Post by chibbs on Dec 11, 2014 0:17:49 GMT -6
((Ugh. I'm really not good at writing like this. Also there is a bit of blood and grossness in the story.))
A young woman stood in the threshold leading to the recruitment office. Her garb could really only be described as one step above rags. Her overtanned a sun blemished skin as well as her smirking countenance gave her a somewhat salty and sailorly look. She clutched a roll of paper to her chest and walked in when a man with a mustache nodded at her. He was sitting at a desk stacked high with records and books and papers and wore somewhat faded stormwind colors. She took the girl's papers and gave them a brief look, speaking in a bantering tone as his eyes scanned back and forth,
"Whitlock eh? So tell me why you want to join the alliance fight?"
The question seemed to only be to pass the time, the recruitment officer didn't really seem to care but all the same a very particular and vivid set of memories flooded into the woman's mind and her smirk ceased to exist.
--------------------------------
Aida Whitlock sat in front of a line of drying clothing in the forest just outside Stormwind's gates. A river bubbling and humming in front of her. She was fiddling with a few freshly caught fish, trying to slice the meat thin enough to dry with a fairly dull knife. She usually dragged two or three of the other street urchins down to the river to get them to bathe. They had long since ran off and Aida sat idly, waiting for the clothes to dry. Nowhere to be really. Eventually she hears footstep and ragged boy runs up towards her, barefoot and ragged and clutching something close to his chest. The boy spoke with so much speed and energy that he very much looked like he was going to explode.
"Aida. Aida. Aida. Aida. Aida. Aida. I made four whole coppers today. Caught two nasty rats. Brought them to the rat catcher."
Aida grabbed the boy by the wrist and pulls his arm over to look at the coins stacked in his palm.
"Oh well done Snaggy. What are you gonna buy?"
The boy looked stunned by the question.
"I'll buy a...I'll get a whole...I want a...."
Aida placed a hand on the boys head and roughly mussed up his hair.
"You can buy whatever you want. Well...whatever costs four coppers. Go find Wuby for me yeah? It's getting dark and I heard a rumor...well go find her in any case. I'll be heading back into town."
The boy ran off and Aida began to take down the only slightly damp clothes. The sun was nearly setting when she walked back through the city gates. She took a detour, skirting around the abandoned and ruined parts of the city destroyed in the cataclysm. A sound drifting up from the ruins, a sound like sobbing. Aida stopped and moved towards it, more concerned than curious. She was strangely alone on the streets. The sound that took her barely registered in her mind, and her last waking thought was confusion.
--------------------------------
She woke up staring at broken stones and mangled wood. She tried to move but couldn't. Held fast at the wrists, ankles, hips, and shoulders. She could hear only the crackling of a torch and could only. Panic quickly set in and she grunted in exertion as she tried to move with every muscle. Her breathing quickened but it was futile. She could still bend her neck however and craned her head up to look down at her body. She was laid out on something like a table, or a great big wooden board. Very definitely tied down with vicious looking leather straps. Her breathing calmed and she noticed something. She noticed that her right hip actually had a bit of wiggle room. She could bump it up 3 or 4 inches, not enough to escape all of the other binds but there was still something loose.
She scanned the rest of the room, barely more than a cubby hole in the side of a mostly collapsed building. Makeshift shelves lined a wall, stacked with cloth and vials and strange sharp looking tools. She took a second to ponder how bizarre it was that some farfetched rumor she heard about a madman prowling the city at night would line up so well with her being knocked out and tied up. She moved on to calling out, first at a normal volume and then raising it to a shout. No sounds responded.
A crazy calm washed over the girl as she closed her eyes. No more stressing a situation had ever crossed her path and yet she calmly sat and ran through the details in her head. Ruins. Out of earshot. Hidden domicile of some kind. Something like the tools of a surgeon on the wall. She opened her eyes again and looked around more carefully and noticed something even more strange. Some hanging bits of brittle something with faint scrolling curving patterns on them. She couldn't place them though, some kind of leather or hide maybe.
