AN: Another chapter!
Now with slightly less body horror!
*Brrrrrriiiinnng*
Homeroom bell rang and a figure shuffled his way into Mr. Lancer's classroom. The literature-loving teacher sent a slightly narrowed glance at them. Technically they were on time, but by the skin of their teeth.
He looked closer at the figure. It wore a baggy, gray hoodie that was so stained and tattered it looked like it was fished out of the discount bin from a Goodwill. Their hands were covered in black winter mittens. The hood was up, hiding the figure's face, but the jeans and telltale shoes had his suspect figured out. Hercule Poirot would be proud.
"Mr. Fenton, a word, please?"
The figure stiffened and reluctantly lowered the hood to show Mr. Fenton's ravenette hair and large, comically-outdated sunglasses.
This sounds like it'll be a good one.
"Everyone else, free time for the next ten minutes." He announced. Immediately the room erupted in chatter and dispersed into their little cliques, far away from where the teacher stood at the corner. The white noise and distraction would allow him to talk to Mr. Fenton with moderately more privacy.
He turned to the clearly nervous student, "Mr. Fenton, I'm not one to pry into personal lives, but your choice of attire is concerning."
"I-It's nothing! Everything's A-okay! No rot- I mean, not... a thing here!" The teen squeaked, a little too fast.
"Hmmm," The teacher's sixth sense was simmering. "Well, Mr. Fenton, my only concerns right now are your clothes. The gloves and the hoodie are toeing the line on school dress code policy. While I understand the school's heating system is... sub par, you may not have your hood up on school property."
"Er... right, yeah, sorry." Mr. Fenton stammered out.
"And you will need to remove your glasses."
"M-my- my glasses?" He parroted back with a stammer.
Mr. Lancer nodded resolutely, "Yes. Sunglasses are not permissible on school property, per dress code. Either put them in your bag or if you're worried they'll be crushed, I can hold onto them and you can pick them up after school."
The teen winced, and slowly reached up to remove them.
"Tale of Two Cities, Mr. Fenton," Lancer exclaimed softly.
"What time did you go to sleep last night?"
While not a black eye or something similar he'd been dreading, the boy's eyes had dark-looking bags encompassing his entire eyelid, like a human panda bear. The eyes themselves were blood-shot with a slight crust on the sides.
"Umm... like, ten?" The teen offered. Lancer could hear the lie in his voice before Danny stumbled onwards. "I'm really not feeling well... so I couldn't get to sleep last night. Believe me, I tried."
Well, that sounded truthful, at least. Concerned, the teacher took a moment to look closer at the boy without the ridiculous sunglasses obscuring his face. The young man was very pale, his lips almost bloodless, and shaky. Bluish veins were slightly more prominent at the sides of his face and his hair was greasier than yesterday, almost matted down.
His entire stature screamed nervousness and anxiety, shifting from one foot to the other with his hands absently caressing one particular finger under the gloves.
Paying attention to his speech, he heard a slight lisp or slur. It was less like drunk or high slurring (the red eyes crossed his mind), but more like his tongue was slightly swollen.
And, ugh, the smell.
Lancer's nose scrunched as a smell finally reached him. It was clearly body odor, but with a sickly, unhealthy tinge to it.
Ah, that explained it.
"Mr. Fenton," he sighed, walking to his desk. "Here is a pass to the nurse's office. If you're not feeling well, please just stay at home next time."
The boy seemed a little surprised, but nodded and immediately a lot of tension left him. Lancer had seen that type before, the kind anxious to not stay at home sick. Usually out of fear of falling behind.
It made the most sense. Poor sleep and greasy hair was likely from nighttime chills and fever. The slurred speech could very well be compounding exhaustion from a bad night's rest and fighting off disease. Body odor... well, he is a teenager.
Come to think of it... he recalled Mr. Fenton's rather vocal gastrointestinal distress yesterday.
