Clare-Dragonfly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clare_dragonfly) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2012-03-30 11:16 pm
clare_dragonfly) wrote in rainbowfic2012-03-30 11:16 pm
The Cave
Name: Clare
Story: Extranormal Crimes
Colors: Tyrian Purple 1, chained to a rock; Heart Gold 19, It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. - William Thackeray; Caput Mortuum 1, Pallor mortis
Supplies and Materials: Canvas, bichromatic
Word Count: 1,648
Rating: PG-13 for nudity
Warnings: No standard warnings apply
Notes: I have a thing for caves. Uhm, this is the sequel to Safety. Thanks tomalapropism for making me think about what happens next! And now I have more thoughts about what happens after this, so it might turn into a whole series about Hugh and his newfound vampirism...
Hugh opened his eyes.
Well, he hadn’t been expecting that.
What he’d been expecting even less was how everything looked. It was all so… clear and bright. It was like daylight, but something seemed wrong.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows. No, it definitely wasn’t daylight—at least not the kind of daylight he was thinking of. The sun seemed to be up, but only a faint, pale light made its way into the cave past the door he had constructed.
His head must have been clearer now, because he realized that it wasn’t the most brilliant idea. Anyone could have gotten through that barrier in seconds. He remembered thinking about guns. Where was his gun? In a sudden panic, he felt around, realizing only after a moment that he was naked, which would explain why he wasn’t wearing his gun.
He rolled onto his side to look for his clothes and his weapon and was instantly distracted. Judith was still there. And she was naked, too. She lay on her side, her head pillowed on her hands, her chest rising and falling softly with each breath. The movement of her breasts was very distracting. Her skin was flushed and pink, as though after activity. After a moment his mind returned to the original question, which had been, why was everything so clear? The sun must have just risen, but he could see every line and hollow of her body perfectly—not to mention all the crags and crannies of the cave around them.
It was like his vision was improved somehow. He’d always had perfect, twenty-twenty vision, but this was… beyond that.
He eventually forced himself to roll over onto his other side. Ah, there were his clothes. They were a bit torn from Judith’s enthusiasm, but still mostly intact. He stood up, banged his head on the ceiling of the cave, and sat down again. The pain dissipated almost instantly. Trying to move quietly, but in a very awkward position, he began pulling his clothes on. Each rustle of his suit sounded loud in his ears.
It must have sounded loud to Judith, too, because she soon sat up and stretched, her curly hair falling fetchingly about her shoulders. He was distracted again, and it took him a minute to finish buckling on his belt. At least the reassuring heft of his gun against his hip returned him fully to the present.
“What did you do to me?” he asked as softly as he could. He didn’t want to blame her—she was so beautiful and sweet—but he was not slow enough to think that whatever had changed was somehow spontaneous.
There were, after all, monsters on this island.
She sighed and looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I knew you’d be angry. But I couldn’t help myself.”
“I’m not angry,” he said, surprised to find that it was actually, definitely true. Okay, he was mad at himself, a little bit. (Had he really seen Judith as a complete innocent last night? Now, remembering the sharp pain in his neck, he didn’t know how he could ever have been so naïve. Just because she was beautiful didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t like he’d never had to learn that lesson before.) But not at her. He felt that he could never be angry at her.
She looked up, her eyes wide and innocent-looking again. “Really?”
“Really.” They were talking in normal voices now. He supposed that, whatever else might be on the island, they could probably handle them now. If they even wanted to. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
She smiled, showing teeth. He realized she hadn’t done that the whole time they were talking last night at the same time as he realized two of those teeth were unnaturally long and pointed. “You haven’t figured it out? I’m a vampire.”
“But you didn’t kill me,” he said. Then it hit him, like a punch in the stomach. “You made me a vampire, too.”
She nodded, then turned around, reaching for her dress. She didn’t put it on right away, and he had a pleasing opportunity to stare directly at her perfect (really, truly, inhumanly perfect) ass before she turned around again, holding out a small, round object. “Here.”
