#arightscrap

ꫂ ၴႅၴ ˎˊ˗

David swings a key around his finger with intense focus. He flicks his wrist, launching the key into the air before trying to catch it on his index finger. Instead, it lands on his knuckle and tumbles back into the grass.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, sifting it from the ground before attempting the trick again.

The key sparkled with a brilliant, almost crystalline finish in the moonlight. Initials had been carved into the shaft, and a lot of craftsmanship had gone into swirly design of the key-head.

While it had initially caught King’s eye as something valuable, right now his boredom had tainted his perception of it into little more than a fidget. He tosses it off of his finger again.

This time though, it flings itself forward and smashes into the heavily bandaged thigh he’d been attempting to nurse.

"I must admit I'm still curious, so if it's ok with you, I would like to ask another question. What is your favourite time of day and why?"

David’s eyes follow the sparks upwards as a flake of ash dances past his face.

“Mmmm… late night. Ten o’clock or so. The good fights start around that time, if you find the right places. Used to be fun to just walk into pubs and wait for someone to throw a fist at somethin’ stupid. Sometimes it’d be me.”

David smirks a bit, rubbing a deep scar on his knuckle.

ꫂ ၴႅၴ ˎˊ˗

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David walks into the camp looking defeated, cradling a big lump of something his jacket. A tiny outline wriggles inside of the fabric, pushing its way to the top before fumbling back down towards his elbow. He repositioned his grip a little bit to keep them from falling, and for a split second you could see a small kitten mewing at him.

Tiny claws on tinier paws poked their way out of the top near his fingers, trying to pull him towards their mouths. His eyes are tinted slightly red like he was ill, and he’s blinking back tears his body was trying to force from him. He appears to be agitated.

— Closed continuation of this thread for @goldenvisions AND @paintxd-notxs —

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[ THE NEXT DAY ]

< A fishing boat, somewhere off the coast of England, thirty-minutes before sunrise. >

A man reaches for a bottle opener. His friend slaps him on the back.

“Y’know you can just open that on the boat, right?”

“Are you scratching my fuckin’ boat?”

The friend rolls his eyes.

“You say that as if the ocean ain’t doing that already,” he retorts, demonstrating his carelessness by popping open a second beer on the side of the ship.

“A boat isn’t meant for opening your shitty drink,” the man scowls, refusing the bottle he was being offered.

“You’re the one drinking it,” the friend points out. “C’mon, just take this one.”

The man opens his original bottle and starts pouring it into the ocean.

“Hey!” The friend yells, rushing over to grab the bottle he’d wasted his wallet on.

“Ay! You’re gonna push me over!” The man screams back, holding the brown bottle above his head while pushing his friend back.

In the scuffle, all three bottles end up pouring their contents into the sea. As the two men continue to bicker, the liquor gets pushed by the waves, drifting towards the bountifully stuffed fishnets at the back of the vessel.

The creatures unlucky enough to have ended up inside wriggle and shimmy around their tightly packed cell. They’d swim to the front of the net, then end up cycled to the back again…

…back towards a very, very hungry beast.

His top half was man, but from the waist down all you could see was a long fish tail. It was like he had jumped out of an old sailors story.

He licks his teeth before plunging his long, scale-spotted arm through a hole in the net. It stretched around his massive body like it was about to snap, tightening a thick red mark into his forearm. His claws search the net for the largest of the catch, piercing the poor creatures straight through before bringing them out and shredding them with his teeth. Then he’d do it again. And again. And again. His appetite was insatiable, which was unsurprising given his abnormal size.

He’d leave nothing but bones, bones he’d drop into the inky blue depths for some bottom feeder to pick up later.

A wave of sound pierces the deep blue, but his mouth remains unmoving as he picks flesh from between his teeth. “Thanks for the dinner, ya bloody morons…”

He looks up to the boat, wondering if the men aboard would end up catching him before he finished his meal. It’d be fun to thrash their vessel around for a bit.

The merman smirks just thinking about it. Maybe he’d throw a guy overboard for fun. Pull him under just a bit, then throw him back onto the deck screaming of a monster. The faces his past victims had given the merman was nothing short of pure gold; eyes popped out of the skull like tennis balls, opening their mouth to gasp before choking on saltwater, then frantically scrambling as he held them by the throat. They were out of their element down here… no knives or spears to save them. He’d waste their precious time as he searched them for golden bands or fancy ear-stones, reminding him about their size by creeping closer to them whenever they tried to fight back.

He fantasized about it while reaching for another fish.

Then comes an odd, stinging feeling. It starts out as nothing more than a slight annoyance, but quickly rises into a very distinct pain that makes his face scrunch up. Liquor. The feeling rapidly spreads through his gills, making him recoil in confusion for a moment as if he could taste just how awful the beers were. His head wobbles a bit as he moves to find the source of this horrible drink.

A single push forward towards the front of the boat almost shot him off course. He’d forgotten to remove his arm from the tight net, and was now jerking the boat forward to get it free.

“Fucking hell!” David snarls. He keeps pulling, but the only thing that seemed to be ripping was his patience.

