9:03pm, the brunette exhaled sharply, breath hissing through clenched teeth. Late per usual, if there was one thing she could say about the dead, they certainly didn’t care about her social life. That’s the third time in a row she’d have to cancel, by her count probably two, too many times to deserve another chance. So much for dinner, drinks, and a semi-satisfying lay, c'est la vie. She put a finger to her temple preemptively massaging the headache this fresh corpse was going to give her. No scratch that, the headache whoever was transporting it was giving her. The heavy creak of swinging doors brought her attention up and away from a stack of forms she was contemplating finishing. Later, paperwork kept a bit better than the dead. She huffed audibly not one to hide her displeasure. If the officer wheeling in the black bag was fazed, he certainly didn’t acknowledge.
”Got another one for ya Dr. D-“
Her eyes narrowed reflexively, despite his attempt to catch himself she understood. Since she’d taken over for her much friendlier predecessor word had gotten around. Iona Chandra was a whole helluva lot nicer to humans if they were room temperature and sans heartbeat. The penchant for being bristly and unnerving chatting with dead people earned her the not so endearing title of Dr. Death. Normally they were smart enough to say it out of earshot. For once she let it slide or rather wasn’t given the chance to correct the cop hovering near the doorway. No one seemed to like hanging around her neck of the department unless they had to. Too cold, too eerily quiet and too many corpses hanging out in metal cubbies, go figure. Prodding for more information about the newly arrived body would only serve as a waste of her time. He couldn't tell her anything she wouldn't be able to find out herself, and she much rather like working without someone over her shoulder.
“Right, I’ll look at it tonight and you can pick up the report in the morning.”
He didn’t argue, barely let her finish, his footsteps disappearing out the door before she could unzip the bag and see what was inside. No chit-chatting tonight, straight to business then, she thought donning a pair of latex gloves. Examining the dead had become a clinical process, a check-list of steps to culminate in how someone bit it. Some part of her felt strange for feeling so removed, but the very thing that made her colleagues nervous was what made the woman so skilled. Her attention to detail, and her ability to keep her feelings packed away in a neat little box until the more visceral portion of her job was finished.
Namely the cutting, peeling and digging around in a stranger’s insides part of her job. A half smirk curled the corner of her lips. This might explain why she never wanted to tell anyone about how her day was. Reaching over onto nearby tray Iona brought up a scalpel to the woman’s chest. Yes woman, she blinked pausing, her blade brandishing hand stopping in midair. There was something oddly familiar about this girl, something nagging at the back of her mind. She put a hand on her hip, scanning with scrutiny.
“Now, where have I seen you before…any hints hmm?”
Not unsurprisingly her question fell on deaf ears or dead ones in this case. Her eyes brightened, and she smiled rather maniacally.
“Ah ha…that’s right…the coffee girl…I knew it! Yes mind like a steel-trap. Aw...the coffee girl.”
Her victory was short-lived, realizing the implication of this sudden discovery.
“Ah-no…you were the best barista for miles. Tell me just what kind of cruel ******** would kill you, you of all people? ”
She looked down at the body on her table, determination in her face. Well if someone thinks they can up and murder her favorite coffee maker and get away with it, they just messed with the wrong caffeine addict. She brought her blade down to the woman’s chest.
“Listen here, I am gonna find out who killed you…and he'll pay for it, don't you worry.”
Dead bodies don't talk [Laura]
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Iona Chandra (DELETED 6382)
- Posts: 3
- Joined: 02 Apr 2015, 00:33
- CrowNet Handle: Dr.Death
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Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)
- Posts: 96
- Joined: 19 Oct 2014, 06:42
Re: Dead bodies don't talk [Laura]
Becoming a vampire couldn’t ever really be an easy thing, but it was even less so for Laura and Mackinnley. Two oblivious innocents who were set up on a blind date and who did not have the good luck to figure out whether they might have lived happily ever after. Instead, they were kidnapped and turned, abandoned to figure out this new life on their own. There were basic things that they learned straight away, of course: one, they craved blood and two, they were burned in the sunlight. The discovery of the zombies came after that; as well as Laura’s stint in the catacombs. She had started to regard them as her home, and strangely she felt comfortable down there. She should have felt claustrophobic, but instead it was the complete opposite.
The last six months had plunged Laura into a well of despair; a dark world that she had slowly grown accustomed to. Now, however, the world was shifting again, metaphorically, beneath her feet. A family. Apparently she has one. A sire, that’s what they call them. The man who had turned them, had also turned others. There’s a whole bunch of them. And they are slowly introducing Laura to a whole lot of **** that she didn’t know.
