#arustysnake

It was just a little break. That would be fine. Absolutely fine. And Silver Lake would have seemed the obvious place for Ollie to take himself… if it weren’t for what Willa whispered, only days ago. Way to ruin a nostalgic summer stop, nana. By sinking his mother’s apparently monstrous, murdered and mutilated body in the middle of it. 

Obviously, that was just another story. Another strange, ridiculous story. Whatever she had to tell herself to manage. Some bizarre sort of coping. Which would be the only kind of coping Willa O’Rourke ever did, and it didn’t run in the family, like certain other things she’d mentioned. So, no, Ollie wasn’t afraid to go to the damn lake. He’d prove that much. Right now. 

Right right now. The walk had always been a quick one - he should mention that to the real estate guy, for the listing - but the lake, he’d swear, hadn’t always been this cold. Ollie just about hissed, legs recoiling with a shocked scatter of bright water. Perched tightly on the edge of that old(er) dock, he scowled into the green-blueness below. In August? Really? Well. There looked to be a bit of sun left, around the far end of the shore; he’d try there. Not that there’d be any sun, for long. Nightfall Grove was just - like that. The way Wicked’s Rest was. 

Retreating to the damp sand, Ollie tugged his shirt back on and started off for the sunshine. With a stubborn shiver. Definitely just because of the cold. Nothing morose or menacing or whatever else about that lazily rippling lake, glimmering in the glow of late afternoon. Not at all. It was nice, out here. Quiet. In a way that damn house never was, with all its creaks and clangs…

Quiet and not that cool, actually, which - Ollie paused, stepped back. Stepped forward, again. He glanced over, way over, to where that sunlight was waiting - still across some lake, and fading fast. But… adjusting the bag and tied-together running shoes slung over his shoulder, Ollie leaned down and laid a hand on the stonier ground he’d come to, trying to make more sense of what his bare feet seemed to be feeling. Maybe he’d just missed the sun, on this side. Must be. It was nice, anyway, that warmth simmering up through the rock of this craggy little cove. That he half-recognized, maybe? His head tilted, wondering, as he headed further up the bank. Wasn’t there a cave around here, someplace? And a dusty memory of a dare he’d actually won, slipping easily through some crevice while the rest of them hung back, muttering about how close they were to the Flat. Not nearly as close as his home, with those weird, flinty walls. It was just rocks. Like the lake was just a lake. And there, there it was; looked smaller, now, the way the walk to the lake felt shorter. When had he last been down here? Years and years and years. 

Leaving his things on the just-rocks, Ollie slithered on down a worn-smooth stone slope to the shore. The water was warmer, too. Sunsoaked, obviously. Perfect. Shin-deep in the shallows, he laced his fingers, popped a couple aches out of someplace between his bones, and kicked back. Literally, wll the way, cracking his neck. Metaphorically, mostly; he measured out a sigh, counting off his to-dos. But. That old house wasn’t going to turn into more of a mess if he left it alone for an hour or two. Probably. He’d keep it quick. Just in case. 

The cave system the Magmacave was a part of, the one that Cass had claimed as her own without any volcanoes to properly satiate her, had openings all over town. She used them to get around, sometimes, traveled through them in a way that let her pretend she had her own private tunnels around Wicked’s Rest. It was nice — it made her feel as though she had something that was undeniably hers for the first time in her life.

And the caves reacted to her as much as she reacted to them, too. They shifted, adjusted. They went from being cold and damp, the way caves usually were, to being warmed by her presence. Maybe the Abnormality had something to do with it — that was one thing that every cave in this system seemed to have in common, after all. The Abnormality ran through it, growing on the walls and on the ground, familiar even in its unfamiliarity. Maybe it was that that warmed the caves, or maybe it really was just Cass’s presence. She didn’t know enough about oreads to really know for sure, hadn’t been taught the way most nymphs were taught to comprehend or understand what she was. All she knew was what she felt. 

And in these caves, in her caves, she felt safe.

She spent a lot of time exploring them. When people were busy (because her friends had jobs and school and that was okay, really, because the less time they spent with Cass the longer it would take them to grow tired of her, anyway), she was here. Wandering through the caves, leaving little pieces of herself in each opening in order to make sure everyone knew that this system was claimed. The run in with the lampade a few months back still had her on edge, territorial in a way she didn’t like but couldn’t help. So she left rock structures in cave openings, the kind that spoke of some intelligent being having a presence there. Other nymphs, she hoped, would get the message. And people who weren’t nymphs would hopefully be spooked enough to stay away. In a town like Wicked’s Rest, most people were… understandably cautious.

Most people. Not all.

