I’ll be fine before dawn; we can work out if I’m contagious then.”
“Ten’s awake.”
“Oh, for the love of... Jen, stay in the saloon! I'm fully manifested right now!”
It took everything Jenny had to not do as she was told and retreat to the couch. All the warnings about what the sight of her hosts in ‘full aspect’ could do to her brain suddenly felt very real, but something made her take a shaky step toward the narrow corridor that led to the bathroom. Probably the same lack of self-preservation that had her trying to connect with what was left of her twin, she thought as she took another step, pausing against the counter in the galley. Seeing what he really looked like now had to be progress, right? And maybe they were distracted enough to not stop her. “What happened?”
Orion let out a weak, breathy little laugh. “A pyrrhic victory. You oughta see the other guy.”
“Should’ve let me kill her,” Nine said.
“First of all, she could’ve killed you; second of all, I didn’t want the grown-ups fretting about us technically being an invasive species again. We bought ourselves river-crossing rights; that’s enough. Ow-ow-ow-ow-will you stop that! I’m fine, it’ll grow back on its own.”
Jenny decided not to think about ‘invasive species’, or what might be growing back. She took a deep breath, and looked around the corner into the narrow corridor. The side hatch was open, stained with multiple hand-prints picked out in glowing purple. There were spatters and streaks of the same liquid across the walls and floor, making the scene look like something out of a TV crime drama after the investigators had gotten out the luminol and a black-light. But the average crime drama wouldn’t have tentacles trailing between the hatch and the bathroom door. They writhed and squirmed in a mass of shadows and lights; fractal patterns of shimmering, iridescent scales; indigo, violet and pewter all constantly shifting in and out of reality.
In and out of the reality I can perceive... Jenny thought as a cold, prickling sensation settled itself across her shoulders and scalp. Her brain made another valiant effort to hide in her rib-cage, but she gripped the edge of the galley counter and concentrated on how real and solid it felt; the texture of the wood grain, and the way it warmed up beneath her fingers.
She didn’t need to perceive all realities to see the bite marks. Something had torn literal chunks out of her brother, and the protective rage was an anchor too.
“What the- Jen, what are you doing?! Don’t look!” Orion snarled, and this time the eldritch reverb in his voice snapped her out of her daze. “The last thing I need is for you to claw your own eyes out!”
“You can borrow two of mine if you need them,” Nine called out, as though she was offering something as normal as a jumper, or taxi fare.
This was it; now or never. Jenny swallowed down the bile that threatened to choke her, and peered around the bathroom door.
At first glance it was something out of a hentai video: a seething mass of glowing tentacles filled the small room, burying the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. Large and small; thick as her thigh, thin as a whip; all of them in constant, flickering motion. Jenny could barely make out the edge of the three-quarter bathtub. Inside it Nine was straddling a squirming mound of fractal nightmares, looking very small and fragile against the backdrop of their brother. An honest-to-god angel in a tattered and stained sundress, her form sketched out in silver and cobalt blue light: four crumpled wings and a thousand glowing eyes taking up every inch that Orion wasn't already occupying. She was half buried under tendrils that gripped her long hair, her feathers, her wrists, all holding her in place. At the mercy of the monster...
Then Nine frowned, pulled her wrist free with an ease that made the violet tendril holding it seem intangible, and pressed the towel she was holding against a bleeding wound, eliciting another barely-stifled screech. “Stop being such a baby.”
Orion grabbed at the edge of the tub with multiple tentacles and one hand, claws clicking against the white enamel, painting it with streaks of his own blood, and Jenny realised that there was still a humanoid form within the morass. Somehow that was worse than an unknowable eldritch tentacle abomination. Her heart stuttered in her chest as she recognised his face - glowing, three-eyed, but still her brother, because this was Jamie now; this was what lay beneath the surface; this was the Franken-creature that had been stitched together from the pieces...
She vaguely heard him scream, “Close your fucking eyes!”, before the darkness took her.
***
Jenny woke with a start. There was something looming over her, and for a moment she remembered the tentacles, Orion's horrified face, and then her mind skittered to one side of it and she realised that Nine was hovering over her with one foot either side of her head. Bathroom floor? No, her bed: the fold-down dinette in Orion’s narrowboat. Nine was sitting on the headboard that was normally the back of one of the benches, peering down at her. Had it all been a nightmare?
“Bad Ten,” Nine said, booping her on the nose. “No biscuit for you.”
“Wha... what happened?”
Nine cocked her head. “Who’s the president?”
“What?”
