A/N:
This story isn't anything like my other ones—girl goes through tragedy, girl falls in love, girl gets hurt, everyone dies. In fact, this one has nothing to do with love at all…but a lot to do with death. So be prepared for the most morbid story I've ever written, and if you're squeamish, it would be wise of you to close this window right away.
Forever Yours,
Nevermore
OCTOBER CHILL
Chapter One:
Raven
"Go on, boy! Fetch the stick! Go get it!"
Raven surveyed the scene with little interest as the puppy watched the stick fall pointlessly to the ground, then wagged its tail uncertainly. A little girl with long, white-blonde pigtails stomped her Mary-Jane's angrily, her big, blue eyes narrowing in a strangely menacing glare.
"You stupid dog! You never do ANYTHING right!" she shouted, her fists clenching as she slumped down to the ground. "I hate you," she added, practically spitting her words. The puppy wagged its tail again, its ears perking up when it saw the little girl stoop to his height; and eagerly bounded towards her to cover her with kisses. Suddenly, the dog let out a high-pitched 'Yipe!' as it was thrown as far across the lawn as the little girl could muster, landing heavily on its side before it scrambled to its feet. "Go away!" the girl hissed, making the poor creature's ears droop. It let out a pitiful whine and she threw a stone at it, smacking it square in the head and making it yelp in pain. "I don't want you anymore! You're a bad, bad dog!" she screamed.
Raven couldn't help feeling her stomach churn as the puppy timidly limped towards the little girl, its tail still wagging hopefully. The girl scowled at it as it approached her, and her face suddenly softened into an eerie, happy smile. She held out a hand to the dog, who shrank back in timid fright, but then hesitated and continued to creep towards her. She scratched it behind the ears and it reluctantly licked her palm, its tail wagging slightly.
"Good boy," she crooned, kissing it on the forehead and rubbing the dog's belly when it flopped over. "Who's a good boy? Does the good boy want a treat? Yes he does! Come on, Biscuit! Does you want a cookie?" She stood up and the dog eagerly followed her inside, Raven following after a moment's hesitation.
Once inside the kitchen, the girl didn't go to the pantry like Raven suspected. Instead, she skipped cheerfully to the drawer beside the breadbox, pulling it open and rooting through its contents before finding the desired item.
A very broad, very sharp cleaver.
The puppy waited at her feet, tail wagging, eyes bright with a loving anticipation. When she turned back to it, it let out a happy little yap and sat down in front of her, its posture pleading for a treat or attention. The little girl smiled, her eyes glazed slightly, and raised the butchering tool high in the air…
Then buried it in the dog's skull…
A cry escaped Raven's lips and she awoke, clammy with a cold sweat, eyes wide open. Slowly, she sat up, her gaze flickering to the front of her room as the thud of uneven footsteps pattered to her door. She must have woken someone up.
"Raven?" she heard Robin call, confirming her suspicions, his voice wary, but also very tired. "Raven, are you okay?" Raven opened her mouth, but no sound came out. "Raven?" She swallowed before chancing another attempt at talking, and was relieved to hear the words cutting through the ominous silence.
"I'm fine," she assured him, her expression betraying the fact that she was anything but fine. "Just a bad dream." She heard Robin yawn.
"Alright," he replied, a strain in his tone as he stretched. "You going to be okay?" he added curiously.
"Of course I'll be okay," she answered, wincing as she heard the snap in her voice. She hadn't meant to sound so scornful. "I told you, it was just a dream." There was silence for a moment, and when Robin spoke again, he sounded a little hurt.
"I'm sorry, Raven—I'm just worried for you." Raven immediately wanted to slap herself—Robin had a way of giving anyone a guilt trip just by blatantly stating the truth. "I mean, the last few times you had nightmares…you remember, right?"
"I remember," she agreed, flopping back into bed. "But this doesn't mean anything. It was…just a dream." And, even as the words left her mouth, she couldn't help but feel that she was trying to make herself believe it.
"Okay. I'm here if you want to talk."
"I know."
"Well…goodnight."
His footsteps echoed through the hallways as he walked away, and Raven was left alone in the dark.
"It was just a dream," she murmured, turning to her side and holding her pillow tightly.
But deep down inside, she knew it wasn't.
