#but then I switched my main to Viscous and found the light again

[deckof-dragons]

Can I just say I super appreciate Deadlock's early game? Like, wow. No long hero pick phase (that can sometimes spark arguments when one guy picks a hero someone else wants). No deciding which lane to go in (also, a potential argument point when 2 or more people decide they want mid). You pick which heroes you'd like to play as before queuing, it assigns you a lane by plopping you onto a zip line, and then as soon as you land, the game begins. Quick, clean, and eliminating 2 potential toxic triggers for people. It's nice.

Also, the laning phase itself is a lot more engaging. You can harass without worrying about running out of mana every five seconds and getting last hits and denies is a lot more engaging.

The start of Dota 2 matches was always the worst/the most boring part and Deadlock fixes that. As someone who played Dota 2 for 4.7k hours, I like it very much.

Also, not related, but I got to play a couple of new heroes today, including Calico and ooh, I love her. I don't know if I necessarily vibe with her play style but she's got a cute little shoulder kitty and her cat statues have such cute little meows when they're attacking. Adorable!

And they added another scrungly lady in the form of Viper, who I didn't get to play but hope to soon because she looks cool. And I hope to get to play Fathom before his inevitable nerf because he seems pretty busted right now.

[en-lil-sin]

The Door

By Mikayla MacPherson

The security guard's steps echoed in the empty hallway. It was a typical sterile basement corridor found in any large building; drab beige walls, overhead fluorescent lights spaced just far enough to allow puddles of shadows between them, sickly pale green colored floor tiles. The only sound came from the ventilation ducts and the guards' steps.

The guard never liked coming down here. Something about it always creeped him out. Especially when he was on a night shift, like he was tonight. He would always try to make his rounds down here as swiftly as possible, just long enough to check the few locked doors and to swipe his keycard against the two security panels to log his rounds had been made. The quicker he finished this round, the quicker he could get back to the security desk and watch shows on his phone. His partner would do the next round in two hours.

He turned the final corner to head back to one of the two stairwells, when he saw a door standing open across from the stairwell. He stopped and looked at the door, slightly confused because he didn't remember ever seeing a door there, but it had to have always been there if he was looking at it. He cautiously walked up to the door and looked inside. A red painted corridor lit by dim lights, and what looked like red an black tiles on the floor stretched before him. He couldn't see any other doors, but the corridor did have an intersection about a dozen feet beyond the door he was standing at, with another about a hundred or so further into the gloom. No sounds could be heard from inside the room, or corridor, or whatever was beyond the door.

Nobody should be down here, he thought. Not even the building's engineering staff would come down here, except for occasional routine maintenance. And even then, they were required to check in with the security desk before starting any work, and then again when the work was completed. He pulled out his radio and keyed it.

"Hey Amanda, the door across from the north stairwell is unlocked and open. Did any of the maintenance guys check in with you, to let us know they would be down here?"

Amanda, his partner for this shift, came back sounding bored and sleepy; "Say again, Greg? Did you say north stairwell?"

"Yeah, directly across from the bottom of the stairs."

"Uh...you ok, dude? There is no door across from either set of stairs." Her voice sounded unsure and confused over the radio.

"I'm telling you, I'm looking right at it. It's open and there is a hallway inside."

There was a pause from the other end, before a dismissive response. "Greg, seriously. Stop screwing around. I have worked here for three years now. I'm pretty sure I would know if there was a door there."

"Whatever you say, 'Manda, but I'm still going to check it out," he said.

"Suit yourself, check out your nonexistent door. Let me know if you run into any unicorns as well, while you're down there."

Greg rolled his eyes as he could hear her laughing over the radio. He clipped the radio back onto his belt, pulled his flashlight out and switched it on. It's beam didn't add very much additional light to the reddish gloom inside the door. He leaned in and called out.

"Hello? Anyone there? It's Greg from security." His voice seemed to echo in a strange way. As if the room or hallway was much larger than the entire basement itself. Silence was the answer. He called out again, "hey you need to check in with the security desk, you know. Hello?"

Still nothing. He stepped into the red hallway and began slowly walking towards the first intersection. He looked down both cross hallways.

"What the fuck?" Both directions seem to go on much further than was possible. With corridors branching off in both directions. He began walking to the right to the next branch. This too stretched away with it's own branching corridors and intersections.