“I watch movies.” Her tone was somewhere between accusation and defensiveness. “Okay, fine, you can have a custard cream, but no chocolate hobnobs.”
It was too early in the morning to deal with the shambles of half-finished thoughts that was a conversation with Nine. Jenny sat up, ignoring the fact that it put her head right between the angel's thighs. “Where’s Orion? Is he okay?” She was vaguely aware that Nine was petting her hair, but it didn’t matter right then.
“He’s mad at me,” Nine said, nodding at a crumpled bundle of blankets on the couch. “It’s not fair. We need new towels.”
Jenny didn't answer; she stared at the arm that stuck out of the blankets, at the very human-looking skin, and the black symbols of the bespelled tattoos that held the component parts together... Light and shadow; violet and indigo and pewter; rippling metallic scales on too many limbs to count; a thousand fractals forming and collapsing; a monster beneath the skin; an unholy terror. Fingers gripping the side of the bath, talons scraping against the enamel; screaming at her to look away. Bleeding out from dozens of wounds, but his concern is for her.
She snapped out of it with a start. He was Jamie; he wasn’t Jamie. She didn’t know any more. But he'd been scared for her, and it was a solid anchor in the whirling horror that wanted to engulf her and drag her down.
She didn't know how long she'd been lost in her own thoughts, but the air was heavy with the smell of bacon; the pops and crackles were an anchor too. And Nine was humming while she cooked, a sound too full of layers to be human. She was among monsters. She was among friends.
She steeled herself, got out of bed and walked over to the couch, taking a seat next to Orion’s head. He was covered with make-shift bandages, and where they’d slipped free she could see the bite-marks. Almost healed now, but whatever it was that attacked him left a lot of damage.
“The Ouse is alive,” Nine said, as if that might mean something to her.
Jenny thought about asking for clarification, but decided against it, instead stroking a strand of Orion's pewter hair out of his eyes. He never slept, so why was he asleep?
He cracked open one eye, and a sparkling glow of purple and pewter flame briefly flashed across his iris before vanishing into his pupil. Human again, at least on the surface. He licked his lower lip, and asked, “You okay?”
She wasn’t sure she could say ‘yes’, so she nodded instead, trying not to think about the bathroom.
“Oh, thank fuck.” He tried to move, then hissed out a breath and reconsidered. “Next time I tell you not to look at something, don’t look, okay? One batshit crazy sister is enough; I can’t cope with two.”
She nodded again, still not trusting her voice.
“I heard that," Nine said.
Orion ignored her. “And don’t go thinking this means you can handle looking at other gods," he said. “Nine and I aren't complete; we’re still pieces that only add up to one layer. It’s... less reality to take in at once.”
Jenny reached out and touched one of the black bars inked into his fingers, tiny symbols packed so close together it almost looked solid. Stitches to keep the pieces together. Her brother and three other beings; a quarter of each. An unholy act to create something holy.
Orion wasn’t Jamie; after what she'd seen the night before she had to accept that he never would be. But... he cared about her. And she wanted him to be safe, eldritch abomination or not.
Maybe it was enough of a foundation to build something new on. He wasn't her twin, but technically they shared some genes, right? She wouldn't be alone...
Blood was thicker than water, even the sluggish, silted muck at the bottom of his precious canal.
https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/426480.html?thread=2532393968#cmt2532393968
Okay, so she was on Orion’s narrowboat; that explained the movement itself, if not its cause. Normally when he got back from patrolling his canals he tried to keep the rocking to the minimum. So what was happening?
A whispering noise filled the air, but it wasn't words: something rubbing against something else; a low, endless susurration. Not the sort of thing you wanted to hear in the middle of the night. Jenny glanced at the clock on the wall, and saw that it was only just past two in the morning. Orion and Nine had told her they wouldn't be back until dawn, something about an encroacher on their territorial boundary, which was apparently a very big deal when you were a genius loci. But if it wasn’t them, then...?
The thought chilled her to the core. She tried to scramble to her feet, but a deafening scream sent her back to her knees. Slapping her hands over her ears didn't help. The air itself seemed to vibrate around her, caught in a reverb so alien it felt like her brain wanted to crawl down her throat and take cover in her rib-cage.
“Shhh, you’ll wake Ten,” Nine said. Her words were clear through the din, as though she was on a different frequency, and it sounded more like she was scolding a hyperactive child than whatever was shaking the fabric of reality itself.
The telling-off seemed to work: the sound dulled down to breathy whimpers, each still filled with that awful reverb, but quiet enough for Jenny to gather her wits. Definitely quiet enough for her to recognise Orion’s voice when he whispered, “Why couldn't you just dump me in the canal like I asked you to?”
