004.
//To the gold eyed dragon, lurking in the bath; what big teeth you have!//
Then the smell rolls over them like a wave of rot.
It's crouched in the darkness, not a single sound peeping from its mouth. It still has eyes, golden and tinged with green, glowing and predatorily sharp, but dulled from misuse.
From the darkness it slinks, and Liria catches sight of white mangy fur clumped around them like grass. It's teeth are growing in, and Liria can see the sharp dagger like shards forcing itself from gums and blood trickling down its jaw.
The thing growls, a low primitive sound from the back of it's throat. Shifting, Liria can see a scrap of cloth, almost skin like, crusted with blood and in the bathing light of it's eyes and the pulsating green heart in its chest.
No, not a scrap of cloth.
A scarf. A once green scarf.
Liria's mind flashes back to the childish drawing on the cardboard box, the boxes on boxes, the heavily boarded in house. The uneasy chill and the silence.
The house wasn't boarded up to keep people from coming in.
It's boarded up to keep something from crawling out.
They forget to breathe, and lean back, bumping into the door. The sunlight flickers in, slowly, like some macabre spotlight, and illuminates the haggard creature huddled in the corner.
The thing is sitting in the bathtub, chains shackling it to the ground in a crude fashion. The once user's arms have been reduced to a mess of hard carapace like claws, and an angry pulsating wound shines on it's shoulder, radioactive and oozing green tinged blood. The white fur that scattered on the ground is barely white, and Liria can see angry scabs and pus from where the thing scratched itself, probably going mad in the darkness.
In the light, however, Liria sees the remains of a mangled bundle of cloth sitting next to it.
And in that cloth, nestled unobtrusively, was a human hand. Was, because with weeks of rot, all that is left of it is a scattered series of flesh and tendons and bones.
Liria tries not to vomit.
They shake their head, but they don't succeed, because three seconds later they collapse next to the toilet and hurl. The half digested mix of solids and liquids splatter as Liria tries to blank themselves, shaking and weak. Memories from decades ago try to surface, of the accident where Liria jumped too high, too far and the red and blue of bone and muscle peaking out from their back as the doctor holds them down-
Oh god. Seeing a rotting body is different in real life versus in a 2D screen and Liria's living in a horror show-
Squelch.
Liria freezes, and takes a deep breath through their mouths as they shakily jump up, staring at the ground.
It's not mud.
The ground is covered in the mushified remains of a human being, a user, and the streaks are where the thing dragged it's prey into.
Technically, Liria did smell human excrements. Unfortunately, those said excrements was intestinal liquids and copious amounts of blood, not feces, although with the disemboweling of the large intestine, it really, really doesn't matter.
Suddenly very thankful for the chains and fighting the loosing battle of retching, Liria turns around.
The creature, attracted by the light, has attempted to move forward, slowly blinking. The noisy clinking of the chains sounds like shattering plates to Liria as it skulks forward. It only stops a few feet away, heaving as the chain pulls taught.
YOU ARE READING
Glitched.
Fanfiction(AKA: I wrote over 60,000 words on a weak noodle man trying to survive not getting skewered by magic zombies. ) Sometimes, you are very small when faced against the world. Liria knows this- knows the smell of copper and rot intimately with the flic...