His confusion grew even more. He turned back and walked past the first intersection to investigate the other side of the main corridor. It was similar to the first one, but did not mirror it, though it also disappeared into the distance. Hair on the back of his neck began to stand up, as his unease increased.

This is beginning to give me the fucking creeps, he thought. And I really want to get the hell out of here. He turned back towards the door. And then froze.

The door was not there. The corridor ended in a t-intersection, but where the door should have been, there was only a red colored wall. He was certain that this was where the door was. He didn't take any other turns other than walking a few feet down each side hall. There was no way he was not where he came in.

He walked to the t-intersection and placed his hand on the wall. It was cool and solid to the touch, feeling like poured concrete. He was certain that this is where the door should be, but only the wall stood in front of him. The first hints of panic began to tickle the back of his mind.

"Ok Greg. There is a logical explanation to this. You just mistook where you came in. It has to be nearby. Let's not let a spooky hallway end up making you feel foolish." He walked about twenty feet in one direction before stopping. Then walked back to the intersection and walked another twenty feet the other way.

Turning to look back down the main hallway, he saw only a hallway that was about a hundred feet long lacking any interesting corridors. Instead it terminated in a single right turn to the right. Cold tendrils of fear now began to well up inside him.

"No. No. No no no no no. This can't be real." His voice wavered as he looked disbelievingly at the now unfamiliar corridor. With a shaking hand he pulled his radio for the clip on the belt and keyed it.

"Hey, uh…'Manda. I seem to...uh...be lost. I don't care if you laugh at me the rest of the night, but I really need you to come down and help me find my way out of here." Only static answered him. He waited a moment and then tried again with the same results.

"Ok, very funny Amanda. I know you're having a good laugh at me right now. But I please need you to help me." His voice began to take on an edge of panic.

The light of his flashlight jumped about in his trembling hands as he slowly walked to the bend in the hallway and looked down it's length. There, about ten feet, was an intersection.

Oh thank God, I must have just gotten turned around. He ran to the intersection and looked both ways. His hopes came crashing down as he only saw more branching corridors. Vison now blurring, due to tears welling up in his eyes, he slowly sank to his knees.

"Greg, where're you at?" Amanda's voice echoed in the maze of passageways. But it sounded distant, and not quite right. Greg jumped to his feet and began running in the direction it sounded like it came from.

"Amanda! I can hear you! Keep calling out!" He stopped to listen.

"Greg, this way!" Now the voice came from a hallway on his right, and he dashed towards it. After a bit he stopped to listen again. Again Amanda's voice called out. But now it came from a new direction behind him. Then again from another direction. Her voice repeatedly came from random directions.

He stood up and picked a random direction to begin walking in. "Amanda? I can hear you, but it's hard to tell what direction you're in." He stopped to listen once again.

Ok, let's be logical about this. I know the size of the basement, this room or whatever the hell this is can't be that big, he thought to himself. He figured he would just continue to walk in one direction.

He walked about a dozen feet until he came to a tee. He took the right hand passage and walked about another dozen feet until he came to another branch to the left, which he took. Another few dozen paces brought him to another intersection. He continued walking straight ahead before being presented with another tee.

He was contemplating which direction to take when he froze. He thought he had heard something. But try as he might, the only sound he could hear was the blood rushing in ears. He peered into the gloom bathed in the red lighting. He swung his flashlight left and right, it's weak beam only penetrating about a dozen feet before being too diffused to be of any use. Suddenly, with a flash and a pop, his light went dead, leaving him cloaked in the low light corridor, now completely the color of blood.

He continued trying to move in one direction as much as he could. He finally admitted he was hopelessly lost in what seemed to be an impossibly sized area within the basement. He was scared, even succumbing to a full panic attack once or twice as he aimlessly traced his way through ever changing hallways that lead nowhere. He lost track of time, though he began to eventually feel both thirst and hunger. Still he wandered, ever deeper into a maze with no exit. Another bend, another intersection, another side passage. On and on.

Then slowly even the dim lights in the distance began to slowly fade out of existence, leaving him in an ever increasingly smaller pool of light. Oh shit, he thought. If the lights went out, and he couldn't get his flashlight to work again, he would be royally screwed, unable to find his way except to feel along the walls.