He held out the pass to Danny, along with a couple worksheets. "Here is the homework for the next few days. Everything you'll need is in the chapters detailed at the top of each. Readings will follow the syllabus schedule, and I'll be sure to send a quick note to your other teachers and let Ms. Manson or Mr. Foley bring your schoolwork."
"T-Thanks," The teen mumbled.
"And Mr. Fenton," Lancer added, with an understanding smile, "don't stress yourself out too much. Focus on recovering."
"Will do. Trust me, I will," Danny replied, going to his desk and gathering his bags.
The teacher got up to the front of the class and began the lesson as the young man slipped quietly out of the front door.
He could only hope his student's illness wasn't serious.
*cough cough*
Danny hacked quietly to himself as he hunkered down beside the school's dumpster. The nurse barely took one look at him and slapped a biohazard sticker on his forehead and a 'go home' pass in his hand. As he walked out, he saw her spraying disinfectant on everything he came into contact with like he had the plague.
He was touched. Really.
In the end, he didn't go home, he still had to talk with Sam and Tucker. Phantom-Half wasn't at the house last night and he can't do this all himself! Who knows how long he has until he's a pile of loose bones shambling their way down the street.
He shuddered at the idea.
It was cold outside today, so he took off the hoodie, figuring if they freeze corpses to keep them 'fresher' it might help him avoid further rot. His cough was a little worse since it started early this morning. It hacked up thick, black phlegm when he coughed into a tissue. Probably more rot.
*Brrriiiinnnng*
The lunch bell, at last!
He batted away a couple flies buzzing around his head (hungrily, he added, disturbingly). The door to the cafeteria kitchens creaked open and he ducked in his little crevice further before he heard two familiar voices.
"Hey, look! They're throwing away perfectly good meatloaf!"
"Ugh! God, Tucker, do not put that in your mouth, I swear!"
"What, because it's meat?"
"Among several other things about that meatloaf, yes. That is a low-priority point right now."
Relieved, Danny sidled up from the dumpster. His friends flinched, but relaxed when they recognized him.
"Dude, are you okay? We got your text this morning to meet up here," Tucker asked.
"Danny, shouldn't you be at home?" Sam cautioned. "You're human now, so sickness is kind of a concern for you again."
"Trust me *cough*... it's little more complicated than that," Danny admitted.
"I knew this was a bad idea," Sam murmured, staring at Danny's exposed fingers.
Tucker was green-faced and cringing every time he so much as glanced Danny's direction. "Ewwww. Ewewewew. For once, I'm glad I didn't eat lunch yet."
"Thanks, Tuck." Danny deadpanned.
"But... like, it's so gross..." He whined, still squirming.
"How do you think I feel?!" Danny gaped incredulously. "I'm literally falling apart at the seams! I'm the one with the rotting body here and let me tell you, it's not fun!"
"Tucker, get a hold of yourself," Sam barked, she turned to Danny. "Okay, so you were pretty much fine yesterday, right?"
"Sort of," Danny admitted. "Looking back, all that belching was probably bloating like corpses in crime shows, you know? But at gym I was also really stiff and sore until I showered. And my legs were swollen with these huge bruises from my kneecaps-down."
"So, Rigor Mortis and Livor Mortis," Sam summarized, thoughtfully. "It sounds like you're progressing pretty normally for a corpse, but we have no clue how long you'll... well... last. It's not like corpses get back up and dance around."
"About a dozen zombie movies beg to differ," Danny pointed out.
"Yeah, but that's Hollywood. We need facts," Sam argued. "We need someone who actually knows their stuff inside and out-"
She paused, eyes brightening with an idea, "And I know just who to go to."
"Really? You've visited your friend how many times and didn't realize Mr. Lindermann owned the place?" Danny asked.
"Well, it's not like he comes down while I'm there. I never met the guy before the radio station!" Sam defended. They entered the funeral home's side entrance and descended a quick set of stairs into a cold cellar space.
