#if I'm missing a tw lemme know but I thinkkk that's all

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

Jaiden broke into Cellbit's Fear room while he slept. Now, she makes a guest appearance in all of his favourite nightmares.

NOTE: this is gorier than all of my other fics, thus the immediate read-more instead of the typical blurb. I watched a bad horror movie and got so offended I went out of my way to write horror on purpose. Cannibalism and blood and gore and mildly ooc Dream Jaiden my beloveds

There’s blood in Cellbit’s mouth.

There’s muscle, too. Fat and nerves and viscera. Somewhere, there’s a knife- he made the first cuts with that, used it to peel away the sweat-soaked skin and get to the hot meat underneath- and he could use it now to carve away more of the corpse, but he can’t bring himself to look for it, preferring to rip away at the gaping hole in the body’s side with his hands and broken nails. He’s so hungry. He was so hungry. He can’t remember why. He remembers his empty stomach, the way it precluded the cannibalism with the desperate feeling of its own self-consumption. Then, the knife. Then, the body. Then, the warmth.

He digs his nails in and pulls, hands so slick with blood that every morsel should be slipping through his fingers, but the knife tore so much of the meat that it is - was - child’s play to come away with another handful. The texture is like poorly-ground pork, and the taste is so metallic- but of course it is. He hadn’t learned how to drain and cook it, yet. Hadn’t known it was an option. Every gory mouthful is seasoned with blood, and he licks it from his hands, then scrapes under his fingernails with his teeth just to consume that little bit more. He’s so hungry. It’s so warm. The body is still hot beneath him, fresh and practically steaming in the cold evening air. He feels drunk on it.

Is this how it went…? No, he doesn’t think so. The first time was desperation. He didn’t mind the taste, but he hadn’t loved it, either. It didn’t matter. It was food, and food to a starving boy is like ambrosia to the gods. But now- now he revels in the metallic taste. The chewiness. The satisfaction of a predator sinking teeth-first into the bowels of its prey.

There’s something not-quite-right here. Something foggy. Who is he eating? There is blood in his beard, across his cheeks, sticking his hair in messy strands to his face. This is his first meal, but he was a boy, then- here, now, he is a man. He is starving. He plunges his hands back into the corpse and swallows down mouthful after mouthful of raw flesh and never feels full.

Another pair of hands join him. Or- one hand, which picks delicately at a loose piece of skin. He stills to watch it, heart suddenly hammering in his chest. The details are stark, suddenly. The corpse’s side torn open like by an animal -had his knife done that?- and the blood shines in the moonlight -is it night?- and the pale hand dips the skin into the rest of the gore, carefully scooping up some of the messiest meat onto it like a strange appetizer at a fancy dinner. Cellbit doesn’t breathe. His eyes are pinned to the hand as it lifts, raising the little treat up to the waiting, smiling face of Jaiden. She pops the skin in her mouth, chews thoughtfully, and swallows decisively. He feels cold.

“Not bad,” she says, and reaches down for more.

Cellbit turns away and vomits.

–

He’s speaking to Pac. He has him pressed up against the wall, knife to his throat, and he’s growling in his ear. There’s sweat sticking his hair to the back of his neck, and he can feel Pac’s heart beating rabbit-quick even through the layers of clothes between them. He laughs, low, and keeps laughing when Pac whimpers out- something. Something he’s happy to hear. He licks his own teeth and tastes blood.

He trails the knife upwards, slow, to scrape against Pac’s pulse point. It leaves a thin white line of marked skin, and he’s smiling. Pac’s eyes are blown wide and he stammers something out and in return the knife is pressed down, gently, until Pac shuts up.

“Woah.”

Cellbit’s heart jumps into his throat. He turns his head, just enough, to see Jaiden. She looks strange in prison clothes, but she doesn’t seem to mind them. She holds her hands up when Cellbit meets her gaze.

“Hey, I’m not judging,” she says. “You do you. I’ll just…uh. Go this way. Really quickly,” she adds, like an afterthought, and turns to stride purposefully down the corridor. Her footsteps don’t make any noise.

Pac is still trembling beneath Cellbit’s hands. He looks back to him- but it’s not Pac, except it is, but he can’t see all of him at once- there are details missing until Cellbit thinks to focus on them. No hair across Pac’s face until there is, and Pac is wearing the hoodie instead of his prison uniform, and he says something that Cellbit doesn’t hear and he doesn’t seem to notice Jaiden at all.

“What?” Cellbit croaks out. He pulls away from Pac in confusion, already turning to follow her. “Jaid-”

–

He’s shaking. There’s blood on his hands, and he’s shaking. His eyes are closed and he tries to close them harder. There is no blood in his mouth. This is progress. He has to believe this is progress. He has to believe that he wants progress. His room is dark and his bed is hard and he can’t stop shaking.

She’s there, then, curled up the way he is; she’s his mirror, wrapped around herself overtop of the covers. When he opens his eyes she doesn’t move, gazing at him peacefully. “How many?” she asks. There’s a strange quality to her voice, and he struggles to parse it.

“What?” he croaks. His voice his hoarse from crying.

“How many therapists did you go through?”

He chokes on a sob, and doesn’t answer.

She hasn’t pulled away, but she’s further from him, and he reaches for her but can’t bring himself to touch her. There is still blood on his hands. She doesn’t recoil; she watches him curiously, smiling faintly. There is something wrong. “Wow, dude. You’re really fucked up, aren’t you?”

