Post by Krähe on Jun 27, 2020 20:50:35 GMT -8
It was late. The hospital itself mostly stood still; a whir of gentle beeps and assisted breathing sounds slunk through the shadows.
The stench of bleach clung to the walls. It was the same clinical smell that funeral homes offer to cover up the smell of rotting corpses...Though in all honesty, many of the bodies in the hospital would soon be rotting too.
Brodie did not slink through the shadows under the blanket of those sounds. In fact, she did not enter the building as a whisper at all. Instead, she wore a mask in the name of a pretty white uniform, pressed and neat, clinging to her body as though it were a second skin.
It was better not to think about where she had obtained the garb, and instead take note that her usually colorful hair was swept up under a nurse's cap. Blonde wisps of hair snaked down the back of her neck and an ID Badge, a smiling, red-lipped portrait of the women she had selected to portray for this little jaunt.
As she moved through the halls and rode the elevator in silence, she caught more than one wandering eye, a lingering glance, but nobody, not a soul, questioned the pretty little nurse with the dazzling smile as big as a crocodile's.
Grasping a chart that she snatched from the wall, the well dressed young practitioner made her way past the nurse's station, a lazy wave to its occupant as she moved past; the ward sister engrossed in whatever trashy TV show she locked her eyes on tonight. Nobody saw her coming.
Not even him.
She could feel her heart quicken as she pressed her palm around the door handle, a swift turn and a gentle shove saw her spill into the room. It was empty and quiet, aside from those beeps as her eyes stretched to adjust to the darkness.
There Krahe lay, in the bed, prone and without a witness. But she was not here for her pound of flesh, not tonight.
"Mi Amore.."
The whisper slipped from her painted red lips, her breath tight, excited as she approached that bed. Fingers danced along the rough hospital blanket, as she took a seat at Krahe's side. The old medical mattress giving a little under her weight to stir him, looming over like the angel of death herself, watching him rouse from his slumber.
One of his hands twitched at the sound of her voice. The movement was enough to draw her gaze down to restraints that bound him to the hospital bed. His wrist was wearing bruises like badges to show just how he fought their hold until the medication kicked in.
Her fingers traveled down to the restraints, working away unto she had freed one wrist, and then the other, bringing her face back up close to his, her breath upon his cheek she smiled, gruesome and bloodied, he lay before her as a masterpiece.
And you would have to forgive her, for as she inhaled the murky scent of his too clean body. It was the smell of a man destined to be a corpse that held on for dear life.
She had to run her tongue up his cheek, had to taste the exquisite divinity of one so close to death, he did, after all, owe her.
"You are going to tell me a story, Mi Amor…"
Her lips pressed to his cheek as she hissed the words into his flesh, thick black painted nails found the softness under his wrists, raw from the restraints, and she delved, digging and jabbing her dainty nails into him, tearing him from the forceful slumber the medication provided.
The smell of the hospital hit his awareness right alongside that first flash of pain. It was a smell that he could identify immediately, even drugged, and the reaction it triggered was instantaneous.
Drugged, he was caught between the dreams of memories and the present. It was impossible in the heat of the moment to differentiate between the two. His body coiled in itself ready to fight it's way free of the nightmare...until his wild eyes met her's.
Despite the sting of claws digging into his flesh, the sight of Brodie drained all the tension from his body.
This was just another time another place...another fucking hospital.
"Hello, Little Red...come to finish someone else's lackluster work?" His throat was slightly raw, likely dry and strained from his ordeal. The effect being that his voice was far rougher than usual, a harsh growl delivered with a whisper of an accent his speech was usually devoid of.
"Gotta say beautiful, I'd never want ta die in a place like this, but if it's you, I can live with it...or rather die with it." He paused to clear his throat. "This conversation would be easier if all of yous would stay still."
After a moment, Krähe gave up on trying to keep his grey eyes focused and closed them instead.
At first, the only sound she made was a gentle growl; almost a purr in fact as she drew her fingers back from his wrists, dancing two on her left hand up the blanket that covered his chest, she cooed softly "A woman's work is never done, Mi Amore… But it is simply not your time yet." Her words weren't meant to offer comfort. She would get her pound of flesh eventually, but she wanted the fight, not this wounded animal.