The rub, however, was that there was still a whole lot that she didn’t know. For all intents and purposes, she and Kinney had moved slowly, and had been sheltered in their existence. There were risks she didn’t know she shouldn’t take—like falling asleep in the sewers.
No, it wasn’t an ideal sleeping place but she felt she had left behind the maze that was the catacombs and had instead found herself lost in an even large labyrinth. She’d been told there were dwellings down here that she could buy, and she felt more comfortable underground. She was curious, and wanted to go and inspect. It would seem, however, that she didn’t have any kind of sense of direction, and by the time dawn came around she still had no idea how to find her way out again.
Unfortunately, some time during the day that she had slept—beneath Wickbridge somewhere—a water main burst. Crews were called in—men grumbling because their days were finished but they were called in after hours. It was an urgent problem, apparently. People needed to shower. They wanted to be able to flush their toilets. But they were getting nothing but dirty water out of their taps—or no water at all.
Down in the sewers, they trudged through slowly rising water to find the source of the problem. They hadn’t bargained on finding the floating body of a dead girl. At least, they assumed she was dead. And why shouldn’t they? There was no breath, no heartbeat, and her skin was cold as death. A little curious, perhaps, that her skin was still pliant, and her limbs still limber. But they just assumed she was freshly dead. Maybe drowned? Whatever the case, the authorities thought it best to get an autopsy, just to be sure.
So there she was, jostled and moved around and none the wiser. See, this was one of the things Laura was unaware of, thus far. The fact that she could be stripped of her clothing and laid out on a metal surgery table and not wake up through any of it. Except…
It was the burning she felt first. The light upon her skin, causing it to turn pink. To slowly begin to burn, as if she were allergic to it. The next thing she felt was the scalpel in her chest, slicing through her skin. Her eyes flew open. She sucked in a deep, ragged breath that she didn’t need, glancing first down at her chest and the blood pooling there, and then up at the woman holding the knife.
Laura screamed. She bucked, and struggled—needing to do whatever she could to get the knife out of her chest, and to get herself out of the bright lights.
The last six months had plunged Laura into a well of despair; a dark world that she had slowly grown accustomed to. Now, however, the world was shifting again, metaphorically, beneath her feet. A family. Apparently she has one. A sire, that’s what they call them. The man who had turned them, had also turned others. There’s a whole bunch of them. And they are slowly introducing Laura to a whole lot of **** that she didn’t know.
The rub, however, was that there was still a whole lot that she didn’t know. For all intents and purposes, she and Kinney had moved slowly, and had been sheltered in their existence. There were risks she didn’t know she shouldn’t take—like falling asleep in the sewers.
No, it wasn’t an ideal sleeping place but she felt she had left behind the maze that was the catacombs and had instead found herself lost in an even large labyrinth. She’d been told there were dwellings down here that she could buy, and she felt more comfortable underground. She was curious, and wanted to go and inspect. It would seem, however, that she didn’t have any kind of sense of direction, and by the time dawn came around she still had no idea how to find her way out again.
Unfortunately, some time during the day that she had slept—beneath Wickbridge somewhere—a water main burst. Crews were called in—men grumbling because their days were finished but they were called in after hours. It was an urgent problem, apparently. People needed to shower. They wanted to be able to flush their toilets. But they were getting nothing but dirty water out of their taps—or no water at all.
Down in the sewers, they trudged through slowly rising water to find the source of the problem. They hadn’t bargained on finding the floating body of a dead girl. At least, they assumed she was dead. And why shouldn’t they? There was no breath, no heartbeat, and her skin was cold as death. A little curious, perhaps, that her skin was still pliant, and her limbs still limber. But they just assumed she was freshly dead. Maybe drowned? Whatever the case, the authorities thought it best to get an autopsy, just to be sure.
So there she was, jostled and moved around and none the wiser. See, this was one of the things Laura was unaware of, thus far. The fact that she could be stripped of her clothing and laid out on a metal surgery table and not wake up through any of it. Except…
It was the burning she felt first. The light upon her skin, causing it to turn pink. To slowly begin to burn, as if she were allergic to it. The next thing she felt was the scalpel in her chest, slicing through her skin. Her eyes flew open. She sucked in a deep, ragged breath that she didn’t need, glancing first down at her chest and the blood pooling there, and then up at the woman holding the knife.