Panic now began to fully close in. Foot by foot the inky black darkness inches it's way closer. Again he thought he heard something. Like something whispering his name, calling out to him. Feeling like his options were dwindling, he began moving in the direction of the disembodied whisper. Soon Greg found himself entering the black void like darkness. Two steps later, he found himself suddenly falling forward as the floor seemed to just drop away.

It felt like he fell only a few feet when the sensation of falling stopped, and was replaced by one floating in a thick viscous fluid. Greg could feel it pressing in around him, as if he was wrapped completely in a warm waterbed, weightless yet somehow comforting. He tried kicking and attempted to swim upwards, or what he thought was upwards.

He felt like an insect trapped within a spider's web. Moving his arms and legs seemed to take more of an effort. He also began to notice another sensation. The feeling of warmth all over his body, like the warmth one gets when a little tipsy after a few alcoholic drinks. A moment later he realized that he could no longer feel his body at all. Only his consciousness remained.

His mind was floating free in the infinite void he found himself in. It was as if he had fallen through a hole into a space between different universes. The darkness now was all there is, and all there will be from this point onwards. It would go on forever in this infinite abyss of nothingness. Time no longer existed. There would be no future or past, only this single moment of time with eternity stretching out before him. And he would be utterly alone.

*************************************************************************

"Look, I'm telling you detective Sawyer, Greg said he had found a door that was unlocked and open in the basement that was directly across from the north stairwell," Amanda Kendell told the haggard looking police detective standing on the other side of the security desk in a cheap rumpled coat and tie. "Greg went into the basement to do his rounds, and never came back."

Detective Sawyer looked at her, then scribbled some notes down on a pad before asking, "and you're sure there is no door directly across from the north stairwell? Or a maintenance hatch? Something he could have crawled into? Something you might not have noticed before?"

Amanda shook her head. "Look detective, I get I'm only a rent-a-cop, but I have been a security guard for ten years now. Three working in this very building. I have been in that basement hundreds of times. There are no doors across from either stairwell." She sounded exasperated. She had explained it to this idiot now multiple times. She was beginning to think he really was not too worried about her work partner and friend who had gone missing two days before.

Another plainclothes detective came walking up with a uniformed officer at his side. Detective Sawyer turned towards them as they walked up. "Find anything down there?"

The second detective, whom she heard Sawyer call Chan, shook his head and said, "it's like she said, sir. There is no door on the wall directly in front of the stairwell. And the only other stairwell is the southern one on the opposite side of the basement. None of the other rooms have an exit, and all of them require keys that only the building engineers have access to to get in. Nor did the security cameras ever show the security guard exit the basement. Also, he was the only one that entered the basement two nights ago. It was as if he just went into the basement and disappeared."

Detective Sawyer stood there for a moment, then slowly nodded. He closed his notebook and stuffed it into an inside pocket of a charcoal grey jacket in desperate need of being pressed. When he was done he ran his hand over a stubbled face then shrugged. He turned back to Amanda, his watery pale blue eyes looking into hers.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Kendall. There doesn't seem like there is much we can do at this point."

Amanda was bit taken back. He didn't even seem to care that Greg simply disappeared into thin air. Without even the slightest clue of where. Or even how.

"That's it? You're just going to say that's it? Are you going to even try to do a more thorough search, or even try to figure out where he could have gotten off to?" She began to get mad at the dismissive attitude of the detective before her.

"Look, Miss Kendall, I have dealt with these kinds of unusual cases for a while now. I'm pretty sure that there is nothing to further investigate here, nor will it do any good or produce any results. But if you encounter anything else usual, give us a call. Good day, Miss Kendall."

He turned to leave and told Detective Chan to give her his card. He turned back to her, nodded his goodby and left. Detective Chan walked up to her and handed her his contact information and card. She took it, anger bubbling up inside of her.

"It's no fucking wonder that people just disappear without a trace, and are never found again. Especially with cops like your detective Sawyer." She snatched the card out of Chan's hand, and tossed it into the security desk.

Detective Chan looked at her for a moment, then said; "he isn't one of our department's detectives. I don't know who he is, he showed up just prior to the missing persons call. Nobody knows who he is. We were just ordered to provide whatever assistance he needed, and to not ask any questions. But, anyway, thank you for your cooperation, ma'am."