She instead drew up, pulling herself onto the bed. She straddled him, dropping down hard, still able to draw some enjoyment from Krahe's pain.
Had it been anyone else, perhaps the movement would have offered more than just the pressing pain and ache that added pressure brought to his injuries.
Instead, she leaned in close again, her hand wrapping gently around his jaw, her lips hovering over his face. Then with a smile drew in a breath, knowing that he need not see her to realize she's there.
"Tell me a story Mi Amore…" cheek to cheek now, she moved her lips closer to his ear, he had to know he was helpless at that moment, the pressed, neat uniform drawn up high above her thighs as she leaned into him. "Tell me about her… I am going to take her from you. And you from her. You know… Pretty little patterns etched into the flesh of everyone you have ever taken any care for… They will suffer, as you have made me suffer… But first."
She drew herself up to sit almost regally, despite the compromising position and glared at the man who still caused every hair on her arms to raise.
The man who had seeded himself so deeply into her subconscious that it took all she had not to tear away at him as she so craved, right there and then.
"Tell me...her story."
Rather than wince in pain at her added weight, he adjusted his body ever so slightly. The extra pain threading through the drugs seeming to relax him far more than the numb haze. A slow smile curled the corner of his lips, but he didn't bother to reopen his eyes.
"Ah, my tease, I suppose I have miles left and promises to keep before I sleep." His tongue slid out just enough to brush his dry lip. There was nothing nervous about the action.
For all the world, he was like a cat laying in the sun, rather than a man partially restrained to a hospital bed. Then he began to speak, and everything else melted away as he began to tell her a "story."
"Because I could not stop for Death, she kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality.
We slowly drove, she knew no haste, and my labor and leisure had been ripped away.
We passed the schools where Children strove
to prove themselves in the ring and cage.
We passed the fields of grain and those that toiled mindlessly from day-to-day.
We passed the setting sun...Or rather, he passed us as he faded away.
And with each night, sensations grew quivering and chill from one ring to the next…one cage to another.
Til the fires cooled, and the cold settled etched in the bone beneath useless flesh.
We separated before a house that seemed little more than burning rubble on the ground. The roof was scarcely visible—the chimney in pieces on the ground.
How I wanted to stay there tired enough to rest my head, but never allowed and doomed to plow the road beyond crossroads instead.
Since then, it seems like it's been centuries and yet feels shorter than the day...I first surmised I was headed toward eternity, and I was neither alive nor dead...but existing all the same.
Now she is back, and once again, things will never be the same...as we ride the endless road...denied the stone to rest our heads."
As he butchered the famous poem by Emily Dickinson and shamelessly stitched it back together, one freed scarred hand gently caressed Brodie's thigh.
The touch was light, barely a whisper of flesh, and it never strayed higher in its soothing caress. Krahe's voice was the perfect mirror to his touch, as it wove around her in the dark room. The sound of his voice was inexplicably able to caress her in a fashion far more intimate than the fingertips brushing against her thigh.
His words kept her still. So still, in fact, that it would be almost impossible to tell if she were alive or dead...were it not for the soft, patterned breathing that came from her barely parted lips. Each small change to the poem caused her hands to grip at the blanked slightly, it was something between excitement and irritation.
The artist within balked at the botched recantation, but there was another voice in the back of her mind. The words of a man not unlike Krahe drew her ever closer to those words.
Once he stopped speaking, she drew a single deep breath, her eyes traveling to his touch on her skin.
She paused, and without a word or sigh, placed her hand over his nose and mouth. She bore down as she locked eyes with the man who had tormented her quietest moments for weeks. Her fingers pressing together to cut off all oxygen supply. The sound of the monitors beside her whirred to life as she kept her hand locked tight to his face. Her fingers clamping at her jaw, but her eyes, almost soft beneath the embers that burned within them…
She wondered as she denied him breath after breath. Did he have faith in her words that she would not kill him, or would he merely welcome the sweet, deep slumber it would bring...should she go back on her word.
The grey eyes that opened held nothing more than a blank calm stare. Beneath her hand, his lips never lost their slight curve, though they did caress against her palm. There was no resistance from him even when his body involuntarily began to twitch beneath her. His hand fell away as his eyes closed once more.
