...I don't even know!
So, who wants to read a graphic, gory, gruesome tale about a very unfortunate dude working in a paranormal prison? If so, have I got a story for you. Believe it or not, I got the idea from something mentioned on TV Tropes.
It's called Semantics and it's about 1,650 words. Warnings for graphic descriptions of gore and mutilation and other squicky things. Hopefully it manages to be vaguely humorous at some point, too. There's backstory here, but I don't know if I'll write it.
Lars Dahlstrom walked the main aisle of the Gramary Institute’s infirmary for patients afflicted by workings of the occult or other paranormal diseases or happenings, a.k.a. ‘the zoo’. Tapping his pen on his clipboard in time to the thump of regulation rubber boots on whitewashed cement floor, Lars brooded. It was Tuesday; Lars hated Tuesdays, primarily because they were so far away from Fridays. Of course, Tuesdays were also Lars’ assigned rounds for follow-up on ‘patient maintenance’, better known as ‘feeding time’.
As Lars walked, something ruddy brown and slimy flew from between the bars of Patient “Nathair MacArthur” 009467’s cell, landing with a wet slap on the floor scant inches from the toes of Lars’ boots. It suspiciously resembled a chunk of liver.
“Hey, mate,” hissed a gravelly voice from somewhere within the dark recesses of 009467’s cage. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to toss that back to me, then?”
Lars toed the squishy, seeping piece of meat. Definitely a chunk of liver. “Not a chance in hell, MacArthur.”
There was a sound like sifting sand, magnified in the echoing blackness; scales sliding over cement. Nathair’s face appeared from the gloom, elongated and ridged with scaly protrusions. His hands—rudimentary caricatures of such—wrapped around the bars. “Come on; just kick it back over, yeah? I’ll reach.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” Lars stepped over the liver chunk, dismissing the request. “Aren’t you supposed to swallow food whole, anyway?”
“I like to take out the good bits and save ‘em for later,” Nathair explained, making a plaintive grasping motion in the direction of his lost lunch.
“Then you probably ought to refrain from throwing them at me,” Lars said bitterly, moving on.
A few steps rang out in relative silence, amidst growls and snarls and unpleasant, wet tearing sounds. Finally, almost indecipherably: “Miserable, warm-blooded sack of inefficient vestigial organs. Who trod on his tail?”
“One more word, MacArthur, and you won’t have your heating lamp turned back on until Sunday,” Lars snapped. Nathair hissed, sandpaper scritch-scratching marking his retreat to the back of the cell.
Somewhere down the hall, a harpy shrieked. Sometimes Lars hated his job.
The zoo was little more than a prison for creatures who couldn’t be trusted in society—hell, they could hardly be trusted here—but ‘infirmary for the magically ill’ looked better on grant applications than ‘jail for the criminally paranormal’. And to be fair, they did receive medical treatment for their various and sundry ‘ailments’…if they wanted. Most of them, Lars thought, were either biding their time until new management came along and freed them in a fit of wishy-washy, leftist diplomacy, or were simply enjoying the free room to themselves with three square meals a day (or once an hour, or twice per month, as the case may be) and access to basic cable. Sometimes Lars wished he had it as good, albeit with a bit less fresh liver.
Lars was only to check on problem cases. Oh joy. Somewhere on this list was Patient 009831, Luperca Adams, and he figured he may as well get her out of the way as fast as possible.
Approaching the dreaded cell, Lars rapped on the reinforced steel door with the backs of his knuckles. “Adams?” he inquired into the black door grate. No answer. Lars sighed. “Luperca Adams.” Nothing. “Patient 009831, answer me right now or so help me god I will get a guard down here with a tazer. Don’t test me.”
Still, there was utter silence. Well, not utter silence…there was something…a faint sound, like someone stepping in mud. Squish, squish, slurp…
“Luca?” Lars asked faintly.
Squish. Riiiip.
“…Luca, what the hell are you doing? Answer me.”
Slurp, squish…
“Luca, you’re not cute. Say something or I’m getting a guard.”
Snarl.
“Okay, fuck this,” Lars muttered. He flipped through the key ring at his belt until he found 009831, removed it, and fit it into the lock. “I’m opening the door. Stand where I can see you and if you so much as twitch, I will tranq you. Twice.” He didn’t actually have his standard issue tranquilizer dart gun with him, but in his experience, bluffing confidently went a long way. He pulled open the door.
Ohhhhh hell.
“Jesus!” Lars exclaimed, stumbling back—his grip on the doorframe was all that saved him. Luca looked up, yellow eyes narrowed and snout wrinkled as she huddled defensively over her dinner, snarling.