[akiiwan]

I really need to get out this experience I just had earlier tonight. Thank you for reading & holding space if you are able. ~Not sure how to CW this, still shaking, still feeling like I'm going to throw up.~ First of all, my therapist has told me that I need to practice not isolating myself & talking about the things that cause me hurt &/or trauma instead of pretending they didn't happen, stuffing them away, or trying to run from them. I have been tapering off of a psychiatric med that for me(or my brain) has not been a good experience for about 3 weeks or so. For the last few days I've found myself in crisis that can't even really be explained with life altering symptoms like self harm that I really don't feel like going further into. Not only am I in the middle of switching psychiatrists, but the next appointment I have is over 3 weeks out. The old white dude I was seeing that I transferred from is out of the country apparently & didn't properly tapper me off. When the nurse I spoke with today spoke with the only doctor who was available, they said I was having very severe (but common!!!) withdrawal symptoms from tapering off of this med. Mind you, this is after I've already self-harmed & was trying not to do it again despite feeling that way + dealing with intense suicidal ideation. ANYWAY, 10 minutes before 5pm, when the nurse & doctor are scheduled to leave, she calls me back & says that I need to get to the pharmacy immediately to pick up a 1/2 dosage to keep tapering down & would be sending it in right then. The pharmacy I like to use has limited hours, & also closes at 5pm (would Never have made it). So I reluctantly had them call it into the so-called tumwater walm*rt pharmacy since they would be open until 9pm. we get into the car & the nurse informs me that i need to hang up with her & actually call them to make sure they got it with no issues before they leave for the weekend. I did that & confirmed I was all set to go + also let the pharmacy know I was on my way when I called. Arriving at the pharmacy, driving through the parking lot at walm*rt it's literally a fucking 'maga' convention or some shit. Driving by the main entrance to park there's literally a truck with a sticker of "make america great ag*in" on their back window & an old white couple loading shit into it. I couldn't fuckin take it anymore, as we passed in the car, I rolled the window down & yelled "america was never great & will never fucking be great". Apparently that was enough to start a bunch of shit... We (my husband & I) go park just a little further away than normal bc of the snow & bc it was so busy. I stayed at our car to rant a little bit before going in to try releasing some of the anger & tension that caused, but apparently to no avail as a wmart employee (of course, some old white guy doing carts) watched me the entire time, even as I walked up to the store. Before I even got to the door, I noticed that same employee that had been watching me that I was trying to just walk past gave me the most aggressive & honestly terrifying look. While still walking, not even breaking stride to engage, I shouted at him "fuck all you maga losers" or something to that effect I really cannot remember to be honest. All I know is I know I was on a mission & actually really focused to go get my medication & get the Fuck Out. So while I defended myself from his purposefully intimidating + vicious gaze just by no longer saying silent, he got on his radio & said hell knows what on it. I continued walking fast, straight to the pharmacy with no further words, just trying to get there as fast as my body could carry me. As I walked up to the counter there was a small line with 1 person standing & (of course) a random middle-aged white guy sitting waiting in line 2nd. I politely asked him if he was in line while my husband stood in front of me & offered me to sit while he stood to wait. He confirmed being in line. Directly after, some large old white guy I've never seen (about 6'2" maybe 6'4" or something) got behind my husband. To distract myself from anxiety/everything that just happened, I started talking to him about stuff we did the day before. The old white guy that came up & stood behind my husband stood there for a few seconds, then threateningly walked up to me as I was sitting down waiting & literally interrupted me talking to my husband + said to me "you should clean up your mouth, no one wants to hear that language, you're in public"... "you should go home then if you don't like it, you fucking racist." I said. OF COURSE, of freakin course the middle aged white dude on the other side completely entered himself into this & said "how does this have *anything* to do with race?!" like he had ANY CLUE what was going on. I said one more thing like something to the effect of "yeah I know what this is really about you heard me tell whoever that you maga losers can all fuck off" to both of them - basically he had coincidentally heard what I said to those old white people or some shit idk honestly. IT GETS BETTER - (sarcasm, obviously) The store manager, assistant store manager, & the rest of his entire entourage -literally all white people- ambush us at the pharmacy & say they will not be filling my emergency script & I can leave for ""harassing their customers"". The store manager (some 100% bald middle-aged white dude who no shit literally looked like a fucking skinhead) & whoever the fuck was next to him would not even look at me nor acknowledge me As A Person. They even said right in front of me like I wasn't even there they would only speak with my husband (who also happens to be white). No shit. As my husband tries calmly to explain our/my situation, he cut him off & this dude(store manager apparently) looked at me for one split second with the most disgusted & threatening look even leaning into it, said "what is your name"? "I don't need to give you that information" I replied. He literally turned on his heel & said "fine, I'll just get it from the pharmacy" like that isn't illegal as all hell. My husband, trying to de-escalate & just get my emergency script at this point & save me from more BS told him my deadname right in front of me as the sm stormed off with his entourage. 2 employees remained. The assistant store manager - a white woman who looked confused + shocked? i guess idk I have problems reading people as someone who is neurodivergent. There was also another employee who was also a white woman who had visible tattoos. Long story short, they sit with me while my husband & myself wait once the shit ass of a store manager informed them they would be filling it bc the wmart employee with the tattoos literally confirmed EVERYTHING in my story as she walked by at the time of the old white man approaching me FIRST when I was sitting down in line. After filling my script I walked directly out the door to the EXACT same wmart employee that started all of this. He had already been tipped off not to engage or even look at me (like he did before). So instead as we walked to our car he made sure to exert his "power" over me by walking as close as possible while passing opposite directions on the sidewalk in front of the store. I wish I was making this up. Not even going to try to sugar coat it, I feel scared as hell making this post for So Many reasons. I know I am a light-skinned &/or a "white-passing" POC that does pass either way in certain situations. Being mixed with white, regardless of whether it's winter or summer, I still benefit from this viscous cycle that is white supremacy. I know that & I acknowledge that. So it just makes this post that much more awkward I suppose?, but I know I cannot invalidate my own experiences & I also cannot change how I am perceived as I move through the world. It's definitely different every damn day. So much so that I never really know where I stand or where my presence is welcome or unwelcome or what to even expect from people.

