ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Rabid

Vignette - Rabid
Insight angst
Dramatis Personae Killian	2015-11-14 Did they too fear the undeath? (Zombie Flu Plot)
Location <BOM> The Doghouse - Ascension Island
Resisting a change was always far worse than succumbing to one. As his mind fades in and out, mercifully dulled by sedation and disease, he’s unable to focus on anything long enough to act on it. The intermittently escalating bouts of rage compete only with the pain that festers bone-deep, making trivial the external wounds he’s unable to heal. Every cell in his body burns, volatile and unstable, begging the retreat of some /other/ form than this one. Anything but being human. Bits and pieces of the plague’s treatment come to his fluctuating consciousness, but rarely the pieces that make sense enough to not elicit panic. The intravenous line of the medication, the whole-body ache, the nausea, and the slowly dying mind all of it claims to cure together threatens to recreate the Promethean nightmare he'd spent so long within. Startling awake, Killian emits a moan caught somewhere between a growl and a whimper both not beast and not human. Even in a place that should be counted as safe, locked away in his own room on the Brotherhood’s island, the scarred metamorph has only been here a few months, even less in the cabin itself. That which should be familiar proves not so comforting, and haunted eyes stare upwards at the ceiling. The sedation wanes as the hours tick on, and his wakefulness slowly begins to outnumber the stretches of uncomfortable sleep. His body craves the change, his mind the reprieve of hiding behind a greater strength than his and instincts more powerful than human determination alone. But in illness, it seems, those minds dominate, lending nothing left to leash their reflexive and destructive reactions. Even here, even removed from the anxiety-eliciting white walls of the infirmary, he remains abnormally more than peripherally aware of the minds he keeps with him. Did they too fear the undeath? The dog is always there, its existence the ever-present comfort of /familiar/. Of familial kindness. Of the reminder that happiness can be so simple. But the other forms he keeps- for protection, battle, escape- are always more unpredictable by nature and ever-changing course. It’s these that demand control when he falls to any surge of adrenaline, and these that serve him best in times of need. The jaguar now presses his limbs to pace, the hawk his heart to race, the rat to chew the line and free himself from this tether. -dance, fucker, dance. He never had a chance. And no one even knew, It was really only- Killian sits straight up with gasping breaths, his hand reaching for his phone too violently, sending the beaten device across the room to clatter against the floor, cutting off the alarm’s song mid-verse. Had he really fallen back asleep? The alarm only meant one thing. It’s done, it’s over. A shaking hand rises to his left, a short yank ripping the tape from his skin and needle from his arm. The blood that drains from it after doesn’t stop him from staggering to his feet and nearly collapsing against the window pane. He wipes his sweaty, pale, green-tainted face as he fumbles for the hook. The latch had been tampered with enough that even a small cat could paw it open, leaving the effort to be minimal. But even minimal effort seems enormous. When he finally manages it open, the shapeshifter tumbles desperately through. He hits the dirt with chest, arms, and knees. Fingers dig into the soil, the irises of his eyes shifting wolven gold, their tapetums glowing in brilliant iridescent whites and yellows from the cabin lights that reflect on them from afar. He bares his teeth in a snarl, the growl reverberating within his throat growing with the rising anger that had been barely stifled for hours. The overpowering /need/ to give in and make those hands paws is caught and chained by a single thought: Brothers. He’d not release an animal of rabid, decaying mind onto the island again. He didn’t join the Brotherhood intending to /care/. It was supposed to be an outlet as a hitman for a better cause than impatient illegal dealers. But that wasn’t how this was all panning out. He was starting to feel uncomfortably protective. At once sure that he’d abandon any for the sake of his own hide, he now questioned if he always could. Killian wretches from all the quick movements. The gasp after is not for air, but from suppressing the wolf’s wild fervor and the scalding fire that radiates from every joint, every tissue of his form as he manages to do so. He turns his eyes up to the clear night sky edged with the not-so-distant city’s glow, falling to one side and over onto his back. And he stays there, giving his consciousness to the basics of the moment: the freshness of the air in his overheated airways, the chill of autumn on his skin, the dampness of the night’s ground beneath him. And the minds slowly become sated in this. This freedom, this release, this calm. For now, they rest.