Episode 48
Oct. 12th, 2009 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaded_grinThousands of dollars spent on taxis? Check
Medieval Times attended? Check
Internet access?....Well, fuck....
Happy Monday anyway! I'm going to catch up on all of my unread mail now, I hope you enjoy this episode! And I hope it isn't apparent that I had some trouble cranking it out *hides* Thank you to everyone who keeps reading! I love you guys! And you know what?
IT'S ALMOST BEEN A YEAR SINCE WE STARTED!!!!! GAH! Hahaaahaaa! Man, I always could take a joke too far, lol!
48
Reeve tried to continue his particularly hideous painting, but Yuffie’s voice kept intruding and wrecking his concentration in much the same way that she wrecked lives and Galas.
“How much could it mean, truly?” he wondered, ruining yet another brush in his absorption. “Lifetime achievement – he’s barely thirty! How much could he have done, really?”
He wobbled a few moments more before he tossed the brush down and cursed, casting an anxious look at the clock. He’d barely have an hour to make the airport, and Gods alone knew how he would pay for the ticket, but at least he could try.
He ran for the door and locked his studio behind him, frantically calling for a taxi even as he spilled out onto the street. It was an unbearable concession to that infuriating annoyance of a supposed boyfriend…but it was the least he could do for a friend.
It was very rare that Rude was surprised.
There had been times over the last few years of his protecting
Returning to find her suite empty and Marlene busily putting her jewelry to rights, that had surprised him.
“Oh! Rude! You scared me!” the girl laughed, panting in her shock, her small hand pressed to her racing heart. She looked scared, and seeing who it was hadn’t alleviated her anxiety. Rude was used to that – fear was a powerful tool, he used it often in lieu of more exhaustive methods.
“Where is Mrs. ShinRa?” he asked, but he immediately thought of
“She’s gone to Setora, I think,” Marlene said, beaming at him to cover her fear. It was badly done, but he ignored it. She was a child in Rude’s eyes, much as
Rude quietly contemplated this, but his fists clenched inside his leather gloves so that they creaked, notching Marlene’s concern up.
He’d left for another country.
He’d taken
Rude turned away and left the suite without another word, leaving Marlene trembling behind him. With that same soundless, seething anger and worry, he got into his car and flipped open his phone, making arrangements as quickly as he could.
He would be there in Setora. He would watch over her. He couldn’t allow
Whether she wanted him there or not.
“Well, here we go,”
“Come on,”
“Good evening, Sir,” a flight attendant said, her smile bright and warm. She gazed at
“Heya, baby,”
“Will do, Sir,” the girl replied. “Does your dinner request still stand?”
“Sure as I’m breathing,”
“Absolutely beautiful!”
“Here, come have a seat,”
“Stop,” he whispered, and laughed a little, pressing one small hand to his hot cheek.
“What?”
“Stop looking at me like that, you’re making me blush!”
“You’re beautiful all the time, Cateyes,”
Kadaj was quick and efficient in his business – he did the collection while Zack waited outside, portioned out hard Gil for
“Let’s get back up top,” Kadaj said, securing the leather satchel and slinging it over his shoulder to fall against his opposite hip.
“What about
“They pool their revenue here,” Kadaj said, his voice sharp and clipped. “I will come back later with
He cut off abruptly as loud air-raid-style sirens suddenly sounded and a few more of the overhead lights flickered to life, pouring harsh, stark light down on them.
“Fuck!”
“What is that?” Zack shouted, hands slapped over his ears.
“Mid-cycle bell!” Kadaj shouted, flinching from the noise but not about to release his grip on the souba or on
The crowds pushed towards the still-dark building of the Butchers, forming two broad, chaotic lines.
“Come on, I don’t want you to see this,” Kadaj yelled, pushing against the crowd to go back the way they had come.
Zack did not follow, because at that very moment glaring floodlights clicked on, ranged along the front of the PFS. Two huge, barn-like doors swung inwards onto total darkness, but not a single one of the crowd attempted to get nearer.
“Attention,” a voice said over the speakers above, drowning out the ShinRa propaganda and the constant flood of televised information. Shutters rolled up with a clang of rusty metal as people moved into booths at the front of the building – women, mostly, Zack saw. They looked off somehow, unhealthy in a way that went deeper than bad nutrition and lack of sunlight, as if evil was a disease and they all had it. “…The Sector Seven Department of Public Food Service is now open…Attention…”
Zack just stood there, gaping as lights flickered to life inside the vast darkness, revealing the inner workings of the PFS.
The rancid stench of hogs and excrement billowed out in a roil of superheated steam. It tumbled out onto the street and slowly dissipated to show the blood-splattered and damp concrete floor. The stink of death and suffering was followed by the uneasy lowing of cattle and the distinctive snuffling grunt of pigs. Faintly, he could hear the screams and cries of people far within and his skin began to crawl.