“You want to make her sick...?”
A silence, then: “You think the bites are contaminated?” It was followed by another horrifying screech.
“See,” Nine said, “they're all gooey. Look: ewwww.” She drew the word out like a little kid might. There was a splattering thud noise, like toy slime being thrown against a wall. “Can’t get it off my fingers.”
“Then stop sticking your fucking fingers in it!” Orion gasped.
“We could stick a towel in it?”
“I don’t need a towel!”
“But you’re leaking.”
“It’s my bathroom, I can bleed to death in it if I want to!”
What the hell was going on? Jenny made a second attempt at pulling herself to her feet, battling both her bruised ribs and the way the reverb in Orion’s voice made her bones feel as though they were softening inside her. She clicked her fingers experimentally. They seemed solid enough, so it was either her imagination, or she was sensing a different aspect of reality... Christ, her world had changed since she’d found out that her twin brother hadn’t been the victim of a senseless murder, but instead a human sacrifice to create a minor deity.
The same minor deity who was currently defending his right to bleed to death in his own bathroom.
“Grumble-bum,” Nine said.
“Just give me some peace and quiet, and don’t turn the pumps on. I’ll be fine before dawn; we can work out if I’m contagious then.”
“Ten’s awake.”
“Oh, for the love of... Jen, stay in the saloon! I'm fully manifested right now!”
It took everything Jenny had to not do as she was told and retreat to the couch. All the warnings about what the sight of her hosts in ‘full aspect’ could do to her brain suddenly felt very real, but something made her take a shaky step toward the narrow corridor that led to the bathroom. Probably the same lack of self-preservation that had her trying to connect with what was left of her twin, she thought as she took another step, pausing against the counter in the galley. Seeing what he really looked like now had to be progress, right? And maybe they were distracted enough to not stop her. “What happened?”
Orion let out a weak, breathy little laugh. “A pyrrhic victory. You oughta see the other guy.”
“Should’ve let me kill her,” Nine said.
“First of all, she could’ve killed you; second of all, I didn’t want the grown-ups fretting about us technically being an invasive species again. We bought ourselves river-crossing rights; that’s enough. Ow-ow-ow-ow-will you stop that! I’m fine, it’ll grow back on its own.”
Jenny decided not to think about ‘invasive species’, or what might be growing back. She took a deep breath, and looked around the corner into the narrow corridor. The side hatch was open, stained with multiple hand-prints picked out in glowing purple. There were spatters and streaks of the same liquid across the walls and floor, making the scene look like something out of a TV crime drama after the investigators had gotten out the luminol and a black-light. But the average crime drama wouldn’t have tentacles trailing between the hatch and the bathroom door. They writhed and squirmed in a mass of shadows and lights; fractal patterns of shimmering, iridescent scales; indigo, violet and pewter all constantly shifting in and out of reality.
In and out of the reality I can perceive... Jenny thought as a cold, prickling sensation settled itself across her shoulders and scalp. Her brain made another valiant effort to hide in her rib-cage, but she gripped the edge of the galley counter and concentrated on how real and solid it felt; the texture of the wood grain, and the way it warmed up beneath her fingers.
She didn’t need to perceive all realities to see the bite marks. Something had torn literal chunks out of her brother, and the protective rage was an anchor too.
“What the- Jen, what are you doing?! Don’t look!” Orion snarled, and this time the eldritch reverb in his voice snapped her out of her daze. “The last thing I need is for you to claw your own eyes out!”
“You can borrow two of mine if you need them,” Nine called out, as though she was offering something as normal as a jumper, or taxi fare.
This was it; now or never. Jenny swallowed down the bile that threatened to choke her, and peered around the bathroom door.
At first glance it was something out of a hentai video: a seething mass of glowing tentacles filled the small room, burying the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. Large and small; thick as her thigh, thin as a whip; all of them in constant, flickering motion. Jenny could barely make out the edge of the three-quarter bathtub. Inside it Nine was straddling a squirming mound of fractal nightmares, looking very small and fragile against the backdrop of their brother. An honest-to-god angel in a tattered and stained sundress, her form sketched out in silver and cobalt blue light: four crumpled wings and a thousand glowing eyes taking up every inch that Orion wasn't already occupying. She was half buried under tendrils that gripped her long hair, her feathers, her wrists, all holding her in place. At the mercy of the monster...
Then Nine frowned, pulled her wrist free with an ease that made the violet tendril holding it seem intangible, and pressed the towel she was holding against a bleeding wound, eliciting another barely-stifled screech. “Stop being such a baby.”