She could feel him wandering around. He felt… colder than people usually did. Undead, maybe? She didn’t usually notice — she could only really feel people like this if they were very close to her or if they ventured into her domain, but right now, this man was both. She didn’t think he saw her against the wall, and she watched him for a moment. Was he freezing? It seemed odd in August, even if Maine wasn’t the warmest of the states. But… no. He was settling down in the sun, lounging on a rock like a reptile or a cat.

Curiosity got the better of her. She wandered over, watching him a moment longer before speaking. “What are you doing?”

Slouched into the stretch, Ollie let his legs sink a little further into the slow roll of the water, churning in and out of the inlet. His eyes drifted shut, softly; he left them like that, rolling his shoulders, flattening against the warmth of those rocks as much as he could. 

Until a voice sent him bolting upright, staring and startled. How hadn’t he noticed somebody coming along the beach? At all? His head cocked, and he set his elbows on his knees, slinging his fidgety hands together. With a baffled sort of smile. What did it seem like he was doing? Sitting by a lake, on a summer afternoon, that was very, very normal. Wasn’t it? (Even in Nightfall Grove. If you were a local, anyway.) Still. Really. The question was the stranger thing. 

“Nothing? Actually.” Absolutely nothing, for the first time in… months, maybe. Well, his kind of absolutely nothing, which meant thinking all over. About rebuilding the porch, and something he’d seen someone saying about a moose on the loose in the Row, and when admin would actually tell him what the hell he was teaching so he could start getting things together for the fall, and the fall, God, how close it was... Ollie’s left thumb slid over where his spinner ring should’ve been, on his right. But he’d been dismantling said porch, all rotten, stripped wood and carpenter ants, before he headed out. So. He hooked a finger through that ring, strung with the others on the chain hanging down his chest. And frowned. Curiously. “Did you…” Come out of the caves? No; no. Maybe? Where else? “Were you down there?” He pointed past her, up to where the cove rose and peeled open into that jagged little rift in the ridgeside. Talk about strange. At least, that’s what most people would say…

He looked pretty relaxed. Like he was about to melt into that rock, become a part of it the way Cass had seen oreads do in the past. But this guy wasn’t an oread — she would have known. He wasn’t fae at all, though that didn’t mean he was human, either. She could rule a few things out, she guessed. Not a vampire, since vampires weren’t big fans of sunbathing. Probably not a mare — Leila didn’t seem to like the day much, either. But… he could be just about anything else, couldn’t he?

There was some excitement in the not knowing, even if logic dictated that he was probably just human. Humans were exciting, too, after all. Cass had always longed to know more about them, to understand them. This one was no different. Did all humans like laying in the sun like this? She’d seen plenty of it from the tourists back in Hawai’i, sure, but there were definite differences there, right? This lake didn’t strike her as the kind of place where people would hang out alone. (Most places in Wicked’s Rest weren’t places where anyone should hang out alone.) 

“Hmm,” Cass responded thoughtfully. He was just doing nothing? That was strange, wasn’t it? People were usually doing something. Or they said they were doing something, even when they weren’t. She watched him play with the rings hanging around his neck, wondered about them but didn’t ask. Mostly because his curiosity was kicking in now. Cass glanced back to the cave with a shrug. Telling a direct lie would give her a stomachache, and she didn’t really want to deal with that right now. “Yeah,” she replied, opting for the truth. “I was exploring. The caves here are really cool.”

Was nothing a more suspicious answer than something? Probably. Almost definitely. Ollie spun that ring, head propped on his other hand, elbow on his knee. Just wondering right back at her. Against his better judgment, possibly. Which was how most wondering went, around here.

“Mhm? I bet.” Totally. Really cool. That’s what caves, here, would be. Fascinating! Until a gigantic centipede (or something) literally ate your face off your skull. Or, or, or. “Never went too far. Personally.” Who would? He hesitated; then, because it seemed like some sort of due diligence: “You’ve… probably heard they’re dangerous? Incredibly dangerous.” By local standards, which was saying something. Then again. “What cave isn’t! Really. People tell all these stories, around here.” He gave his head a shake, had a short, tired laugh. Then turned a little more, that wonder getting the better of him. Too long spent with just his exceptionally aloof cats, for company, maybe. “Do they, do the tunnels… I guess they’ve gotta pass through the -” Abnormality always seemed so… sensational, out loud. “Flat?” Ollie circled a finger in the general direction of that still sea of darkly rippled rock, just visible beyond the trees and a couple lanes of the Grove’s old-fashioned roofs. “Somewhere, in there? Or do you… leave that alone? When you’re exploring.” Most people would. Even winnowed down to most of the people who’d go - quite casually, it seemed - caving in Wicked’s Rest. 