Laura screamed. She bucked, and struggled—needing to do whatever she could to get the knife out of her chest, and to get herself out of the bright lights.
HARMED BY LIGHT - C O N D U I T - CRYPT DWELLER
T E L E P A T H
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Iona Chandra (DELETED 6382)
- Posts: 3
- Joined: 02 Apr 2015, 00:33
- CrowNet Handle: Dr.Death
Re: Dead bodies don't talk [Laura]
It was always smart to posit a good reason before slicing into the bare chest of an acquaintance. More so than with her typical clientele, John and Jane Does didn’t seem to illicit the same feelings of responsibility. Iona felt she needed to tell the recently deceased in this case, that she was doing the girl a favor. Giving her justice, granted she’d be lying it wasn’t entirely altruistic, sticking it to whoever murdered the only one who could craft a decent latte in this neck of town was still fresh in her mind. Perhaps it would have been better, had the woman been fully focused on her work, rather than fantasizing about nailing the prick responsible to the wall. She might have noticed the light from her overhead lamp was causing the woman’s seemingly dead flesh to redden and blister. She could have realized that there was something amiss about the distinct scent of singeing hair starting to permeate her nostrils. Or for a nice change of pace, that the body that she’d just stuck her knife into wasn’t in fact dead.
The scream hit her first, setting off a chain reaction of equal parts horrified, slack-jawed look on her face, with reeling backward. She’d managed to hit the back of her head on the lamp hovering above her workstation, and as an added bonus, nearly broke her neck on the tray table full of pointy surgical instruments. If she’d nicked her hand on something as she awkwardly stumbled away, the woman didn’t notice, nor have the wherewithal to register any pain. Shock does horrible things to the brain, like for instance, strips away one’s ability to speak.
She watched, wide-eyed, mouth gaping as the barista violently struggled and shrieked. For all her medical training, she’d never had the misfortune of almost murdering a suspected murder victim. No words left her mouth, but there was certainly no shortage of them in her brain. Amongst the various colorful swears were the words, malpractice, lawsuit and you’ll be lucky enough if you can even look at Band-Aids again without having this girl’s angry family trying to run you out of town.
Her legs were shaking, from a possible concussion she reasoned and not fear concerning her current predicament. She steadied herself with a now bleeding hand. Her brows knit together as she concentrated. There had to be something she could say, something she could do to fix this. Somehow she was coming up empty, how exactly does a person apologize for sticking a scalpel into someone? There were at least five false starts in attempting to speak before she actually successful said something.
”I…um…****!”
All that build-up and it was the best she could do. Against better judgement, she tried taking a step toward the woman. If she couldn’t soothe her with words, maybe she could at least try to do so with touch. Right, like putting her hand one this girl’s shoulder was going to make the knife sticking out of her any less traumatizing. She put her hands up, trying to seem non-threatening, one hand slowly reached toward her medical badge.
”I-I’m a doctor…I can, I can remove…um, that.”
She pointed meekly toward the scalpel, not even sure the woman was in the right state of mind to understand. The brunet took another step toward the woman, she had to do something. Had to try, had to at least attempt to fix this situation or she was facing the loss of her license. Or worse, if this woman bleeds out and dies on her. Going to prison wasn’t exactly on Iona’s list of to-dos tonight.
The scream hit her first, setting off a chain reaction of equal parts horrified, slack-jawed look on her face, with reeling backward. She’d managed to hit the back of her head on the lamp hovering above her workstation, and as an added bonus, nearly broke her neck on the tray table full of pointy surgical instruments. If she’d nicked her hand on something as she awkwardly stumbled away, the woman didn’t notice, nor have the wherewithal to register any pain. Shock does horrible things to the brain, like for instance, strips away one’s ability to speak.
She watched, wide-eyed, mouth gaping as the barista violently struggled and shrieked. For all her medical training, she’d never had the misfortune of almost murdering a suspected murder victim. No words left her mouth, but there was certainly no shortage of them in her brain. Amongst the various colorful swears were the words, malpractice, lawsuit and you’ll be lucky enough if you can even look at Band-Aids again without having this girl’s angry family trying to run you out of town.
Her legs were shaking, from a possible concussion she reasoned and not fear concerning her current predicament. She steadied herself with a now bleeding hand. Her brows knit together as she concentrated. There had to be something she could say, something she could do to fix this. Somehow she was coming up empty, how exactly does a person apologize for sticking a scalpel into someone? There were at least five false starts in attempting to speak before she actually successful said something.