The little girl she had 'seen' earlier had been haunting her dreams for the past three days, the morbidity of her stature increasing with each passing night. Last night, the girl was four years old and playing with a dead bird, opening and closing its wings before wrenching them off and watching in fascination as the maggots clung to the bone even after it had been ripped out of its socket. The girl's mother had screamed in horror and disgust as she watched her daughter stroke the bird's lifeless head and hold the dead animal to her chest as any other child would a doll, then swatted the carcass out of the girl's arms and pulled her back inside.
The night before, the little girl was six and watching a mouse squirm noisily as it attempted to escape the iron clamp of a mouse trap that had slammed on its tail. Slowly, she lifted the clamp and held it up, gazing intently at it as it wriggled free and sniffed around the wooden base of the trap. She waited until it had found the bait that had tipped the spring, then grinned and released the lever so it snapped down on the mouse's neck.
Raven didn't know the girl. She had never seen her before in her life.
"Hellooooo," Beast Boy said loudly, interrupting Raven in mid-thought. "Earth to Raven!" Raven flinched and glared at him, casually upending his cereal over his head with a single blink of her eyes. "Agh! What was that for?" he shrieked, rubbing milk and Cap'n Crunch away from his eyes.
"I had a rough night," Raven replied evenly, closing her violet eyes and taking a long sip of her tea. "That made me feel a little better. And, you're annoying me." Beast Boy peered at her from underneath his cereal bowl, tipping it upwards so his face was exposed.
"A little better?" he shot back incredulously. "What's it going to take to make you feel a lot better? Aren't I humiliated enough?" Raven glanced pointedly at the chair he was sitting in and smiled slightly as it jerked out from underneath him, sending him sprawling to the floor and out of sight.
"I set myself up for that one," his voice declared, slightly muffled. "You're feeling better now…right?" The chair, which was levitating serenely in midair after dislodging its occupant, suddenly dropped down onto the floor where Beast Boy had just fallen, followed closely by his cereal bowl, spoon, and orange juice.
"I am now," Raven admitted, smiling absentmindedly and stirring her tea in a cheerful sort of way. Beast Boy grumbled and stood, shaking his sopping wet torso and glaring at her. "And, for the record, I think you set yourself up for that one, too."
"Well, you're a little more sadistic than usual today," he snapped, looking aggravated, wet, and miserable. Raven glanced up at him, her gaze clearly intoning that he should drop it.
"Maybe," she replied evenly. Then, after a moment's thought…"Glorbag," she added, using a particularly tasteful insult she had heard Starfire use.
"I bet you don't even know what that means!" he taunted.
"I don't. Go prance around with your magical animal friends, Beast Breath." Her gaze wandered towards the fallen chair and woebegone cereal bowl in a suggestive sort of way and then glanced back at him. "Or I'll find more things to drop on you."
Beast Boy scowled at her, then stomped away. Suddenly, she saw him pause in the doorway.
"Nimblethorp!" he called accusingly, immediately dashing down the hallway and out of reach of the sorceress's wrath. She ignored him, but the usage of Tamaranian insults had attracted another Titan—Starfire herself.
"You should not say such hurtful things," she began, her large, limpid green eyes wide with concern, but Raven cut her off with a look. "Mean words…mean words will not solve your problems?" she added uncertainly. Raven's eyes narrowed.
"Don't start with me today." Her gaze returned to the newspaper and Starfire opened and closed her mouth several times, each time thinking better of her comment and staying silent.
"Perhaps if I…?" she started hopefully, but she never got any further than that. The door slammed in her face, and Raven looked very pleased with herself.
Robin sat down across from her at the dining table, looking from one side of the room to the other.
"Wow. It got quiet fast," he commented. Raven glared at him over her teacup.
"Don't you start with me either," she pointed out darkly.
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
"But you have been acting strange lately," Robin admitted, giving her a weak glance of conformation. "You know. More moody…you're just not yourself."
"What makes you say that?" Raven inquired calmly, her thoughts immediately traveling to the little girl, slowly pulling the wings off of a dead bird. Robin raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"You know what I'm talking about," he continued slowly. "It doesn't take a genius to know that you're upset about something."
"That's funny," Raven said bitterly, scowling at the newspaper and refusing to look at him. "I thought you only noticed I was upset if I filled the tower with monsters, shut myself in my room for three weeks with a cursed book, or sprouted extra eyes and broke out in glowing red runes." Robin's eyes narrowed.
"That's not true, Raven, and you know it."
