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ashintheairlikesnow · 1 year

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Why You?

CW: PTSD, panic attack, hallucination, traumatized whumpee, escaped whumpee, some referenced gore from the past

Death Valley

For @amonthofwhump day 8; holiday haunting

Wichita, Kansas, 2012

A man who had once gone by Finn Schneider sat in a diner just before midnight, sipping weak but scalding hot coffee and waiting for his breakfast plate to be ready. The diner held a scattering of people other than him - a group of five drunk kids who couldn’t be more than teenagers, giggling to each other, a boy and girl shooting each other lingering looks that told the man that they would probably be kissing before the night was out.

The girl had stolen the boy’s hat five minutes ago and currently wore it with the bright and shining smile of the triumphant. The boy slid her sidelong smiles.

How long did it take him to realize what it meant when girls stole his sweater, his coat, his hat? He couldn’t remember, really. At some point, though, he understood that it was the same as a sign waved in the air, interest made clear without words.

There were a couple of truckers meeting for what passed for dinner at midnight, too. They’d nodded to him when they came in, thinking he must be one of them. He figured it was the eating-at-midnight, the loneliness, the heavy canvas coat he wore against the frigid chill of wind outside.

Noah had given it to him, congratulated him on your first Carhartt, now you’ll fit right in behind the wheel with me, and he’d worn it ever since. Noah was off on a different job, and it was up to the man - who currently called himself Henry Schmidtgall - to try and fit in by himself. Mostly, that meant saying as little as possible to hide his accent and wearing these heavy coats and gloves and a thick hat.

He was on his way from his last job in Illinois, near Chicago, headed up to Montana. There were some people he’d pick up in Colorado, three or four, and then he’d head north for the border and hope they made it before the snows fell.

Meanwhile, he sat in a diner in Kansas freezing his ass off. The chill air from outside made its way through the big glass windows, and he looked out to see absolutely nothing beyond the bright streetlights flooding the small parking lot. Not that there was much to see.

He hated driving through this part of the country.

There were no trees to stop the wind, for one, no real hills to slow it down. It blew across the fields and plains and cut like a knife. Half the time he thought if he forgot to wear gloves it would slice his skin right open. This time of year, there wasn’t even corn to rustle.

The waitress stopped over to refill his coffee, and he smiled at her, distant and unfocused. Over the tinny speakers, country music played, low enough to mostly escape notice, occasionally breaking into his thoughts as the singers wailed a particularly emotional line. The booth squeaked a little when he shifted, but he ignored it.

One of the teenagers threw her head back, letting out a bright burst of laughter that traveled through the diner like a gunshot. Everyone tensed a little, then went back to their soft conversations or - in Finn’s case - to staring at nothing.

Two waitresses argued over politics by the countertop, the cook occasionally chiming in while bacon sizzled and eggs fried in a saucepan to one side. The man who used to be Finn Schneider barely listened to them. He didn’t know anything about American politics and he didn’t care, either.

The bell over the door jingled as it opened, a merry little sound, and he looked up on pure instinct.

Then he froze.

His hands clamped down around the cheap ceramic coffee mug until the heat burned his palms, and still he held on. The chill was no longer on the outside of him, but boiling up from within, traveling up his throat and turning into the softest whimper.

Luckily, that came just as the chorus of the song hit its crescendo, and the tiny noise he’d made was smothered by she was the one that got away, the one that wrecked my heart…

Hesitating just inside the door was a woman in her midtwenties with black hair that flowed loose down her back like water, blown around by the freezing wind. She had a cell phone up to her ear, wearing tight black jeans that flared out over heavy boots, a thick sweater and the same kind of coat the man who used to be Finn Schneider was wearing over that.

Finn saw her in profile, left side only, her aquiline nose and light brown skin, one green eye - he was sure it would be green, although he couldn’t see from here - and full lips. She laughed, to whoever she was talking to. “Yeah, I’ll call you when I get back on the road,” She said, her eyes scanning over the booths and tables, taking in the sparsely populated little place. “Yeah, I try my best to be. Mmhmm. Love you, too.”

She shifted, shoving the phone into her pocket.

Finn stared at her, years falling away. If she turned her head, he knew she’d be missing one eye. The right side of her head would be bashed in, crushed bone and brain and so much blood. If she turned, he’d see one green eye ringed in a little line of brown, just the one, an empty marble in a broken face.