“I’m a monster.”

He blinks and Jaiden is sitting up, suddenly, legs crossed. She blinks a few times before she furrows her brows at him, squinting at where he’s still curled up on the horrible bed. “And I’m a bird,” she offers, uncertain but trying to help.

Cellbit’s tears break down into laughter. He laughs, and laughs, and she joins him.

–

The plan goes bad. The plan goes bad fast.

The hallway is cold, damp and wet- moldy, and covered in rotting vines. It’s dark. He can’t see. He doesn’t know how he got here, but he knows what happens next.

Like in slow motion, he turns. The bear is there, grinning. The chainsaw is there, whirring. He’s there, too, and he’s already screaming before the saw meets his flesh.

Slow motion. Why is it so slow? He watches his own blood fly through the air, splattering across the walls, the bear, himself. It’s not just blood, though, he knows this. It’s meat. Chunks of his own muscle wet his face and coat his hands. He’s frozen, stuck in place. He can’t feel the pain but he’s so acutely aware of it- and then the whirring stops.

Now is his cue to run.

He takes it, gasping for air as he rips himself off of the saw (and there is more gore, more blood, more scraps of him left to smear across the floor). He almost slips in the blood as he turns, but just barely recovers and instead manages to fall into his sprint. .

Fuck. He can’t run fast enough. Slow motion. He’s moving in slow motion, but the bear isn’t, and the chainsaw starts to whirr again behind him. Where can he run? Forwards. Nowhere to hide, but there is a trail of blood left behind him so he can’t hide anyway.

His limbs are heavy, weighed down by terror. His heart is in his ears. Then there are spikes in the floor, and there is blood on the spikes, and there is a woman bleeding.

Before, he tried to jump over the pit. Now, Cellbit stands in front of it and stares, caught like a deer in headlights.

“Cellbit!” Jaiden cheers, happy to see him. She’s embedded deep into the spike pit, impaled in every limb. There are no less than four spikes driven entirely through her torso, and one that has torn away her ear. Her wings are spread out beneath her, and they bleed. She’s pinned like a bug in a glass case, leaking red onto the floor below her. Cellbit tastes metal in his mouth. “This is so cool. I’ve always wanted to star in a horror movie.”

“This isn’t- this isn’t a movie,” he pants, the english thick on his tongue. He’s so confused. He’s so scared. Where are they? Why is she here? She wasn’t here before, before it was just him and-

“Cucurucho!” Jaiden cheers, with the same joy she’d called Cellbit’s name. His blood runs cold. Jaiden keeps talking. “Long time no see, buddy! I like your chainsaw. And all the red is nice, it’s good to see you trying out a new style. Do you like it?”

“Ha ha ha,” Cucurucho says, too close, behind him. Cellbit doesn’t turn. Is he hyperventilating? He keeps his eyes pinned on Jaiden. She is still smiling, and bleeding, and she leans her head happily against the spike that took her ear.

“Jaiden-” Cellbit chokes out. There is a hand on his back. Soft and round. More of a paw than a hand, really. It pats him, once, in a gesture that in any other situation could have been taken as comforting. Here, he knows, it is mocking.

“Yeah?” Jaiden says.

Cellbit doesn’t get the chance to answer. The paw pushes him, and he falls, and in the blink of an eye he’s impaled. One through his stomach, two through his chest, one scraping his neck and one for each arm and two in his left leg and he is screaming, he is crying, he is dying.

Below him, Jaiden’s blue feathers are stained bright red. She’s talking to Cucurucho, but he can’t hear the words.

–

Roier is dead on the ground. His side is open, sliced cleanly with a knife. Cellbit sits quietly next to him, hands bloodied. Jaiden sits on his other side, holding Roier’s heart in her hands.

“I don’t think you would, for the record,” she says, quietly. She holds Roier’s heart up to his mouth, almost reverent, and he almost drowns on the gush of blood when he bites.

–

There is a worm burning in a fire. There is more burning, too, but he watches the thing he has killed the most closely. He wishes it died. He wishes he had more worms. He wishes he could kill it again.

“Is it always like this?” she asks. Again, her posture mirrors his. Her legs are pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees as she watches the fire.

“No,” he answers numbly. “Sometimes Richarlyson is here. I’m surprised that Bagi isn’t.”

She sucks air in through her teeth, and then there’s the weight of her hand on his arm. They sit like that for a minute, watching the fire. Roberto is almost nothing but ash, now.

Jaiden asks, ���If it came down to it- you, Roier, or Cucurucho, who do you think I would choose?”

He puts his chin on his knees and holds himself tighter. “I don’t know.”

“...I don’t think real-me knows that answer, either,” Jaiden admits to him. “But I think you know she loves you… And I think you should wake up now, too. I’m gone.”

He turns to look at her, mouth opening on a question, but she’s gone. The room is gone. It’s dark, and then it’s just- it’s just his Fear room. He’s laying on the ground, curled up in a tight little ball, arms over his head, and his mouth tastes like dust. His joints pop as he uncurls and pushes himself up, the weight of sleep still resting heavy on his bones.

There’s a single blue feather on the ground in front of him. Jaiden is nowhere to be seen.

Cellbit sits there for a long, long moment. Then, he stands up, leaves the Fear room, and goes to find his husband.

He hopes Roier slept better than he did.