For a moment, with the way he was laying on the rock, she deluded herself into believing that he might… understand her, somehow. As much as a probably-human would be capable of understanding her, at least. No one but another oread could really comprehend Cass’s fondness for caves and cliff faces, but it was nice to think that someone might. 

But he seemed so hesitant about the caves, and that hope died in her chest before it could ever really take flight at all. She shifted with a sigh, shrugging a shoulder. “They’re only dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.” To humans, maybe even to nymphs who weren’t oreads, the caves were daunting. She knew that. She’d seen plenty of bodies spread throughout, stumbled across bones picked clean and corpses still decomposing. People and animals died in the caves often, but Cass wouldn’t. The stones on the walls were a part of her. Didn’t he get that? At his question, she nodded. “It’s all around.” Crawling up the walls, suspended on the ceiling. The Flat, the Abnormality, the whatever name you wanted to call it, it was a strange comfort. It felt like ‘almost-home,’ volcanic but not volcanic. It was part of what drew Cass here, to Wicked’s Rest. “I hang out next to it sometimes, but I’ve never touched it or anything.” It didn’t want to be touched, she thought. Not everything did. Most things didn’t, actually, though most people tended to refuse objects such grace.

If you don’t know what you’re doing. What was anyone really doing, going underground in Wicked’s Rest? Avoiding Wicked’s Rest. In the warm and the quiet, with no one asking you how you were, yes, doing, these days, and no appointments to keep, no paperwork to file in perfect order…

Sounded pretty nice, actually. Subterranean horrors, alleged and otherwise, aside. 

Ollie had tipped his head in some sort of agreement, at least. He realized, a little belatedly - God, he was worn out - that his eyes had tracked to those cracked-open stones, the total blackness waiting on the other side of them. Deep, from what she was saying. Riddled with the Abnormality, all around, a dark deeper than the loss of any light, clinging and crawling along the walls… 

Blinking, Ollie looked back to this spelunking stranger. Who’d done however much wandering in those caves without ever laying a finger on the Flat. He winced. “Mm. Me either. Just seems -” What did it seem? That… his chain of rings clinked as his hands whirled, searching and failing to come up with words for it. That way he could feel the Flat on his skin from across those familiar rooms. Under his skin. Not the heat of it, exactly, but maybe? Something radiant, and… ridiculous. He gave up. “Better, not to?” That’d do. “But, ah, it’s actually, it’s inside the house I grew up in. Really. If you go out one of the top floor windows, you’re - well, you’re walking on the Flat. My mom used to have picnics there, when she was a kid. Great-granddad liked it for sunbathing.” That grimace had smoothed out; he could just about hear Willa wheezing with laughter, spinning story after story. His eyes had strayed to that not-so-distant dark sweep of whatever the Abnormality actually was. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She’d been next to it; maybe that wouldn’t be such a strange thing to say, to someone who’d seen it like that. “The sheen, all the colors? I must’ve tried to paint that about a thousand times. Just can’t get it right.” And forget photographs. They never did that iridescence, that flow of rainbow, any kind of justice. 

Maybe she’d mistaken exhaustion for relaxation before. The more she looked at him, really looked at him, the less ‘at ease’ he really looked. There was something heavy weighing on him, she thought, something that had him looking at the mouth of a cave like it might be an escape route. Cass wasn’t sure she liked that. She didn’t know him well enough to want him in her cave.

“Better not to,” she agreed. She wasn’t sure what it was about the Abnormality that threw her off, but something about it was strange. Maybe it was the feeling of almost-home that came with the sulfuric nature of the Flat, the way it was ‘almost but not quite’ something familiar. Or maybe it was the way it felt vaguely unnatural, like something that didn’t quite belong. The idea of touching it, of someone else touching it, it didn’t sit right with her. If it was natural, it deserved to be left alone. If it wasn’t, it was too dangerous to touch. Either way, wandering hands should stay far, far away.

Her interest was piqued, however, at the mention of the Abnormality inside his house. “Really?” Living in a house with a rock growing throughout probably wasn’t much different than living in a cave, was it? Maybe he wouldn’t think she was strange for her chosen living arrangements, then. “It is pretty. But… all minerals are. And stones. I don’t think anyone has ever gotten any of them right.” Paintings, sketches, photographs — all of them always seemed to be missing something. None ever compared to the real thing.

Really? Was a common enough response to the O’Rourke house. That tone, though - wondering, rather than vaguely to seriously disturbed - that wasn’t the usual. She wasn’t very usual, though. Or a local, possibly. A Rester would say it the other way. Really?