He never did quite understand what had happened to the other eye.

He last saw her on Robert’s living room floor, a dead body dragged along on a trash bag with her hair a terrible halo clumped with blood and gray matter. He’d listened to the awful, final sound of her body thumping down the basement stairs, disappearing into the dark. Then he’d seen Robert bring up the barrel with little left inside but bones he’d bury somewhere in the wilderness while hunting for new victims.

What had her name been?

Robert had shown him the driver’s license, made him hold it and smear his fingerprints all over the thing. A smiling, pretty woman’s face with long black hair. Nicole Chumani. Age 24, address somewhere in North Dakota.

Robert had commanded Finn to read every detail out so he couldn’t look away from it. Hair, black. Weight, one hundred forty-five pounds, height, five feet six inches…

Only when Finn had broken down into tears inside his cage, Robert disgusted by his emotions, had he taken the license back and driven her body away to be dumped with all the others. She’d been in California, Robert had said cheerfully, to visit a friend who came out here. She’d been to California to have a nice visit, and she’d had one, and then she’d run into Robert at a rest stop at 3 AM when he was hunting.

And then-

She’d been buried in the woods, with the others Robert didn’t keep in his basement. Somewhere in the woods, somewhere along a highway in Wyoming, somewhere no one was ever looking for them.

And here she was, now.

When Finn glanced down at the floor, he could see the blood dripping and puddling there beneath her feet, bits of gray matter floating in it. Bone, like shards of glass, the slight curve of a skull.

“Just you, sweetheart?” The older waitress called out, a woman in her fifties maybe. The dead woman smiled, giving a nod in affirmation. “Sit wherever you like, it’s too late for anybody to be all that picky.”

She laughed in response, and Finn blinked, watching her back as she walked to a booth, pausing just before it. Bloodied footsteps trailed behind her. His heart stilled as he waited for her turn around - to see that bashed-in face, to throw up all over the table and to have only coffee inside of him to lose - and then it began to beat again. The heavy thump of it knocked the air from his lungs.

She turned his way as she sat down and he realized it wasn’t Nicole Chumani at all.

There wasn’t any blood on the floor.

No bone or brain.

He blinked, rapidly, and shook himself like a dog shaking off water.

She didn’t even look like Nicole Chumani, and her eyes were clearly far too dark to be green. Her hair was too long, although didn’t he read once that hair keeps growing for a while after you die? Her face wasn’t broken at all, wasn’t bashed in and destroyed by Robert’s hammer blows. She had two perfect dark eyes.

She glanced over and caught him looking at her - staring - and Finn immediately looked back down at his coffee. The next time he chanced a look, she had her phone in her hands, and he knew what she was doing.

He knew.

She was taking a photo of him, maybe, or just describing him in a text to someone she trusted. Guy staring at me, creepy asshole.

It was only-

She’d just looked like-

He almost asked. Do you remember Nicole Chumani? She went missing in 2003? But of course she wouldn’t, they probably had never heard of each other. How many people lived in the States, that he should assume any one person would know about any other? This woman would have been a teenager when Robert dragged a body across the floor in front of Finn’s face.

It would have been fine, if he had died, and Nicole Chumani had been the one who lived. She would probably have done a better job with her life than he’d done with his.

A plate was set down with a clatter in front of him and he jumped, heart in his throat, eyes jerking up to see-

The waitress, blinking with surprise. “You all right, hon?”

Finn swallowed, once, twice, three times. “I-... yes, thank you.” If he kept his sentences brutally short, he could mostly cover up his accent. Noah told him to, that he needed to not seem like someone who didn’t belong here, but it was hard when he belonged nowhere at all. When he shouldn’t even be alive. When he should have been buried in the basement with the rest. “More coffee, please?”

She nodded, bustling away. His stomach flipped at the smell of the cooked eggs and bacon in front of him, the toast with its little cups of butter and jam. He wasn’t hungry any longer, but he made himself spread the butter anyway, take a bite of crunchy browned bread and salty fat.

The waitress poured his coffee back up to the top, then glanced up at a clock that hung on the wall near the door. “Merry Christmas,” She said, with a solemn thoughtfulness.

“Wh-... what?” Finn blinked.

