The Fight For Us Part III | Resident Evil |

8 - He's awake!

Giggling. It's loud. It's burrowing into Henry's skull. Like a whisper from a ghost. He can't see anything, it's all dark. His eyes are shut, but he doesn't want to open them. The darkness, it's so comforting. An escape into nothingness. To just float away. But Henry can't, and when his face is tapped by something sharp he winces.

Upon opening his eyes he doesn't know what the hell he's looking at. He's sat on the ground, his back against some sort of pole. His wrists are bound behind it. His knee is wounded, badly. But that's not the most damning thing, that would be the porcelain doll that is in his face. It's talking, its weathered dress floating in the air. Henry kicks it, finding his legs free the little thing doesn't seem to mind, it only screams a delighted, "He's awakeee—!" Henry then sees as another thing stumbles into his face. It's grunting, it looks like it was a person. But melted, back hunched like a beetle. Its face is wide and dog-like, like a combination of a pit pull, a beetle, and a boy from the seventeenth century. It's drooling.
"Ooh, I wanna see! Move!" The doll's demands are met with a very poignant scream from Henry,
"Get the hell away from me!"

The two things wander away, sitting down. Henry finally gets a glimpse at the things before him, this place. He thought the Lycan's were where the mutations ended. The supernatural. But no, it's here. The doll ran over and sat in the lap of a woman adorned in black, she's just a shadow of a human.
"Mother Miranda, leave the man-thing's fate in my hands. My daughters do so love entertaining foreigners." A woman, a massive, tall woman, attempts to entice Mother Miranda. The lord. She towers over the others.

Henry observes as these things talk to each other, like a family at a dinner table they're arguing about responsibilities. Like they're each trying to get out of doing chores. Miranda is strange, she looks human, but bird-like. The wings of crows sprout out from behind her back, eight of them. There's no way she can fly with those. It's something there just to see. Or not to see? Henry doesn't know what she is. What any of these people are. Mutants? Things?

"We're still missing one aren't we?" Miranda adds, Leon? Henry wonders,
"Send the wolves to find him, I will not search this village for a man Heisenberg lost in the forest!" The giant woman shouts, pointing at the guy who knocked him out. That man, geared hammer and all. Heisenberg? Henry jots his name down in his head. He then thinks of Ethan, who he looks around to find right beside him. He's awake, and he meets Henry's gaze. He looks petrified. Henry struggles with his restraints, pulling at his wrists and the rope, his feet in front of him trying to brace himself—as if that'd help.

"Oh, that's rich blame it on me! Of course!" Heisenberg shouts, standing up to scream at the lady. Even while sitting she's still taller than him. And she's as smug as can be about it.
"You were supposed to keep an eye on that cras—" she snaps back, standing up and blocking Henry's view of literally anything else. All he can see is her and her white dress.
"You try doing it! Take off the heels and actually do something for once!" Heisenberg waves his hammer around like an old man with his cane.
"Quiet! Child, adults are talking."
"Oh, I'm the child?!"

Henry wants to scream and tell them to shut their traps—but he's aware it wouldn't help his situation. He used to be scared when he'd get tied up like this, but now it just makes him mad. Who the hell are these people to tie him up? He's been bound like this three times now. And damn if it doesn't hurt to struggle with rope. But he rather be tied up than stabbed in his side again.

"Silence! The both of you!" Miranda shouts, her wings popping out behind her as she did, "My dear, the brown-haired one is to be at your mercy," she points to Henry, and the massive woman smirks, "And Heisenberg, you're in charge of the other. But before you two dispose of them, make sure the other man is found. We cannot risk it. Find him. And then you can have your fun." Henry struggles more, desperately he yanks at his restraints. They still don't budge.
"What are we to do with them for the moment?" Heisenberg asks, standing up and looking at Ethan,
"Hold them. Nothing until that man is found."
"Don't I get a say in this?" Ethan groans, and that seems to be it as the doll runs up to them, she says something. Something strange, and they're out. Neither of them knows how long.

Henry comes to hazily, but it doesn't feel as if he was knocked out. Usually when he's knocked out, he'll feel sick after waking up—as if he just woke from a deep sickness, but no. That felt like he was put to sleep, and his sudden lucidity felt intended. Scheduled. This is something they wanted him to be awake for. He feels a breeze on his face, cold laminate floor is beneath him, and he can feel himself being dragged across it. Surely he's leaving a bloody trail from his knee. He then opens his eyes, he's somewhere new.

He can't get a good look at the place with the bugs, swarms of dark black insects. Flies congregate around his head and around two girls. They're adorned in veils, black and shadowed as if they're in mourning. They're pulling him down a long hall, old and antique. They seem to be floating, flying even. Like they're made of the bugs that surround them. They have scythes in their hands, blood is caked around the handles of their weapons—like they wipe blood off them often but never get into the grooves to clean them thoroughly. Henry always cleans his knife thoroughly, and on some level he thinks they don't deserve to have bladed weapons.

His hands are bound, he can't move much of anything. He's barely able to move his head to see the girls. Without warning they bust through a set of double doors, leading to some closed-off room without any lighting besides an ornate fireplace. "Mother, we bring you fresh meat." One of the strange girls says, Henry starts to move, finally getting his mobility back he catches a glimpse of the massive woman from before. She's pretty, and he hates that she is.
"Put him up." The woman instructs the girls, leaving Henry to wonder just what that means he can't even fight it. He's too tired.

He finds out what they mean soon enough when he's lifted into the air by the bug-ridden girls, one on each arm. Henry then feels something scrape his back, something sharp and long. Before he can even breathe he feels the sharpness enter him. Piercing his shoulder violently he cries out, looking down at the tip of a meat hook that's now protruding from under his collarbone. He tries to reach it, but his hands are still bound.

The woman walks over to him, a black hat fashionably tilted he's brought to eye level with her. The hook is the perfect height to stare into her icy eyes. She flashes him a smile, something sinister and insultingly toothy.
"Get the cloth out of my way." She demands, Henry then feels as his coat and his sweater are cut off his body by scythes. The coldness of the room hit his bare skin like needles, the scythes cut him in the process. But those girls did it on purpose.
"The hell are you doing—?" Henry asks as the large woman produces his switchblade from some hidden pocket in her dress.

She brandishes his own knife to him before thrusting it into his gut, making him gasp Henry's breath hitches so hard he forgets how to breathe. Panicked and pained air coming out of his lungs like exhaust. But as if that wasn't bad enough the woman then latches onto the wound, sucking on it as she tastes his blood like she's tasting wine. Sampling him.

Henry stays there, completely and utterly lost in the moment. So thoroughly disgusted, disturbed, pained, panicked, scared, angry, everything all hit him at once as he tried his best to not throw up. Ignoring the feeling of her tongue slipping inside of the wound. He doesn't even look down at what the woman's doing, but he feels enough to get the picture.

"Absolutely divine." She suddenly sighs, letting go. An audible kiss-like sound echoes out, she latched onto him like a leech. Forming a seal to drink easier,
"Then we should eat him quickly Mother?" One of the girls adds as she hands her mother a rag to wipe the blood from around her mouth—painted with red lipstick that didn't smear. It might not be makeup.
"No, I must first inform Mother Miranda. Patience my daughters, in just a moment there'll be enough man-flesh to feed us all."

With one more look, the woman walks out of the room. She has to bend her head down to get through the doors. And her daughters follow her, except one who grabs his switchblade off the floor. She looks at it for a second, her eyes flicking back to Henry before she follows his sisters. Taking the knife with her, Henry loses consciousness. Then he's alone. Hanging.