“Really. It’s just - part of the place.” By design. His family hadn’t built around the Abnormality; they’d built against it. If they’d been around town before Bleak Point was eaten by all that sort-of rock, it might’ve been defiance that put the idea in their head. As it was… well, Ollie couldn’t fathom it any more than their understandably, reasonably distant neighbors. 

(What Willa had said, that actual explanation she’d always washed over and changed around as she liked - well, it hadn’t made any real sense. Not real sense.) 

Some strong opinions about geology, and depictions thereof. Interesting. He’d had rock kids, before; she was… close, to kid-ness? He’d guess? A little older, maybe. Young. Wary. Which was a little funny, given she’d just stepped out of that pit without any special spelunking anything, no headlamp, no… nothing out of the ordinary, at all. She could’ve been taking a stroll on the boardwalk, not through one of the strangest cave complexes in the country. Or anywhere, maybe. Then again - that wariness. People were every bit as unpredictable as some crumbling, creeping-with-hermit-crabs cave. Worse, really. 

Ollie nodded, chin propped on his palm. Only briefly, before his hands got talking again. “They’re a wonderful challenge, though. Absolutely. The textures are one thing, but the - the luster, how translucent they are, the way they catch the light? Crazy-making,” he beamed. And wondered how long it had been, exactly, since he’d painted anything besides examples. No, actually; he’d wonder at her, instead. “Have you tried? I mean, loving something does a hell of a lot for any art you make of it. I’d say.” Of course, that hell could be the worse kind, too. But. How loaded could a few geological studies be?

(As if he hadn’t avoided the corner of the attic where all his might be stored. If Willa hadn’t actually put them and every other canvas he’d left stacked up there in the woodstove, like she’d told him, years ago. Seeing as he was moving on.)

There was some respect building up in her chest for this strange man, some odd sense of unity. She didn’t know what to think of the Abnormality, but she liked that this man didn’t seem to be afraid of it. She liked that he wasn’t running away from it or avoiding it, that he seemed to respect what it was and what it stood for and its place in the world. 

He seemed to understand a lot, really, which was rare for someone who wasn’t an oread. The way he spoke about other rocks was similar to how he spoke about the Abnormality — with appreciation and a quiet respect. She liked that about him. She thought she might like to see some of his paintings, too, even if they didn’t quite capture the true visage of the stones he was trying to paint.

“I’m not much of an artist,” she replied with a shrug. “I have friends who are, though.” She thought of Metzli, Nora, and Ren, of how they could all create beautiful works of art seemingly without even thinking. Cass had always been jealous of that. Her fingers were clumsy and uncertain, stones not built for works of art. “I’d like to see some of yours, though, if you ever wanted to show me.”

Not much? He’d heard that, before. So often. Not much of a painter, a sculptor, a musician, an actor. And so on. As if those artist friends - it was, so often, the ones with artist friends - had somehow set the bar to entry just too high to scramble over. Must be this artistic to make anything worth existing. Worth the cost of making it at all. Worth the time. Worth taking any joy and pride and wonder in. 

“I don’t know that anyone has to be ‘much’ of an artist to enjoy it,” Ollie considered, lightly. “So if you do - well. That’s the important thing.” A beat, then, because he wasn’t in the classroom yet: “Fuck the rest, you know?” As for his, all that, a shrug snaked across his shoulders. “Oh, there’s… not much of that left, anywhere. I think. It’s been a while.” So long. Since anything old he’d done here, and anything new he’d done anywhere. In the fall, though? Maybe? There’d be samples to do up, of this assignment and that. They’d be… something. “But - I’m sorry, we never really did names, did we? Oliver. Hi, hello. Nice to meet you!” He waved, brightly, from his spot. It was a good spot. And that wariness she had about her - seemed better not to close that distance, either. If she figured rocks out to be left a little room, seemed some sort of sensible to presume she liked the same. No problem. On the off chance that she was a cave-dwelling terror. Clearly a possibility he’d do well to keep in mind. With all the other bullshit he’d heard, growing up here and nearly, not-quite managing to actually leave. Ever…  

It was a nice thought, wasn’t it? That something only had to exist in order to have value, that it didn’t have to be good, it only needed to be. For someone like Cass, who’d spent all her life existing and existing and existing and still not being enough, it felt a laughable thought to believe in. But this man said it with such certainty, like he really believed it. And he liked to lay out on rocks, and he wasn’t afraid of the Abnormality, and he looked kind of cool, so maybe it was enough if he believed it was enough. Maybe she could get behind that.

