Participants:
| Scene Title | Winding |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | How in the name of Heaven can he escape ; That defiling and disfigured shape |
| Date | May 6th, 2019 |
Somewhere in Jackson Heights
May 8th
11:13 pm
Panicked breathing fills the air.
A hurried and rushed sound of shoes slapping on wet asphalt after a long night of rain. Dogs are barking in the dark of the lightless stretches of the city, where the power ceases to flow, where the sirens cannot call. In this cold dead of night, a lone man runs until his legs ache and his joints scream. There's blood on his face, from his nose and his split lip, a glimmer of metal at his wrist where handcuffs once bound his arms together; now jingle-jangling with broken chains.
Tall, rainsoaked brick walls rise up into the darkness of the cloudy night's sky overhead. Shouting and the sound of a truck echoes in the distance at his back, flashlights sweeping across the glistening street. The escapee's lungs burn from running, but the flashlights and the raised voices spur him like a tired horse back into the race. As he turns, he strikes a collection of metal trash cans, sending them rattling down to the alleyway scattering bottles and paper about his feet. The noise catches the attention of his pursuers, but he can't stop now, can't go back. The flashlights are already at his heels. Instead he runs, runs as fast and as far as he can until the alley opens out into another street. He sprints across the road, no cars to be seen except for those without tired or windshields or doors littering the roadside. He vaults over the hood of one, his shoes squeaking as they skim across wet metal. When he lands on the other side, he can hear someone in the alley shout, "There! There!"
The escapee darts for the boarded up tenement building across the street and the two men pursuing him weave around either side of the derelict car. They're not as tired, haven't been running for an hour straight. He reaches the front door of the tenement building ahead of them, throwing himself through the door with a crash of the aluminum frame buckling and glass shattering. His entire body weight is just barely enough to knock the door open but the leaping charge sends him tumbling to the ground, rolling through the broken glass as it scatters like stars across the pitch black floor. His pursuers are almost on him, just a short ways across the street now. He scrambles to his feet, leaving bloody handprints in his wake and moves for the stairs up.
But there is a figure at the top of the stairs, ahead of him. He is tall, thin and lanky with long and narrow limbs. Even in the dark his pale skin seems to glow, as do his pallid blue eyes. He angles his bald head to the side, dusty platinum blonde brows furrowing together as a low hum builds up in the air between he and the escapee. "Please don't— " is all the escapee manages to say before he is struck by a vibrating wall of sound that throws him off of his feet so hard it knocks him out of his shoes. He flies backwards, landing on the ground in front of the tenement building doorway just as two men in gray jumpsuits come crashing through the door, each of them holding cheap handguns. They arrest their movement, guns trained down on the prone man, then look up to the tall and pale figure creeping down the stairs. They look at each other, warily, then back to the tall and gaunt man as they lower their guns down to their side.
"I pay you to guard them," the tall man says with an involuntary twitch of his head to the side, "not— allow them to escape." His pale eyes flick from one man to the next, then down to the one on the floor who is breathing in heaving, gulping breaths and struggling to see straight from the force of the impact. The albino grimaces and turns the expression into a rueful smile as he takes a knee beside the prone man.
"I'm sorry," the albino says with a quiver of his brows, noticing that his hired help is already backing up. They know what's about to happen. The escapee spits a little blood up into his beard, a tooth with it as well. The impact that hit him face on broke his jaw, the words don't come out in anything other than a slurred mess of wet noises. The albino lays one long-fingered, pale hand down across the prone man's mouth. "I'm— so sorry. But I need this more."
The albino's hand clamps around the prone man's mouth who begins to convulse and spit muffled screams into that pale palm. The screams and convulsions become more violent, even as the albino's eyes roll back in his head and his veins bulge at his temples and his neck. His back arches, parched lips part and he begins to tremble as the man convulsing on the floor curls his fingers into his palms. The prone man's veins rupture under his skin and blood blisters begin to form, soon becoming weeping beads of blood sucked out of his pores. The blood rolls across his face and toward the hand of the albino, who exhales a shuddering breath. Color drains out of the man beneath him, his eyes collapse into shriveled husks, and soon a flush of color floods up the albino's arm, then up the side of his neck and his face, coloring him the pallor of life rather than the chalky cast of death. He exhales, sharply, and looks over to the two hired hands standing frozen in the doorway.
The screaming has stopped. That man is dead.
"Please clean this up," the albino says as he rises into a slow standing position, blood staining his palm slowly soaking into his flesh until not a drop on his skin remains.
"…and— don't let it happen again."
