Re: The Inferior Vessel

[DoF Archive]

Date: 5/30/2001 8:33 AM Central Daylight Time
From: Baghiira

Strangely, the jostling and jerking of the dragging trek did less to rouse the burn victim than did the increased digging of teeth as she was rolled onto her stomach. A deep breath grated into damaged lungs; released only slowly, it hissed across raw, new tissues. The rasp of the rough tongue across the new, sensitive skin of her back set the itch of nerve
endings a notch higher, pushing her over the edge into pain.

Still, she did nothing as the panther rolled her back over again, reclaimed his grip and began pulling; simply breathed, the rhythm shallow and slow. By the time he reached the cabin, slits of muddied green had appeared in the blackened face; her mouth also opened, a red, wet gash in seared flesh. As he pulled her up the steps to the porch with a series of jerks, her arms finally lifted; charred skin cracked and peeled away with the motion, with
the tensing of muscles as fingers gripped the loose skin and fur below his neck.

Fingers curled; tiny, delicate claws tore their way free of newly formed sheathes to prick at the skin she gripped.





Drink to the dead, all you still alive-

we shall join them in good time.

Should you go crossin' that silvery brook,

it's best to leap before you look.

[Clutch]

[DoF Archive]

Date: 6/5/2001 4:37 PM Central Daylight Time
From: Jinn Kiko


The panicked gurgle that slices from a closed up throat involuntarily escapes as he jerks back. A heavy paw slashes at the attacking appendage, trying to figure out what exactly had launched the attack. His pulling back was futile, resulting in merely dragging the body back with him. His eyes narrow, the multicolored vision swimming with more confusion as it becomes less of an enigma about where the attack was
coming from.

Shadows dance along the patio wood throwing more alerts to the already thrumming and desperate movements of muscle. He was jerking constantly until the weakened hold was finally detached. Unwilling to just stalk off and let bygones be bygones, he's leapt up onto the railings glowering down at the midnight snack turned attacker, his tail twitching warily and warningly. A low grumbling growl was echoing within his stomach, as a mother cat's
would if anyone was to unwittingly walk too close to her kittens. Ears flat, he watches the charred mass he had struggled so hard to bring back.

[DoF Archive]

Date: 6/12/2001 9:35 PM Central Daylight Time
From: Baghiira


The slashing paw tears through charred layers like tissue paper, ripping the last layers of a previous life away from newborn-pink skin before catching and slicing into that skin itself.

With that pain, a wildcat's screech pierces the darkness that shrouds the cabin, a shrill cry that fades into hoarse breathing from the figure that crumples as he he jerks and releases her. For a long moment, there is no further movement or sound than the panther's rumbling growl and her tortured breathing.

Just as that growl is beginning to die away—just as, perhaps, the panther is easing his stance—she twists with the shadows that dance across the porch, pushing onto hands and knees. Old skin crackles, the last remnants flaking away. Blood wells slowly in the puncture wounds around her shoulder, the newer scrapes on her arm weeping fresher, lighter blood.

"Here, kitty ... " it's a horrible, sing-song croak from the bent and crouched creature on the floor. In the darkness, previously narrow slits widen, golden-green throwing back tenfold what little light the night offers.





Drink to the dead, all you still alive-

we shall join them in good time.

Should you go crossin' that silvery brook,

it's best to leap before you look.

[Clutch]

[DoF Archive]

Date: 6/13/2001 9:41 PM Central Daylight Time
From: AlItheDiamonds


He had been watching the creature for days, weeks, maybe it had even been months. No, all of this had happened in the short span of one night, but he couldn't tell, time was nothing but a blur, he couldn't remember having done else but watch the sleek creature hunt and bring this newest thing back to the
cabin. At first it had been frightening, almost to the point of the urge to run overcoming him, especially when the panther started at him, almost hungrily. But always the panther looked elsewhere, he was never sure why, but in the lower corner of his eye he would catch a spark of light, like his Opal was involved in all of this. But those thoughts were laughed off, it was a rock, he didn't believe in curses.

"Why the hell am I here? What am I doing..." It wasn't the first time he had asked himself that question, it wouldn't be the last. The sudden sound coming from the charred mass of...something...the panther had dragged home silenced him and then he was watching once more.

A chuckle so silent and far in the back of Shawn's mind was loosed, so imperceptible that he wasn't even sure there had been such a thing. It was still testing him...seeing how far it could go to control him, cloud his mind, before it was noticed. The curse belief Shawn held had helped it's tests so far,
he still didn't notice the opal was acting on its own, forcing him to do things he never normally would have, and even though it did it with a bitter taste in its proverbial mouth, it had protected him when needed. The dark opal was going to have fun with this "owner".


"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."

