versusnurture | twenty-eight ♢ spam & video ( cw: tooth squick )

spam } infirmary

[Before the pain hits, in that brief insensible moment after waking, she feels a stab of pride. She did it. She got him. She didn't win, but she fought back against the implacable, impossible, eternal enemy. She silenced him - if only for a moment, she silenced him.]

[It's after that that the pain hits, her head aching impossibly. She wants to die, laughs silently when she recognizes the irony. It feels as though she's cracking in half from her skull down.]

[But even the pain can't distract her from panic for long. While she was dead, it must have gotten worse. It creeps back up her throat before she knows it's there to push back down, her heart beating a hard tattoo in her chest as she sees-- hears-- smells red blood on her hands and the fur of the beast.]

[There is a man in the corner of the room. He breathes in and out. She can hear him speaking, one word only: "See." She can see his chest moving. She can smell blood on his teeth like he's breathing in her face.]

[She sits on her cot, staring at nothing, shivering helplessly, her throat as dry as the deadest desert.]

video

[It's later that the knives sprout. Thirty-two little monster teeth, each with a metal serrated edge, each curved just slightly, making their way into her mouth after pushing her old teeth bloody onto the pure white sheet.]

[They don't distract her as much as they should, though they cut her tongue up something wicked. She has questions - but she can't speak.]

[So in video she turns on a smile, her knife-teeth fitting together like perfect dentures, and holds up a small whiteboard.]

[It says, WHO ELSE CAN SEE HIM?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A few days? Not long.

It got worse since I died.

You think it's part of the toll?

Nuh-uh. I've tolled before. And I never saw . . .

[Her eyes stray back to the figure of her father standing in the corner.]

Okay. Uh...

[She frowns down at her paper.]

I think I should be asking you about your mental health, but I don't know a lot of those questions.

Maybe I should just take a full patient history. State and spell your name, please.

Are you even a doctor?

... No.

Then why are you doing this?

I work here. I'm making notes for the doctors.

[. . . Well, fine then. That makes sense and Abigail will accept it. For now.]

Abigail Hobbs. A-B-I-G-A-I-L H-O-B-B-S. I'm, like, the only Abigail on board.