Much thanks to Ancient Glory, who is still reading this for some strange, unknown reason.
Guys, my midterms start tomorrow so I'm kind of too busy waiting for a miracle or a portal to another world to write. Of course, I'll still probably do things, but I just don't know how often I'll update.
ALSO it's Ciel's birthday today, so happy birthday, Ciel! We all wish you few nightmares of your dead parents and how they were sewn together! :D
Enjoy.
"Life is neither good or [SIC] evil, but only a place for good and evil."
-Marcus Aurelius
_-X*X-_
I scramble backwards, shoving the handle of one of my knives between my teeth and brandishing the other one. Ciel raises his gun and lets off a couple shots. The bullets ping off metal coffins and make squelching sounds as they sink into rotted flesh.
"I tul' oo so!" I snap at Casimir through the silver alloy in my mouth. It's a miracle he can understand me through my slurred speech and the moans of the undead in the cargo hold.
"Very mature!" He shouts back, angrily slashing through a creature's brittle bone and snapping its arm off and to the floor. I stab one through the eye and yank my knife out, but it only stumbles forward and continues its mindless trek.
"Eh?" I shriek shrilly, dancing out of the way of wriggling fingers. "Zey von' die!"
"You have to smash their heads!" Ciel inputs, letting off more furious shots into the mob of corpses ambling our way.
Huffing a dark curl away from my eyes, I lurch forward and duck under a wrinkled, outstretched arm, spinning into place just in front of it. Before I can think, I slam my fist into its mess of diseased flesh. My wounded arm sings with pain.
"On top of the crates!" Ciel orders. I duck out of the way and dance back into the circle of light. Ciel lets off three more shots from his gun before the tiny mechanism clicks silently. He mutters to himself.
"Go on, then!" Casimir sings, delighted. He flashes a demented grin over his shoulder.
"Smile!" Snake calls, reaching a hand down. Ciel grabs it and his footman hoists him up on top of a pile of the largest crates I've ever seen. I reach a desperate hand up, opting to run instead of risk fighting with my injured arm. The footman clasps my hand and pulls me up with as little effort as he did Ciel. I roll onto the wood and lean over the edge of the crate.
Down below, Casimir dances. His knives are a blur and sickly black blood pools at his feet. This is what we mean when we claim our utter insanity. Casimir loves the feel of bones breaking and flesh tearing under his knives. I breathe deeply; the smell is what drugs me.
"He's getting tired," I say when Cas loses his flow and gets knocked twice by dirty, pale fingernails. A new gash opens on his jawbone and one across the bridge of his nose. I turn to the footman and demand, "Help him up!"
Snake does, and my brother tumbles next to me. He is slathered in dark, sickly black blood. A thin trickle of crimson cuts through the grime down his nose and off his chin. He undoes his bow tie and uses it to scrub his face off enough so I can see a semblance of his skin.
The crates under us lurch violently. Lizzy yelps and is thrown into Ciel's chest. The snakes undulating around Snake's torso start up a creepy hissing mantra. I slide straight into Casimir, who wraps his arms around me protectively.
"So high!" I exclaim, suddenly remembering how high up we are.
"Stay calm," Casimir murmurs to me in Italian. Ciel is yelling something unintelligible. My stomach lurches with each vicious pound into the wooden crates. I can hear the undead moaning below us. I think it must be meaningless sounds, but there are words.
I bury my face into Casimir's shoulder. Something is happening. Squishes. Pain. The crates stop rocking. With every crunch, every squelch, I wince. I don't know why, but it hurts. It hurts. Pain. Curious. It hurts.
Silence. Footsteps. I crawl back to sanity. The chains that bind me to the darkness (madhouse) snap and break. I can hear voices again. I can see the heat. I click my tongue. Two heat signatures against the cold.
"Alexandra!" Casimir sighs at the same time Ciel calls his own butler's name.
I lift my head up and see my maid's figure. The writhing mass of corpses is still, spread out like a blanket on the floor. Alexandra steps daintily over the bodies, raising her hands up to help us down. I dangle my feet over the edge and she swings me down.
"Alexandra," I snap as she assists Casimir. "Your pinafore."
"Does something displease you, mistress?" She asks, voice layered with condescension.
