Chapter Text
There was something in the sky.
You didn’t have to look too far to see it. People had been out, living their lives when the screams began. The color of the sky shimmering across the streets like a kaleidoscope - red purple green blue black white - an aurora borealis of all things Fucked. And that’s the word for it. Capital F Fucked.
The body tensed, the mind reeled. Their eyes turned skywards and their bodies would twist. Faces contorting, then pulsing out of their bodies, like someone had grabbed one end of them and squeezed their essance like toothpaste. A minute. Two minutes. A dog walker was engulfed by the rolling mass of her charge and fused into them, shrieking and barking as they tumbled into a jogger. Three minutes. Four minutes. A nail salon across the street erupted into a burst of elongated fingers, cuticles perfectly cut, scrabbling out of the shop into the city streets.
Help. That’s what you needed to do when this happened, right? Call for help? But who the fuck was supposed to help with this? Five minutes. A cop car swerved, slammed head first into a brick wall, then shook itself off with a growl, fire and teeth erupting in like proportions to turn and slam down on the hand thing from the salon. Six minutes.
Her eyes stared transfixed at the carnage below her. The unlit cigarette dangling from her trembling lips. Laundry - she needed to - No, it was still drying. She couldn’t bring it in. Not yet. But she didn’t have anything else and she needed something because she had to go - go?? Go where exactly?? Whole world’s going to hell outside, if she hadn’t noticed! Hasn’t been staring at it for… what? Seven minutes?
Don’t look up. Looking up meant death. She only had to watch a little old lady, bumped by the scrambling crowds, fall flat on her ass and have her head forced skywards to see what it did to someone. Blue grey hair parted by dozens upon hundreds of bulging eyes that overtook her from her cardigan, wrapped around her walker like vines. She grips the balcony bars, almost mimicking the old woman to steady herself. Somehow she can feel it - like a sunburn you know is going to show up a half hour later. The crawling of someone looking at you from afar even if you hadn’t noticed yet. Nine minutes passed in a blink as it bored down on the back of her head.
Don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look -
Ten.
Ten minutes is what it took for her to finally tear her eyes from the carnage and stagger back into her apartment, having only enough sense to shut the blinds before bile spewed from her lips. She dropped to her knees, retching onto the kitchen floor, her ragged coughs filling the apartment. Jeanne sat back on her haunches with every breath rattling her body. Her eyes staring at the vomit on the tile, her own bloodshot eyes looking back at her in shine.
What the hell was all that? That had to be some sort of nightmare, right? Or the filming of some wild new movie? Didn’t they film shoots around Canada? Or was that mostly Toronto? Ontario? Quebec? This stuff usually stayed in Quebec though, didn’t it?
No, she hadn’t seen any cameras. No cameras, no wires, just people. People who’d contorted their bodies to twist themselves into human pretzels because of something in the sky. Screaming and frenzied beneath its gaze. Gaze? No, that sounded right. She could feel it staring at her after all. At least she hadn’t looked. Looking seemed to be what killed people.
She picked herself up and glanced at the mess on the floor. Right, can’t have that. Not if she was on her own. Had to be a big girl and take care of that shit. Just grab some paper towels and -
Her eyes drifted to the fridge - a list notepad with PAPER TOWELS in bold pen strokes on the page.
Fuuuuuuck okay, regular towels -
The laundry -
Jeanne staggered upright and found her way to the bathroom. Toilet paper it is then!! Hopefully she wasn’t out of that too! Christ, why hadn’t she gone to the store last night? Her feet are still unsteady, bumping against the trash on the way. Picking up the clatter of tin on tile but ignoring it. Paper first. That’s what you did with messes. Had to clean it up. Before it got worse.
A hoarse laugh leaves Jeanne at the thought. Right, worse!! Like that was the worst thing that could happen to her today! Fuck, weren’t cigarettes on there too?? What else was she missing?
Okay, one thing at a time. Calm down. Calm down. Calm the fuck down.
“Okay thank god.” She grabbed a roll off the back of the toilet and took a headcount. Feeling lucky she wasn’t home that much. It meant she was still sitting at a solid five left, which at least meant she didn’t have to worry about running out. For now. For however long this went on for. While she was there, she checked the cupboards too. Painkillers, eyedrops, bottle of antacids (those didn’t expire, right? Even if it said they did…) She popped two and sat on the edge of her tub, running her hands through her hair. Chewing her lip.
She still had to clean it up but… she needed a minute. Just a minute. Setting her hands against her face and taking a shaking breath, then forcing another in.
Jeanne didn’t have much. The apartment had been a compromise - the gap between crashing on someone’s couch and getting a home in some cookie cutter neighborhood. Enough for some privacy when she needed to get away, with the rest of her hours spent with the crew.
She squeezed her eyes shut, clasping her hands together to lean her forehead on, a silent sort of prayer. They’d gone out last night, she knew that much. And she’d crashed out early. Had they stayed out? Long enough for that thing to get them? If not the sky, then one of the monsters out there had to have, right? The laugh comes out bitter. “Maybe I won’t have to break up with him now…” then she’s biting her lip again and hissing through her teeth, “Cmon, don’t. I can’t say stuff like that…”
But it was true, wasn’t it? Even if he hadn’t looked, there was so much happening outside. The crew had to be dead. He had to be dead. If he wasn’t then he sure wasn’t human. Her brain cycles back to the dog walker, the cop car, the nail salon, the little old lady - none of them were human anymore, right? It wasn’t cruel to think that - that’s just reality. They weren’t human. She didn’t need to worry about them, just herself. Even if Rodrick could have -
Jeanne takes a breath and shakes her head. “Don’t. Quit it. He’s gone, crews gone, just…” She stood up, “Even if they’re not, it’s not like I was an asset, right?? They can handle their shit. It’s fine.”
None of this was fine. And she wasn’t about to make it worse thinking about fucking Rodrick at a time like this. Knowing him, he would have charged out of the bar, knife at the ready to fuck up some poor sap who got fused with a blow dryer or whatever the hell. If he’d gotten killed or turned, it was his own damn fault.
One thing at a time. Clean up the puke, focus on breathing, then - and only then - get her laundry before she spent the rest of this apocalypse in a tank top and boxers. Another deep breath to calm herself down -
Something lodges in her throat. She reaches for her neck, but the choking sensation doesn’t come from her throat. It’s different somehow. The taste of moist fabric sticking to her tongue. Wet and with the sour tang of sweat and bile. She catches herself in the mirror and freezes.
There’s a hole along her shoulder, beneath her shirt, sucking in the fabric when she breathed. Fingers trembling as she reached for one strap and pulled it to the side. Two beady little eyes stared back at her, spitting up the fabric as she parted it from a mouth with teeth and tongue that lead to god knows where. Her hands clasp over her mouth. A sharp gasp and an agonized sound come from her hip, an eye pushing from one of her skin pores like a zit, gawking at her from beneath the hem of her tank.
The people outside were monsters after only a minute of looking up at the sky. Its gaze still tingling across her skin. Only a minute, a split second glance at whatever it was turning them into something inhuman, obscene, painful looking. Did it still count even if she hadn’t looked?
And if it did, what was ten minutes about to do to her?