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Null drones convert a hapless photographer poking around an abandoned hospital. Explicit.
Eight clicks echoed through the dead hospital.
Thomas raised his head. His ears rose too, stretching to hear the sound again. To him, rusted gurneys and rubble-strewn beds were photogenic, not eerie, and an odd noise was cause for investigation, not panic.
He pulled his camera off of his tripod. He thought it might be a wild animal, or some sort of scavenger. Whatever it was, he was going to get a picture of it.
He walked back across the ground floor of Bellvue Hospital, closed down and left to steep in its own formaldehyde for the last thirty years. There had been a quarantine then, a panic—but it was all before Thomas's time. The hospital had never been sealed up airtight. If there were any pathogens left, simply going inside couldn't hurt.
2 July, 2015
Demophagiai
Scythian hyena-barbarians capture a Greek man and make him join their warband. Explicit.
Demos had no reason to be scared of the Scythians. They were like beasts, or were they like amazons; they devoured everyone, or maybe they kidnapped everyone, or both. No matter who was telling it, though, they always came in the dead of night for misbehaving young boys and girls and snatched them from their beds. In short, they were the monsters at the edges of childhood.
Demos had no reason to be scared of the Scythians until they came. He was grown up. He sold oil all over Thrace. He had a slave who stayed up night to make sure no one tried to make off with a jug of his oil and another slave who brought him dinner. He was supposed to be beyond monsters, but they had come in the dead of night and then pain had exploded across his head and everything was black.
On top of him lay a thick weight and beneath him it was uncomfortably lumpy and all around him the smell was awful. At the tips of his fingers, arms outstretched, he could feel a breeze. Animal instinct drove him toward the open air, squeezing and pushing and grunting. At last his head and shoulders were free.
2 July, 2015
Hell of a Party
A Halloween party gets more enjoyable for a young cat once a demonic force starts altering reality. Explicit.
Circ had grown out of parties. Well, he didn't want to say it like that and sound like an asshole, but that was pretty much the way he felt. Parties were great when you were a kid and got presents and everyone played games. And he bet that parties were pretty fun when you were an adult and could get drunk and do all sorts of crazy stuff. But when you were a teenager, what was there to do?
He couldn't dance, so trying to would be an embarrassment. It was way too loud to have a conversation with someone. But everyone was was where it was noisy; he couldn't slip off somewhere quiet and find someone to talk to.
The music was hurting the brown cat's ears. Damn it, was he getting a headache? He'd wanted to go trick or treating, but his friends had talked him into coming to the party instead. He was pretty sure he'd be having more fun trick or treating. Only maybe half the people had even showed up in any kind of costume.