TL:DR; My friends of color in this area or passing through: stay the fuck away from the tumwater walm*rt literally at all fucking costs. it's 100% unsafe.

Thankful as all hell for the community I've chosen to surround myself with & that we've moved into an area that seems a lot safer & with a lot more POC community to connect with + continually feel safe around to help manage my C-PTSD.

[buggerygrips]

I found an old piece of writing while clearing out some files.

I’m posting this even though it won’t mean anything to anyone, because I don’t have anyone I share my writing with. Also I want to embarrass myself into improving.

The electricity had cut out. Adrian flicked the switch a few more times, then dropped his hand to touch the rough wood of the walls to guide himself instead. It wasn’t yet nightfall, not really, but the town had spilled out of the stable boundaries long ago, leaving houses like this built in the shadow of the cliff face. Landslides or falling debris were hazardous, meaning that places like these were never here long. But even when the buildings were crushed to splinters, new ones quickly sprang up like mushrooms after a rain.

Floorboards creaked under his footsteps, hinting at where the ground beneath had already fallen away, and Adrian froze in place to listen for a response. All that answered was the usual sound of people outside: talking, arguing, laughing. But inside… the silence was enough to make him reach out.

“Den?” he asked, not quite in a shout. He should be here, waiting for Adrian like he always did, on the half-days his wife and children were the other side of the town.

The man was probably asleep, which explained why he hadn’t attempted to repair the electrics this time. The wiring was always coming loose in these cobbled-together homes, a long and complex mix of cables which stole away power to as many homes as possible, stringing from place to place like some mechanic spider’s vast web. 

Now that he listened again, there was a faint humming coming from behind the curtain which led to the sleeping area. Maybe it was only the main room which had become disconnected.

Adrian’s fingers brushed against the heavy curtain and pulled it aside sharply, stepping through before he even noticed the smell. Something thick and warm, but in the gloom he couldn’t see where it was coming from. “Den?” he asked again, more quietly this time, trying to listen out for the sound of him sleeping.

