Calamity ⇛ Teen Wolf [s.u.]

00.

           00 ; grave digging

"I'll get the flowers, if you dig," Teddy bargained with his brother as they walked together, their hands stuffed into their pockets. Isaac just scoffed quietly in response; they both knew that Teddy wasn't allowed to go near the backhoe, in the off chance that he would somehow damage it or something else. It was common knowledge that anything that Theodore Lahey touched had a 40-60 chance of being broken.

Take his family for example; his mother died because of him, due to complications during childbirth. That caused his father to turn to alcohol, trying to numb the pain that the loss of his wife had caused in his heart. But in turn, it caused him to lose control of himself and make questionable decisions. The first time he had hit one of his sons, it had been an accident; a bought of silence hung in the air, tears welling in the eyes of four-year-old Isaac as he clutched where he had been hit as eleven-year-old Camden stood as still as death, a three-year-old Teddy peacefully napping in his arms. Their father quickly dropped to his knees, pulling Isaac into his arms and apologizing profusely.

But the second time hadn't been an accident. By the time Teddy had turned five, Isaac had turned six, and Camden had turned thirteen, something had snapped in the father of the Lahey boys. In a fit of sudden rage, induced by alcohol, their father had thrown a glass bottle in the direction of Camden. It had shattered against the wall, every child flinching at the sound. But this time there had been no apologizing, no hugging, just shouting at the eldest Lahey child to clean up the mess that their father had made.

Each instance had grown in severity, Camden taking the brunt of the assault to protect his brothers. But there came a time when Camden had had enough; upon his graduation, he revealed to his brothers that tomorrow morning, he was being going to a training camp, so he could join the military. And so that night, all three of them managed to squeeze into Camden's bed and sleep together, the younger boys holding tightly onto their older brother. The next morning the Teddy was a snotty mess as he clung onto his older brother, Isaac a teary-eyed, not-as-snotty mess as he tried to pull Teddy away from their older brother. The two boys stayed in their room while Camden left, the sound of a fight echoing through the house: yelling and things being thrown or thrown over, before there was the house-shaking sound of the front door being slammed shut. That night did not end well for either of the remaining Lahey boys.

And then there were two: eleven-year-old Isaac and ten-year-old Teddy, left with their father in a house that seemed empty without their brother. Their brother who just up and left, abandoned them to escape the world of torture that Theodore Lahey had unintentionally brought into the world by just surviving.

The boys separated upon their arrival to the backhoe, Isaac climbing into it so he could finish digging the grave for a "Katherine Argent" while Teddy went to walk among the headstones, collecting the dead flowers that gathered around them.

The only sound that hummed through the graveyard for a solid twenty minutes had been the mechanical sound of the backhoe, until Isaac's voice filled the near-silence.

"Teddy?" he shouted, "is that you?"

Teddy stood up from where he had been picking dead flowers off the ground and turned towards the direction of the backhoe's faint flood lights to shout back, "is what me?"

"Seriously, if it's you, stop!"

"If what's me?" he repeated, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

The thing that came in response was the sound of something crashing to the ground and glass smashing, the faint lights of the backhoe flickering out.

"Isaac!" he shouted, making a half step motion in the direction in which he had just been staring, "Isaac, are you okay?"

With no response coming from his brother, Teddy dropped the armful of dead flowers that he had and broke into a sprint, running across the graveyard. Well, running until his tripped over one of the wire flower-holders that a family had placed in the ground in front of a headstone. He swore as he pushed himself up, but paused his motion when he saw something digging into a grave, just a few feet in front of him. The thing was making disgusting noises and what sounded like growls; maybe it was a stray dog? They always managed to get into the fenced off area and sometimes slept around the graves, but no stray dog ever went grave-robbing.

Teddy slowly lowered himself back to the ground, hoping the stray dog or whatever it was would go away so he didn't have to risk getting rabies while trying to save his brother from what could be a disastrous backhoe accident. Maybe he could find a big stick and chase it away? He began feeling around on the grass, but before he could get too far in finding a stick, the dog made a whimpering noise before a loud growl filled the air, one that made Teddy's blood run cold and freeze in terror. The dog whimpered as it fled, running right past where Teddy was laying on the ground. He was thankful that the dog was gone, but he was now terrified of whatever that thing was that had growled.

The sound he expected to hear next was more growling and the sound of leaves crunching as the thing approached him, not the sound of creaking metal. His head quickly shot up, and he watched in the dim light as the backhoe slowly made its way from its position on its side back to upright. What the hell could move something that heavy? Teddy pushed himself up again, but slower this time, as he watched someone emerge from behind the backhoe and walk around the grave that the machine had fallen over.

"Need a hand?" Teddy heard the person ask, which could only mean that Isaac had fallen into the grave. He then heard shuffling, like the sound of someone kicking against hard dirt before the thump of a body onto the grass: Isaac. Teddy got up from where he had been laying, running over to his brother.

"Are you okay?" he asked as he helped Isaac stand up, eyeing the man who had just pulled his brother out of the empty grave.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You don't look so fine to me," the man said, who Teddy glared at, "where'd you get that black eye?"

Neither of the Lahey boys said anything, until Isaac muttered something about sports.

"That doesn't sound like the truth."

Both of the boys tensed at his words, preparing for him to take some sort of action upon them. The man took a step forward, causing the boys to shrink where they stood.

"I'm not here to hurt either of you," he said, eyes suddenly lighting up red in the darkness, "actually, I'm here to help."

(c'mon and slam, welcome to the jam) that is calamity, which will tear your heart out and eat it