He took it, confused, and found a clasp at one side. When he opened it, he found it was a mirror. He took a deep breath and held it up to his face, afraid of what he would see.
It took him several confused seconds, turning the reflection about and around, to realize that there was nothing to see. He simply wasn’t reflected at all.
He closed it and held it out to Judith, and saw that she was laughing. He shook his head, but he couldn’t help smiling in return. “And you just carry this around with you?”
“I had it on me to look for humans with. I knew you FBI guys were on the island. I figured if I saw anything reflected in the mirror and it wasn’t an animal, I would have found you. And, well, I did.”
“So was this your plan all along?”
“Oh, no, not at all! I was just going to eat you. But…” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, a pose that would have been childish if she had been capable of doing anything childish, or at least if she wasn’t wearing a short skirt with nothing underneath. “Well, you were so sweet and you were trying so hard to protect me. I didn’t think you deserved to die. I thought you would make a good vampire.” She swallowed and looked to the side. “I guess I shouldn’t be worried about you being mad, even if you were. It’s the others who are going to be mad.”
“You’re not the only one?”
“Oh, no, there’s about a dozen of us… yeah, I guess thirteen now, including you.” She sighed. “And who knows when we’re going to get fresh food that isn’t animal blood. Yeah, they’re going to be mad.”
“Why do you all live here on this island?”
“Well, I don’t know how the first guy ended up here. He’s really vague about it. I think it was a shipwreck or something and he’s embarrassed that he let that happen to him. But he’s been turning people one at a time for a few hundred years.”
Hugh shook his head. “But if you’re worried about finding food, why don’t you go to the the mainland? Wouldn’t that be easier? I mean, I don’t want to kill anybody. And I’m not saying you should. But there’s a pretty good-sized town just across on the ferry, and a big city about an hour away from that.”
Judith sighed again and finally turned back to face him. Her lips were twisted in an ironic smirk. “We’re all trapped here.”
“How?”
She made a gesture that seemed to encompass everything around them. “The water. None of us can cross it. We’ve tried. Apparently, the rule is you have to be asleep to cross running water.”
“Oh. I… guess that would explain why the stories never talked about vampires on the mainland.” He rested his head against the uncomfortable rock wall, thinking. “You know, the FBI really should listen when people have the same story for a hundred years. I’ll tell them that, if I ever get back.” He felt a sudden, wrenching pain in his heart. The rest of his team. He hadn’t wanted to believe it last night, but they must all be dead, mustn’t they? “I bet you guys like that we kept sending teams here, looking for the psychopathic killer we expected, huh? Fresh food.”
“And you.”
He rolled his head to look at her. She was still smiling. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Well… I’m not sure. But I guess I’d rather be a vampire than dead.” It would probably take him a while to get used to being undead. He’d so loved being alive… but so far, this didn’t seem all that different, except for the part where he evidently couldn’t leave this island. Not unless he could, somehow, persuade a living person to carry him on and off the ferry…
If the FBI ever sent another team to this island—he wasn’t sure how likely that was, since his team would be the third in thirty years to go and not return—he would try that. He still had his badge, after all; he would be presumed dead, but whatever new agents there were probably wouldn’t know that.
Yeah, that’s what he would do. And maybe he’d be able to get Judith off the island with him too. But for now… well, undeath with her didn’t seem so bad. He managed to stretch his face into a smile. Looking at her made it easier. He reached his hand out toward her. “So thanks for taking care of me.”
She looked at his hand for a moment, then unclasped her own hand from his and took it. “You’re welcome. As long as you help take care of me when we go to talk to the other vampires.”
“Sure.” He squeezed her hand and looked up at the entrance to the cave, where slender shafts of sunlight still streamed in through the gaps in his barrier. “When do you want to do that?”
“Now, if you’re up for it.”
He turned back to her, his smile fading. “Can we do that?”
She clambered onto her hand and knees, tugging on his hand. “Yeah. Not all vampire lore is true. The sun is fine. But I’ll warn you, you’re never going to be able to eat Italian food again.”
