"Explain it to me. What are these things?" she pants, the running tearing at the skin of her back, a tearing, ripping, stinging sensation that she steels from and ignores as she follows that suggestion of shadow, it was a shadow, and following it was kind of like following Griffin's glasses around the hotel, and again she hears that strange not-voice in her brain.
They are shadows, Its shadows, that herald Its presence here, hopeless wraiths, pitiful things; aren't even ghosts, so thin is their existence...
"Are they...they aren't monsters, are they? I've never seen them..." she asks, choking a bit on air as she runs up a wall to follow, seeing its shape race on the brickwork.
They are...monstrosities... it replies, Parasites, mimickers, figments manifest, hungry without stomachs to want or to fill, they ARE shadows... Resistance and knowledge of their machination by those you'd met had dulled them to an idling that was quick broken by you and your boy's arrival. Ironic, eh? Heh-heh.
"And you?" she snarls quietly, reaching out with a hand to touch the shadow.
And to her surprise she pins it with the barest pressure. It silently writhes and snaps under her fingertips, surreal, and she thinks she sees the dark shape of a hand ghost over her own, grasp over it like trying to tug it away, feeling like nothing more than a cooling of air.
"What are you?" she mutters, slightly shocked.
Uncomfortable? it mutters reproachfully, And I am...I am myself, different, I am not of them. I, at least, was cast by flesh than by fear! I am not of Its creation! But please, I do not mislead you, Preserver lady. I seek no flesh nor feeling, I seek to help and be helped... But quick, loose me, your boy waits!
"What do you want then?" she continues to ask, releasing it, and it wavered unsteadily before racing on, and she can see its outline better now, looking like a person's silhouette, outstretched...
I want to be reunited with he who cast me, it mutters softly, He who I had been torn from most cruelly before I had chance to follow.
My condition is simple, lady, but necessary. Let me take your boy's shadow.
There is a moment of silence as they move on, shadows in the dusk, one literally, one poetically.
". . . That sounds like it could be a bad thing..." Mavis commented bluntly.
It is unusual, yes, it says slowly, Perhaps unconventional but—below!
She snaps her gaze down into the alleyway they were passing over, where she sees some writhing...mass...
At first it looks oily, a car-sized thing mounded like some sort of strange black jelly, almost solid, almost not, but... It moves, pulses, pulsates, and she sees what look like the imprints of hands and faces press and disappear from inside, showing many expressions, many sizes, but many grin, and gape, and leer... It whispers, murmurs, mutters, and more bits from around the area congregate to stick themselves to this mass... And stuck to the outside of it, nearly sinking into it is...Johnny...
She feels acid rise in her throat to spread on her tongue, as, even when tendrils and webs of the thing are covering him, slipping into and under his skin like intrusive veins, he looks at her. He strains to turn his head, bits of the stuff snapping and stretching from the skin on the side of his face, before another pulsing renews it, smooth and swift enough that he doesn't even bleed...
"'vis...?" she hears, a voice hoarse and haggard, and she chokes when the stuff is starting to take one of his eyes, darkness sneaking its tendrils in through the socket, through the eyelid to grow into it like a bizarre fungus that throbs like something beats inside... He grins tiredly, tears leaking from the untouched eye, a corner of his mouth spasming where more of the shadow is tugging at his facial muscles, "Oh, he-ey, there's you, if...if tha's you... Heh, uhm, this? Yeah, my bad, s'ry..." Then his head snaps to another angle, quick and near unnatural, the grin widening and more vicious, more 'sweet', and the next time he speaks it is from between his teeth, and the mass pulses in time, the faces in it mouthing in sync, "Mavis, you're here! Quick, I need help, please! I am scared! You can sa-ave me-e-e!" he cackles. His head falls back onto the mass, laughter dying into a grimace, "Nope, no-no-no-no-no, don't hel', no, g'way, g'way, nope Mav run..."
Oh-h, they are confused. Interesting. They'd usually be done in minutes, she hears faintly. Air is hissing between her teeth, as she's frozen on the wall.
