wickedlittlecritta
lord of misrule
intro
i will never die
delta rae
opening.
It had been the kind of late February day that was warm enough to melt snow, and unthaw the earth, and even after sunset the ground was still loose enough that Cathal’s shovel moved it without much effort.
The fact that somebody else had dug through it not so long ago helped too.
His jacket lay on a fallen log not far away as he worked, digging up the unmarked grave in the woods. It was sweaty work, digging graves, even in the cold.
Below him (about three feet below now, though it had been a solid six when he had started) he could sense the faint, familiar traces of neodymium that colored Charlie’s glass pendant. Neodymium was the kind of rare earth metal that was actually rare–most of it, if he remembered right, was mined in China. So the chances of it being anything but Charlie’s necklace was basically nil.
Cathal continued digging. Scoop and toss, scoop and toss, the piles of earth behind and beside him growing larger as the grave went deeper.
Three hours ago, he had stopped in at Charlie’s cabin and found obvious signs of a fight–furniture overturned, mail and tableware strewn across the floor–and blood.
Too much blood.
And after tracking her down with nothing but his ability to sense metals and the hope that Charlie had a few more lives left, Cathal was digging her shoddy grave in the state forest up.
He hoped they’d rolled her up in a tarp or something at least. Otherwise everything would be deeply unpleasant. He dug very gingerly, afraid his shovel would make contact with flesh.
Instead, it hit wood.
“...You’re shitting me,” he said, imagining someone dragging an entire coffin into the woods. But as he felt for the outline of its shape with his shovel (and started paying more attention to metal that wasn’t neodymium) he found it was much smaller, and before long he was pulling a big antique steamer trunk free of the earth, with quite a bit of huffing.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, they put rocks in this thing with you?” he asked, not really expecting an answer, as he got the lid free enough to inspect the latches. It was padlocked, which made him frown, though it wasn’t anything that the shovel couldn’t handle. The trunk lid opened with a loud clunk of protest.
“Hey.” Charlie said. She was crumpled into the trunk like a pretzel, looking pale and her thin white shirt, the one she liked to wear best to bed, the lucky one with sailor moon posing full of holes, was crusted with blood.
“Have you died in that fucking shirt twice now?” Cathal asked.
“I think its the shirt that won't let me die- can you - I- please,” She said, trying to unpretzel herself but finding herself mostly boneless.
“Hang on,” Cathal said, bending down to help Charlie untangle herself, deeply relieved that she was alive still. He had worried that she was dead for real this time, that maybe she had a set number of times she got to come back, and that maybe this death was the one that would stick. Now that he knew it wasn’t, that she had at least one more death left, his worry was replaced by relief, which was fast being replaced by rage.
Somebody had killed his girlfriend.
When he’d gotten her to sit cross legged on the cold leaf litter she scrubbed at her face and then matter of fact asked; “What happened?” as this was a routine debriefing over some weird probie shit and not her own murder scene.
“I was hoping you’d tell me. I went to the cabin and it was all fucked up like there’d been a fight. Lots of blood. And then I found you here.” Cathal gestured vaguely at the treeline beyond the outline of yellow light from his camping lantern. He also answered as if this were a routine explanation about some weird probie shit, and he had not just unearthed her from a steamer trunk.
“I,” said Charlie with some authority, “Was watching Encanto.”
“Insult to injury,” Cathal said gravely.
“The chickens went nuts. I grabbed my gun at some point. I don’t know. I’m sorry,” she hugged herself tight, her chest still aching and a scatter blur of a memory remaining in her mind of the confrontation. More a feeling. Like waking from a bad dream.
“Why are you sorry? You’re the one who got murdered and buried in a trunk.” Cathal stood up and stretched a kink out of his back. “Forgot the water in the truck, like a fool,” he added.
Charlie spent a lot of time in her life attempting to project as much self assurance as possible, like a rooster strutting around the shop with a cigarette in mouth, and Cathal was always immune to it. And so too was he immune to her being completely disarmed and humbled, bloodied and cold in the forest. She was sure she looked nothing like some one who should be in charge of anything. What kind of President got murdered in her own house? But she forgot some times that she probably couldn’t let Cathal down if she tried and that usually pissed her off.
But right now he was handsome and had just freed her from her second and so far most uncomfortable grave so she was going to have to let him love her without complaint.
“Water sounds good,” she said with longing instead of anything sharp. The cold was seeping into her now and her trembling wasn’t something she could pretend that they were both politely ignoring.
“Do you think you can walk a ways, or do you want me to give you a piggy back ride?” Cathal asked, retrieving his jacket. It was red leather, and clashed tremendously with his very red hair, but he personally thought that that looked nice. He offered it to Charlie, since she was wearing far less than he was, and it was still winter, after all.