"Brrr. You think they could crank up the heating for the Living," Tucker muttered, huddling in on himself.
"Yep! But it pays not to be able to feel it!"
They turned at the sound of the voice to an older teenager, maybe 18 or 19 dropping some boxes on the ground. The guy was taller and lanky with a gray striped-sleeve sweater. A pair of goggles with yellow-tinted lenses ruffled his already-untamable hair that stuck up in every-which-way.
A medical face-mask with a cutesy cat-whisker print hung around his neck just under a lopsided smile. One side being wide and normal, the other stretched and warped in a scar.
"Eh, don't worry about staring," he shrugged off cheerfully, waggling the side of his jaw with the scar for effect.
"O-oh, sorry," Sam managed. "W-we're just looking for Natalie. Is she in today? It's kind of urgent..."
"Yeah, she might be in the back room areas. You need a keycard to get in, but I can bring you to her," The other responded. "Just give me a minute to unpack this stuff and we'll be out. Kay?" The trio nodded.
He shuffled around inside the box, pulling out equipment and boxes of gloves. Absently, his neck cracked to the side loudly.
"Um... so, what did you mean you mean about feeling it earlier?" Tucker asked.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, well y'see I can't feel a thing!" The older boy said brightly. "When I was a kid I got a nasty virus that took out a chunk of my brain or something so now I can't feel anything. Pain, pressure, hot, cold. It's all the same to me."
"Woah, that's... unfortunate," Danny apologized.
The other shrugged. "Meh, it just means I have to be careful. If I strain a muscle or break a bone I won't notice. Same with frostbite and stuff. Can't feel it."
"Uh, h-hey, weren't you at the pumpkin carving contest?" Danny asked, trying a new line of topic.
The figure squinted then beamed excitedly, "No way! You were the guys with the 1st place Pumpkin! Aw, man, that was awesome what you did with the fire and the screaming! Shame about the Horseman and stuff."
"Well, yours was pretty impressive, too," Tucker complimented.
The other guy leaned in conspiratorially, "Just between you and me; I totally modeled it after Mr. Lindermann."
With that, he stacked the last of the glove boxes in place and started leading them deeper into the back rooms of the funeral home, many featuring very sterile and very shiny stainless steel equipment, storage bays and gurneys. Tucker was shivering the whole way, not just from cold.
"Y-you never said this place looked like a h-h-hospital," He whimpered to Sam.
"Huh? Oh, yeah," The guy replied happily. "I'm just a hired hand, mostly with grunt work and maintaining the landscaping around the Home, but almost everyone else has medical or chemical training."
He swiped a keycard at one section, leading off into a dingy-looking hall branching off into a couple of rooms. He stopped in front of one and knocked before letting himself in.
"Oh, Clocky~!" He sang.
"Toby," a voice deadpanned from inside.
The group filtered into a room about the size of a doctor's office. In the center was a steel gurney-looking device on wheels just beside a sink and a little device with tubes and prodding needles. Along the shelves were boxes of gloves and bottles of chemicals.
Danny eyed the table warily, unnerved.
The room resounded with the 'tick-tock' of clocks. Wall clocks, mantle clocks, novelty clocks, antique clocks, cuckoo clocks, dangling pocketwatches and wristwatches. Any clock that ticked and tocked and wasn't electric except for a plain, white business clock that looked installed in the wall itself.
The woman in the room was young, maybe around Toby's age, but wearing a white medical coat. Her long brown hair was tied in a ponytail behind her. Her lips had faint scars extending at the edges, making her look like she was always slightly smiling, but what mostly caught their attention was an eyepatch adjacent to a single, very green eye.
"You have visitors!" the guy, Toby, announced.
"Hey, Nat. You got a minute?" Sam greeted, walking in behind him.
The girl smiled back, "Hey, Sam. Yeah, I finished up today's workload, so I'm good for a break. Nice change of pace to talk to some people for a bit."