"You're right. You also tend to figure things out pretty fast when I blow up Beast Boy's breakfast." Robin let out an exasperated sigh and ran his fingers through his hair, shaking his head.
"You really want this to be difficult, don't you?" he said tiredly. Raven drained the rest of her tea and glowered fiercely at the front page article about bicycle helmet hazards. "You keep trying to pick a fight, but I just want to know what's wrong."
"It's nothing I can't handle," Raven snapped, instinctively lifting her teacup to her lips before she realized it was empty.
"I've heard that one before," Robin retorted darkly.
"Now who's trying to pick a fight?" He let out a groan of frustration and closed his eyes, tilting his head so he was facing the ceiling.
"Raven," he finally moaned, now positively begging. "Come on…"
"I'll be fine. Thanks for caring," Raven said firmly. "Go away." Robin folded his arms stubbornly and glared fixedly at her, refusing to move an inch.
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's wrong," he challenged. Raven raised an eyebrow and black tendrils of energy swarmed around her, letting her melt into the floor and appear in her room. Down the hallway she could faintly hear Robin swear, and, rolling her eyes, she fell heavily onto her bed. Not surprisingly, a loud knocking sounded on her door only seconds later, and she ignored it; carefully studying her bookshelves and selecting a particularly ancient Latin novel to drown him out.
She would deal with it on her own. It wasn't their problem.
As far as she knew, they didn't have creepy, psychotic little girls terrorizing them in their dreams. Beast Boy didn't watch a kid dissect a bird with her bare hands. Cyborg wasn't plagued endlessly by the thought of her sweet, innocent little smile as she held a hatchet-sized cleaver over her head.
And Starfire, the naïve animal-lover, certainly wasn't dreaming about slaughtered puppy dogs. Raven would know if she was, because the effect it would have on Starfire would be insane.
A noise like a fire alarm suddenly filled the tower and cut her off, and, at the same time, the stone on her cloak began to glow red. Something was wrong.
"What is it?" Raven demanded, her robes billowing behind her as she turned the corner to the living room. Beast Boy rewarded her entrance with a reproachful look as he pointedly pulled off a piece of sticky cereal that was still clinging to his suit, and she ignored him. Robin, who also looked a little put-out, swiveled away from the computer monitor to glance momentarily at her.
"Trouble," he said swiftly, his fingers flying across the keyboard and making the screen zoom in on the city map. "There's been an outbreak of murders all around this quadrant of the city."
"Can't the police handle that?" Cyborg put in, his eyes narrowing as he examined the victims' profiles. Beast Boy shrugged and nodded, silently agreeing with him. "I mean, it's just a matter of printing the bodies." Robin shook his head, still staring unblinkingly at the screen.
"That's just it. There are no fingerprints." Raven frowned and watched the monitor closely from half-lidded eyes. "It's easy to determine the cause of death, but as far as suspects go, nobody can find anything," he continued. Starfire looked troubled.
"But how are we to stop the killer if there are no more clues?" she asked timidly.
"She's right," Beast Boy agreed, peeking over Robin's chair to look at the victims' profiles. "These guys are already dead. The police have already taken everything in for 'evidence'. I'd bet you anything these people's families already went through with a funeral and everything, and the morgue probably dug through their guts for us! What are we supposed to do? Wait for this psycho to kill someone else and analyze them!"
"Cyborg's sensors are way more accurate than anything at the police station, or the morgue," Robin answered, turning around completely to face his comrades. "All we need are the bodies, and we can run a base-analysis to look for anything out of the ordinary." Cyborg's human eye twitched in disgust.
"You mean I'm going to have to open up a dead person?" he asked weakly.
"Get over it. It's for the safety of the people."
"Then why can't they stick their hands inside dead people!"
As they bickered, Raven opened her mouth to silence them, but then, she saw the pictures on the screen.
Her stomach lurched sickeningly, and she leaned in closer despite herself. On the screen was a man, lying spread-eagle on the cement. Blood was pooling from both his arms, which were detached from his shoulders, and sprinkled on the pavement were several soft, lustrous, black…
Feathers.
The revolting ripping noise of a bird's wings tearing from its sockets echoed in her head, and she heard a demented, sickly sweet giggle from the confines of her mind. In the next picture, a woman was nailed by her palms to the plaster wall, a cleaver buried in her forehead.
"Does Biscuit want a cookie?"