Hugh groaned theatrically and let Judith lead him out of the cave.
Story: Extranormal Crimes
Colors: Tyrian Purple 1, chained to a rock; Heart Gold 19, It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. - William Thackeray; Caput Mortuum 1, Pallor mortis
Supplies and Materials: Canvas, bichromatic
Word Count: 1,648
Rating: PG-13 for nudity
Warnings: No standard warnings apply
Notes: I have a thing for caves. Uhm, this is the sequel to Safety. Thanks to
malapropism for making me think about what happens next! And now I have more thoughts about what happens after this, so it might turn into a whole series about Hugh and his newfound vampirism...Hugh opened his eyes.
Well, he hadn’t been expecting that.
What he’d been expecting even less was how everything looked. It was all so… clear and bright. It was like daylight, but something seemed wrong.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows. No, it definitely wasn’t daylight—at least not the kind of daylight he was thinking of. The sun seemed to be up, but only a faint, pale light made its way into the cave past the door he had constructed.
His head must have been clearer now, because he realized that it wasn’t the most brilliant idea. Anyone could have gotten through that barrier in seconds. He remembered thinking about guns. Where was his gun? In a sudden panic, he felt around, realizing only after a moment that he was naked, which would explain why he wasn’t wearing his gun.
He rolled onto his side to look for his clothes and his weapon and was instantly distracted. Judith was still there. And she was naked, too. She lay on her side, her head pillowed on her hands, her chest rising and falling softly with each breath. The movement of her breasts was very distracting. Her skin was flushed and pink, as though after activity. After a moment his mind returned to the original question, which had been, why was everything so clear? The sun must have just risen, but he could see every line and hollow of her body perfectly—not to mention all the crags and crannies of the cave around them.
It was like his vision was improved somehow. He’d always had perfect, twenty-twenty vision, but this was… beyond that.
He eventually forced himself to roll over onto his other side. Ah, there were his clothes. They were a bit torn from Judith’s enthusiasm, but still mostly intact. He stood up, banged his head on the ceiling of the cave, and sat down again. The pain dissipated almost instantly. Trying to move quietly, but in a very awkward position, he began pulling his clothes on. Each rustle of his suit sounded loud in his ears.
It must have sounded loud to Judith, too, because she soon sat up and stretched, her curly hair falling fetchingly about her shoulders. He was distracted again, and it took him a minute to finish buckling on his belt. At least the reassuring heft of his gun against his hip returned him fully to the present.
“What did you do to me?” he asked as softly as he could. He didn’t want to blame her—she was so beautiful and sweet—but he was not slow enough to think that whatever had changed was somehow spontaneous.
There were, after all, monsters on this island.
She sighed and looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I knew you’d be angry. But I couldn’t help myself.”
“I’m not angry,” he said, surprised to find that it was actually, definitely true. Okay, he was mad at himself, a little bit. (Had he really seen Judith as a complete innocent last night? Now, remembering the sharp pain in his neck, he didn’t know how he could ever have been so naïve. Just because she was beautiful didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t like he’d never had to learn that lesson before.) But not at her. He felt that he could never be angry at her.
She looked up, her eyes wide and innocent-looking again. “Really?”
“Really.” They were talking in normal voices now. He supposed that, whatever else might be on the island, they could probably handle them now. If they even wanted to. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
She smiled, showing teeth. He realized she hadn’t done that the whole time they were talking last night at the same time as he realized two of those teeth were unnaturally long and pointed. “You haven’t figured it out? I’m a vampire.”
“But you didn’t kill me,” he said. Then it hit him, like a punch in the stomach. “You made me a vampire, too.”
She nodded, then turned around, reaching for her dress. She didn’t put it on right away, and he had a pleasing opportunity to stare directly at her perfect (really, truly, inhumanly perfect) ass before she turned around again, holding out a small, round object. “Here.”
He took it, confused, and found a clasp at one side. When he opened it, he found it was a mirror. He took a deep breath and held it up to his face, afraid of what he would see.