[DoF Archive]

Date: 7/11/2001 7:19 PM Central Daylight Time
From: Baghiira


The nature of the beast—both beasts—called for fight, rather than flight. The panther was well aware of his own power; something, some distant instinct, told her that such a beast could be dominated, bent to her will. Thus, maimed as she was, she eased an inch, maybe two, closer to the panther crouched on the railing. Soft skin, rubbed raw in places,
twitched as the muscles below spasmed, only partially healed and reacting violently to the impulses firing down nerves. "Kitty … kiiiiitty," she croaked again in that horrible, ravaged singsong, filling the silence left by the waiting panther. On the railing, he seemed content to paw at the wood, claws flexing in and out as if he needed to knead the railing into a comfortable spot. Two-toned eyes remained focused on her as he growled back to her
catcall, lip curling above sharpened teeth.

She mirrored the gesture, her own lips still red—raw and wet, left exposed by the flaking away of dead, charred flesh—as they wrinkled back from her own teeth, poor and dulled as they appeared. Another inch disappeared from between them, blood pooling at each point that touched the floor of the porch: from fingertips, where unfinished claws had torn through delicate skin in her self-defense, and from knees, where dripped the run-off of the
blood that still slowly seeped from the tears in her back.

Shawn merely watched this exchange from his spot in the brush surrounding the cabin. Fingers curled around the deathly-black gem that dangled at his throat. As the creature spoke, his own lips started moving, silently repeating her words before he made a decision. The pressure of his legs brought him to his fullest height and slow steps started toward the cabin. With a narrowing of eyes in concentration and a muted flash of light from the opal,
there were suddenly two—and then three—of him moving toward the porch.

Of the pair on the porch, only the panther had earlier noted anything amiss; he had caught the off-scent of the other being, the warmth of his presence caught and felt in the breeze. As a predator, he knew these things; but in the few seconds that he had taken his eyes off the strange thing in front of him, he'd seen nothing to further alarm him. Now, with her closer movements, he was tensing to either pounce toward or away from her, another
warning growl given to let her know she was invading his territory. How odd things become when one's food suddenly tries to fight back!

As he moved closer to the porch, a silver case fell into Shawn's hand, fingers idly toying with it as he considered the scene before him. "Kitty … kitty," he called softly, pausing to consider the comment for a moment; something seemed to be missing. Ah, yes. "Heeeeeere, kitty, kitty, kitty." He probably shouldn't be toying with the large cat … but … he couldn't really help himself. "And what do we have here?" For the moment, as his
attention shifted to the other … thing … he didn't really care about the cat.

Her own senses almost as dulled as those sorry teeth she had bared earlier, as distant as the misguided hint of instinct that had her facing off with the panther, she reacted only slowly to this interloper. Muscles churned and twisted in protest beneath her skin as she snaked her head around to face him, a low hiss playing across her teeth. One, two, thr—





[taken from live play with AlItheDiamonds, Jinn Kiko and Baghiira; all permissions granted.]

[DoF Archive]

Date: 7/11/2001 9:21 PM Central Daylight Time
From: Baghiira


At the initial approach, the big cat had been confused, thinking somehow that this attack-if an attack it was-had been issuing entirely from this small creature he had dragged back to the cabin. In his frozen crouch, his ears had been swiveling back and forth between the two points of noise. [Ever seen the cartoons where the cat jumps out of his own skin? He
was pretty much the same, only his fur stayed in place.] Now he turned, finally, to face this new front and nature took over: he dropped down instinctively between Shawn and the prey. It didn't matter that his after-dinner snack seemed to have an agenda of its own; it was the principle of the matter. He padded down to the porch's floor into a position that allowed him to see both her and the true Shawn. While humans might easily accept the
doppelgangers as real, he was trained all his life to sense the heat of a real victim. Another growl issued as he moved, warning.

Baghiira's movement, when it finally came, was in response to the big cat's leap. She flinched back from his new position, jerked to a halt and shifted her attention between him, Shawn and the other two. Unlike the panther, she was lacking her knack of telling warm-blooded human from shadowed doppleganger. Her sense of smell had yet to return and her hearing was crowded by the pulse and roar of her own blood, the fever that flushed her skin even
as she bled out onto the floor. Instinct shifted like a slumbering beast, slow and heavy; fight bled gradually into the first thoughts of flight.

As Shawn moved, however, sweat began to roll from three faces, dripping down their identical chins before dropping silently to the earth below. He had almost laughed when the cat jumped; he had to see what it would do this time. The opal shimmered with his concentration and one of the mirror images faded, only to be replaced with a ball of darkness slightly smaller than a basketball, which happened to appear conveniently enshrouding the panther's
head. The panther was focused on Shawn, however, and intent on protecting his non-meal. His front end lowered slightly, pulling his head below the shadow as his tail lashed angrily. He struck out fiercely as the ball dropped to follow him, fighting to free himself from the damnable thing. The last doppelganger received the brunt of his anger; it wasn't real, it lacked heat, but it served the same purpose. It was in his training to destroy this
thing.

