singillatim | open | i heard a scream in the woods somewhere

[ The bite of anger makes him jump, the moment of being frozen in his discovery quickly broken. Kieren scrambles back and away — legs kicking slightly to scoot himself back in the snow. There's gore smeared on his mouth and hands, which he holds up in a defensive gesture. His eyes are wide, fearful. ]

S-sorry— I'm sorry— I just—

[ It becomes painfully obvious now he's moved away: the ruined mess of animal skull in the snow. He hasn't touched the body, the meat. ]

[Caught, her thief scrambles back, the beam of the flashlight sweeps over his face and - shit, it's just a kid. The sharpest bite of her anger fades away, if he's like her but has no one to help him no wonder he's doing this. It's hard to tell much in the dark, but he really does look awful, and the mess he’d made of the rabbit says he doesn't really know what he's doing.]

… I've got a knife, if you want to cut it?

[ Kieren blinks, stunned, confused. She's... offering him a knife. He stares for a long moment, quivering. He doesn't know what to say, how to react. She's just... offering him a knife to cut it, just like that?

He speaks before he can stop himself. ]

I— I can't eat the meat. Not that part.

[ He means the body. ]

What?

[That doesn't even make sense. How can you not eat meat but chew through a rabbit’s skull?]

I don't think the brain counts as like, a vegetarian compromise.

[ Christ, he wants the world to swallow him whole in that very moment. He balks, appalled and horrified as he shrinks back a little. ]

Oh, fucking Christ— [ A vegetarian. God, he wishes it were that simple. He wishes that's all it was. ] I'm— I'm not, it's not like that, it's—

[ He's all nerves and the back of his throat feels uncomfortably slick. He can't afford to throw up what little he's already scarfed down. ]

I mean I... I literally can't eat it. I'm not supposed to eat, ever.

[There's something here that Chloe doesn't get yet, but she gets the sense that she won't like it when she does.

There's a terror in the kid’s expression that makes her feel a little sick - he really thinks she's going to hurt him - but she's also so hungry too, and looking at that mess isn't helping.]

Look, I don't know what that means, but I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? But I'm starving, and that's mine. I'll... [She laughs, maybe a little hysterical, what's happening to her in this place?] I'll cut off the head and give it back but I want the rest.

Fine, fine. Yeah, no totally fine.

[ Totally all hers. Well, it literally is. All hers. All he needs is the meagre amount of brains. Rabbits don't have much, unfortunately.

This is already so fucking weird, he might as well come out with it. This is what Cornelius was talking about, just telling people. Like sure he's a zombie, but he's also Kieren. Kieren doesn't want to hurt people. ]

I'm... not supposed to eat because my insides don't work anymore. I'm... [ He doesn't know how to say it, so he's just going to say it. ] I'm a zombie.

[A zombie. Normally she’d say that's bullshit, but she has magic powers now, so.]

Oh. Okay. Like an honest-to-god dead zombie, huh? That's why you want the brain.

[Chloe gently takes the rabbit from the kid, chops the head with her hunting knife and hands it back. Afterward, as she speaks, she cuts and eats pieces of the rabbit’s body.]

I'm sure some of the people in town would give you brains from the stuff they hunt if you asked. The only thing they might use it for otherwise is tanning.

What, as opposed to an 'honest-to-god alive zombie?' [ He's neither, really. Not fully alive or dead. Partially Deceased, and he cringes, his head dipping in defeat. Christ, this is just.... he actually wants to laugh at how absurd it all is. Why the hell isn't he getting stabbed or something?

He takes the ruined mess of a rabbit head back, and it just looks so pitiful. He looks pitiful, just there in the snow with his rabbit head. He hates all of this so much. ]

I never felt hungry before. Now I do. [ And that's horrifying to him. ] It's not as if it's a normal thing to ask for though, is it?

Yeah, like those… rabies zombies they have in movies sometimes, or fungus or whatever. [Would they have those, in a world where zombies are real? She's heard about zombie-like creatures, those Gollums Nate fought on the El Dorado caper or the yetis in Shambhala, but she's pretty sure those guys weren't dead until they killed them.]

You didn't eat brains before? Is this zombie puberty or something?

[Must suck to go through something like that alone, where no one else can explain to you what's happening.]

Though you may have noticed, I'm hungry too. Did you have a weird dream recently?

[ Oh, Christ give him strength. Kieren looks as if he's about to pass out from the sheer stress and mortification. His eyes close for a moment as he openly winces. Zombie puberty... ]

No, no— christ— it's— [ How the hell does he put this. ] I'm not supposed to eat anything. Ever. Food's toxic to people like me. Only— only I know I can eat brains because that's what I ate when I first came back. But then I didn't, because I was different when I first came back, and then I got medicated and now—

[ Well. Now he doesn't know, anymore. He's shit at explaining this. ]

Uh... yeah. Last month? I had a dream I was a... deer.