The floorboards seemed to suck at his feet as Adrian moved further into the room, his eyes adjusting slowly, and stopped as the toe of his shoe bumped into one of the mattresses.

He fumbled in his pockets then, bringing out a lighter and only realising as he tried to spark it that his hands were shaking. Cut it out, he told himself, and the flame obediently flickered to life in his hand, giving him a little sphere of light as he held it out.

A small cloud of flies skittered away from the movement of his hand, their wings humming as they settled instead on one of the other huddled shapes in the room.

The mattress was soaked red, and on top of the blanket lay a woman who Adrian didn’t recognise, but there was no doubt who she was, lying there on the bed that Den shared with him, but also with his wife. The smell was coming from her, her and the mattress she was lying on, heavy with blood. Her face at least was mostly intact, which was more than could be said for her body, and with the sight of that the thick smell in the room swelled into something foul.

He swept the light left, and didn’t dare try to get closer to what he knew was there. Three smaller forms, one of them tiny, all of them ruined and misshapen. He’d never known their names, never wanted to know, and Den had never tried to tell him.

And there he was, too, a hand gripping the arm of one of his children, lying with his head on one of their beds, with a wound across his throat black with flies. 

The sounds of the world carried on outside, oblivious to the stinking, cloying, red scene inside the house so close to them. How long had they been dead? How long more before the smell turned to rot and the house filled with vermin, and somebody was bound to notice what had happened?

I can’t tell anybody, that was his first thought, and then he felt bitterly ashamed. Holding up the lighter again, he made himself look at Den, but after a few moments of meeting those dead eyes he looked away, not in grief but in the realisation that he felt none.

It was sex, shelter and food for some nights of the week, which was better than none at all. Sometimes there were promises made, that Den would abandon his family, but both of them knew that those meant nothing. Adrian never wanted them to: without a roof over his head to share, the man was a hindrance, but he would never have told him so, or risked losing what he had.

He dropped his hand, dimly aware that was the end of it, and with his respects paid the cold feeling in his gut wrenched his attention back to the present. Get out.

His shoe was congealing into the pool of blood gathering on one of the floorboards, and it made a horrible sucking sound as he pulled it free. He had to leave, before somebody found him here. How could people not already know? The smell filled the whole world.

Behind him, the curtain pushed back.

Adrian turned, almost slipping, and the hot light in his hand caught the sharp, pale angles of the figure who had just walked through.

She was thin, her white skin stretched over bones so tightly that she could be a skeleton, her naked scalp like a skull but for the gold flashes of her eyes that caught the flame. Her arms and chin were dark, though, and the viscous liquid smeared across her sinewy flesh glinted red.

“Den?” she asked him, mocking the question he’d so stupidly asked before.

“I’ll go,” he replied, quickly. “I don’t… I got the wrong house. I don’t care what you do here, let me leave.”

She didn’t move aside, just smiled at him with a mouth that stretched too widely for her face. Her shoulders pushed back, too, bones creaking like a spring being pulled tight, tendons pushing out against the skin.

Finally, sluggishly, Adrian tried to run past her, do anything other than just stand there, but she sprang towards him. A hand swiped at him, missing as he ducked aside, but the other grabbed hold of his hooded sweatshirt and held him still. Trying to wriggle free only made him drop the lighter, and it left the room in grey dimness before he could even will for it to somehow set the place ablaze.

“Please,” was all he was able to say before her other hand closed around his throat. Was it even a hand? A sharpness pressed into his skin, grasped by long, pale fingers tipped with razors, letting go of his clothes to fend off his flailing arms, ignoring the useless kicking of his legs.

All he could see now was the ghostly hint of her face, but her distortion of a mouth still seemed to loom out at him, jaws stretched wider to show long teeth as the hideous stink of raw flesh washed over him in her breath.

He thought, bizarrely, of his mother, and the promise he had made to her the day before he ran. That he wouldn’t be like the others. That she didn’t have to be ashamed for what she gave birth to, and that he would prove wrong every single slur and insult that had been said about her since they found out what Adrian was, and what that said about her.

Even if he lived for a thousand years, he would never have been able to do that. Perhaps she thought that he was already dead.

His flailing hand struck her face, and the grip around his neck tightened in response, his lungs screaming.

I fucked up, was his last thought before he passed out.