It took him several confused seconds, turning the reflection about and around, to realize that there was nothing to see. He simply wasn’t reflected at all.
He closed it and held it out to Judith, and saw that she was laughing. He shook his head, but he couldn’t help smiling in return. “And you just carry this around with you?”
“I had it on me to look for humans with. I knew you FBI guys were on the island. I figured if I saw anything reflected in the mirror and it wasn’t an animal, I would have found you. And, well, I did.”
“So was this your plan all along?”
“Oh, no, not at all! I was just going to eat you. But…” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, a pose that would have been childish if she had been capable of doing anything childish, or at least if she wasn’t wearing a short skirt with nothing underneath. “Well, you were so sweet and you were trying so hard to protect me. I didn’t think you deserved to die. I thought you would make a good vampire.” She swallowed and looked to the side. “I guess I shouldn’t be worried about you being mad, even if you were. It’s the others who are going to be mad.”
“You’re not the only one?”
“Oh, no, there’s about a dozen of us… yeah, I guess thirteen now, including you.” She sighed. “And who knows when we’re going to get fresh food that isn’t animal blood. Yeah, they’re going to be mad.”
“Why do you all live here on this island?”
“Well, I don’t know how the first guy ended up here. He’s really vague about it. I think it was a shipwreck or something and he’s embarrassed that he let that happen to him. But he’s been turning people one at a time for a few hundred years.”
Hugh shook his head. “But if you’re worried about finding food, why don’t you go to the the mainland? Wouldn’t that be easier? I mean, I don’t want to kill anybody. And I’m not saying you should. But there’s a pretty good-sized town just across on the ferry, and a big city about an hour away from that.”
Judith sighed again and finally turned back to face him. Her lips were twisted in an ironic smirk. “We’re all trapped here.”
“How?”
She made a gesture that seemed to encompass everything around them. “The water. None of us can cross it. We’ve tried. Apparently, the rule is you have to be asleep to cross running water.”
“Oh. I… guess that would explain why the stories never talked about vampires on the mainland.” He rested his head against the uncomfortable rock wall, thinking. “You know, the FBI really should listen when people have the same story for a hundred years. I’ll tell them that, if I ever get back.” He felt a sudden, wrenching pain in his heart. The rest of his team. He hadn’t wanted to believe it last night, but they must all be dead, mustn’t they? “I bet you guys like that we kept sending teams here, looking for the psychopathic killer we expected, huh? Fresh food.”
“And you.”
He rolled his head to look at her. She was still smiling. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Well… I’m not sure. But I guess I’d rather be a vampire than dead.” It would probably take him a while to get used to being undead. He’d so loved being alive… but so far, this didn’t seem all that different, except for the part where he evidently couldn’t leave this island. Not unless he could, somehow, persuade a living person to carry him on and off the ferry…
If the FBI ever sent another team to this island—he wasn’t sure how likely that was, since his team would be the third in thirty years to go and not return—he would try that. He still had his badge, after all; he would be presumed dead, but whatever new agents there were probably wouldn’t know that.
Yeah, that’s what he would do. And maybe he’d be able to get Judith off the island with him too. But for now… well, undeath with her didn’t seem so bad. He managed to stretch his face into a smile. Looking at her made it easier. He reached his hand out toward her. “So thanks for taking care of me.”
She looked at his hand for a moment, then unclasped her own hand from his and took it. “You’re welcome. As long as you help take care of me when we go to talk to the other vampires.”
“Sure.” He squeezed her hand and looked up at the entrance to the cave, where slender shafts of sunlight still streamed in through the gaps in his barrier. “When do you want to do that?”
“Now, if you’re up for it.”
He turned back to her, his smile fading. “Can we do that?”
She clambered onto her hand and knees, tugging on his hand. “Yeah. Not all vampire lore is true. The sun is fine. But I’ll warn you, you’re never going to be able to eat Italian food again.”
Hugh groaned theatrically and let Judith lead him out of the cave.
no subject