Lines of naked hooks hung from hidden rafters all the way to the dim back of the building where huge mako-furnaces awaited meat to be cooked, fed by the constant steam and pulse of the reactor rearing up behind it.
“Holy Mother,” Zack breathed, and in that moment he was sure he was looking into the pits of Hell, even as his eyes registered rows of wooden crates awaiting filling, and the hopeless eyes of caged animals vanishing out of sight around a corner.
“…of Food Service is now open…Attention…”
“Zack, come on!” Kadaj shouted, but Zack could hardly hear him over the scream of those sirens and the loud clamor of the crowd, all topped by that soothing but disturbingly smooth announcement blaring across the speakers. “Zack, you do not want to see this!”
He very nearly turned to go with Kadaj, because he knew the boy was right – he didn’t want to see this, to see how these people lived in squalor and death, how they dealt misery for despair and traded on the flesh of their fathers, mothers, and siblings, their children, all so they could continue to live and breathe in this awful twin to the Underworld itself.
He shifted to leave, but two figures came into view, moving slowly across the wet floors, tall and hulking as they came to rest just inside the open doors of the building. Zack actually recoiled when he saw them, the menace radiating from them almost palpable. They were powerfully built but thin, their white skin dirty and streaked with the rusty smears of unwashed blood, the blue of their veins lacing over their starkly bulging muscles. They wore butcher aprons that were covered in gore, so black at the bottoms that they nearly blended in with their rubber boots and black pants. Each man held a hook and a cleaver in his rubber-gloved hands, the gleaming, clean sharpness of them stark and sterile against their unkempt aprons.
“Zack! Zack!”
‘They wear masks,’ Zack thought, horrified and sickened, but that wasn’t exactly true – they wore hoods, like executioners of old, swathing their features from wondering eyes, claiming anonymity in the face of the horrors they wreaked.
The sirens and announcements abruptly died, and one of them lifted his sinewy arm in a beckoning gesture.
The crowd erupted into chaos, shouting and screaming as bodies were brought to be laid at the Butchers’ feet. Two unhooded, strapping boys scrambled to pile them onto a wooden cart, long blackened with blood. Zack watched in stunned disbelief as they did a bastardized version of the Rites for the Damned over them – a thing reserved for priests, for the holy women and men of the Goddess. His moral outrage was rapidly exceeding his disgust with these people, and rose to flaring life when the next body laid before the Butchers was still squirming and tearful.
“Hey!” Zack shouted, unheard over the roar of the crowd.
“Zack! Please! Don’t do this! You don’t want to see!”
The cart was trundled away, laden with bodies, pushed to the furthest reaches of the slaughterhouse and out of sight.
The person tossed on the slick concrete was joined by a woman and another man, and the crowd was chanting, shouting, outraged.
“Murderers!”
“They’ve killed! They’ve killed!”
“They are murderers! We want no murderers!”
All three of them glanced around at the crowd, feral and angry but afraid. The woman didn’t seem to understand what was happening, but she kept looking at the Butcher’s hook with stark fear on her face.
“What are they doing?” Zack asked, shoving forward through the crowd.
One of the Butchers turned to move after the cart – no doubt to start breaking down the bodies of the dead. The remaining Butcher stood impassive in the face of the woman’s tears and the men’s pleas of innocence. His hooded face stayed tipped down to blankly study them, as if he could read their sin in the set of their bodies.
“Zack!” Kadaj shouted, pushing after him but unable to hold him back.
“Hey!” Zack yelled, his voice rising above the crowd as the Butcher hefted his hook. “You can’t do that! Hey! Stop!”
The hook flashed so quickly Zack didn’t even see it, burying itself in the base of one man’s skull, erupting from his throat in a spray of blood. The woman began shrieking at the top of her lungs, huddling backwards away from the dead man, too stupefied to even try running – not that the circled crowd would allow it.
Zack was stunned at the speed with which the man had been dispatched. He’d only ever seen one other man move that fast…
Calmly, the Butcher reached around his back and withdrew a second hook. In that same effortless way, he got the other man who was trying to scramble away, snagging him back by first using it as a crook, and then hooking him where death was an instant blessing and the strength of tissue would hold the metal fast.
The crowd was wild with justice served, in their opinions. The Butcher didn’t seem to care either way – he gathered up the slick handles of both hooks in one hand, clipped the cleaver to the back of his apron, wrapped his free fist in the woman’s hair, and began to move back into the depths of the building dragging all three bodies over the slaughterhouse floor.
“Let her go!” Zack snarled, breaking through the crowd and pausing just inside the huge, open doors. The men were dead, there was nothing there to save, though he would like to rescue their bodies from desecration. But the woman was still alive and terrified, screaming for help, being dragged back to Goddess alone knew what horrors before she, too, would end on a hook.