Lars swallowed a few times, willing his legs to stop rattling. He felt a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. Keep calm, Lars. You’ve seen a dead man before.
Lars had seen a dead man before. He’d even seen the inside of a dead man before; neat, bloodless incisions on an autopsy table. He’d never seen the inside of a dead man all over the floor, however. He’d never seen a corpse’s belly ripped open by canine teeth, soft and vulnerable flesh rent messily apart, stinking viscera exposed and hanging out like so much fishing bait. He’d never seen so much blood, slick and coppery and violently red, coating skin, floors, walls, fur. He’d never seen a dead man staring terrified from blind eyes, mouth open and seeping blood, throat torn out in a killing blow, fingers bloody and clenched against the floor leaving desperate trails of crimson on concrete.
Unceremoniously, Lars’ legs decided that supporting his weight was highly overrated. His knees slammed into the hard cement floor, but he was too focused on not vomiting to worry much about the pain.
“What’s your problem?” Luca said irritably.
Lars took a moment to kneel on the floor with his hand clamped over his mouth, trying to take in some air that wasn’t tainted by blood and bowel. Eventually, he got shakily to his feet and clutched the doorframe. “Fuck, Luca,” he said.
“What?” she asked again. He looked. He shouldn’t have looked.
Luca was in full human form now, naked as her gored dinner, still hunkered over the corpse as if wary that Lars would try to take a piece for himself. She was soaked in blood. There were brownish bloodstains, sticky and drying, all over her arms and torso, while redder, fresher blood coated her hands and face all the way up into her bristly hair. As she stared at him, a rivulet of blood/saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth. There was a scrap of flesh hanging from her teeth. Lars suppressed the urge to vomit again.
“Why,” he finally managed, “didn’t you just answer me?”
Luca shrugged, lithe shoulders rolling in a strikingly canine fashion. “My mouth was full.” She slurped up the bit of flesh stuck to her lip, and Lars gagged. “What’s wrong with you? I don’t act like I’m being morally offended when you’re eating.”
Lars wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, you never did, I guess.” He made an effort to straighten up. “Christ…don’t you have any clothes?”
“Don’t need them anymore,” she said matter-of-factly, and then, much to Lars’ abject horror, she leaned down and bit into a chunk of torn meat, lifting her head and pulling until it snapped away. She chewed it complacently, skin hanging from her mouth.
“That’s disgusting,” Lars said hollowly, clutching his stomach. “Ugh. Fucking werewolves.” He turned around, pressing a hand over his face in a futile attempt to block out the stench of split intestines. It was almost unbearable.
“Wifwolf,” said Luca. Her mouth sounded full.
“…What?”
“I’m a wifwolf.”
“Fuck you, you’re a werewolf. Don’t argue semantics with me.”
“You used to be a lot nicer than this,” said Luca. There was a gulping sound, and her next words were clearer: “Anyway, I’m a wifwolf whether you think so or not.”
Lars took a deep breath of stale but less stinking air from the hallway before turning back around, avoiding the sight of the corpse by looking into Luca’s yellow-tinted hazel eyes, which turned out to be a mistake. So that’s what untainted resentment looked like. He focused on the wall above her head instead. “Okay, fine. What’s a wifwolf?”
“Female version of a werewolf.” She bent her head to chew on the dead man’s flesh again. Lars was suddenly glad he’d forgone lunch after all. “The word ‘were’ is the archaic English word for an adult male human. ‘Wif’ is an adult female human. I’m an adult female lycanthrope, hence, wifwolf.” Another slimy slurping sound punctuated this. “Etymologically, in old English times and for a long time before, the word ‘man’ was genderless, a substitution for ‘mankind’, which is why the Bible is full of statements like, oh, ‘Some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom’ and why the Marquis de Lafayette drafted the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” She sat back and shook her head like a dog, scratching behind her ear. “So, semantics, yes, but it’s only polite, don’t you think?”
Lars stared. “Okay, new rule,” he said at last. “No administering linguistic lessons while naked and covered in blood.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When would you suggest I give them, then, Lars?”
Lars couldn’t keep from laughing at that. It was a horrified sort of laugh, but he couldn’t stop it. He shook his head, ran his hands through his hair. “Luca…just finish eating your fucking corpse and hose yourself off.” He slammed the door closed and locked it as fast as he could with shaking hands, fighting the urge to run away and never come back. “And it’s Dr. Dahlstrom.”
Lars stumbled away down the hall. He left the zoo, clocked out, and went home; if Turner called him up later to bitch him out, so be it. He needed a drink.