"Your pinafore," I repeat as the last of our small group splashes into the thick pool of deceased blood, "Take it off and leave it here. That's an order."
Without question, she unties the ribbon from around her waist and behind her neck and drops it into the pool of blood. Her lavender dress is spattered with blood at the hem and her shoes shine black. The discarded garment is already ruined. I glare at it. I don't want my maid smelling so strongly of soullessness.
"You could have been less messy," Ciel reprimands, inspecting the bottom of his shoes. Casimir snickers at him.
"I apologize, my lord, but this was the quickest way to eliminate the threat," Sebastian responds.
"Well, we're going to go find Stoker," Casimir announces, wrapping his knives in their sheath and tucking them into his suit jacket for easy access. Casimir locks my good hand in his and marches me off with a quick, "See you then, Ciel!"
"My lord..?" Alexandra calls hesitantly. "Do you truly believe the mistress should be about? That wound looks rather painful."
At the mention of pain, the adrenaline of the fight finally wears off, ebbing like the ocean's tide, and pain takes its place. It burns like insanity. I yelp and stumble backwards into Alexandra.
"Caci-!"
"Do not worry yourself, my lord. I will escort you to your cabin, si, Padroncina?" Alexandra offers.
"Fine. Fix me as best you can and change my clothes. Then come back down here and finish what we started."
"Yes, miei amore."
_-X*X-_
Campania, First-class Suite A-47, April 19, 1889, 9:07 pm
I sit alone on the borrowed silk sheets, swinging my legs absently. My upper arm is wrapped thickly with cloth and still stings from where Alexandra took it upon herself to sew my skin shut. She opted to clothe me in a slender gown with a skirt I cannot trip over and no petticoats. My knives have been purged of blood.
I can still smell it. The rot, the sickness, the death and decay. I inspect my fingernails. They are caked with that dead, ebony blood. The smell clashes with the richness of the suite; the silkiness of the sheets, the softness of the bed, even the paint on the walls and the carvings in the dark wood.
I am bored.
Sighing, I sit up and transfer my weight on to the floor. I open the cabin door and make my way into the hall, my boots light on the flags. I turn the corner from the hallway and push open the door to the first-class deck, pushing my dress sleeve over to cover my bandages.
Before I can step out into the night, the ground lurches. I tumble into the wall as the boat underneath me shudders. When it finally rests still, I can hear murmuring, screaming, from the still-open doorway from the passengers on the deck. I peek my head out.
Dead. Corpses roam the deck. Blood, living, crimson blood, splashes down the railings and into the sea water. Cracks run down the deck underneath my feet. The boat is breaking. Bones are breaking. Dead. People are dying.
Casimir. Rosy.
My brother can care for himself, but Rosy! She is handicapped, innocent, she cannot fight. I'm sure Casimir is safe, probably still in the cargo hold, but where is Rosy?
I slip my knives from their sheath and, in my haste, discard the silk wrappings on the bloodied deck. I take off, blood like a waterfall down the now slanted deck. It occurs to me that maybe we crashed into something. Ran aground.
I burst into the last place I saw her, the lounge. It is empty of living people, but a handful of living corpses crowd around something in the corner. I almost close my eyes and leave, but I don't. Something isn't right. They are moaning, not feeding.
I stand on my toes to get a better look. There's a table, shoved over on its side, acting as a barrier between the undead and whatever they're pining for. I make a quick decision, tuck my knives into my boot, and search for something sturdy. My eyes fall on a thick, splintered table leg, broken in the frenzied scramble for safety. I lift it with both of my arms, rest it on my shoulder, and pick my way over the debris.
As I get closer, I can hear whimpers. I recognize the voice as Rosy's. I almost sigh in relief. Luck led me to her.
When I reach the first corpse, I swing the table leg hard into the decayed head. It cracks like a walnut. I grin to myself as the rest of the corpses stop their squirming and face me. I count seven.
They go down, one after the other, steadily, like rainfall. Eight headless corpses, nothing more than disgusting mush over their shoulders, sprawl at my feet. I drop the heavy table leg, my arms trembling. I can feel my wound bleeding through my bandages. The seams on my stitches popped.
"Rosy, are you okay?" I ask as my sister pokes her head over the round edge of the table.