She smiled, shrugging a shoulder. “Sure,” she agreed, the word flowing off her tongue with ease, “fuck them.” But she shifted a little as he admitted that he didn’t have any of his own work to show off, wondered how he could encourage her to make something when he’d evidently gotten rid of his own creations. “Maybe you should start making more, then,” she suggested, a little hesitant. She didn’t want to seem pushy, didn’t want to be too much. “Oh, sorry. I guess that’s kind of rude of me, huh? I’m Cass. It’s nice to meet you, Oliver.” She punctuated the introduction with a small grin. 

Well, that was - a point. Ollie tapped a finger in the summer-evening air as if he were nailing the idea down. Bit hypocritical, wasn’t it? (Students always caught that kind of thing. God. School was so close, somehow.) He brushed her apology away, anyhow. “We got there. Eventually. Better late than never, right?” Cass. Cass the caver. The rock kid. The not much of an artist, allegedly. 

Knuckles bridged, Ollie gave those a crack. Just… coming up with something. Something small. Because why not? Really. (He could have started listing reasons, if he kept thinking. Overthinking.) “You ever done an art trade, Cass?” Probably not, if she thought so seemingly little of her work. But… “That way, we’re both giving the whole thing another go. And we have to actually stick with it. Which is the hardest part, sometimes?” For him, anyway. There was always that moment when a thing stopped turning out. Where whatever he did to fix the problem just made everything worse. Somehow. Better to start over. (Or not.) He’d thrown it out there, anyway. Gently. “Just an idea! If you’d like.”  

“Sure. Manners are totally overrated, anyway.” In a town like this one, it would be better if he did believe that, probably. Cass wouldn’t leave him unbound if he thanked her, regardless of how much she might like to pretend she would; she was still a little selfish, when it came to things like that. But most other people in this town wouldn’t, either. And if he ran into that guy from the BMV? He’d be better off not introducing himself.

He seemed to be thinking about something, and Cass leaned forward in careful anticipation. “An art trade?” It seemed like a simple enough concept — give something, get something. As a fae, Cass was plenty familiar with trades in general. They were typically one-sided… and this one would be no different. She wasn’t an artist, and he was. Obviously, whatever she offered him wouldn’t be up to par with what she got in return. But… That made it even harder to say no. “That sounds fun,” she allowed, grinning a little. “I bet we could both stick it out if we knew we were doing it for someone else.”

Totally? Ollie waffled a hand at that, now. Kids today, and so on. Then again, it was his grandmother who’d always warned him about being too thankful, or giving his name away, or inviting the wrong people in…

(Naturally, Willa had somehow managed to make the third and most normal of those childhood lessons especially unfathomable. Have you met them by daylight? Have you seen them eat? Have you checked their feet, are they right? You’ll know. But he hadn’t known, and like so many other O’Rourke oddities, his grandmother’s sense of etiquette had fared poorly when he’d finally got to leave homeschooling behind.)

But. “That’s the idea! And the spirit of the thing.” With a solid nod, Ollie threw a double thumbs up - then circled his fingers to take in that cave’s little corner of Silver Lake. “Why don’t we meet back here, when we’re set? At the… end of September?” He threw out, loosely. Should be settled into that new courseload by then. That new courseload, which was his only real concern, at the moment, future-plans-wise. Definitely. “The wonderful fall weather of Maine permitting, of course,” he tacked on.

She wondered how much Ollie knew about this town. It wasn’t a rare thing to wonder, when meeting new people. Wicked’s Rest was chalk full of oddities, but a lot of people seemed capable of writing them off as if they were nothing to be concerned about at all. As if it was normal, as if it was to be expected. People said ignorance was bliss but, in this town? Ignorance was a lot more likely to be death.

But not right now. Not for Ollie. Cass made a mental note to keep an eye out for him, to make sure he was okay. He was kind and nice and that was rare not just in Wicked’s Rest, but in the world at large. Cass had seen far more cruelty than she had kindness, and she firmly believed that the latter should be rewarded whenever it was present. Ollie was kind. He shouldn’t suffer for that.

“End of September,” she echoed, nodding her head with determination. “Okay. I can do that.” She’d enlist Metzli or Nora to help her. Both were good artists, and surely one of them would be capable of helping her construct some art worth trading. “I’ll meet you here at the end of September, and we’ll do a trade. Okay? But… you should probably stay out of the water around then. It’ll be a lot colder.” She flashed him a grin.

“Deal. Here, the thirtieth, noon? So we’ve got the natural light, if we’re lucky. Perfect for a gallery showing.” All set. Well - no, any actual supplies around the house would’ve been tossed with his work, wouldn’t they? He’d just stay late in the art room. As if he wouldn’t be staying late already. It’d be fine. What time was it? Not as late as it seemed, ever, not in the Grove. Should get going, all the same. The house, for all it was supposedly capable of, wouldn’t fix itself. 