There was still a bottle of wine left in the cupboard, wasn’t there?
Lars hoped it was white.
It's called Semantics and it's about 1,650 words. Warnings for graphic descriptions of gore and mutilation and other squicky things. Hopefully it manages to be vaguely humorous at some point, too. There's backstory here, but I don't know if I'll write it.
Lars Dahlstrom walked the main aisle of the Gramary Institute’s infirmary for patients afflicted by workings of the occult or other paranormal diseases or happenings, a.k.a. ‘the zoo’. Tapping his pen on his clipboard in time to the thump of regulation rubber boots on whitewashed cement floor, Lars brooded. It was Tuesday; Lars hated Tuesdays, primarily because they were so far away from Fridays. Of course, Tuesdays were also Lars’ assigned rounds for follow-up on ‘patient maintenance’, better known as ‘feeding time’.
As Lars walked, something ruddy brown and slimy flew from between the bars of Patient “Nathair MacArthur” 009467’s cell, landing with a wet slap on the floor scant inches from the toes of Lars’ boots. It suspiciously resembled a chunk of liver.
“Hey, mate,” hissed a gravelly voice from somewhere within the dark recesses of 009467’s cage. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to toss that back to me, then?”
Lars toed the squishy, seeping piece of meat. Definitely a chunk of liver. “Not a chance in hell, MacArthur.”
There was a sound like sifting sand, magnified in the echoing blackness; scales sliding over cement. Nathair’s face appeared from the gloom, elongated and ridged with scaly protrusions. His hands—rudimentary caricatures of such—wrapped around the bars. “Come on; just kick it back over, yeah? I’ll reach.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” Lars stepped over the liver chunk, dismissing the request. “Aren’t you supposed to swallow food whole, anyway?”
“I like to take out the good bits and save ‘em for later,” Nathair explained, making a plaintive grasping motion in the direction of his lost lunch.
“Then you probably ought to refrain from throwing them at me,” Lars said bitterly, moving on.
A few steps rang out in relative silence, amidst growls and snarls and unpleasant, wet tearing sounds. Finally, almost indecipherably: “Miserable, warm-blooded sack of inefficient vestigial organs. Who trod on his tail?”
“One more word, MacArthur, and you won’t have your heating lamp turned back on until Sunday,” Lars snapped. Nathair hissed, sandpaper scritch-scratching marking his retreat to the back of the cell.
Somewhere down the hall, a harpy shrieked. Sometimes Lars hated his job.
The zoo was little more than a prison for creatures who couldn’t be trusted in society—hell, they could hardly be trusted here—but ‘infirmary for the magically ill’ looked better on grant applications than ‘jail for the criminally paranormal’. And to be fair, they did receive medical treatment for their various and sundry ‘ailments’…if they wanted. Most of them, Lars thought, were either biding their time until new management came along and freed them in a fit of wishy-washy, leftist diplomacy, or were simply enjoying the free room to themselves with three square meals a day (or once an hour, or twice per month, as the case may be) and access to basic cable. Sometimes Lars wished he had it as good, albeit with a bit less fresh liver.
Lars was only to check on problem cases. Oh joy. Somewhere on this list was Patient 009831, Luperca Adams, and he figured he may as well get her out of the way as fast as possible.
Approaching the dreaded cell, Lars rapped on the reinforced steel door with the backs of his knuckles. “Adams?” he inquired into the black door grate. No answer. Lars sighed. “Luperca Adams.” Nothing. “Patient 009831, answer me right now or so help me god I will get a guard down here with a tazer. Don’t test me.”
Still, there was utter silence. Well, not utter silence…there was something…a faint sound, like someone stepping in mud. Squish, squish, slurp…
“Luca?” Lars asked faintly.
Squish. Riiiip.
“…Luca, what the hell are you doing? Answer me.”
Slurp, squish…
“Luca, you’re not cute. Say something or I’m getting a guard.”
Snarl.
“Okay, fuck this,” Lars muttered. He flipped through the key ring at his belt until he found 009831, removed it, and fit it into the lock. “I’m opening the door. Stand where I can see you and if you so much as twitch, I will tranq you. Twice.” He didn’t actually have his standard issue tranquilizer dart gun with him, but in his experience, bluffing confidently went a long way. He pulled open the door.
Ohhhhh hell.
“Jesus!” Lars exclaimed, stumbling back—his grip on the doorframe was all that saved him. Luca looked up, yellow eyes narrowed and snout wrinkled as she huddled defensively over her dinner, snarling.