“You can princess carry me for all I care, I think I’m beyond dignity,” She said, wrapping the jacket around herself without putting her arms through the sleeves. The fine motor skills of her fingers hadn’t loaded back in yet. Might not for a while. That happened last time too.
“The trees don’t care,” Cathal said. “It’s not that far, at least. Your would-be murderers weren’t terribly ambitious.”
“Cheap hits get you what you pay for I guess,” she said, letting him help her up.
Cathal tsked like this was rookie behavior (it was), and helped Charlie through the trees and onto a little hiking trail that soon led out to a dirt road that was empty except for his mother’s little yellow pick up. Charlie let him manhandle her into the passenger side and buckle her in, since her hands were still refusing to cooperate. He was about to shut the door when she lurched and said “Wait!” and then one hand against him and the other on the door handle vomited three bloody lugs out the side of the car door.
“Gross,” Cathal said, bending down to inspect them with his camping lantern. He then reached past Charlie for the first aid kit his ma kept in the truck and pulled out a rubber glove, which he used as a baggie to collect the bullets.
“Oh, are you Sherlock now?”
“Don’t insult me like that. I’m obviously Benoit Blanc.”
She groaned and deflated, because he was like this. Cathal tied off the wrist of the glove and tucked it in his pocket before sliding around the back to dump his shovel in the bed.
“Hey, you’re gonna hate me,” she said when he hopped in the driver seat, “We can’t leave a steamer trunk full of my blood on a public trail.”
Cathal rolled his head against the back of the seat to look at her with an expression of deep annoyance. “Oh, I do hate that,” he said. She was right though.
She leaned against the seat and matched his muppet frown, “You’re cute when you’re full of rage.”
He frowned deeper at her, and then got back out of the truck. He was trying very hard to look like he wasn’t full of rage, but Charlie always knew anyway. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said, putting the glove of bullets in the cup holder, where they rattled.
“Aw, shit, I was gonna hit up tim hortons. But sure, I’ll stay here,” She said, which was a sure sign she was feeling perhaps a little less dead.
“You’re so wise and magnanimous. I should have brought a probie to bully.” But empty, the trunk really wasn’t that heavy, or even very big. It did make a very satisfying thunk when it hit the truck bed.
“Can the next thing on our to-do list be a shower?” Cathal asked, getting into the driver’s seat again. “Not that I don’t love being covered in dirt, but. You know.”
“That’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me after water.”
Charlie had cranked the shower hot enough to fill the entire bathroom with warm steam in what felt like no time. Cathal sat on the toilet and said, “They locked the trunk, which means whoever killed you knew you wouldn’t stay dead.”
The sound of the shower running and the soft slap of water was the only answer for a long minute. The shower was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
“If that was true. Why didn’t they use cement?”
“Perhaps they were stupid. Or in a hurry.”
“I don’t think I’ve personally pissed anyone off too badly? Better question is how would they know? How would they know I didn’t die right at the lab last time. Just you and Tom know that.”
“Well maybe they don’t know. Maybe it was Devin testing a fucked up little theory.” Cathal paused, picking dirt out from under his nails with a baby wipe. “Goblin behavior.”
“Syndicate games,” She said with whale like intonations of despair, “Maybe....- maybe Insomnia thinks I’m pretty and went apeshit? The Family feels like cheap hits and Walmart locks more than Devin does. Devin would have had some gravitas.”
“Yeah. He would have gotten cement,” Cathal allowed. “Could be the Saints too? I don’t think they know, but that’s more their style.”
“MMm, I mean maybe we’re over thinking the lock. If I had to drive a dead body in a steamer trunk down I-9 I’d probably lock it too. Augh, I wish I could remember more. I mean I don’t. Not really. Don’t need that evil, but it’d be worth the trauma maybe?” She said this as she turned the faucet off abruptly.
“Maybe,” Cathal said, more about the lock than the remembering.
She stepped out and grabbed a towel and asked; “Do you want to finish Encanto with me?”
Cathal looked at her and said, “Yes.”
Charlie nodded. This was why she was in love with him and she could never admit it.
“Cool. After I’ll have a couple of probies drop the bullets off with the coroners and get rid of the trunk. Then we’ll wait to see what goes wrong while some one thinks I’m dead- Actually, call Tom, lets lock the lab down, send some guys over. I don’t want to fuck around. I want to finish Encanto.”
Cathal nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
cast
cast.
role five
played by
@ user
role six
played by
@ user
intro
cast
dead river
motorcycle
club
time
12am, midnight
date
February
location
township forest
status
open
♡coded by uxie♡
