#aria girl i am so so sorry about ur security deposit

[autumnshowell]

Time wears on into a night that proves itself ungentle and cruel.

The waves of pain reach first a slow rhythmic march across her being. And then something staccato. Autumn can hear her heartbeat, louder than she’s ever heard it before. She feels things flooding into her thoughts that she’s never thought before. She perceives Aria, in brief microcosms of time, in new ways she’s never experienced; scent, the taste of her in the air. Autumns voice stretches around the change, going from the girlish timbre that a choral instructor in High School had once described as a squeak into something low and guttural and altogether monstrous. She only screams once in those first two hour, the rest is all low grunts and growls. When it gets worse, when she’s all but blind to the world around her, Autumn feels Aria’s hands at her cheeks, eyes fighting to focus, blue bled out into some animal brassy yellow.

I’m sorry, Autumn tries to say, but who knows if the words find their way around a convulsing tongue and long fangs spreading apart incovenient human teeth. She’s still there enough to recognize the intimacy and the love and to whimper and let it happen, and she wishes — oh, God! — how she wishes it brought the comfort it deserved to bring.

Every bone feels like it’s being bent. Every joint feels like the tension is going to snap it in the wrong direction. For some of them, it’s true, and it does. But this is no horror movie, cut clean for runtime. Autumn feels fresh and sharp fangs push their way in between her teeth. Bones surge and broaden, all in agonizing time.

Somehow, Aria manages to wrangle her into the hardware store chains they rigged into Aria’s bathroom. Autumn remembers none of it, and as the night wares on, things make less and less sense. Why the need for chains? She’s not sure she’ll go anywhere again. Aria says try not to fight it. But she can’t let it win. She tries to fight it, whatever exactly fighting it means, but that only seems to make whatever is shredding its way through her angrier and eventually, exhausted of mind and body, the tide turns; her mind slowly comes around to the idea that there is no fighting it because it is just her. For a fleeting moment, this sole realization makes the groaning heap on the tiled floor laugh in a bout of mania, because maybe if Aria’s right, if she stops trying not to let it happen, it will be gentle.

For hours, she lies on the floor, all sweat and spittle and undignified meat and bone, shifting between quiet tears and pleading to a God she’s never really spoken with. Maybe, the thought occasionally crosses her mind, the pain will get so bad that she’ll pass out.

She never does.

A few hours in and Autumn isn’t herself, or isn’t somebody one could really recognize as her. Misshapen, rattling with agony. Aria’s words of comfort don’t really mean anything to her anymore when they amble from behind the door. A jumble of sounds that seem less comforting and more annoying. Its here, when chains meant to hold human arms starts to tug at the fraying edges of human patience, begin being tested.

And it’s when things change and she can see them that she feels insane. Her hand, not really a hand, nails that she’s always been neurotic about clipping short long, dark, hard things, shaped to a point out of fingers that aren’t fingers on a hand that isn’t a hand anymore. Hair that’s dark and ruddy and brown wiry springing out of her skin. All in its own time, not hers.

She had reasoned, as the month went on, that if this were to happen, then maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she feared. That it would be manageable. One of the last thoughts that passes through her mind as recognizably human is how much she wishes Aria would grab the heavy lid from the toilet and bash her head in with it, to stop the agony. At one mean snapping sound, the muscles in her arm tense so greatly that one of the chains comes loose from its mooring.

In some time, the human throes stop, wind down quiet, only occasionally piercing through once Aria closes the door on her and she has to be alone. She can hear Aria still. Smell her. But that name, Aria, it means less and less to her. Who is an Aria? What is an Aria? Something big and beyond strong, even stronger than its size would betray, bucks at its bonds, a cacophany preceding the sound of another anchor snapping loose from the wall. Something scratches at the door again.

When the pain stops, Aria isn’t in her thoughts, not the way she usually is. Not haunting her desires. Instinct is playing the game now. An Aria is keeping her here. She takes unsteady steps on four legs she’s never used, and looks through eyes that have never seen the indignity of a door. Trapped. Hungry. She scratches at the door. Let me out, she thinks. Let me out, I am hungry. Let me out or I’ll kill you. Don’t you love me, she thinks. Let me out or I’ll kill you and eat you, because I am hungry. This room is so small and I am afraid, let me out. I am so hungry. These whimpers prompt little other than more of the Aria sounds from behind the door, and so the scrapes at the door turn into violent thudding as Autumn throws the whole of her weight against the door. Let me out. Let me out. I am going to eat you. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. You are killing me. Let me out.

THUD LET ME THUD THUD OUT

Legs slip free of chains too loose on new shapes. Something growls feral and furious behind the door. The door is just another cage in a life full of cages.

Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!

"Okay, so we hunker down." She murmurs and moves away from Autumn to grab the chains -- How ridiculous this is, what they're doing. She doesn't know if the chains will hold or if the wolfsbane Autumn's been drinking will weaken her enough to stay bound by them. But there's no turning back now.

She can see something rippling through Autumn's muscles and joints, can smell the change within her - something animalistic and raw and-- It's not a great smell. Aria watches as Autumn twitches on the floor and when it subsides, she clasps the chains around her limps - wrist, wrist, ankle, ankle. Will it be enough?

The crack comes soon after and Aria feels bile at the back of her throat at the sound of it.

The shifting change is clear on her face - she looks more.. monster than human and Aria finds herself whimpering at the sight of it. "It's okay, it's okay - don't fight it." Her hands go to Autumn's face, and she searches the golden yellow hues for something to latch onto. Without thinking, she leans forward and kisses - oh, so gently - the bloody lips hiding sharper teeth behind them.

"Just a little longer." Another kiss, this time to her forehead, then to her nose. "You can do this. I'll be right outside the bathroom."

Now that she can see the shifting signs of the wolf coming, Aria knows it's not safe to stay sitting beside her all night -- a feral werewolf is terrifying on its own. But she reluctantly lets go of Autumn and moves back, out of the room. To watch? To wait?

She sits down right outside of the threshold, pulling her knees to her chest.