"You talk to me, Clocky," Toby interrupted.
She sent a one-eyed glare his way. "Not by choice, Rogers."
"So hurtful," He fake-whimpered, retreating back to what he was doing before.
She sighed and glared at the direction he left in before turning to the three. "Take a seat, you guys."
They found spots in the room to sit as Clocky hopped herself on her own gurney without a care. "So, Sam, who're your friends?"
"I'm Tucker Foley. TF; for 'Too Fine'," Tucker winked.
"Hmm, hard pass, kid." She replied evenly, with a slight upturn in he lips. "I'm 21, I don't date guys who can't legally order a drink for me."
Her piercing green eye slid away from a sulking Tucker and focused on Danny, looking him over like a specimen on a lab table.
"Eh... D-Danny Fenton."
She kept looking his way before nodding, "Name's Natalie. Natalie Ouellette, but I also go by 'Clocky' around here."
"Because of the clocks?" Danny guessed, gesturing to her little 'collection'.
She shrugged. "Partially. I like the sound while I'm working. The other reason..."
She paused with a grin and lifted her eye patch showing a customized prosthetic eye detailing a wide, clock dial pattern embedded in her socket, complete with a set of painted clock hands stuck at 7:06.
"Cool," Sam approved.
Tucker shuddered, shakily pointing, "D-do you... put that in or...?"
Clocky shrugged with a cocky grin, "It's just like putting in a contact lens. What's the matter? Squeamish?"
"No!" Tucker defended, still not looking her in the eye. "Just... just curious..."
"Can I ask how that happened?" Danny cautioned.
"Don't run with scissors," Natalie replied solemnly.
"Really? That's what happened?"
"No."
...
"So, you gotta question or you just wanna see me pop my fake eye out?" She asked, replacing the eye patch and turning to Sam.
The goth nodded, "Okay, so in complete seriousness, what would happen if someone was, say, dead but alive?"
"What?" The mortician was confused.
"I mean, dead like decomposing, but still moving around and stuff."
The older woman was clearly disquieted, "I'm not sure I fully understand what you're asking this for."
Sam sighed, "Look, it's an argument between me and Tucker. He's freaking out about the zombie apocalypse over here, and I'm saying zombies would just fall apart after a month. So, I figured I'd go to somebody who actually knows their stuff."
"Oh," Clocky laughed, more relaxed, "I get where you're coming from now."
She looks up in thought and starts speaking, "So, after initial death, the body starts cooling off and using up all the oxygen, going into rigor mortis. Then blood starts settling to the lowest point, that's livor mortis-"
"Yeah, we know that much, but what about actual decomposition?" Tucker interrupted.
Natalie raised an eyebrow at him and answered, "Well, if you mean how long until they snap their muscles and bones apart, then we're maybe looking at a week or so. Black rot is when things really 'heat up', so to speak, and muscles and skin start to tear in putrefaction. For a normal body, left out in the open, that can take about 10 days.
"However, with your walking, shambling zombie problem, they'd most likely start experiencing it much, much sooner because they are an 'active' corpse, so to speak. Lots of movement, abuse to the bones and joints, and a significantly higher chance of a hatchet in the brain," She laughed to herself.
The trio tried managing a weak laugh in response.
"So... how long until it can't... function anymore?" Tucker asked, cautiously.
She looked up in thought, "Well, assuming its eyes don't just dry out of its skull in the first day, and it's not stumbling around blind, then we're looking at maybe 5 days since death, or reanimation, in this case, until it literally cannot support itself anymore and it just falls apart."
Sam and Tucker shared a glance and looked back at Danny. The half-of-a-halfa was shaking slightly and tensely nervous where he stood, staring sightlessly at nothing ahead of him.
"Thanks, Nat, that was all we really needed to hear." Sam finally said with a forced smile.
"Hey, just doing my job. Well, sort-of. Not everyday I talk about the impending zombie apocalypse, but, hey, we got ghosts around here, so I guess it's not off the table yet." She laughed easily.
