#leopold

Drew this for my one of my projects in a wildlife management course this past semester, but I was too distraught at the time to post it lmao, so here it is now!

Close-ups, line, and shitty sketch below:

Both of these cars were specifically picked because they would've likely been present in the 1940's in Wisconsin where Leopold was writing this book! The one above is a 1941 Pontiac Custom Torpedo. (I made sure even the mower behind fit the time period, but as I am not a mower person, I can't give any more info lol)

This gorgeous black car is a 1937 Chrysler Imperial. Both of these cars were picked because they would've likely been somewhat affordable at the time, and were not farm vehicles so they would've been more likely to not notice the Silphium, as the text says.

Bison bison my beloved.

The door’s slam echoed in the warehouse, echoes eaten into the scuttling of beetle feet over the walls, floor, and shelves. It seemed to Isabel that insects didn’t normally sound that loud. She put a hand to her mouth and coughed, and a moth flew out from her lips. Sir recoiled in horror and hurried through the door to get out of the surreal infestation.

Alarms immediately went off in her mind when instead of a dark night with the open air smelling of river water and factory pollution, she stepped into a bright hallway. It looked like a hospital, except that hospitals these days painted their walls earth tones and pastels with art on the walls. The stark white walls and tiled floor unnerved her enough on their own, but when she followed Scott’s sandy shoe prints on the tile with her eyes they led to a splash of blood across the floor with more pooled in the middle of the hallway. Shoe prints and tracks like large raccoon hands smeared through the blood and, stepping cautiously closer, Isabel saw marks like a fallen body, dog paw prints mixed in with the raccoon prints, and drag marks leading farther down the hall.

Since the only other option here was the door behind her, Sir followed the drag marks until she arrived at an intersection with black checkered tile and a curved mirror. Given options, Sir headed in the opposite direction from the blood. Keeping one hand on the right wall, Isabel wandered the corridors for awhile. Her throat felt parched and burnt, so she was grateful to find a water fountain in an alcove. Icy cold, clear water sprang forth when she turned a knob with four spokes on the side, and a small sip tasted fine. She drank deeply until quenched, then stood back up. These hallways didn’t seem to lead anywhere.

---

In the warehouse, Leopold held back from the door. He’d seen the bright hallway on the other side of it, and though he’d put his trust in the cardboard tunnel in his refrigerator, he felt wary of this passage. Sitting on the stairs, however, he began to feel the biting of ants crawling up his legs and clothes. Acid sting smarted his skin and he sprang up from the step, shaking his limbs out and brushing ants off. Looking around the hot, crawling shelves, Leo decided it was time to leave, misbehaving doors or not. Still brushing ants off and flicking them from his fingers, he hurried to the door, slipped through, and shut it behind him. The bright lights made him flinch so he worked a pair of cheap sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. Better.

Fortified against the light, Leo started when he saw the blood puddle with its smears and splatters a short ways down the hall. “Fuck.” He walked forward and could see that the shallower areas had dried to the tile and only the middle puddle remained sticky and wet. A scrap of denim about the length of Leo’s hand lay in the splatter, itself soaked and crusty.

“Well fuck,” Leo said, and began to follow the trail. At the four way intersection the trail curved around to the left. The bloody path continued around yet another corner and then in through a doorway.

Leopold walked softly and peeked through the doorway. Static buzzed across a tape showing engaged bodies in some amateur production, giving a flickering cold light to an otherwise warmly lit room furnished in red and orange. Tapes, formerly stacked, had fallen over and strewn across the carpet. Scott’s body had become unrecognizable, until Leo found the upper half of the man’s face at one end of the carnage. The thick, heavy smell of blood hung in the air mixed with the stench of shit from spilled intestines.

As the disemboweled and ravaged spread began to turn Leo’s stomach, he thought he saw Scott blink and heard a wet gurgle from his torn throat. Leopold shook his head and retreated back out of the room to stand with his back to the wall beside the door frame. As he stood there he could hear a repeating wet scraping noise and breathing. Morbid curiosity drew Leo’s attention back to the room and he reminded himself silently that nobody could live through this kind of evisceration and blood loss. The blink had to be a trick of his imagination. He saw an arm twitch and the fingers seem to flex, but the limb in question had been torn almost completely off.

As for the wet scraping, Leo turned his attention to a creature licking between its legs behind the television. Viscera clotted its fur and, rising from its back, fat shiny larvae swayed and pulsed, each one decked with blunt spines poking from its gorged body. Sid looked up from cleaning his dick and licked his nose as he turned to face Leopold. Leo hesitated, but his doubts about the blink and the twitching drove him forward. He skirted around Scott’s body spread out over the carpet, hauled the heavy CRT off the glass table, and smashed it down on Scott’s head.

“Dead. For sure now. Dead,” whispered Leopold. He turned around to face Sid, feeling some of Scott squish under his shoes as he did.

Sid grinned and raised a monkey-like paw to wave at Leo. “Hey!”

Leo waved back. “H-hey. Hi. Uh.” He took another step back toward the door, this time crunching the bones of Scott’s forearm under his heel. “Sorry. Shit.”

“Urreyohh! Yuu ghaught mee ahht a ghadt tayymm. Eyyumm,” Sid smiled apologetically and looked down at the remains of his meal on the floor. “Ehtull taayg me a yithuu geht gyeendup.” Leo! You caught me at a bad time. Umm, it’ll take me a bit to get cleaned up.

“It talks. You talk. Hi. Um.” Leo looked behind him as he continued to walk backwards and found the doorframe with his hand.

“Eyrunnahhs hasstas ah ghar so dohnnut erruuhn,” warned Sidney. I run as fast as a car, so don’t run.

Leo laughed nervously then began to run. A fragment of meat stuck to the bottom of his shoe slipped on the smooth floor and he staggered, caught himself before he fell, and took off down the hall leaving bloody shoe prints. Just around the corner he ran full on into Isabel with a shout. They tangled for a second before Leo gave her an urgent look and continued sprinting down the hall. Sid wasn’t even hungry, but the temptation to chase prey took hold and he bounded into the hall. Even if he couldn’t hear Leo running, and he could, the tracks were blindingly obvious. The long-legged creature ran right past Isabel. Leo had just gotten to another bend in the hall when the maned wolf mowed him down from behind, grasped his neck, and shook him until the vertebrae snapped.

Isabel covered her mouth and sneaked as quietly as she could around the corner where she found the blood trail leading into the room with the red carpet. Static buzzed and sparks flashed from a broken television on the head of a body she only recognized from the clothes. As far as she could tell, this was the only room in the labyrinth she’d found herself in. None of the other hallways lead anywhere. A sinking feeling of despair washed coldly down over her and she cursed.