Dents

[+] Dracula

((This chapter contains mature or potentially triggering content. Reader discretion is advised.))

His teeth repulsed the living hell out of me.

I never noticed how uncomfortably they sat in his mouth, like little brown woodchips stabbed into his gums wherever they could fit. His tongue rhythmically coated them in a layer of slime that sometimes hung, just slightly, from the corner of his lip. Other times, it swung loose during one of his temper tantrums.

He hurt 2D all the time. I hated him for it.

Murdoc led the both of us toward a stairwell in the kitchen that I had mistaken for a food pantry.
He guided 2D and I down a rusty spiral staircase.

A recording studio was set up in the basement. The equipment there was hardly comparable to what it had been at Plastic Beach. The only remaining items of use were a mixer, a keyboard, and a couple of microphones. The room smelled dingy. The surface of my flesh felt colder than it did before.

I eyed the perimeter of the room while Murdoc spieled on about his new album and how he's planning on calling it Humanz, and how they are Gorillaz, and do I get it, do I get it?

I clenched my jaw to avoid calling him an arsehole.

He rambled on for nearly an hour. 2D and I had almost walked free without performing and without incident by the time he was finished.

Fate, as it seemed, found that too fair.

"Aye, faceache, why don't you stay here with good old Murdoc fo' a bit," he swallowed a glob of spit under his tongue, "Got somethin' I been meanin' to ask ya."

My head turned so sharply I was certain I'd have whiplash the next day. Murdoc noted my reaction and gave me a look I didn't understand, clearing his throat.

"Alone."

"... Right," I groaned, squeezing 2D's bony hand in mine.

"I'll be upstairs."

He looked terribly afraid. My gut churned with uneasiness at the sight. I wanted to stay with him, but I knew that Murdoc would corner him eventually. The guilt of leaving him there ate me up inside.

I closed the door behind me without further argument. I was not going upstairs.

I took a few loud steps toward the stairs before racing back to the door and pressing my ear against the cold, metal surface. I closed my eyes, focusing only on the dampened sounds leaking from under the door.

"So," Murdoc started. A glass clinked softly.

"'Ave you screwed 'er, yet?"

"Wha'?"

"You heard me loud 'n clear, faceache."

"I don't fink 'at's any ov yewr business, Murdoc."

There was the commotion of glass slamming into something, hard. The piercing sound caused me to flinch away from the door.

"And if it is?"

"Et's. Not."

2D's tone was dark. I hadn't ever heard him sound like that before. It scared me.

Murdoc mumbled incoherently, raising in volume until his screaming loosened a faulty screw in the door knob.

"The hell it isn't! You need to know wha' the bloody 'ell you're gettin' us into, now! You want this hole in the wall to fall apart summore? What are you fixin' to do if the band goes to shite completely, eh?"

Every word was a slur of drunken rambling. Even so, I was beginning to understand the implications of what he was saying.

One of them sighed.