lads, chaps, chums...here is chapter 5. i'm sorry for the decades that have passed between chapter 4 and now. i will try harder in future.

Bad dreams. Screaming, running. Unseen monsters clawing at me, scratching at my arm as I fight them off.

Then - cold. Bone-deep, relentless, aching cold. I try to move. Don't think I have a body. Sink back into something. Unconsciousness, or death? I don't care. I fade.

...

Panicked voices. Resurfacing. I try to open my eyes.

White, blinding white. I clamp them shut. I don't want it. It hurts.

No feeling except heaviness. Warmer now, but numb.

Am I dead? I don't think I want to find out. I let myself sleep again, soothed by the voices, allowing myself to melt into them, the warmth, the dreams.

...

The voices have returned. Louder, clearer, more like something I can try to understand.

"How long has it been?" I don't recognise the voice but I fixate on the syllables, the sounds, dragging myself towards them and into consciousness.

"Around sixteen hours," says another, sterner voice. "I don't mean to frighten anyone, but we need to see some movement soon. If he doesn't show any signs within the next few hours I'm going to start worrying-"

The feeling is returning to my body, but I wish it wasn't. My head is spinning, my mouth is dry as dust and sore, and my gut is a mass of pain.

What the fuck is going on? I concentrate hard and drag my eyelids open a crack.

White again, but this time shapes. Angles. Clean. A hospital room?

I open my eyes.

...

I was lying in a hospital bed, wearing a stiff uncomfortable gown with an IV in my arm. blfhxgfdvgg i hate needles i fucking HATE THEM. I ripped it out and threw it across the room. It hit Isabelle, who was standing with a group of concerned villagers, in the eye and blinded her and I laughed.

"Stop that you dick," came a voice from beside me. I looked and it was a doctor with a frown on her weird fucked-up bird face.

"Sorry," I said regrettingfully, with much regret, but not really because it was funny watching Isabelle bleed and cry.

"You nearly died," said the doctor, "from a dangerous combination of dehydration and dorito overdose, or Doritoverdose as we call it in the medical world."

"That's not funny," I said. "Stop making puns about my near-death experiences, you slag. You're not even hot." In reality, she was quite attractive, but for some reason I wasn't experiencing the usual towering boners I usually got. I hoped I hadn't turned gay again.

She frowned so hard her disgusting face nearly slid off. "Now that you're finally awake...do you have any existing medical conditions, Mayor Fleshynub?" she said, tapping a pen against her clipboard.

"Let's see...I have every STI known to man," I began, "But additionally I have the most powerful immune system known to man, so the only symptom is that my dick is stretchy like a Stretch Armstrong. It's well known that as a result everyone I fuck eventually dies." Luckily Isabelle was too busy howling in pain to hear this.

The doctor scribbled this down. "What else?"

"I have one giant lung instead of two normal sized lungs...they used to call me Fatlung in school…" I sighed. Those were hard times.

"Anything else?"

I thought. There was the possibility that my issues with sexuality were the result of a giant brain tumour, but I'd be damned if I let the medicals get their hands on my tumours. I'd always been protective of tumours, stroking and cooing at people's in the street, as you would a pregnant woman's stomach.

"Nope. That's it," I said. She finished writing and looked at me sternly but I only coughed in her face and giggled.

"Now, Mayor," she said, wiping my phlegm from her feathers, "you'll need to be in here for at least two weeks. We need to rehydrate you and deal with any after effects of the poisoning."

I sprung out of bed like a big spring on springy tablets. "Fuck that, I have a mystery to solve. I'm the goshdang mayor, I can't just sleep in here and wank all day while you watch. You pervert."

She grabbed for me but I said "get away you big bitch" and dodged and did a pirouette and then a sick barrel roll and landed in a crouching tiger stance. Everyone applauded. I tried to hide the fact that the effort had cause me to shit myself; there was a gentle river of faeces flowing down my leg. It actually felt quite soothing.

The doctor huffed and threw down her clipboard. "WELL," she said grouchily, "if that's the way you're going to be you can get better on your own." She opened the window and tried to fly out, but couldn't because she wasn't a real bird but an anthropomorphic one and she wasn't aerodynamic. And she fell onto the ground and got run over by an ambulance.

"Good," I said, as I pulled some real clothes on, shaking the shit from my leg. "Come on Isabelle, we've got no time to waste. There's a conspiracy afoot and we have to solve a murder."

"I'm bleeding!" she shrieked, clawing at her mangled eye socket. I couldn't believe how fucking selfish she was being, after I had nearly died. I wasn't even a BIT aroused by her right now. Normally I would have done something at least slightly fucked up, like stick my hard cock in her warm, yielding eye socket, but at the moment….meh.

"I can see that. I'm not fucking blind," I said. "But you are now, haha!" I ran out the room and left her, deciding that she would come along later when she had stopped feeling sorry for herself.

As I walked towards the exit of the hospital, my pace slowed and I became thoughtful. Pieces of the mystery were revealing themselves, that much was clear. Thanks to Isabelle I knew I had been right about the sea bass; I wasn't crazy. But more questions had been raised than answered. How could I stop the sea bass? What was it that everyone knew about them? Why the seagull, and why the doritos? I was in the middle of something shitty alright. Maybe I should have let Isabelle come (haha ;))) after all, so we could have talked. Talked. Hmm. Straight men like me weren't usually interested in talking to girls like Isabelle, but I supposed I was still feeling abnormal.

I turned back around and started to walk back to my room. "Isabelle," I called out, "I changed my mind, why don't you come after all? We need to talk."

I opened the door and froze.

Blood, thick, sticky blood covered every surface of the room. It was soaking into the bed linen and dripping in slick ribbons from the ceiling. The villagers had all been killed - no, not even just killed; ripped apart as though from an explosion. Limbs were scattered around the room almost casually and the sour stench of torn bodies was overwhelming.

I took a step forward, sliding on the warm red liquid. My mind had stopped. I couldn't even scream; I stepped over an arm, a jawbone, a head as though it was normal.

I was making my way towards Isabelle.

She lay in the part of the room I had left her in, limbless and gasping. I dropped to my knees beside her, letting the blood soak into my trousers, not caring.

"Who did this?" I asked calmly, for I knew it was meant for me and that I should have been dying too. She looked at me, the pupil of her one remaining eye constricted in terror.

"You know," she wheezed. "You know who it was." Her eye swivelled towards the window.

I stood up and walked towards it slowly, knowing as she did what I would find. The hospital overlooked a bend in the river, and it was a bright day. It was a beautiful day, in fact. The sun was illuminating everything and I could see them, glinting, floating together in a menacing silver cloud. An entire shoal of sea bass were watching from the river.

"They got me," I said, tears beginning to slide down my cheeks. "They fucking got me." I had never felt such fear and desperation.

I turned around to look at Isabelle. She was already dead.

thank you for reading chapter 5 of what is becoming a very emo fanfiction

thank you also for the reviews, they are delicious

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