Somebody punched him in the chest, and he cried out in pain, a jolt that sent his battered lungs taking in a breath. The warm, bitterly metallic air could not have tasted sweeter, and it took Adrian several moments to focus on anything else.

The room was lit up and he was lying on the floor of it, his eyes watering despite the tears he could already feel drying on his cheeks. His ribs ached, his throat felt half its usual size, and his spine was aching for good measure where he had fallen onto the floorboards. The realisation made him aware of the stickiness against his skin, and he reached up to touch his cheek, trying not to recoil at the feeling of blood on his face and in his hair…

His hair. Automatically, he reached around on the floor behind him, ignoring the pain shooting through his chest and the disgusting things his hand was touching, trying desperately to find his hat.

A soft giggle in front of him made him finally look up.

Crouched on her heels beside a lamp was a young woman his own age, smiling as she watched him and apparently unaffected by the carnage around them. She was holding out his hat in one hand, a cheap, grey woollen thing which was uncomfortably hot in warm weather but that hid his hair and the truth of what he was.

This woman didn’t seem to mind, though. Maybe she was one of those who liked that sort of thing. She wasn’t conventionally pretty, with a prominent nose and a long face, framed by a tangle of black curls. Even so, her eyes were big and dark, and her skin was the pale amber of honey. But he had promised to give up women, ever since what he’d done to Sara.

He nodded and reached for his hat, but she pulled her hand away. “You should wash first,” she told him.

Adrian scowled. “Why are… who��?” He sighed. “Tell me what happened.” He glanced behind him, checking that the corpses were still there, as though everything might have somehow been a dream. But he could almost feel the pressure of that skeletal hand around his neck, and the flies were still drinking at Den’s throat.

“They died,” she said simply, and before he could interrupt continued in the same sad tone: “It was the hunger. She probably tried to ignore it for as long as she could, but in the end the longing gets too much. She lost control.”

She actually felt sorry for the woman who had tried to kill him. Who had killed. “Where is she?”

The young woman shrugged. “Who knows? She’s sated for now. Even I couldn’t kill her.”

There were too many questions to ask at once, but the girl stood up before he could try, reaching down a hand. Adrian took it instead of arguing, and she pulled him to his feet, reaching down for the lamp with her other hand.

She was cold to the touch, despite the cloying heat in the room. Alarmed, he let go without thinking, but she didn’t seem offended. “There’s a washroom through here,” she told him, lifting aside the curtain. “But you know that, don’t you?”

There was no point in answering, and with the light source vanishing, Adrian followed her instead of being left alone in the dark with the carrion.

The other room had a sink with a hose, as well as a number of cooking utensils and a small stove. The sight of it made Adrian feel sick. “She ate them, didn’t she?” he asked. “That’s what you meant by hunger. As in, actual hunger.”

The girl sat herself down on a low table, lamp set beside her, as Adrian reluctantly moved over to the sink. “Yes.”

“She wasn’t human.”

He could hear the smile in the woman’s voice. “Neither are you.”

Turning on the hose, Adrian ducked his head over the sink and washed the blood from his face and neck instead of answering. He rubbed the water into his hair to shift the stains, feeling the sodden beginnings of feathers beneath his fingers. He kept cutting it short whenever he could, but they grew back, and even at this length the soft black was tinted with red and gold in places. There were other characteristic features, but the damned hair was the worst. Anyone with it cropped this short made it obvious that they had something to hide, but Adrian couldn’t stand letting it grow out. Even seeing another… another like him, who was open about what they were, made him angry.

The cold water felt good against the heat of his face.

Finally he stood up, and took off his sweater, cursing at the stains before using the relatively unscathed interior to dry himself off. The woman watched him with apparent interest, and finally held out the hat to him, like a reward. He almost snatched it from her hand, putting it back on and wondering if the lamp was bright enough to show the embarrassed flush of his face.

But instead of saying anything about it, she hopped down off the table and turned off the lamp, leaving the two of them in the darkness of rapidly approaching nightfall.

“Let’s go,” she told him, and he felt her take hold of his wrist, pulling at him to follow.

There was still the sound of activity outside, although a little less than before. Adrian stalled, but he felt her give his arm a reassuring squeeze before slipping out through the door and into the evening.