“It’s after midnight, hon. Merry Christmas.”

“Oh… ah, Merry Christmas, thank you.” He caught himself before he could say danke.

She walked back over to her argument over the President with the other two, and Finn ate some bacon with a tongue that did not taste it, with teeth that were barely aware as they chewed. He could feel the woman in the other booth looking at him, still. Wondering why he had stared at her like that.

There was nothing he could have said to ease her mind, now that she was worried over him. No way to say, look, I’m sorry, but you look just like a corpse I once knew-

He had to stifle a giggle, put a hand over his mouth. Hysterical fear threatened the edges of his vision, settled like a weight against his back, ringed him like the bars of his cage.

He didn’t dare look her way again. Not only because he knew what he looked like, but because he was terrified that if he did, she would be missing half her face again. She would point at him, glaring with her one baleful remaining eye, and ask with a mouthful of missing bashed-up teeth and cracking broken cheekbone what made you so goddamn special? Why did you get to live and I had to die?

And he’d have to say, I don’t know.

He fled into the night a few minutes later, his meal barely touched and a twenty dollar bill left on the table.

The man who used to be Finn Schneider was in Dodge City before he stopped feeling the weight of one single eye on his back.

@finder-of-rings @endless-whump @arlinthesnep @thefancydoughnut @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears @hackles-up @grizzlie70 @mylifeisonthebookshelf @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp

@whumperfully @pigeonwhumps @squishablesunbeam @darkthingshappen @whumper-soot @pumpkin-spice-whump @pardonmekreature @d-cs @honey-is-mesi @whump-queen @sowhumpful

#amow winter whumperland 2022 #finn schneider #death valley fic #whump #holiday haunting #day 8: holiday haunting #gore #ptsd tw #panic attack tw #Hallucinations #visual hallucinations tw #referenced eye whump #traumatized whumpee #trauma response tw #escaped whumpee #freed whumpee #rescued whumpee

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blackberry-bloody · 1 year

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Pick Your Poison 3

You chose to hide.

You were looking for a building, not a person. And already unnerved, you worry about this person’s intentions. Especially since you swear their footsteps appeared out of thin air.

Quickly you grab your phone and stand up. Your rest allowed your eyes to adjust a bit more to the dark, so you could make out the silhouettes of the trees as you weaved your way back a few rows to tuck behind a thick trunk.

Soon enough though, you see a light breaking through the dark as the person traveling the path comes into view. You poke your head out to watch, confident they couldn’t see you.

They were definitely a person. A taller man by the looks of it. A black cloak wrapped around them, and hood over their head. All you could make out was their face. Their eyes were quickly darting back and forth with their light. Clearly focused and looking for something. Their eyes were a bright green that, had you not known better, you would’ve thought were glowing.

You watched them pause as they reached the stone you had stopped at, as though finding what they were looking for. You felt your heart racing and ducked back behind the tree, just to be safe. You could see the light shine around you, piercing the woods like a needle.

“Hello?” The man spoke up. You held your breath and hoped they would just leave quickly. After a tense moment, you hear the man sigh deeply. “Damn hunters trespassing again.” His voice held both anger and concern. “If you can hear me, this is your warning that these woods are off limits! The creatures that inhabit here are protected, and are not kind to unwarranted visitors! This is my only offer. Come out and I will lead you back safely.” He shouted into the night. Amongst the silence all around you, it was nearly deafening. But you heard afterwards, much quieter, “Please…” They sounded genuinely worried.

You were no hunter, but here was someone offering help! But you also knew nothing of this stranger… Could you trust them? Then again, their warning rattled in your mind. Could you risk the dangers of not getting their help, being shot or trapped by a hunter, or attacked by a wild animal also seemed like particularly appealing options.

You snap out of your thoughts as you hear the footsteps starting to walk away. You only have a few moments to decide before they’re gone.

Taglist:

@whumpshaped, @whumpsday, @whump-queen, @emmettnet, @icyheart-and-friends

#jay jabbers #my writing #pick your poison #choose your own whump #just in case anyone's curious #or wants a 'soundtrack' while they read these #I've been writing these while listening to Steampianinst's songs on youtube #'Doctor Herbert West'#and 'I feed'#in particular #on loop XD #but a lot of their songs work really well for this #just keep in mind some of their visuals/content can be disturbing to some

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