Lars swallowed a few times, willing his legs to stop rattling. He felt a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. Keep calm, Lars. You’ve seen a dead man before.
Lars had seen a dead man before. He’d even seen the inside of a dead man before; neat, bloodless incisions on an autopsy table. He’d never seen the inside of a dead man all over the floor, however. He’d never seen a corpse’s belly ripped open by canine teeth, soft and vulnerable flesh rent messily apart, stinking viscera exposed and hanging out like so much fishing bait. He’d never seen so much blood, slick and coppery and violently red, coating skin, floors, walls, fur. He’d never seen a dead man staring terrified from blind eyes, mouth open and seeping blood, throat torn out in a killing blow, fingers bloody and clenched against the floor leaving desperate trails of crimson on concrete.
Unceremoniously, Lars’ legs decided that supporting his weight was highly overrated. His knees slammed into the hard cement floor, but he was too focused on not vomiting to worry much about the pain.
“What’s your problem?” Luca said irritably.
Lars took a moment to kneel on the floor with his hand clamped over his mouth, trying to take in some air that wasn’t tainted by blood and bowel. Eventually, he got shakily to his feet and clutched the doorframe. “Fuck, Luca,” he said.
“What?” she asked again. He looked. He shouldn’t have looked.
Luca was in full human form now, naked as her gored dinner, still hunkered over the corpse as if wary that Lars would try to take a piece for himself. She was soaked in blood. There were brownish bloodstains, sticky and drying, all over her arms and torso, while redder, fresher blood coated her hands and face all the way up into her bristly hair. As she stared at him, a rivulet of blood/saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth. There was a scrap of flesh hanging from her teeth. Lars suppressed the urge to vomit again.
“Why,” he finally managed, “didn’t you just answer me?”
Luca shrugged, lithe shoulders rolling in a strikingly canine fashion. “My mouth was full.” She slurped up the bit of flesh stuck to her lip, and Lars gagged. “What’s wrong with you? I don’t act like I’m being morally offended when you’re eating.”
Lars wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, you never did, I guess.” He made an effort to straighten up. “Christ…don’t you have any clothes?”
“Don’t need them anymore,” she said matter-of-factly, and then, much to Lars’ abject horror, she leaned down and bit into a chunk of torn meat, lifting her head and pulling until it snapped away. She chewed it complacently, skin hanging from her mouth.
“That’s disgusting,” Lars said hollowly, clutching his stomach. “Ugh. Fucking werewolves.” He turned around, pressing a hand over his face in a futile attempt to block out the stench of split intestines. It was almost unbearable.
“Wifwolf,” said Luca. Her mouth sounded full.
“…What?”
“I’m a wifwolf.”
“Fuck you, you’re a werewolf. Don’t argue semantics with me.”
“You used to be a lot nicer than this,” said Luca. There was a gulping sound, and her next words were clearer: “Anyway, I’m a wifwolf whether you think so or not.”
Lars took a deep breath of stale but less stinking air from the hallway before turning back around, avoiding the sight of the corpse by looking into Luca’s yellow-tinted hazel eyes, which turned out to be a mistake. So that’s what untainted resentment looked like. He focused on the wall above her head instead. “Okay, fine. What’s a wifwolf?”
“Female version of a werewolf.” She bent her head to chew on the dead man’s flesh again. Lars was suddenly glad he’d forgone lunch after all. “The word ‘were’ is the archaic English word for an adult male human. ‘Wif’ is an adult female human. I’m an adult female lycanthrope, hence, wifwolf.” Another slimy slurping sound punctuated this. “Etymologically, in old English times and for a long time before, the word ‘man’ was genderless, a substitution for ‘mankind’, which is why the Bible is full of statements like, oh, ‘Some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom’ and why the Marquis de Lafayette drafted the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” She sat back and shook her head like a dog, scratching behind her ear. “So, semantics, yes, but it’s only polite, don’t you think?”
Lars stared. “Okay, new rule,” he said at last. “No administering linguistic lessons while naked and covered in blood.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When would you suggest I give them, then, Lars?”
Lars couldn’t keep from laughing at that. It was a horrified sort of laugh, but he couldn’t stop it. He shook his head, ran his hands through his hair. “Luca…just finish eating your fucking corpse and hose yourself off.” He slammed the door closed and locked it as fast as he could with shaking hands, fighting the urge to run away and never come back. “And it’s Dr. Dahlstrom.”
Lars stumbled away down the hall. He left the zoo, clocked out, and went home; if Turner called him up later to bitch him out, so be it. He needed a drink.
There was still a bottle of wine left in the cupboard, wasn’t there?
Lars hoped it was white.