In Shawn's hand, the metal case flicked open with a quick snap of wrist, fingers moving to catch the razor-edged card that slid from it, the rest held in place by the design of the case. It was too bad that John was dead; he would've been able to thank him for that. Fingers toyed with the card as he walked closer-though he wasn't planning on getting within twenty feet of the panther as the last of the doppelgangers dissolved into the ground.

She took this time to lurch further away, clumsily orchestrating pain-wracked limbs in an attempt to make good on that internal cry for survival. Pale skin flashed in what moonlight there was, slicked red in places with slowly seeping blood, crusted brown in others with blood already dried. She left a trail as she moved to the furthest corner of the porch. Where? What? Why? Alien memories and thoughts pressed themselves to the forefront
of a mind that had gone bestial: the dim memory of floating without sensation, blurred images of a laboratory and the more immediate and intense memories of burning, burning, burning.





[taken from live play with AlItheDiamonds, Jinn Kiko and Baghiira; all permissions granted.]

[DoF Archive]

Date: 7/11/2001 9:31 PM Central Daylight Time
From: Baghiira


Shawn walked around the corner of the cabin, circling a bit further out to avoid the cat, following the newly-born creature as it moved across the porch. "What … is that?" He was practically panting himself, now, as the last doppelganger was destroyed. Sweat soaked his clothing, but all of his attention was focused on the thing he had seen the panther
drag to the cabin.

"What. Do. I. Look. Like?" Cornered, each word was forced out, slurred as if she'd never quite properly learned to speak, grating across vocal cords raw and only partially healed. The woman/child dragged her own panther-like gaze from the cat, settling it heavily upon the man. Golden-green eyes swam with every shade of nausea and poison, belying the toll taken upon her body by simple consciousness.

"I don't know," Shawn answered openly, shrugging. He'd never seen anything quite like it before—human-like, yet obviously not. "You look strange … extremely strange."

Maybe it was that comment that did it; she stared at him with the first openly human expression so far: disbelief. She was tired, she was hurting, she was growing lightheaded from blood loss, and he thinks she looks … strange. She reached up, a hand clasping to the porch railing to hold her half-way upright in her crouched position. The other hand reached to spread flat below her shoulder, pressing against the puncture wounds left by the cat's
teeth. The movement pressed her back against the wood and it dug into her skin, torn from being dragged through the woods to the cabin. She grit her teeth against the pain, against the faintness, glancing to the cat again and not trusting its silence.

The cat was silent because it had laid itself down, panting and watching with growing curiosity. When he'd gone through his 'drive-through' servicing of the dumpsters, he hadn't been looking for a human at all. It was just a bunch of fire-blackened flesh and the smell of blood, more than enough for an evening's scavenge. He knew and understood that that was his friend, Shawn, standing there … but only the fact that he was trained to hunt
animals, never humans, kept him at bay as the bent creature straightened, naked and unmistakably human.





[taken from live play with AlItheDiamonds, Jinn Kiko and Baghiira; all permissions granted.]

[DoF Archive]

Date: 8/31/2001 3:07 AM Central Daylight Time
From: Baghiira


It had been a few weeks—or five or perhaps ten; time tended to swing its way wildly by, or not at all—since she had been dragged from the alleyway refuse to this cabin. The encounter on the porch with the panther and the man was a watercolor memory, bleeding through the paper to become a meaningless blot of color. Every now and then, the man's voice would rise up in her head: What ... is that? Often, in the midst of fitful
sleep, the panther's mismatched eyes would blink open in the darkness of her dreams. They beckoned her, those eyes; called to her in a way both familiar and completely alien. It was that call that woke her up, most times; that or the low purr that rumbled painfully in her own chest.

Her lungs seemed to be taking the longest to heal. Her breathing still rasped audibly; a small cough would turn into a spasm of hacking that sent her into a pained fetal position, fingers digging into the cabin's floor until the fit passed. Sometimes, it took her several minutes just to pluck each extended claw from the floorboards. That hurt, too; retracting those sharp claws. The pain of her burning seemed to linger in the sheathes, and many
were the times she could not retract them at all.

Her skin healed more quickly. True, there were still thick scabs on her back from being dragged, along with the deep punctures on her shoulder. But the remainder of her body, where burnt skin had flaked away like charred paper, had healed smoothly. She still peeled—particularly from her face, where whisper-thin layers of skin would split and peel away, dangling until they tangled in her eyelashes or caught in her lips. She picked them away
carelessly.

The cabin had been neatly stocked when she was deserted on the porch—there had been stores of food available when she broke in. Now, however many weeks later, the food was gone; the cabin was a mess of discarded containers, torn upholstery and, every here and there, small piles of ash and peeled skin.





[to continue]





Drink to the dead, all you still alive-

we shall join them in good time.

Should you go crossin' that silvery brook,

it's best to leap before you look.

[Clutch]