She turned to Tucker with a smile, "So, Mr. 'Too Fine', you can stop stocking your underground bunker with toilet paper and canned peaches."
"Yeah, got it," He thanked, weakly.
The trio walked out of the funeral home, gently guiding a stunned Danny along with them.
"Five days," he muttered aloud, once they were outside.
"Actually, three-and-a-half." Tucker corrected, wilting under Sam's murderous glare. "sorry..."
"No, no, you're right. One day passed and pretty much another day gone." Danny acknowledged blankly. "S-so, just... what can we do right now?"
Sam put a hand on his shoulder, "We go to your house. You said your parents had files on everything, there's got to be something on that weird net. We go there, figure out what it is and what it does, then move from there."
"And my ghost-half?" Danny asked. "Even if we do find a way to merge myself together, I haven't seen Phantom anywhere."
"One step at a time, Danny," Sam comforted, leading them to Specter House. "One step at a time."
Reggie was just out for a late-night jog. How cool was it to meet the town's hero on the way!?
"Phantom! Yo!" He cried out, running over.
The spectral hero was floating a little ways down the street, staring at a random house on the way. He didn't move or make any indication he heard his shout.
"Dude, this is so awesome to meet you! Can I get an autograph? Do you, like, do that or do pens just go through you?" Reggie asked.
...
Phantom remained unmoving, staring at an old tree on the property.
"Uh... dude? You okay?"
"S-swingset..."
Startled at the raspy emptiness of the voice, Reggie looked at the lawn, seeing nothing. He looked back to Phantom... or was it really Phantom?
The guy's hoodie looked about the same. It was hard to make out details in the dusky light, but it looked like Phantom's. And the guy's build was spot-on, too.
But he realized Phantom's hood was down for once. Weird, he'd never seen Phantom's hood fall off, even in a ghost fight. What was with the white hair? He didn't look very old.
"Swingset..." the ghost rasped again.
Reggie took a closer look at the tree Phantom was fixated at, seeing a particularly low, but heavy branch a few feet up. It had faint scars on the branch, two and evenly spaced apart. Maybe once-upon-a-time there might've been a swingset, but now?
This guy was just staring at empty space kinda creepily.
He was seriously starting to get unnerved. "Uh... dude, you okay? Is this a ghost thing or...?"
"Mine."
The ghost turned its neck so fast, it crackled like broken glass. Two, piercing green eyes glowed angrily at him.
"Mine!"
Reggie backed up, scared.
"MiiiIIIIiiiiNNNnnnnnneeeEEEEE!" It wailed.
The figure's young-looking face contorted like melted wax, dripping green ooze that vaporized mid-air. The potent, gagging smell of rotting chicken wafted up in its place.
The figure's eyes melted back into empty, black sockets with pinpricks of ectoplasmic green light.
He ran.
He ran away... and decided nighttime jogging wasn't a very good hobby for his health after all.
The human was gone.
Phantom's face slowly melted back together. Its ectoplasmic bones creaked as they shifted back into place. Proper eyes reformed, containing the green glow.
It stared back at the tree...
...
Phantom titled its head, wondering what the tree's significance is...
He had a feeling there was something to this particular tree, but that feeling was fading like morning mist.
...
He decided this tree was not his...
It was not mine...
He left the tree, chasing after memories sliding down like sand in an hourglass running out of time.
Memories vaporizing into nothingness like the dripping ectoplasm slipping off himself.
AN: I've been thinking about COVID-19... does it show in this chapter? I felt like it did...
Anyways, here I am, the entire state is in a stay-at-home lockdown and I'm 'lucky' enough to drag my contractually-obligated rear in to work everyday during it.
I prefer to look at it as me and my work in the labs being 'essential' to the company. It boosts morale.
And the only other option is 'expendable'.
...
On the other hand; Toby! My favorite! I missed you after that little cameo all that time ago.