Apparently he is not an easy eating, hah! And you...you can't yet be called 'prey', can you, Preserver lady...? . . . Preserver lady?
She is walking slowly down the wall, eyes fixed on the mass and the human it's trying to dissolve, pupils mere slits in shining azure scleras...
Wait, wait, lady, wait, to provoke them now would—!
"He. Is. Mine." she snarls, stalking up to the edge of it, and the edge meets her foot, feeling cool, soft, and then slimy and sharp when it oozes over the edge to get into her shoe. She wrenches her foot away, shaking it off, seeing a few tendrils wriggle uselessly from where they were embedded in her skin. She yanks them out, feeling it slip out easy as anything, and crushes them, seeing the viscous fluid trickle out, becoming watery and 'dead-feeling'.
"HE. IS. MINE." she roars, claws tzinging from her fingertips as she gouges her hands into the mass, and it's weird. The stuff near Johnny hisses and spurts with dark, thin fluid, while the edges soften and puddle to ooze into air. She grasps fistfuls of the stuff and tugs it away with a growl, seeing the tendrils snap and spray, and then she does it again, gathering her hands in around the mass that coalesced around her human, and experimented...
The stuff nearest to him was the strongest, but the most solid, easy to rip or slice or tear or bite away, while the stuff at the edges was the most intrusive, the stuff designed to slip into flesh and flesh alone, and these parts she crushes underneath her boots, squelching, feeling it give beneath much like rotted flesh, like a jelly that nearly makes her slip, the ground becoming slick with its oozing... She pants, growling, tearing, sobbing, swearing, mine, mine, MINE! The air is beginning to rise with the thing's shrieks and pleads as she rips into it, using the ghostly voices, the wails and cries of women, men, children, babies, begging her to stop she's hurting the family she's hurting them please spare them where's mama help stop spare the children no please please no she's hurting Johnny she's killing killing monster stop lady stop murderess murderess monster murderess MURDERER MURDEROUS MONSTER!
"GIVE ME WHAT IS MINE!" she screams at it in return, plunging a fist into a wailing face, and it gives as easily as thick jelly, even when it chills and tries to coat her skin, slipping uneasily from her body's coolness, and she feels the cooling of air at her back.
Much that such blind love is touching, your efforts will be for naught if you don't let me in, lady, it whispers to her, I know now why he is not such easy food, and such is the reason that it even prevents me to interfere on my own power. To help, I require entrance that only you can grant, lady. Kiss him, and say 'grant it', and I may then help...
"Kiss him?" she repeats incredulously, slicing away a tendril that tried to snake at her face, and she tries to tug him again from the mass, but it just held him in.
"Now? What?!"
A kiss is everything in these matters... it murmurs, and she feels it watching her struggle. Why not liken it to 'Sleeping Beauty', hm? it suggests, In this particular circumstance, though, I would put it as 'Stupid Bastard'... I would explain, but, are we not to make haste? Kiss the boy, save the day, tra-la-la?
The surrealism of it all makes her giggle, nervous, jerkily shrugging, "Alright, then!" she says, desperately bright, "Can't get any freaking worse!"
You'd be surprised how inventive It can be... it says idly, and she feels it against her back as she clamber-crawls her way on top of the mass to kneel over Johnny, her knees nearly sinking into the giving essence, tuning out the mass' gibbering. She sees half of his face, still holding out from the rest of this stuff, and as gently as she can, with shaky hands, angles his face, seeing his eye crack open blearily at her, the iris darting slowly, trying to focus, and she can nearly see some of the stuff pulsing in his mouth from where it had burrowed in through his cheek... Caught halfway between a gag and a sob, she lunges forward, a breath away, "G-grant it..." she says shakily, feeling his shallow breath against her face, smelling like blood and something like river water.
Yes... she hears.
She kisses him, tasting something vile and something wonderful, something disgustingly alien and something breakingly natural...
"Grant it...!" she murmurs into his mouth, a desperate hiss, and feels the coolness rush from her back, through her mouth, and into him, as the mass is closing up her legs and nearly to her hips, and she kisses him again, feeling hopeless as she absently tries to escape, but she's stuck, and feels it starting to bore into her skin, monster, monster, monster...