She very suddenly heard the presence of someone else in the room. Raspy breathing and the opening and closing of a mouth. She looked up again, a man stood in the door way. Mouth open, dark circles under his eyes. His hands wringing together. She spoke quickly, suddenly filled with anger. Cursing him and asking him who he was and what she was doing here and why was she tied up. The man hardly looked disturbed and spoke as he walked over to his shelf. His voice dripping with depravity.
"I thought you should know that I've been watching you. In the city, outside the gates..."
Something about the tone of his voice made Aida acutely aware of her state of dress. Or undress as it was. At least she still had her underwear on. She clenched her jaw and glared. And he kept speaking. Gesturing up at those strange bit of something hanging on the wall.
"I'm an artist you see. I did some of these but no, no. They weren't perfect. They were spoiled. But you, you're perfect. A sweet canvas."
She cursed him again. Something about his mother and his similarity to vermin. She also noticed how tidy he looked. Fancy clothes, clean shaven, well kept. But not too old, early 20s maybe. Some bored noble son no doubt. He turned around, a ghastly sharp looking scalpel like instrument in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other. He held the paper up to show another scrolling motifs and shapes almost like the lines of lace. The same faint things she saw in those bits of something on the wall. Sharp object, tied down subject. The facts were relayed again and a sweeping horror enveloped her.
"I made it myself you know. Prepared in advance. But I hope you don't mind if I improvise too. I've gotten quite good."
He walked over and settled next to her right leg. She watched him all the way. The desire to vomit was overpowering. He placed the paper on the table and brandished his little surgeons tool.
And set to work on the top of her right thigh.
Screaming in pain really seemed appropriate at that moment. The sharpness was unlike anything she'd ever felt. But she bit her lip, and focused entirely on controlling her breathing. Grunts of pain escaped on the exhale but she stared at the ceiling. Thinking about breathing. It was clear this madman's goal was to cut his disturbed "artwork" into her flesh directly.
Her breathing blocked almost everything out of her mind. In. Out. In. Out. She could feel blood dripping down and away. In. Out. In. Out. She could feel him wiping away blood as he worked. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. No thinking. Just breathing. No sobbing, screaming, cursing, begging. Not anymore. Just breathing. Could have been minutes or hours. The pain was so harsh that she could hardly even pinpoint where exactly it was coming from, just that the whole leg felt like fire. Aida finally broke and pulled her head up to look.
He was focused, working away. Scoring the skin. She could see the shapes in red, the work already done. He leaned close, clearly concerned about the detail. And the facts streamed back into her mind. Right hip lose. Surgical instrument. And a few new facts where made clear. He was leaning very close. And his blade was pointed at both ends.
Right hip loose, leaning close, pointed both ends.
She exhaled and let out a tiny whimper before putting all her weight into the looseness of her bindings and jerking her leg up the best she could. And two things happened, a strange popping sound and a deep sharp pain in her thigh. The scalpel stood straight up, jutting out of her leg. And the man jerked back explosively and let out a howl of pain unlike anything she had ever heard. He was cradling the bloody hole of his right eye. It worked.
She was almost as shocked as he was. Almost.
The man stumbled around and whimpered in pain. Holding on to his blinded eye, like it was about to fall out. He eventually stood up straight again and fixed with a look of rage from his surviving eyeball. He babbled, his words slurred. He grabbed something off the wall, something big and heavy, almost like a meat cleaver and he moved towards her with it.
The girl was already acting by this time. Stretching and reaching out with her hand, bound at her side. The scalpel still stood up, planted in the meat of her thigh and she had to get it. She reached and reached and reached and grabbed it. Yanked it out with a muffled yell and moved it across her palm with her fingers in an attempt to cut the bindings at her wrist. She moved it back and forth, cutting herself as much as the leather binding. Bit by bit it gave way, as the man approached. And then one wrist was free.
He approached. Blood streaming from his eye. Spittle flying from his mouth.
"It's ruined! You ruined it! I'll take off your head for this!"