Soft jazz rang out over the speakers as the doors slid open to an empty grocery store aside from a stoner kid who definitely didn’t want to be working. The fluorescent lights made everything brighter than it needed to be and almost hurt the shambling zombie's eyes as she entered the building with little effort. There had been no set goal on Mackenzie’s journey of wreaking havoc and consuming whatever was in her path. She just needed to feed and that was it.

Making her way down the aisles aimlessly bumping into things and knocking them off the shelves had caused a mess, but the kid up front had been lost in his own world listening to heavy metal not paying a bit of attention. The one thing that seemed to piss Mackenize off though was a cardboard cutout of Kim Kardashian that seemed to have gotten in her way. Growling with frustration, the zombie leaned forward and bit into the face of the smiling figure only to spit out the paper person in disgust with no sustenance to be found. And instead of waiting for Kim to fight back, she pushed the cutout down and walked over her, resuming her journey through the store.

—

How. How. Had he run out of… so much. Ollie had tried to write an actual list - his phone hadn’t charged, of course; the outlets were just that unpredictable, such a fun guessing game - before heading out, bleary-eyed. It was way too late for anyone to be walking around, nevermind along Worm Row. Even the locals didn’t wander at this hour. But he was, for some reason, too hungry to care. That’s what he’d been, the last few days. Hungry. He hadn’t quite placed it, at first, somehow; hard to, maybe, among all the other pinches and pangs he’d caught sleeping on a beat up mattress, on the floor, when he wasn’t tearing apart that old house from timbers to tiles. But tonight, sleepless and losing the argument with himself as to how tired he was, how he really ought to just be able to pass out and rest, please, he’d attempted to midnight snack himself to sleep. And found the fridge… weirdly bare. 

So. Fine. Problem-solving. That’s what he was doing, standing, in an absolute daze, in the tiny dairy etc. aisle, wondering why there were no more eggs. Scuffing a hand over his 2AM shadow, Ollie - found the eggs. In his basket. The last three dozen in the store. Apparently. God. Shambling on to… whatever was next, he rocked to a stop. There was a, some sort of - noise? Not the elevator-grade ambience fizzing on the speakers. Like… 

Cardboard, tearing? An art room noise. And growling? Not, typically, an art room noise. The cardboard that slapped to the floor several aisle-ends ahead. The growling - followed. Dredging up, it seemed, out of the chest of a woman who could, genuinely, horribly, be called cadaverous. White-knuckled, staring, Ollie froze. In the freezer section. He just - he couldn’t move. Something, low down in the back of his ringing skull, seemed very, very sure that was the best thing to do; Ollie couldn’t have explained the case it made, exactly, but. It was compelling, all the same.

—

The smell of fresh meat had caught Mackenzie’s dull senses and made her mouth water. Stumbling around aisle after aisle, inching closer and closer to what was going to be a tasty snack, she had her sights set on one thing. The meat department. The open cooler full of freshly cut steaks, chicken, and pork looked like a dream come true to an endlessly hungry zombie, and it was easy prey. The hardest part would be getting the tender morsels out of the plastic wrap, which she quickly found to be a challenge.

One by one, she picked up the containers of meat and bit into them, only to be stopped by endless after endless plastic wrap. With each package of meat she couldn’t open up, Mack’s frustration grew, and the harder she threw down the steaks, chicken, and pork onto the floor. The meat was piling up, but finally with enough anger and the one cell that seemed to be functioning in her brain, she managed to open up a package.

Pulling the large roast out of the plastic wrap and off the foam tray, Mackenzie bit into the meat and started gnawing on it. It was juicy, but not as tender as she had anticipated. Still it tasted like satisfaction, and she longed for more. With one successful snack obtained, she managed to pull off the next piece of plastic shrink-wrapped around a $22 t-bone steak. Her absolute favorite. And without any hesitation, began chewing on the red meat until she was cleaning the bone. 

—

The, well, meaty smack of tray after slightly gnawed tray hitting the tiles was only getting louder. And with it, some of the downright animal terror that’d wired Ollie in place started to snap, a strand at a time. His hand flickered to his back pocket, which was - empty. Shit. Because, right, his phone might be charging, blocks away. Couldn’t get an ambulance. Which… that’s what he should do, right? There had to be something wrong. 

So wrong. The plasticky squeak-rip of the wrapper peeling off a blood-swollen hunk of beef ran down his spine. Not like nails on a chalkboard; like nails, on skin. Those nails Willa had left thrown around in the cellar, rust-crusted, scraping before they gashed. He’d managed to slither a half-step back, soundlessly. Still staring, wide-eyed. Now, now she was just - eating it. Obviously. What else would she have been trying to do, besides tear into a raw, seeping, cooler-cold roast? Just. With her teeth. Obviously.

