#oh title is from 2023 by blue rain boots

[smileygoth]

1. The Monster In Me (WODtober 2023)

Vamptober 2023 begins - or as it's called this year, WODtober! (I prefer Vamptober, but oh well) Using the prompts I'm going to attempt to 'tell a vampire story', as Jason Carl so eloquently puts it on LA by Night! As with last year, I don't really know how it's going to turn out as I'm taking it prompt by prompt, so comments, suggestions and ideas for the final title are welcome! Entries will be collected on my Contents page as the month progresses.

Word Count: 483 words.

CW: Blood. Lots of blood.

Image from @worldofdarkness on Twitter.

Blood.

The taste was heavy in her mouth, coating her tongue, teeth, lips. The scent was all around her, overpowering, intoxicating. Her veins hummed with it, vitality flooding through her in a slow, comforting wave. Her fangs slid out slowly, instinct momentarily overcoming her sated appetite, then retracted to nestle comfortably in her gums. She stirred, stretching luxuriously, and opened her eyes.

Where am I?

Above her was a high ceiling of dull grey tiles. The floor she lay on felt like marble but wasn’t - some cheap imitation. Around her, walls of concrete painted in corporate grey. Floor to ceiling windows letting in the light from the streetlamps outside. A desk, behind which a glowing sign declared it to be ‘Harrogate Enterprises’. All of it, smeared and splattered with crimson.

She looked around her and saw the bodies. Security guards, a few people in business suits. She counted eleven in total. All dead. Some torn apart, others drained of blood, their skin shrivelling and turning grey under the bright fluorescent lights.

Did I do this? 

The question seemed foolish even as she thought it. Their blood was in her mouth, in her veins .. and all over her hands and clothes, she realised as she looked down. In her shirt, directly over her heart, was a neat round hole, the skin beneath it puckered in a scar that was fading away as she watched, healed by the blood. 

Did somebody stake me? 

She looked up and again found her answer. A wooden crate, just big enough for a body to rest in, lay open near the doors, and next to it a long pointed piece of wood, the sharp end bloody. 

But the next question that occurred to her was not so easily answered. 

Who am I? 

She searched for the answer, groping around in her mind, but it was like rummaging around in an empty box. Nails grating over the insides, irritating, coming up with nothing. She grimaced and dug in deeper. 

The slowly swelling wail of sirens didn’t distract her from her thoughts, but the bright strobes of blue spilling through the windows did. She turned her head to look and saw multiple eyes staring in at her. Wide, horrified. Phones raised, camera flashes twinkling. Rough voices shouting at them to stand aside, get out of the way, police coming through.

Her name - of lack of it - forgotten, she let instinct take over. She scrambled to her feet, boots slipping on blood and the slick marble floor, and bolted to the back of the building. Office buildings seemed to all be built the same these days, and she found a fire exit with no trouble, shoving it open and racing out into cold winter rain, ignoring the blare of the alarm she’d triggered. It was way too late to be stealthy - she just needed to get away. As far away as possible.

[hirokiyuu]

i mentioned on the dys>sol/nomi i was gonna be posting more of my fic backlog on here and then Did Not Do That..... until now! have some dys>sol>cal. 'you sure write a lot of dys>sol where sol likes other people' yeah. yeah. i won't lie to you guys tho this run does eventually end w/dys/sol but. u kno. takes a bit :)

aaaaanyways please enjoy this Unrequited Teen Angst WWWWWWW set during early year 16!

is that the sun i see (or am i just being greedy); 700 words

Sol’s weirdly moody on the transport. Usually even if he’s quiet, he’ll be fiddling with his holopalm or listening to music or something, but today he’s in the very back, just staring out at the scenery, and when their eyes meet for half a second he doesn’t even smile. Sol always smiles when he sees Dys, which honestly used to kind of weird him out but these days… does not do that.

Still, as the team files out of the transport and breaks off into pairs, Dys keeps an eye on him instead of scouting ahead like normal -- which ends up being a good thing, because after about fives minutes out by themselves Sol suddenly lets out an enormous groan and slumps over, hunched in over himself. And Dys can’t feel fear but his heart’s pounding anyways as he runs over, careful to keep an eye on their surroundings as he leans over and says, urgently, “Sol, what --”

The moment his hand touches Sol’s back Sol jumps, enough to send himself falling back on his ass in the dirt, eyes wide with surprise like he hadn’t heard Dys sprinting towards him. “Dys?” he sputters, before glancing around. “I thought -- I mean, don’t you normally go on ahead…?”

He doesn't look hurt at all, though on closer inspection there’s bags under his eyes Dys’s never seen on his face before. “I mean,” says Dys, who can’t bring himself to say I was worried about you, “you were acting weird, so….”

“Oh,” says Sol, before managing a tiny grin up at him. “That’s… that’s really nice of you. Thanks.”

“Whatever.” Ugh. He can feel his stupid face going red. The worst part is that he can’t even leave, not with how Sol’s smile is still wobbling at the edges. “...Are you okay?”

“Oh, well, um… I mean, that’s….” The smile slides off Sol’s face piece by piece, until he gives up on it all at once and sighs miserably, pulling his knees in close until he’s curled up on himself in the dirt. “No.”

Dys… can’t even pretend to be surprised. Slowly he sits down next to Sol, watching as Sol leans forward to rest his chin on his arms, for once not even fidgeting. “...It’s stupid,” says Sol, finally. “It’s really stupid, and you’re gonna think it’s stupid too. But… if I tell you… can you pretend you don’t think it is? Just for like, ten minutes.”

This already sounds like it’s going to suck. “...Okay. I won’t… say anything, I guess.”

“Thanks.”

The moment drags out. Dys picks a little at a hangnail, waiting. Finally, Sol sighs again, and doesn’t quite look at Dys as he says, “Cal and Tammy are dating.”

“...Oh.”

“He told me on my birthday.” Sol tilts even further forward, until his face is buried in his arms, and with a muffled voice says, “Like, he knocked on the door and she was there and he had his hand on her back. And she’d made me a cake, which was like, nice or whatever, but it was so unbearable just seeing them together and I just -- I just had to sit there and pretend I was happy for them….

“Apparently she asked him out during Glow? Like, after the attack? And I saw them together in the lounge but I didn’t even realize….” There is, horrifyingly, a sniffing noise. “Stupid… stupid Fennec Face. She’s not… she’s not even that cute, and she’s afraid of everything, and I… I….”

Another sniff. Dys is probably the person least equipped to deal with this in the entire colony, not in the least because he heard Cal was dating someone else and his first reaction was gratitude. “...Sorry,” he offers up, finally. “That… that sucks.”

“Yeah,” says Sol, as he burrows deeper into his arms. “I… I just… I really like him. Y’know?”

Quietly, Dys answers, “I know.”

In response Sol just lets out this big shuddering sigh, somehow burrowing even deeper. “Sorry,” he says. “I know it’s stupid. I… Sorry.”

Dys can’t think of anything to say to that, can’t think of a single thing that might make Sol feel a little better. Instead of trying anyways he just sits there like an idiot, keeping half an eye on the planet around them to make sure they don’t get eaten by anything, and next to him Sol doesn’t move for a long, long time.