”I…um…****!”
All that build-up and it was the best she could do. Against better judgement, she tried taking a step toward the woman. If she couldn’t soothe her with words, maybe she could at least try to do so with touch. Right, like putting her hand one this girl’s shoulder was going to make the knife sticking out of her any less traumatizing. She put her hands up, trying to seem non-threatening, one hand slowly reached toward her medical badge.
”I-I’m a doctor…I can, I can remove…um, that.”
She pointed meekly toward the scalpel, not even sure the woman was in the right state of mind to understand. The brunet took another step toward the woman, she had to do something. Had to try, had to at least attempt to fix this situation or she was facing the loss of her license. Or worse, if this woman bleeds out and dies on her. Going to prison wasn’t exactly on Iona’s list of to-dos tonight.
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Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)
- Posts: 96
- Joined: 19 Oct 2014, 06:42
Re: Dead bodies don't talk [Laura]
Laura’s chest heaved as her eyes were wide and searching for the source of the now-swinging light. Nostrils flared as she caught the scent of blood; it wasn’t her own blood. It wasn’t dead blood, but fresh blood. Hot and living. It cut through the scent of bleach and medical-grade cleaning products. Of coldness and death. She lurched up from the table, and she wasn’t paying any attention to the other presence in the room, though her instincts told her that it was just one other person. Just her and one other person. That wasn’t too hard to deal with.
Laura was trying to gather her senses. Where was she, and how had she got here? Of course, she was terrified. This had happened once before, hadn’t it? She’d woken up in a strange place and had no idea how she’s got there. She’d had Mackinnley, of course, but their lives had been changed irrevocably, and they could never go back. Laura was not naïve enough to assume that this was some kind of reversal. No, she was cold and numb and naked, and there was a shiny instrument sticking out of her bleeding chest.
And she couldn’t see properly. The light was too bright, and the woman now approaching her was just a blur. As soon as Laura felt fingers upon her shoulder she reacted. First, she reached up and whacked the lamp directly over them to smash the bulb. Second, she reached up and wrenched the scalpel from her chest. The instrument clattered to the floor. Third, she reacted upon instinct; she reached for the hot body standing so close to her. The embrace might have been affectionate if the circumstances were completely different, but the circumstances were thus:
Laura felt as if her life were in danger and she was terrified. And when she was terrified, she reacted in self-defence. The embrace was not affectionate; it was the embrace of a predator around its prey. Laura’s legs went to wrap around the doctor’s waist, her arms around her shoulders, all so that she could cling to the body so that, should she struggle, it would be harder for her to shuck Laura’s grip. Laura lunged for the vein, wanting to at least make the woman pass out and forget that she’d ever had a corpse on this table.
Though of course she wasn’t thinking straight, not really. There was no end goal—just a moment by moment reaction to a nightmare that Laura just wanted to be free of.
Laura was trying to gather her senses. Where was she, and how had she got here? Of course, she was terrified. This had happened once before, hadn’t it? She’d woken up in a strange place and had no idea how she’s got there. She’d had Mackinnley, of course, but their lives had been changed irrevocably, and they could never go back. Laura was not naïve enough to assume that this was some kind of reversal. No, she was cold and numb and naked, and there was a shiny instrument sticking out of her bleeding chest.
And she couldn’t see properly. The light was too bright, and the woman now approaching her was just a blur. As soon as Laura felt fingers upon her shoulder she reacted. First, she reached up and whacked the lamp directly over them to smash the bulb. Second, she reached up and wrenched the scalpel from her chest. The instrument clattered to the floor. Third, she reacted upon instinct; she reached for the hot body standing so close to her. The embrace might have been affectionate if the circumstances were completely different, but the circumstances were thus:
Laura felt as if her life were in danger and she was terrified. And when she was terrified, she reacted in self-defence. The embrace was not affectionate; it was the embrace of a predator around its prey. Laura’s legs went to wrap around the doctor’s waist, her arms around her shoulders, all so that she could cling to the body so that, should she struggle, it would be harder for her to shuck Laura’s grip. Laura lunged for the vein, wanting to at least make the woman pass out and forget that she’d ever had a corpse on this table.
Though of course she wasn’t thinking straight, not really. There was no end goal—just a moment by moment reaction to a nightmare that Laura just wanted to be free of.
HARMED BY LIGHT - C O N D U I T - CRYPT DWELLER
T E L E P A T H