A/N: Super short chapter for a super short song. It's barely even a song. It's like 1:40 of random ass music. Love it regardless. Also the title translates to 'Single Day's Journey of the Dead Man'. If that doesn't tell you who this chapter is about then I can't help you.
Also...this chapter *may* gross some people out? I'm really not sure but...there's your fair warning I guess, pft.
Enjoy~
It was no different from any time before. Nothing about the routine had changed, but he couldn't help but feel a wariness as it dripped down upon him. The process always left him winded and feeling a sense of dread before plunging from complete isolation into the blinding lights of reality.
The world seemed to drop from beneath his body, his entire being scaling down into what he could only relate to being a lone astronaut out in the cosmos; floating off into the endless void, never knowing if he'd ever find his way back again.
But Kenny knew. He always found his way home.
His soul was nothing but a speck of dust amid the arid night sky, floating down through the expansion of the world as nothingness. And, he thought, maybe that's what he always had been: Nothingness.
The team had lost him time and again, each day waking up to never know that he'd been missing in the first place. Unfortunately for the teams' sake, they had a tendency to get angry whenever they lost him. They had a habit of losing focus on the main goal, suiting themselves only for vengeance of his loss.
He appreciated the sentiment; he hated the results.
His soul continued to flutter down from the heavens, making its way towards his body down below. He could never see exactly where he was going, always kept in the shadows. But if his past experiences of being shot down by the Rats had taught him anything, he'd wake up in the Body Pit. No one in the team but himself knew of them, hidden well enough that even Kyle had never spotted them on his scouts. The truth was truly just too horrible to let everyone else know about, so Kenny never minded taking the burden of knowledge upon himself.
The Body Pit was where the Rats merely threw their victims into a ditch back behind the main building. It was surrounded by the marked graves of fellow Rats that had fallen in combat with the team. Clean and pristine markers for those who had no home to go to, and, as Kenny had seen, it seemed most if not all of the Rats had nowhere else to go but here. The numbers were massive, and they hid the Body Pit, back towards the back of the area where that fucking wall bordered South Park from the rest of the world. Kenny had counted throughout his various reincarnations, there was usually one standing guard of the cemetery and they were always simple enough to take out if need-be. No one ever expected the dead to be coming for their throat, after all.
Kenny could only hope that he was coming back to his body in the night, where it was easy enough to sneak out through the trees off in the middle of the site, crawling beside the main building and ducking down behind tombstones, weaving his way in and out until he was clear for the woods. It was simple enough, at least, in the night. Too many times had he come back during the day, and one time of getting caught and dying once more was enough to make him learn to stay put until the darkness came back over the town.
Those experiences were always the worst. Spending the day atop of decomposing flesh, the heat from the sun giving off a stench unlike anything anyone had ever smelled. He could barely take it, regardless of how much time he'd spent in the Pit. It was a moldy, clammy stench, one that he felt he could never wash off of himself. He'd learned early on to carry a small tin filled with vapor rub that he'd managed to steal from a store before they were all blockaded. It was cleverly hidden where the Rats wouldn't check to confiscate, sewed sloppily into the inside hip of his pants where it could easily be mistaken for a part of the hard leather logo he'd placed it inside. Very diligently on his unfortunate awakenings in the early morning light, he'd reach down and dip his finger into the small opening he'd left at the top of the branding, genially coating his finger and wiping it across his upper lip before reassuming his position as a corpse. It worked for a few hours, and every time he'd have to replenish was nothing but an adrenaline-fueled risk, but it was better than confronting that pungent aroma for hours on end. It was one that you could never get used to. The rest of the team had come to the conclusion that the smell coming from the region was merely materials that the Rats used and burned to keep their operation going. None of them knew quite what the smell of rotting corpses was, and Kenny hoped that they never would.
He'd seen many a familiar face in the Pit, every now and then dying and waking up beside them once again, seeing that their flesh had began to seep off of their bones. Putrid blackened liquids began to flow out of their mouths and noses, clumping over their splotched skin. Various wounds he found inflicted on others became more prominent: Slashed throats and bullet wounds bloated and covered in maggots and gnats. That same clumpy black excess feeding them, exciting them.
Kenny had once spent an entire day watching a body next to him being devoured by the small beasts. He was disgusted, of course, but more than all else, he was intrigued. Watching them gnaw away silently in droves at the decaying corpse, feeding happily on the spoils of war. It sent him into a deep state of wonder, amazed at how this battle was turning out good for some kind of creature. The thought nearly drove the boy mad as he watched inch by inch of a child's throat becoming more openly visible throughout the day, his spinal cord in full view of Kenny's gaze as the sun finally began to set. How something had managed to turn into a victory for anything in the thrall of all the madness was beyond Kenny's imagination. He spent that day wondering if the team would end up being the corpse in the end of it all or the maggots that feasted upon it.
His soul continued spiraling downwards, heading towards his body lying in the Pit, on top per usual as he was more often than not the only casualty of the day, occasionally he was joined by one or two other misfortunate, but he always prayed that he'd be the only body that would be enough to satisfy the bloodlust of the ever-persistent Rat bastards. He could come back, he knew well enough that the corpses he awoke upon would not.