He was screaming. Completely inhuman. Insane. With her right hand freed she quickly moved over to cut her left hand out. Just as he raised his weapon, she was free. She brought her arms up and together, and pushed her forearms up and out at him. It caught his swing short and jolted the heavy cleaver out of his hands to fly against the wall.
He fell backwards with a grunt and sat against the wall hugging his legs. Muttering unintelligible things all the while. Rocking back and forth. Aida moved on to cut apart the rest of her bindings and climbed off the table. The moment she put weight on her leg she grimaced, and noticed again the blood streaming down her leg.
The calm came back. Almost like another person took control of her body. She could hardly believe she acted how she did, surely the situation would have been hopeless. Surely her nerves would have cracked under the pressure. But there was no shaking, no extreme panic.
She stood and limped over to the man. Still rocking back and forth. For a split second she felt sympathetic. Maybe it was pity. She placed a hand on his head, and exhaled again.
"There there. You'll be ok. I forgive you."
The words barely left her mouth before she grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head up to expose his neck. The scalpel, bloody and dripping was still in her hand. And she buried it deep into his throat. Her expressing was blank as he gurgled. She calmly stepped out of the way as he fell forward. She left the scalpel in his neck and walked over to the shelf, finding her clothes in a pile. She sacrificed a shirt to stop the bleeding on her leg. Good thing she was coming back from washing her clothes. She went over and pulled the still spattering torch off the wall and tossed it at the shelf to land among the papers and wood. She limped out, finding a gap in the ruined cave. She didn't look at the body on the floor and never looked back.
--------------------------------
The memories finished sliding their way through her mind and she paused. She had never told anyone what had happened, ever. Never bared her scarred leg in front of others. In a weird strange way the scars that developed were striking. Snaking and scrolling half way down her thigh. Unfinished.
In that instant right after the question was asked, she considered telling it all true. But she never could.
"So tell me why you want to join the alliance fight?"
Sure she could lie, and tell them that the experience drove her to want to protect others. To never see that happen again. But in truth, it was something darker. An anger that took hold, conquered her nerves. And it needed to be let out again.
Her smirk returned as she went with a simpler answer.
"Oh...steady feed and a solid roof over my head?"
A young woman stood in the threshold leading to the recruitment office. Her garb could really only be described as one step above rags. Her overtanned a sun blemished skin as well as her smirking countenance gave her a somewhat salty and sailorly look. She clutched a roll of paper to her chest and walked in when a man with a mustache nodded at her. He was sitting at a desk stacked high with records and books and papers and wore somewhat faded stormwind colors. She took the girl's papers and gave them a brief look, speaking in a bantering tone as his eyes scanned back and forth,
"Whitlock eh? So tell me why you want to join the alliance fight?"
The question seemed to only be to pass the time, the recruitment officer didn't really seem to care but all the same a very particular and vivid set of memories flooded into the woman's mind and her smirk ceased to exist.
--------------------------------
Aida Whitlock sat in front of a line of drying clothing in the forest just outside Stormwind's gates. A river bubbling and humming in front of her. She was fiddling with a few freshly caught fish, trying to slice the meat thin enough to dry with a fairly dull knife. She usually dragged two or three of the other street urchins down to the river to get them to bathe. They had long since ran off and Aida sat idly, waiting for the clothes to dry. Nowhere to be really. Eventually she hears footstep and ragged boy runs up towards her, barefoot and ragged and clutching something close to his chest. The boy spoke with so much speed and energy that he very much looked like he was going to explode.
"Aida. Aida. Aida. Aida. Aida. Aida. I made four whole coppers today. Caught two nasty rats. Brought them to the rat catcher."
Aida grabbed the boy by the wrist and pulls his arm over to look at the coins stacked in his palm.
"Oh well done Snaggy. What are you gonna buy?"
The boy looked stunned by the question.
"I'll buy a...I'll get a whole...I want a...."
Aida placed a hand on the boys head and roughly mussed up his hair.
"You can buy whatever you want. Well...whatever costs four coppers. Go find Wuby for me yeah? It's getting dark and I heard a rumor...well go find her in any case. I'll be heading back into town."