And then...she feels his mouth turn up at the corners, his teeth baring against her lips, she sees his eye widening, the color of the iris turning from its earthy brown to a bright, sharp, wild yellow-green. "OH, YEEES..." he says breathlessly into her mouth, and it's his voice, but...it's not him...
In the midst of the mass, she feels hands; warm, human hands grab her hips and push her up.
"Oh-h-h, what fools these shadows BE!" is what she hears it laugh when she is pushed out of the mass to tumble to the ground, frantically crawling back on her rear, not daring to look away as the whole thing writhes, Johnny-who-wasn't-Johnny sitting up from it, scraping the stuff from his—its?—face and body, laughing like a madman.
"Oh, lovely, lovely lady, I owe you much and more!" it—he chuckles, black ichor trickling from his lips and eye and other places those shadows had invaded the body, speech strange with Johnny's voice, bright green eye rolling at her, one hand seemingly absently clenching into the other socket to rip out the infesting shadows with a visceral sqlrrch!—an action that surprisingly reveals a matching eye, whole and unharmed. "But first," he continues, twisting a finger into his ear to trail out with something foul that he flicks away, "First to deal with these wearisome wretches, yes?"
His head snaps down to leer at the shadows, "Have at thee!"
Traitor... it snarls, trying to swallow him, and Mavis feels the air get light in her lungs, her vision going disturbingly dark at the edges. It will find you, It will—!
"It can go piss whatever passes for Its undergarments." he interrupts simply, grinning cheerfully in a manic leer.
Mavis can't really recall much after that, as she thinks she passed out, but she was pretty sure he started eating it...
. . .
"La-a-ady? Preserver lady?"
She feels knuckles brush against her cheek, "Wakey, wakey, little lady, the heroine needs accept her dues, hm?"
"Anyone ever told you that you talk weird...?" Mavis mumbled tiredly, then opening her eyes.
Green eyes looked strange in Johnny's face, she decided. The corners crinkle in a wide smile that's stained with darkness around the lips like blackberry juice when he sees her wake up. She thinks in her desperation she might be wearing matching stains... She licks her lips, and makes a gagging grimace at the taste, yup...
"Such vivacious vocabulary I owe to she who was my caster's lady," he tells her amiably when she finishes writhing, "But the cleverness of conversing and the talent of tongue are all mine, Preserver lady..." He winks, and she shudders, sitting up and backing off until she hits a wall, "You—no—his voice—that face—just, no—God help me I will duct tape you, whatever you are..." she stammers weakly.
His grin quickly drops into a look of blank intensity as he stares at her, "All will be explained," he assures her softly, the smile coming back in a quirk at the corner, "But 'tis a story that needs no telling now. Your boy is safe," he pointedly pats the shadow he's casting, and she looks at it with slow realization, "And so are you," he adds, wiping off his mouth and taking a moment to spit, grimacing, "Puh, nasty wretches to the end... But...you are weary, and so is he. He shall know no memory of me, as for all my speech and likeness it was never the boys who heard me, only the girls... We'll exchange stories later, lovely, and if you need anything, I'll be right...here..."
He strokes the ground where his shadow is, and then his eyes fade from green to brown, and the lids droop, as what looks like a ripple of shadow moves over Johnny's body, and then the man blinks.
". . . Mavis...?" he rasps.
Wordlessly she hugs him, and a few beats pass before she feels him hug her back, and then the stupid crying breaks out...
She sees remnants of the shadows scattered like old rags around this alleyway, dark blobs through her tears, twitching weakly at the edges as they slowly dissolved, small pale faces smiling tiredly as they went, and she clutches him tighter, shaking while he tries to soothe her through his confusion, but she keeps reassuring him through her sobs, reminding him, reminding herself...
"It's okay... It's okay... It's okay..."
It's in this state that they're found, a flashlight shining on them in the dim, and they look wearily at their finders.
There is a momentary silence.
". . . What...in the name of holy fuck...?" Elliot said blankly, before being cuffed upside the head by Avril.