Raven shivered and looked away, focusing instead on the next picture and immediately wishing she hadn't. Blood was seeping through a young man's mouth, and his limbs were bent at awkward angles…bent in a way that no human body should be able to bend. One of his legs was twisted into a morbid tangle, the heel of that foot pressed against the man's elbow. One of his arms was malformed in such a bizarre manner that bones were jutting out from his skin. Each finger was bent backwards. Underneath him, gore and dark blood was spreading, and she realized that his stomach had been squeezed open by some sort of pressure…like an overripe fruit.
She felt the bile rise in her throat when she saw the tool of murder—a huge, flat, sheet of heavy iron that had presumably 'fallen' while the man was at work at a construction area. It was a freak accident.
Raven winced when she remembered how helpless the mouse was, caught in his trap, and gave an involuntary jerk when she recalled the deafening snap of the lever.
"Robin," she said quietly. Robin, who had just begun to utter a snappy retort to Cyborg's sarcastic inquiry, paused and turned to her.
"What is it?"
"When were these people murdered?" Robin frowned and swiveled back to face the computer screen, squinting fiercely at the analysis.
"The most recent was the woman," he answered, opening the woman's stats and making Raven sigh in relief as the morbid pictures were replaced by a smiling lady's profile. "Someone drove a cleaver through the crown of her skull…"
"R-right," Raven said quickly, cutting him off so he wouldn't continue to recite the bloody details of her death. Normally she wasn't this squeamish, but the bizarre similarities between her dreams and this new reality had robbed her of whatever endurance she had before. "But when?" Again, Robin peered quizzically at the screen for a moment, scanning each paragraph intently.
"The woman was murdered last night," he finally confirmed. Raven choked a little, holding a hand firmly against her mouth, and Robin looked more than a little concerned on her behalf. "Raven," he said slowly, "do you know anything about all of this?" For what seemed like an eternity, she didn't say a word, still staring straight ahead. Then, after closing her eyes and taking several deep breaths, she seemed to return to her normal apathetic self.
"I…" she began weakly, and the rest of the team seemed to lean in a little closer in anticipation. The only sound to break the otherwise perfectly silent tower was the steady hum of the computer. Her eyes flickered to Robin, who was waiting for her response with a strange expression on his face, and she chewed nervously on her lip. "Robin…" she said, her voice unnaturally small and helpless.
"What is it?" he asked softly. Raven's eyes lowered, her dark, mysterious gaze veiled by long lashes.
"…I…I need to think," she murmured, giving the rest of them a fleeting, worried glance before she backed away, willing herself to be swallowed by the black shadows of her magic and disappearing from the scene.
She appeared instantly back in her room, sitting on her bed and closing her eyes meditatively.
"What's happening to me?" she whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
A/N:
Wow…six pages. I really have far too much time on my hands.
Thanks for bearing with me, I suppose—it's been quite a while since I last updated any of my work. I've been re-reading The Unbreakable Vow, and have readily decided that a few changes need to be made, so I'll be updating that soon as well. I won't go so far as to add more chapters…but I will, how ever, be making some minor alterations to the chapters themselves, per se. I get OCD when I'm faced with the task of reading my old work, you see, and I start editing, and then eventually re-write the entire thing. The 'whirled around in a whirl of red hair' deal is getting on my nerves. That was very unintentional—it was honestly just a typo and not redundancy, I swear—and I'd appreciate it if all my friends IRL would shut up about it. If I hear one more crack about it, I think I'm going to go insane. That's saying something, because I'm already not necessarily the perfect model of sanity.
I think I'm just going to close this document now for the sake of my readers, as they are bound to be quite bored by now.
Nevermore
P.S: Thanks for recommending I've made my own account there and plan on posting a bit of my work on the site, so look me up every once in a while. My pen name is Catherine the Third.
P.S.S: Due to the feedback from TUVOGW, I've finally decided to delete the 'other' sex scene that everyone hated. Quite frankly, I wasn't too fond of it either, so it's not much of a loss. Thanks for your support.
P.S.S.S: This is directed to the anonymous person who posted their undying hatred for my story. If you would like to criticize my writing, I think I would take you much more seriously if you used proper capitalization, grammar, and punctuation. Also, if you'd care to explain what you find so offensive, I might take the time to change it in the future. I am not attempting to be boastful, but my English scores have determined that I am not, in fact, that horrible a writer, so it must be one detail in particular. Thank you, and have a nice day.