The men on board stop arguing for a second.

“What was that?”

“It’s coming from the back,” the other points out. They hurry over to the nets.

The bountiful school they’d caught had been dwindled to less than a quarter of its original size.

The man who owned the boat balls a fist, fury rising in his heart and finding its home at his knuckles. His wind-chapped face finds a way to turn even more red.

“You bloody idiot! I would’ve seen this if you hadn’t wasted our time with your stupid-“

“Mike, shut the fuck up for a second,” the friend hisses through beared teeth, urgently gesturing to a blank space in the net.

Between the intoxicated crowds of fish was the massive, scaly arm of a man decorated with razor sharp claws. The boat jostles with every impatient jolt it made trying to escape.

Mike staggers backwards. He’d heard stories of this. That’s what ate the fish, what trashed up his friend’s boat, the reason why they had to be on this stupid trip together.

That’s the monster he’d been warned about.

He runs over to the big net, the only one that hadn’t been pulled up yet. He waves for his friend to follow like their lives depended on it, and they start pulling up the final net.

David starts thrashing aimlessly against the net, now completely inebriated, snarling like a rabid dog slowly getting tranquilized. Even his thoughts were slurring.

How’d he end up in here? Who the hell did they think they were… putting him in a cage like that… like a… fffish…

One of the fisherman speeds to the wheel and kicks it into gear and the other brings the merman around to the side, away from the rudders and from any important thing he could damage. Soon, he’s upside down with his tail tied above his head. He wasn’t quite sure if the man had tied him, or if he’d tied himself, but he was way too intoxicated to really care.

He flashes his teeth to the sea below out of reflex, hurling vague insult-adjacent noises to whatever he passed.

Ugh… hhow was he swimming like ttthis…

His body couldn’t keep up with the burden of thought, and he soon fell asleep.

——————————————

is this u.

(/lh and /j of course. love u, david, i just thought this was silly!!)

David snickers at the photo before playfully punching you in the arm.

“Yeah alright, glad you’re havin’ fun with that,” he smiles through squinted eyes, dismissing the presence of the smaller flag in the image as nothing more than a lighthearted joke. A defensive maneuver sprinkled in a flimsy sense of denial.

He scoffs at “jk”, crossing his arms with a grin that barely pretended to be humble.

“You’re fuckin’ right you love me. Good someone still has sense around here,” he then boasts, chest puffed up with pride. And ego.

(🥂🐾) ꫂ ၴႅၴ ˎˊ˗

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It is a quiet, serene night in this world. Misty beings with no defined shape wander fields of endless blue colored grass, each obtaining more defined features as more begin to spring up from the ground like root vegetables that have somehow managed to harvest themselves. As they gain form, each dusty-figure starts arranging themselves in a line, waiting at a single plot of land covered in a thick black fog. It crackles with red lighting, striking all with its beauty, as it was a color that did not exist in their tiny world.

The fog is slowly clearing, and the humble outline of a restaurant is emerging. On the outside, it appeared to be nothing more than a tiny building. Family owned, perhaps. But on the inside… if you weren’t careful you could get lost in there, forever.

The doorbell rings, signaling that it’s safe to enter; and just like that, the night has started.

But there won’t be any mixing of alcohol, no tipsy-conversations, no placing bad decisions onto someone’s tab. At least, not for King. Instead of waiting behind the bar counter for customers to pour on, he’s clutching note in his pocket and walking through the vast dining area.

He could almost feel the boredom of his new “assignment” — which he was certain was actually a punishment — rubbing off the words inside of his fist. Count the idiots walking into the restaurant. That’s not what it actually said, but to him it was. It was just busywork. Like he was actually going to do that…

He presses the call button on the elevator before stopping to check his reflection in the shiny surface. His tongue grazes over his teeth to make sure none of the features brought on by shapeshifting had chosen to stick again. Some didn’t mind the feline-traits — whether it be patterns that remained on their skin, or full on tails — but King couldn’t stand them. “Anything for the customers-“ Ugh. The cat theming was so everywhere it just made him sick of the things.

Then, with a tiny ding that absolutely did not give him enough warning, the doors open and a hoard of figures spill out of the elevator.

“Ay! Get out of the fuckin’ way!” He hisses, pushing his way through them like he were wading through sand. “Bloody hell- move!”

He grumbles as the crowd disappears, slapping the badge on his lanyard over the card-scanner before pressing a button with an employee symbol over it. The chamber starts moving up.

King had no intention of actually doing what he was told. He was just gonna scribble a bunch of lines on a paper and that’d be it. He wasn’t scared of being assigned the boiler if he got caught for it either — at least that was actual work. No, right now he was going to explore.

When the doors open, he’s greeted by a largely empty space. His eyes widen a bit, surprised but not really confused. Remodeling, probably. Maybe he’d actually get to see Richter for once.

King had met him a few times, enough to know the other, but the two rarely spoke with how different their roles were here. If Richter was up right now, he’d be either really quick at getting to his position, or he’d stayed up all day working despite the nocturnal nature they’d all adapted to.