When it came to death, Krähe was fearless.
The stench of bleach clung to the walls. It was the same clinical smell that funeral homes offer to cover up the smell of rotting corpses...Though in all honesty, many of the bodies in the hospital would soon be rotting too.
Brodie did not slink through the shadows under the blanket of those sounds. In fact, she did not enter the building as a whisper at all. Instead, she wore a mask in the name of a pretty white uniform, pressed and neat, clinging to her body as though it were a second skin.
It was better not to think about where she had obtained the garb, and instead take note that her usually colorful hair was swept up under a nurse's cap. Blonde wisps of hair snaked down the back of her neck and an ID Badge, a smiling, red-lipped portrait of the women she had selected to portray for this little jaunt.
As she moved through the halls and rode the elevator in silence, she caught more than one wandering eye, a lingering glance, but nobody, not a soul, questioned the pretty little nurse with the dazzling smile as big as a crocodile's.
Grasping a chart that she snatched from the wall, the well dressed young practitioner made her way past the nurse's station, a lazy wave to its occupant as she moved past; the ward sister engrossed in whatever trashy TV show she locked her eyes on tonight. Nobody saw her coming.
Not even him.
She could feel her heart quicken as she pressed her palm around the door handle, a swift turn and a gentle shove saw her spill into the room. It was empty and quiet, aside from those beeps as her eyes stretched to adjust to the darkness.
There Krahe lay, in the bed, prone and without a witness. But she was not here for her pound of flesh, not tonight.
"Mi Amore.."
The whisper slipped from her painted red lips, her breath tight, excited as she approached that bed. Fingers danced along the rough hospital blanket, as she took a seat at Krahe's side. The old medical mattress giving a little under her weight to stir him, looming over like the angel of death herself, watching him rouse from his slumber.
One of his hands twitched at the sound of her voice. The movement was enough to draw her gaze down to restraints that bound him to the hospital bed. His wrist was wearing bruises like badges to show just how he fought their hold until the medication kicked in.
Her fingers traveled down to the restraints, working away unto she had freed one wrist, and then the other, bringing her face back up close to his, her breath upon his cheek she smiled, gruesome and bloodied, he lay before her as a masterpiece.
And you would have to forgive her, for as she inhaled the murky scent of his too clean body. It was the smell of a man destined to be a corpse that held on for dear life.
She had to run her tongue up his cheek, had to taste the exquisite divinity of one so close to death, he did, after all, owe her.
"You are going to tell me a story, Mi Amor…"
Her lips pressed to his cheek as she hissed the words into his flesh, thick black painted nails found the softness under his wrists, raw from the restraints, and she delved, digging and jabbing her dainty nails into him, tearing him from the forceful slumber the medication provided.
The smell of the hospital hit his awareness right alongside that first flash of pain. It was a smell that he could identify immediately, even drugged, and the reaction it triggered was instantaneous.
Drugged, he was caught between the dreams of memories and the present. It was impossible in the heat of the moment to differentiate between the two. His body coiled in itself ready to fight it's way free of the nightmare...until his wild eyes met her's.
Despite the sting of claws digging into his flesh, the sight of Brodie drained all the tension from his body.
This was just another time another place...another fucking hospital.
"Hello, Little Red...come to finish someone else's lackluster work?" His throat was slightly raw, likely dry and strained from his ordeal. The effect being that his voice was far rougher than usual, a harsh growl delivered with a whisper of an accent his speech was usually devoid of.
"Gotta say beautiful, I'd never want ta die in a place like this, but if it's you, I can live with it...or rather die with it." He paused to clear his throat. "This conversation would be easier if all of yous would stay still."
After a moment, Krähe gave up on trying to keep his grey eyes focused and closed them instead.
At first, the only sound she made was a gentle growl; almost a purr in fact as she drew her fingers back from his wrists, dancing two on her left hand up the blanket that covered his chest, she cooed softly "A woman's work is never done, Mi Amore… But it is simply not your time yet." Her words weren't meant to offer comfort. She would get her pound of flesh eventually, but she wanted the fight, not this wounded animal.