Orion grabbed at the edge of the tub with multiple tentacles and one hand, claws clicking against the white enamel, painting it with streaks of his own blood, and Jenny realised that there was still a humanoid form within the morass. Somehow that was worse than an unknowable eldritch tentacle abomination. Her heart stuttered in her chest as she recognised his face - glowing, three-eyed, but still her brother, because this was Jamie now; this was what lay beneath the surface; this was the Franken-creature that had been stitched together from the pieces...
She vaguely heard him scream, “Close your fucking eyes!”, before the darkness took her.
***
Jenny woke with a start. There was something looming over her, and for a moment she remembered the tentacles, Orion's horrified face, and then her mind skittered to one side of it and she realised that Nine was hovering over her with one foot either side of her head. Bathroom floor? No, her bed: the fold-down dinette in Orion’s narrowboat. Nine was sitting on the headboard that was normally the back of one of the benches, peering down at her. Had it all been a nightmare?
“Bad Ten,” Nine said, booping her on the nose. “No biscuit for you.”
“Wha... what happened?”
Nine cocked her head. “Who’s the president?”
“What?”
“I watch movies.” Her tone was somewhere between accusation and defensiveness. “Okay, fine, you can have a custard cream, but no chocolate hobnobs.”
It was too early in the morning to deal with the shambles of half-finished thoughts that was a conversation with Nine. Jenny sat up, ignoring the fact that it put her head right between the angel's thighs. “Where’s Orion? Is he okay?” She was vaguely aware that Nine was petting her hair, but it didn’t matter right then.
“He’s mad at me,” Nine said, nodding at a crumpled bundle of blankets on the couch. “It’s not fair. We need new towels.”
Jenny didn't answer; she stared at the arm that stuck out of the blankets, at the very human-looking skin, and the black symbols of the bespelled tattoos that held the component parts together... Light and shadow; violet and indigo and pewter; rippling metallic scales on too many limbs to count; a thousand fractals forming and collapsing; a monster beneath the skin; an unholy terror. Fingers gripping the side of the bath, talons scraping against the enamel; screaming at her to look away. Bleeding out from dozens of wounds, but his concern is for her.
She snapped out of it with a start. He was Jamie; he wasn’t Jamie. She didn’t know any more. But he'd been scared for her, and it was a solid anchor in the whirling horror that wanted to engulf her and drag her down.
She didn't know how long she'd been lost in her own thoughts, but the air was heavy with the smell of bacon; the pops and crackles were an anchor too. And Nine was humming while she cooked, a sound too full of layers to be human. She was among monsters. She was among friends.
She steeled herself, got out of bed and walked over to the couch, taking a seat next to Orion’s head. He was covered with make-shift bandages, and where they’d slipped free she could see the bite-marks. Almost healed now, but whatever it was that attacked him left a lot of damage.
“The Ouse is alive,” Nine said, as if that might mean something to her.
Jenny thought about asking for clarification, but decided against it, instead stroking a strand of Orion's pewter hair out of his eyes. He never slept, so why was he asleep?
He cracked open one eye, and a sparkling glow of purple and pewter flame briefly flashed across his iris before vanishing into his pupil. Human again, at least on the surface. He licked his lower lip, and asked, “You okay?”
She wasn’t sure she could say ‘yes’, so she nodded instead, trying not to think about the bathroom.
“Oh, thank fuck.” He tried to move, then hissed out a breath and reconsidered. “Next time I tell you not to look at something, don’t look, okay? One batshit crazy sister is enough; I can’t cope with two.”
She nodded again, still not trusting her voice.
“I heard that," Nine said.
Orion ignored her. “And don’t go thinking this means you can handle looking at other gods," he said. “Nine and I aren't complete; we’re still pieces that only add up to one layer. It’s... less reality to take in at once.”
Jenny reached out and touched one of the black bars inked into his fingers, tiny symbols packed so close together it almost looked solid. Stitches to keep the pieces together. Her brother and three other beings; a quarter of each. An unholy act to create something holy.
Orion wasn’t Jamie; after what she'd seen the night before she had to accept that he never would be. But... he cared about her. And she wanted him to be safe, eldritch abomination or not.
Maybe it was enough of a foundation to build something new on. He wasn't her twin, but technically they shared some genes, right? She wouldn't be alone...
Blood was thicker than water, even the sluggish, silted muck at the bottom of his precious canal.
https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/426480.html?thread=2532393968#cmt2532393968