"Y- Yes," she rasps, wiggling over the edge and dropping to her feet in a pool of black blood and broken bone. Her face is streaked with tears and her braid has come undone, her long sheet of straight black hair hanging limply down her back. Her whole body trembles.
"Is… Is Casimir…?" She stammers, gulping down air.
"I'll find him, don't worry. I think he's in the cargo hold."
"Okay." Rosanne's face steels in determination. "Let's go find him then." She marches sternly past me, the skirt of her light pink dress splattered with black blood.
"Rosy, no!" I call, clasping her thin shoulder. "You're getting on a lifeboat."
Her huge sapphire eyes well up with tears and she sniffles. "But… Acacia, what about you and Casimir?"
"We'll be right behind you. I promise. I'll follow you as soon as I find Casimir and Alexandra," I smile reassuringly.
"B-But," Rosy's lip trembles and her tears spill over. "What if I don't see you again? I don't want to go back home alone."
"Hey," I reassure, smiling again, and lifting my necklace off my neck. The serpent on the chain spins slowly and shines in the starlight. "You know how much I love this, right? Well, I'll give it to you, so when I get back, you can give it back to me. Okay?"
Rosy nods, and I slip the chain over her head.
"Go to the lifeboats. When you get back to land, find the Yard. It's their job to help. Get home. I'll see you there."
With that, I turn on my toes and sprint off the way I went to the cargo hold.
_-X*X-_
Campania portside cargo hold, April 19, 1889, 9:25 pm
I fist my hands and place them on my hips. This huge iron door is too heavy for me. There's a valve in the center for opening, but I can hardly reach high enough to turn it a full time.
I grab a luggage trunk from the huge, organized piles heaped against the walls, and kick it methodically until it's under the valve. Then, I climb on it and can easily place my hands on the top.
The valve sticks at first and shrieks as I turn it, but I can feel it unsticking under my hands.
Suddenly, the huge iron door slams open, and a blast of freezing water hits me full on, throwing me to the metal.
_-X*X-_
Bucket after bucket of water is dumped over my head. Tiny bits of ice slide down my body and plunk to the grated floor. Another bucket is emptied. I shiver, the leather and metal cuffs around my wrists clanking together. It smells of metal. My mouth is coated in an acrid taste. The window is open and snow blows in, piling around my feet. Another bucket. Another gust of winter wind.
They try to freeze the insanity away. The fire only gets hotter and hotter until I am so numb I can feel nothing at all. Not the ice sliding down my arms or the water dripping from my nose. Nothing.
_-X*X-_
Campania portside cargo hold, April 19, 1889, 9:25 pm
I blink in the darkness and shoot to my feet. Water pools around my waist, numbing my legs and weighing my skirt down. It is rising quickly, spilling in from the boiler room. It engulfs my shoulders, climbs up my neck. I take a huge breath.
Coldness. Numbness. Just like the ice water in the madhouse. I pull my knives from my boots and tap them together. The sound is muffled, but I can hear deep blue, frigid, ice, cold. A length of heat in the darkness, four figures close together. I kick my legs and move despairingly slowly.
My lungs burn. The heat is closer. I tap my knives again, reach up, my fingertips break the surface. Something whizzes past me in the water, leaving a trail of bubbles as it sinks. I reach up again, fighting the weight of my waterlogged skirts.
A hand grasps mine, and I am tugged out of the water and onto a metal surface. Before I open my eyes, I click my tongue and see heat.
Casimir kneels above me. His face cracks into a grin as he meets my eyes.
"There are more," I slur, panting and rubbing my numbed skin. Casimir pulls me into him. He's wet, but much warmer.
"We know," Ciel snaps.
"Take off your clothes, Caci," Casimir demands, helping me to my feet.
"Not in front of so many people," I joke.
"Do you want hypothermia?" Ciel interjects coldly. I huff at him and snap, "Yes," before turning back to Casimir.
"Fine. Let's go," Ciel agrees without pushing it. Casimir practically lifts me up and Ciel leads our way out of the boiler room.
Yeah… Please review! I'm loving it! (ba da da da da!)
My account is in no way related to McDonalds. I just thought I should add that in there for comic relief. Anyway, review.