She instead drew up, pulling herself onto the bed. She straddled him, dropping down hard, still able to draw some enjoyment from Krahe's pain.
Had it been anyone else, perhaps the movement would have offered more than just the pressing pain and ache that added pressure brought to his injuries.
Instead, she leaned in close again, her hand wrapping gently around his jaw, her lips hovering over his face. Then with a smile drew in a breath, knowing that he need not see her to realize she's there.
"Tell me a story Mi Amore…" cheek to cheek now, she moved her lips closer to his ear, he had to know he was helpless at that moment, the pressed, neat uniform drawn up high above her thighs as she leaned into him. "Tell me about her… I am going to take her from you. And you from her. You know… Pretty little patterns etched into the flesh of everyone you have ever taken any care for… They will suffer, as you have made me suffer… But first."
She drew herself up to sit almost regally, despite the compromising position and glared at the man who still caused every hair on her arms to raise.
The man who had seeded himself so deeply into her subconscious that it took all she had not to tear away at him as she so craved, right there and then.
"Tell me...her story."
Rather than wince in pain at her added weight, he adjusted his body ever so slightly. The extra pain threading through the drugs seeming to relax him far more than the numb haze. A slow smile curled the corner of his lips, but he didn't bother to reopen his eyes.
"Ah, my tease, I suppose I have miles left and promises to keep before I sleep." His tongue slid out just enough to brush his dry lip. There was nothing nervous about the action.
For all the world, he was like a cat laying in the sun, rather than a man partially restrained to a hospital bed. Then he began to speak, and everything else melted away as he began to tell her a "story."
"Because I could not stop for Death, she kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality.
We slowly drove, she knew no haste, and my labor and leisure had been ripped away.
We passed the schools where Children strove
to prove themselves in the ring and cage.
We passed the fields of grain and those that toiled mindlessly from day-to-day.
We passed the setting sun...Or rather, he passed us as he faded away.
And with each night, sensations grew quivering and chill from one ring to the next…one cage to another.
Til the fires cooled, and the cold settled etched in the bone beneath useless flesh.
We separated before a house that seemed little more than burning rubble on the ground. The roof was scarcely visible—the chimney in pieces on the ground.
How I wanted to stay there tired enough to rest my head, but never allowed and doomed to plow the road beyond crossroads instead.
Since then, it seems like it's been centuries and yet feels shorter than the day...I first surmised I was headed toward eternity, and I was neither alive nor dead...but existing all the same.
Now she is back, and once again, things will never be the same...as we ride the endless road...denied the stone to rest our heads."
As he butchered the famous poem by Emily Dickinson and shamelessly stitched it back together, one freed scarred hand gently caressed Brodie's thigh.
The touch was light, barely a whisper of flesh, and it never strayed higher in its soothing caress. Krahe's voice was the perfect mirror to his touch, as it wove around her in the dark room. The sound of his voice was inexplicably able to caress her in a fashion far more intimate than the fingertips brushing against her thigh.
His words kept her still. So still, in fact, that it would be almost impossible to tell if she were alive or dead...were it not for the soft, patterned breathing that came from her barely parted lips. Each small change to the poem caused her hands to grip at the blanked slightly, it was something between excitement and irritation.
The artist within balked at the botched recantation, but there was another voice in the back of her mind. The words of a man not unlike Krahe drew her ever closer to those words.
Once he stopped speaking, she drew a single deep breath, her eyes traveling to his touch on her skin.
She paused, and without a word or sigh, placed her hand over his nose and mouth. She bore down as she locked eyes with the man who had tormented her quietest moments for weeks. Her fingers pressing together to cut off all oxygen supply. The sound of the monitors beside her whirred to life as she kept her hand locked tight to his face. Her fingers clamping at her jaw, but her eyes, almost soft beneath the embers that burned within them…
She wondered as she denied him breath after breath. Did he have faith in her words that she would not kill him, or would he merely welcome the sweet, deep slumber it would bring...should she go back on her word.
The grey eyes that opened held nothing more than a blank calm stare. Beneath her hand, his lips never lost their slight curve, though they did caress against her palm. There was no resistance from him even when his body involuntarily began to twitch beneath her. His hand fell away as his eyes closed once more.
When it came to death, Krähe was fearless.