The boy ran off and Aida began to take down the only slightly damp clothes. The sun was nearly setting when she walked back through the city gates. She took a detour, skirting around the abandoned and ruined parts of the city destroyed in the cataclysm. A sound drifting up from the ruins, a sound like sobbing. Aida stopped and moved towards it, more concerned than curious. She was strangely alone on the streets. The sound that took her barely registered in her mind, and her last waking thought was confusion.
--------------------------------
She woke up staring at broken stones and mangled wood. She tried to move but couldn't. Held fast at the wrists, ankles, hips, and shoulders. She could hear only the crackling of a torch and could only. Panic quickly set in and she grunted in exertion as she tried to move with every muscle. Her breathing quickened but it was futile. She could still bend her neck however and craned her head up to look down at her body. She was laid out on something like a table, or a great big wooden board. Very definitely tied down with vicious looking leather straps. Her breathing calmed and she noticed something. She noticed that her right hip actually had a bit of wiggle room. She could bump it up 3 or 4 inches, not enough to escape all of the other binds but there was still something loose.
She scanned the rest of the room, barely more than a cubby hole in the side of a mostly collapsed building. Makeshift shelves lined a wall, stacked with cloth and vials and strange sharp looking tools. She took a second to ponder how bizarre it was that some farfetched rumor she heard about a madman prowling the city at night would line up so well with her being knocked out and tied up. She moved on to calling out, first at a normal volume and then raising it to a shout. No sounds responded.
A crazy calm washed over the girl as she closed her eyes. No more stressing a situation had ever crossed her path and yet she calmly sat and ran through the details in her head. Ruins. Out of earshot. Hidden domicile of some kind. Something like the tools of a surgeon on the wall. She opened her eyes again and looked around more carefully and noticed something even more strange. Some hanging bits of brittle something with faint scrolling curving patterns on them. She couldn't place them though, some kind of leather or hide maybe.
She very suddenly heard the presence of someone else in the room. Raspy breathing and the opening and closing of a mouth. She looked up again, a man stood in the door way. Mouth open, dark circles under his eyes. His hands wringing together. She spoke quickly, suddenly filled with anger. Cursing him and asking him who he was and what she was doing here and why was she tied up. The man hardly looked disturbed and spoke as he walked over to his shelf. His voice dripping with depravity.
"I thought you should know that I've been watching you. In the city, outside the gates..."
Something about the tone of his voice made Aida acutely aware of her state of dress. Or undress as it was. At least she still had her underwear on. She clenched her jaw and glared. And he kept speaking. Gesturing up at those strange bit of something hanging on the wall.
"I'm an artist you see. I did some of these but no, no. They weren't perfect. They were spoiled. But you, you're perfect. A sweet canvas."
She cursed him again. Something about his mother and his similarity to vermin. She also noticed how tidy he looked. Fancy clothes, clean shaven, well kept. But not too old, early 20s maybe. Some bored noble son no doubt. He turned around, a ghastly sharp looking scalpel like instrument in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other. He held the paper up to show another scrolling motifs and shapes almost like the lines of lace. The same faint things she saw in those bits of something on the wall. Sharp object, tied down subject. The facts were relayed again and a sweeping horror enveloped her.
"I made it myself you know. Prepared in advance. But I hope you don't mind if I improvise too. I've gotten quite good."
He walked over and settled next to her right leg. She watched him all the way. The desire to vomit was overpowering. He placed the paper on the table and brandished his little surgeons tool.
And set to work on the top of her right thigh.
Screaming in pain really seemed appropriate at that moment. The sharpness was unlike anything she'd ever felt. But she bit her lip, and focused entirely on controlling her breathing. Grunts of pain escaped on the exhale but she stared at the ceiling. Thinking about breathing. It was clear this madman's goal was to cut his disturbed "artwork" into her flesh directly.
Her breathing blocked almost everything out of her mind. In. Out. In. Out. She could feel blood dripping down and away. In. Out. In. Out. She could feel him wiping away blood as he worked. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. No thinking. Just breathing. No sobbing, screaming, cursing, begging. Not anymore. Just breathing. Could have been minutes or hours. The pain was so harsh that she could hardly even pinpoint where exactly it was coming from, just that the whole leg felt like fire. Aida finally broke and pulled her head up to look.
