This fanfiction was a bit of a dedication to the members of MTC's production of "Arsenic and Old Lace", as well as the house members who sat and deciphered all the lovely sexual innuendos. I don't even know what genre this was supposed to end up as, but I can guarantee that it will be pretty much all of them in the end. Good Lord. Have mercy, this will likely be the worst, most unrefined, inappropriate thing I've ever written. ~Cat.
Rating: T+, I think. For swearing, blood, and implied sex.
Mortimer's nose prickled at the very smell of whatever seemed to have permeated the air. He awoke slowly, shaking his head. Something about the way the ground felt under his body felt incorrect, as though it were simply painted cotton. His heartbeat was erratic, and the color of the world seemed to have paled in the eerie darkness. Worst of all, the faint weight of Elaine's hand was gone from his.
No. Elaine herself was gone from beside him.
The young man got up and glanced around the yard. Everything seemed to be in disarray- the yew tree above had been decimated to a frail, silvery skeleton, and the grass was up to the backs of his knees. The flowerbeds were overgrown and shriveling, and the looming Brewster house itself had a bit of a disheveled aura about it. It seemed as though the entire place, his beloved childhood home, had become a nightmare. [No shit, Sherlock.]
Trying to get his scattered mind together, Mortimer began to jog towards the back door. "Aunt Abby, Aunt Martha? Elaine? Reverend Harper?!" Each call became more and more frantic, bleaker. The thick wrought-iron door to the breezeway fell open with a heart-stopping creak, the only sound anything had made besides the understated wind that whistled by every so often. "Hello?" Mortimer called, a question and a plea. "Is anyone home?"
His steps made reverberating echoes throughout the hallway, whose walls were stained and peeling. The place was cold and empty, inhabited only by the remains of life it had once supported. It seemed like years had passed since his head had lolled back under the September stars, and now the world itself was grinding to a halt. The front room was how it had been left when Mortimer had been there that afternoon, the table set but bare, save for a broken bottle laying in a pool of dark purple. Wine, he guessed.
"Abby? Martha?" The quivering critic called. "Elaine? ELAINE!" He sighed and sat down on the sofa, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling up unpleasantly. Perhaps this was what he got for taking the afternoon off. An eternity of hell to pay.
Behind Mortimer, the door to the drafty old cellar slowly swung open. It groaned, a plaintive sound in the silence. He whirled around and recoiled from the back of the seat very slowly, putting more distance between himself and the deep darkness. There was a low, throaty sound in the basement, one as painful as death itself. [The way this stuff is going, it wouldn't surprise me if death itself had paid dear old Mortimer a visit...]
"MORTIMER!"
There was a scream that echoed up the dank passage. It throttled the man straight to the core, sending him rocketing down the stairs of the cellar, jumping and tripping over a few steps in between. The low-ceilinged room was lined along the walls with wine bottles, and across from him was the double-door into his grandfather's old laboratory. These were thrown open, sending an abnormal stream of cold air out into the space.
"Mortimer?!"
It was Elaine's voice. Mortimer raced across the packed dirt floor and into the altogether different surroundings of the sterile medical lab, where the young woman was laid straight across an old gurney. "E-Elaine..." He gasped. His eyes raced across her small body [No, that's not perverted at all.], finding no clear evidence of harm. Her chest was heaving [DEAR GOD, MAN, WHY ARE YOU LOOKING?] and it appeared she was just as frightened as he was. "Are you okay?" [Well it's not like you wouldn't know, after looking her over. Next time, I beat you with a feckin' stick.]
"Yes, Mortimer, I'm - I'm okay," she choked. Her emerald eyes were wide with fear, looking past him into the outside chamber. "But... I woke them up..." Salty streams stemmed from her eyes, and she sat up and leaned around Mortimer. There was a slight vibration that rumbled through the earthen floor, a disturbance of the space. He ignored it.
"Woke who up?" He had no time to answer as there was a loud, throaty groan from the outside room. [Oh, God, Elaine! What were you doing before I got here?]
She stared into his eyes. There was something wrong with her left eye; it was normally a beautiful green, and now, it was tinged purple. "They smelled it, you see. I'm just a carrier." Mortimer felt his eyebrows elevate, a sick feeling creeping into his stomach.
"What did you - do?" [What didn't she DO?]
Quickly, spastically, Mortimer twisted his head in a while turn. A small mob of less than a dozen men, elderly and stooped, stunted by this thing, were slowly advancing. An attempt at a pathetic shout changed into a sick choking noise. "What-" He retched dryly, looking at Elaine, who seemed frightened in a contained sort of fashion. Like she did this every day. "What exactly is going on?"
"They have the sickness," she said swiftly, expressionlessly. "I don't know how to explain it, they just..." [...are dead old leches who want yo body.]
Before he could stumble about, do anything, profess to the world that this adorable vessel of God knew what was going to be his death (waking or asleep), the [virgin] reverend's daughter reached out and grabbed Mortimer by the lips. ["Oh God, does this make me a pedo?" Yes, Mortimer, it does.] Eyes wide, the subtle exchange of saliva spread the "sickness" to his body. And he felt it, a sort of fire spreading through him. [For sure it wasn't sexual this time...]
There was a rage in his veins, and it consumed him to the point of wanting to kill everything that moved within the nearest hundred miles. He was sick with anger, and the once-tame, civil critic let out a shout. This wasn't him...
Back in the backyard of the old Brewster home, the real Mortimer woke up screaming for his aunts, his freakish brother Jonathan, anyone... Elaine simply opened one eye, the left, and stared at him, bemused. [She wanted him screaming all the time.] He stopped his squalling hoarsely and stared back.
"What are you... gaping at?" He coughed.
The reverend's daughter chuckled, opening the other eye. Mortimer sighed as he realized they were both normal. "You, Mortimer." [Once again, AWWW.]
Afternotes: Ahaha, sexual innuendos all around. Specifically poked at the fact that Elaine is a Lolita with stuff for older men, as well as Mortimer screaming Jonathan's name in his sleep... :D Oh, this was a big spoofing of 28 Days Later.