He floated in a free fall down and down towards the Pit. The speck of dust made contact with the body, the air and blood rushing back through his being. The wound on his head quickly made quick work of itself, his brain spinning back together as though a spider was weaving the web of matter. His skull fragments pieced themselves back into place, tearing themselves out of the brain that they'd flown into and letting the tissue repair itself upon their removal. Any missing fragments were sewn from nothingness, his skin stitching itself back onto itself and his hair popping back through the flesh of his head like grains of wheat popping through the soil.
It was a process that he could never see, though he imagined it to be some glorious sight; one that made someone stop and question everything that they'd ever believed. His soul was kind enough to make sure that he felt nothing before all wounds were healed before slamming down into his chest and letting the oxygen he'd regathered flow freely through his throat and nose. He'd learned quickly that the possibility of himself coughing and giving away his position was always a threat, so he'd shut his lips tightly as soon as the impact of the reincarnation hit him. It was habit at this point, probably one that he would never grow out of should they actually escape in the end.
His lungs began to expand and contract, his muscles tightening and relaxing. His heart was thudding wildly in his chest as he felt the chill air attack him as his nerves began to reignite with feeling. That all-too-familiar smell slammed into his nostrils and he silently groaned, slowly trying to creak open his eyes. His vision was always blurry in the beginning, he'd have to squint and readjust to the sensation once again. His pounding heart settled in the slightest as through his fuzzy vision, he saw nothing but dark and tiny lights above him.
It was nighttime. He would be able to get home.
He slowly worked his eyes all the way open, flittering them around in an attempt to speed up the process. He clenched his fists and reopened them, cringing as he felt his fingers dragging through a child's hair beneath him. It didn't matter though. Getting emotional was strictly out of the question.
He genially made his way up into a sitting position, rolling his shoulders and swaying his back around to loosen himself up from the effects of the rigor mortis. The heat swelled around his muscles, his limbs coming out of a deep sleep and sending painful tingles all throughout his system. He continued working himself back into a movable state, his completely renewed hearing sharp and alert for the sounds of any lurking Rats. He could hear nothing but the soft sound of an owl in the distance and a few crickets off to the side of the Pit. He sighed silently in relief, beginning to twist his body over and starting to slowly crawl through the masses of decaying children around him. He gulped, silently relieved that the Rats had thrown him near the edge of the pit this time, remembering with a shudder all the times he'd woken in the middle and had so much to crawl through before getting to his target.
He bit his lip as he made his way over to the rope ladder that the Rats had made in case they needed to recover a certain body. Why they would need to, Kenny had no idea, but he had no intentions of finding out. He worked his way up the ladder, taking slow, silent steps up the way, clenching his fingers in the dirt behind it to keep himself from swaying and thudding against the wall, making too much of a sound.
He slowly poked his head up, scanning around for his nightly guard. He narrowed his eyes confusedly at the lack of one, turning and looking behind him at the other side of the pit. His answer came with a bit of a start, spotting a dark figure on the grass, a small flag held in his stiffened hands. Kenny couldn't help but smirk. One of them had been taken down. Apparently he didn't have any back-up and the graveyard just wasn't important enough to send someone else to guard it.
Worked for him.
He made his way up onto the grass, silently crawling through the array of headstones towards the main building. He licked over dry lips, his hands feeling the night dew of the grass co-mingling with his sweat. As many times as he'd done this, as many times as he'd easily escaped, it never made it any easier, his mind easily overrun with worry and fear as he slipped in and out of shadows. He made his way to the main building, putting his hand on the cold brick wall and taking a shuddery breath.
Hit the building, turn left, go five stones down, edge up against the building and make sure to bend extra low to avoid the one window in his path, go three more gravestones down to the one that read 'Tom Markson', head back in towards them, and stealthily make his way back to the forest hidden behind a clustered row of the marks. It was the only routine and sure-fire-thing that Ken had been able to find in the whole mess, and he clung onto it with gusto. Anything that seemed ordinary was a welcome change of pace.
His ears perked against the wind, hearing two guards far off and away, probably by the window that he'd thrown the bug into earlier, he surmised. He smirked. The window was far off from where he was going, with the shadows, he could probably just waltz right into the woods. But he knew better, he had to do this correctly.
He crouched down, beginning to crawl towards his target, his head turned towards the graves as he tried reading in the darkness of the night. He ducked his head and body down lower, knowing that the window was right above him, a part of him confused at the fact that the light was turned on for once and the sound of the air conditioning of the room indicating that it was open as well, but he had little time to pay attention to it aside from making himself crawl along slower and quieter. The slightest diversion could be a death trap, that was what they had all come to know and respect from the madness.
As he crept along the building, his attention fully focused on the markers beside him, he never caught the bright gleam of red hair sitting in the room alone bound to a chair, just within his grasp.
A/N: Omg I did a whole chapter without dialogue. You guys...no. This is fucking awesome. I'm hella proud of me. I've never done this before aside from, ya know, the prologue of this story and that doesn't really count since it didn't have characters pft. Go me.
Ahhhhhh I'm so excited for next chapter. It's my favorite song on the album and it's allllll about Kahl. ewe
Thanks for R&Ring!