(He should move. Quick as that petrified, sensible skitter crawling up and down his spine. But she was just - she wasn’t well, to say the fucking least. And besides that checked-out clerk, there was nobody else around to do anything. And, and if everything Willa’d told him was true, which it wasn’t, and being something wrong got his mom murdered, which it hadn’t, then…)

“Can I help you?” He rasped, words forming faster, at this god awful hour, than the better judgment that would’ve definitely stopped them cold. “Is there anything you could… use a hand with?” Ollie tried again, wincing as those teeth tore at a waxy clump of gristle and crunched it down. “Anybody we could call?” At the desk. Which seemed so, so far away; he craned his neck a little, risking a quick glance towards the till, way down the aisles. 

—

Mackenzie continued to rip and gnaw. Chew and snack. Blood ran down her chin from the deep bites she was consistently taking from package after package of meat, now that she was able to actually open them up. That also meant that the meat on the floor would be next. It was a smorgasbord of delicious cuts. Organic meat. Cheap meat. Even vegan meat - that she didn’t like too well, and upon first bite, flung it halfway across the store. She had sausages, roasts, and steaks. Pigs feet, tripe, liver. You named it, and she ate it as quickly as she could get her hands on it. Yes, Mackenzie was in pure meaty bliss, until…

The quivering voice drew her attention away from her feast. And looking up at him slowly, mid-bite and still chewing, her glazed eyes grew wide and a breathy, demented gasping noise left her mouth; a current bite of meat dropping to the floor with a string of drool to follow. The already cut and prepackaged meal was tasty, but there was nothing like a fresh and very alive human.

Dropping what was currently in her grimey little hands, Mack slowly started moving forward with arms outstretched - cute dead grabby hands coming his way. Her eyes, though hollow and a milky white color, looked like an adorable and curious baby animal longing to explore what was right in front of it. But the bared teeth and growling said otherwise.

—

He absolutely could not help them at all. 

Ollie knew that, now, should’ve known, but. If he was lucky, he’d be out of here and behind every deadbolt on the O’Rourke door very, very soon, and then, only then, he could tear himself all the new ones his currently jackhammering heart desired. So long as whatever the hell all this was didn’t tear him a few first. 

Those eyes. He’d seen eyes like those before - on the rotting corpse of a deer he’d slipped and stumbled through on Lyssa’s Peak, years and years ago. Gauzy, bleak marble-eyes, staring out of a withering head, over black lips curled to bare baby-white teeth. It was hardly more than a fawn, its moldering fur still spotted under squirming clusters of hungry worms; he’d been hardly more than ten, skinned from the wild, gravelly fall. And heaving, nearly elbow-deep in its stinking, empty-sackish gut, where his hand had burst through as he finally skidded to a stop at the bottom of the hill. His fingers had torn away slimy, the juices of the thing gone thick and dark. Ollie hadn’t made a sound, then. Not until he scrambled back to the top of the fucking hill, and threw up - again, somehow - so hard he couldn’t help crying. And crying, God, red-hot with the mortification of it all. He didn’t say a word when he got home. Couldn’t. Never have been allowed outside again, probably ever. 

None of that was the fawn’s fault. Obviously. Maybe it wasn’t hers, either. But Ollie was dead-silent, again,  - dead, she looked fucking dead - besides the smash of those cartons of eggs and everything else he had in his basket shattering across the floor as he dropped it all, lurched backwards, and ran.

—

Mackenzie had her sights now set on one thing and that was the man that had currently turned and ran from her. What was it with people and running from her? If she could express herself in any way, she’d probably have let out a heavy sigh of frustration - comical at best, as if to say, here we go again. Why did she always have to work for her meals? The best thing she had come across had been the deer carcass on the road, before she had faced a man who was determined to saw her head off with a dull blade. It was just getting ridiculous at this point, but nevertheless, the power of the Flats drove her forward with a determination like no other. She just lacked the speed and coordination sometimes.

Much like an episode of Scooby Doo, Mackenzie made it a point to weave in and out of every aisle with her dirty, blood and glitter covered hands trying to grab anything that she could eat, mostly the only man in the store running from her; all while the kid at the front still had no clue that his store was being trashed to a heavy metal soundtrack that only played through his earbuds. Instead, they got the soft, but inspired jazz solo that rang out through the entirety of the store while boxes and jars crashed and broke with each wobbly bump into the shelves that the hungry zombie had made.