He was focused, working away. Scoring the skin. She could see the shapes in red, the work already done. He leaned close, clearly concerned about the detail. And the facts streamed back into her mind. Right hip lose. Surgical instrument. And a few new facts where made clear. He was leaning very close. And his blade was pointed at both ends.
Right hip loose, leaning close, pointed both ends.
She exhaled and let out a tiny whimper before putting all her weight into the looseness of her bindings and jerking her leg up the best she could. And two things happened, a strange popping sound and a deep sharp pain in her thigh. The scalpel stood straight up, jutting out of her leg. And the man jerked back explosively and let out a howl of pain unlike anything she had ever heard. He was cradling the bloody hole of his right eye. It worked.
She was almost as shocked as he was. Almost.
The man stumbled around and whimpered in pain. Holding on to his blinded eye, like it was about to fall out. He eventually stood up straight again and fixed with a look of rage from his surviving eyeball. He babbled, his words slurred. He grabbed something off the wall, something big and heavy, almost like a meat cleaver and he moved towards her with it.
The girl was already acting by this time. Stretching and reaching out with her hand, bound at her side. The scalpel still stood up, planted in the meat of her thigh and she had to get it. She reached and reached and reached and grabbed it. Yanked it out with a muffled yell and moved it across her palm with her fingers in an attempt to cut the bindings at her wrist. She moved it back and forth, cutting herself as much as the leather binding. Bit by bit it gave way, as the man approached. And then one wrist was free.
He approached. Blood streaming from his eye. Spittle flying from his mouth.
"It's ruined! You ruined it! I'll take off your head for this!"
He was screaming. Completely inhuman. Insane. With her right hand freed she quickly moved over to cut her left hand out. Just as he raised his weapon, she was free. She brought her arms up and together, and pushed her forearms up and out at him. It caught his swing short and jolted the heavy cleaver out of his hands to fly against the wall.
He fell backwards with a grunt and sat against the wall hugging his legs. Muttering unintelligible things all the while. Rocking back and forth. Aida moved on to cut apart the rest of her bindings and climbed off the table. The moment she put weight on her leg she grimaced, and noticed again the blood streaming down her leg.
The calm came back. Almost like another person took control of her body. She could hardly believe she acted how she did, surely the situation would have been hopeless. Surely her nerves would have cracked under the pressure. But there was no shaking, no extreme panic.
She stood and limped over to the man. Still rocking back and forth. For a split second she felt sympathetic. Maybe it was pity. She placed a hand on his head, and exhaled again.
"There there. You'll be ok. I forgive you."
The words barely left her mouth before she grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head up to expose his neck. The scalpel, bloody and dripping was still in her hand. And she buried it deep into his throat. Her expressing was blank as he gurgled. She calmly stepped out of the way as he fell forward. She left the scalpel in his neck and walked over to the shelf, finding her clothes in a pile. She sacrificed a shirt to stop the bleeding on her leg. Good thing she was coming back from washing her clothes. She went over and pulled the still spattering torch off the wall and tossed it at the shelf to land among the papers and wood. She limped out, finding a gap in the ruined cave. She didn't look at the body on the floor and never looked back.
--------------------------------
The memories finished sliding their way through her mind and she paused. She had never told anyone what had happened, ever. Never bared her scarred leg in front of others. In a weird strange way the scars that developed were striking. Snaking and scrolling half way down her thigh. Unfinished.
In that instant right after the question was asked, she considered telling it all true. But she never could.
"So tell me why you want to join the alliance fight?"
Sure she could lie, and tell them that the experience drove her to want to protect others. To never see that happen again. But in truth, it was something darker. An anger that took hold, conquered her nerves. And it needed to be let out again.
Her smirk returned as she went with a simpler answer.
"Oh...steady feed and a solid roof over my head?"
in the process of getting it all done now. so feel free to whispers me if you have any questions or use my battletag Embershade#1485