[ Which is... really fucking weird for him. ]

[Okay, Chloe doesn't know anything about this type of zombie - medicated??? - but she’s pretty intimately familiar with the other thing.]

And ever since, you've found that you can move faster, right? You can travel farther, you trip less? It happened to me, too. [She holds up what remains of the rabbit, as if to demonstrate.] It makes you so hungry.

I didn't really realise, at first. [ But he nods. Yeah, pretty much all like that. ] I had... there was this shadow following me, last month.

[ One that looked just like him. ]

I didn't want to think about the hunger, though. I'm— I thought it might meant I'm going rabid again. [ He sniffs, shaking his head. ] I kept putting it off, but I can't—

[Chloe remembers how desperate she’d been when her hoarded supplies had run out. This kid has been starving for way longer than she’d held out.]

Yeah, I don't blame you for that. Can you… [How do you say it.] Do you have to eat them raw? I'm sure it'd feel a little less… like this… if you were eating a cooked meal in your house.

[She says, as she's eating raw meat next to him. At this point she's kind of had to embrace being a freak, but that doesn't mean everyone wants to.]

A shadow? You think someone was stalking you?

[ If only the ground could just swallow him up right now. Let him jump back in his grave again, thanks. Kieren's head drops, mortified and disgusted all at once. ]

I— [ Cringing. So much cringing. ] I dunno. I've... I've just only even eaten it raw. S'not exactly something you really wanna bring to the dinner table though, is it?

[ Roast brains with veg and mash. Wonderful. And god— he has no room to talk, but this is just... so gross. He's trying not to look to closely at her eating. ]

Not think. I knew they were. [ He shakes his head. ] It... it, um— it was a person. Looked... just like me.

Not so weird so long as it's animal, is it? Lots of places they eat animal brains.

[Cooking a human brain might be a bit much but that's more because you'd know it's human than anything else.]

Oh. I haven't seen anything like that. Did it talk or anything?

I... guess. I suppose I haven't really thought about it.

[ He's.. really not wanted to, in all honesty. Thinking about brains in general is something he'd rather have far from his mind. Animal or otherwise. ]

No. Just... hung around. Nobody else could see it. It was... weird. Bad weird. [ He swallows thickly. ] It, um— it made me feel like shit.

I don't blame you for that. I wouldn't want to be stalked by myself either.

[No offence to this kid but it seems like feeling like shit is pretty normal for him.]

Anyway, it's not you, you know that now. It's this place forcing shit on us again.

When I'm not… doing this… [Eating animals straight out of the snare.] I do a bit of trapping for Louis at the store. I bet he’d give you what you need in a way that sucks less.

Don't reckon anyone would. We're not exactly the most cheeriest of bunches here.

[ Chloe, you have no idea just how extremely normal it is to be feeling like shit all the time for him. ]

.... Yeah.

[ He exhales it, sounds so defeated about it. Man, fuck this place. ]

Mm, sure that'll go down well. [ He jerks his head a little, his voice shifting into a mockingly cheerful tone that is... incredibly out of place for him. ] 'Hello, shopkeep! Two pounds of your finest deer brain, please!' I know this place is weird and stuff, but like... come on.

[Chloe looks over at the boy crouching next to her with the rabbit head, blood and tear tracks on his face.]

Worse than this, you reckon? If someone else who didn't have to do this had found you?

I'd rather not die— [ He wants to get home, he wants to get back to his family. ] but dying's the thing to worry about least. They kill people like me back home.

[ He's quiet for a long while, considering. What's worse? Things kicking off, things getting ugly. People getting hurt. He... he has people he knows, here. Friends. ]

... A witch hunt. [ He answers quietly. ] That's how people get hurt.

[That’s something Chloe has been a bit afraid of too - there’s a reason she eats in the forest and not in town - but hearing it from him, she frowns.]

It doesn't have to be. There are other people like us, who have this power and know its downsides. We can help each other.

D'you think they'd be as chill knowing one of them's a zombie?

[ Like sure, if there's a whole bunch of them chowing down on raw rabbits and shit in the woods, that's one thing. But... zombies are a whole other thing. ]

I don't see why not. If anything you've got more of a reason to be out here than we do.

[After all, he doesn't have the choice to eat anything else.]

[ Okay, that answer surprises him. He's not entirely sure what to say. The acceptance of it is... almost uncomfortable for him. ]

You... do realise people kill people like me, yeah? Not to mention we don't have a stellar track record in media, either. [ That moment when you walk in and your baby sister's shooting up zombies in a video game. ] Zombies... evil... undead monsters. Yeah?

open | i heard a scream in the woods somewhere

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I think we can wrap here