Finally, as if Lady Luck was on her cold, dead side, Mackenzie caught up to her prey and with a tight forceful grip, yanked him back and laid her blood stained veneers into his shoulder as hard as she could. Growling and yanking back, she tugged until his shirt ripped and she had managed to pull out a chunk of fresh flesh from his body. The warm and tender meat had tasted so much better than the store bought cuts laying in a messy, bloody pile on the floor in the back of the store, and she knew she had to have more. She wasn’t going to let him get away this time!

—

How loud was whatever the hell that kid at the front was listening to? He’d yelled, hadn’t he? Shouted - something? Couldn’t say. Ollie’s world had closed into the glare of the fluorescents, the scatter of swept shelves, his own bolting sprint, and the wet-mouthed snarl rattling down the nape of his neck, it seemed. It was. A freakishly strong hand smashed the air out of his lungs, slamming against the back of his ribs and tearing at a fistful of his flannel. His sneakers skidded, his arms flailed, he caught hold of a shelf. A hold he lost to the hard, hungry grip of whatever that lady was. 

(Sick. Strung out. Something.) 

And then - then he was in those teeth, shearing at wiry muscle and grating along bone and he was silent, still, fighting to get that lost breath back. Fighting with a rip and roll that left her with a mouthful, a mouth, full, of his shoulder, and a bundle of camping aisle firewood in his clenched-tight fingers, the zap strap digging in deep. Until it snapped. Because he’d hit her with it, blindly, wildly. Just slung the stack back and around as hard as he could, stomach churning, the smell of his own blood and the whole goddamn meat department and who knew what else she’d been eating roiling down the back of his throat. Fingers sticky - bloody? Bloody - on that barely-held-together firewood, Ollie staggered down the aisle, panting, staring. He’d hit her.

Hard enough? 

She’d been eating him.

—

Mackenzie wanted more. She needed more. Oh how she needed more of his sweet, sweet flesh. But when she went in for a second nibble she felt something hard smack her upside the head. Hard enough that she’d faltered. Hard enough to send her backwards and to the ground as splintered wood stuck out of her face leaving her wounded and panting loudly. But just like before, when the man with the knife had knocked her to the ground, she rolled around clumsily trying to find her footing. This time slipping on the blood that had dripped to the floor from her meal that was now fleeing away from her yet again. But she couldn’t find a way up, and instead, her one brain cell told her to crawl.

Pulling forward through the muck on the floor; scattered firewood, glass, and random bits of flesh and other bits and bobbles, Mackenzie used her arms to guide her towards the front. She hadn’t seen where her wounded walking nuggie had gone, but it didn’t matter. The moment was ruined. The meat in the back hadn’t even satisfied her craving anymore. No, she wanted fresh meat. And not some scrawny kid that looked like a twig with arms and a head.

—

She was still going. Even with a face full of splinters and bones that weren’t put together quite so neatly as they used to be. The tattered plastic just-holding that firewood together tore completely apart as Ollie turned away from the horrible sight of her, reaching, dragging. He stumbled around the scattered pine, but didn’t stop. Not for anything, Jesus. Until he was passing the cash register, swerving across the counter to sweep a bloody, shuddering hand right in the way of that neckbearded clerk. 

Who didn’t so much as take his goddamn airpods out as he blinked, slowly. And stepped back, holding the broom he’d been air-guitaring across. Hadn’t noticed a thing. Couldn’t. At this hour. In Worm Row. In Wicked’s Rest. Like there was nothing, at all, to be scared of. 

Ollie, wide-eyed, head light and hollow besides the roiling, animal panic bursting away like a crate of Roman candles, simply stared back for a moment. And shook, and dripped blood on the countertop ,and the floor, his shirt reefed apart, his shoulder gnawed open. “Dude,” the twentysomething scowled. At the mess, spattered all over the candy bars and gum, the fliers. Ollie might’ve had something - a lot of something, a hell of a lot - to say, like sorry, or run, or what the fuck!, or help, if he weren’t desperately trying not to puke, grey-faced. And if he hadn’t heard another of those growls. The clerk’s head had swiveled with his, at least; Ollie didn’t stick around to see what the guy made of whatever the hell he’d been missing. The door, streaked with red, screeched open as he tore through, and slammed shut, far behind him. Not far enough, though. Not yet. 

—

Mackenzie slowly pulled herself towards the front, but it was a much longer trek than just shambling along. The blood trail had led her back to the entrance of the store where the confused and wide-eyed kid stood dumbfounded; his eyes shifting to her as she made her way along. Not paying any attention to him, she finally found her footing again and shambled out into the cool night air. Eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness after the bright fluorescents had taken over her hazy view, the zombie felt her stomach rumble at the longing for another hardy meal.