The Butcher stopped and craned his head around, just staring at Zack for a long moment that actually made the impassioned former Brother take pause. Distantly, he heard the ShinRa propaganda begin again, but it didn’t matter. He was ten feet away from the Butcher with the scent of death, shit, and misery in his nose, and he realized that he was afraid. Deep in his dark, betrayer’s heart, he was frightened of the Butchers. That heavy, weighing look seemed to find and judge his flaws in a moment that stretched long enough to make Zack feel nauseous. He felt stripped bare, exposed, keenly aware that he had no right to be here. Tending flocks was no longer his concern. The human condition was not his to rectify – he had given all of that up when he’d made his decision. He’d sacrificed his life’s work and now he had no moral ground to stand on when it came down to how the Butchers dealt with their own people. That eyeless gaze caused this abrupt self-inspection, and Zack trembled to find that he was lacking.
“Please, help me!” the woman wailed, sobbing, reaching for him.
Stricken, Zack looked at her.
More Butchers and their spawn came from the wings, from their work. They came to watch what must not often occur – someone challenging them. There were more people than Zack had thought there would be. Women, from crones to toddlers; men, from the hooded and powerful Butchers down to the grubby and squalling babies. All of them stared at him, curious but unafraid, no doubt wondering why he was alone in a circle of people who did nothing to aid him.
The Butcher’s head turned away and he took another step, and another, dragging the meat and woman back into the heated, steamy depths, his broad and defenseless back to Zack, the cleaver and several other hooks dangling from the ties of his dirty apron.
“Zack…please…come away, there’s nothing you can do…”
“Please! Help me!”
Zack didn’t think, he simply acted – he slid the machete free of his belt and lunged at the Butcher’s back in lethal silence.
He heard a soft burr that might have been the Butcher’s breath, might’ve been the cry of one of the other bystanders, might’ve been the sound of that sinewy arm whipping around to snatch the hook and lift it.
Once again, Zack was confronted with a speed that exceeded his own – the machete threw sparks against the curved metal of the hook, but the Butcher was behind him. The woman was to one side, huddled and screaming. Other Butchers had come to drag off the hooked bodies and hoist them by their ankles, unmindful of what Zack was doing in their midst.
“Zack!” Kadaj shouted, a thin note of fear in his voice.
He couldn’t make sense of how the Butcher had moved, had somehow gotten behind him and was pulling the hook to force the blunt edge of the machete into Zack’s chest.
He resisted, but it was like trying to push against a mountain, like trying to fight a gale-force wind. With that kind of pressure, even the blunt back of the blade would do him irreparable harm, would crush against breastbone and ribs and crack him like a shell.
He dropped, spinning, pulling the blade, but again the Butcher was faster. The hook shrieked – metal against metal – and slipped around to yank the machete down, and a fist like stone hit him between the shoulder-blades, knocking the wind out of him, sending him sprawling almost atop the blade. He caught himself in the last second, sliding aside to land on the slick, bloody floor, panting and incredulous.
The Butcher stared down at him, composed and calm. After a moment, he put the hook away, retrieved the woman, and returned to his business.
“Stop this!” Zack shouted, and scrambled to his feet. With an enraged roar, he launched himself at the Butcher again. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d been so easily dispatched, that his time away from the Brotherhood had resulted in an untrained murderer being able to send him sprawling to the ground like a child.
The Butcher turned, one fist still tangled in the woman’s hair, and gave Zack a backhand that staggered him. In the pause that followed, the sinewy creature spread his gloved hand wide, palm out, a warding gesture, or perhaps a warning for him to stop.
No matter how many times Zack attacked him, the Butcher rebuffed him as easily as he would swat away an annoying child or a fly, paying him no heed as he lifted the woman into a cage, secured it, and returned to help strip the bodies.
Stunned, Zack was pushed out of the way, forced back by more of the Butcher Clan come to do their gruesome work. But even in his shock he realized that they had not harmed him, and he was almost angry about that. They would murder helpless ones, would handle the dead with awful disrespect, but they would not meet him in honest battle. It was infuriating and frustrating, but no matter how he challenged them, they ignored him, turning him aside time after time.
Zack found himself back by the doors almost as if on accident. He could see the woman in her cage and almost moved after her, but didn’t. Couldn’t.
“I…I can’t,” he said, but there was no way she could hear him over the screaming crowd or the huge noise of the reactor inside. “I’m so sorry…”
Her tear streaked face changed for a moment, changed to a face he’d known well, loved well. She, too, he’d had no way to aid, no hope of saving. She’d cried for help and he’d been powerless, unable to draw her back from the hand of death.
Zack could only watch as the men’s throats were slit with careless efficiency, a dirty and feral-looking little boy darting out of the shadows to catch the drippings in a bucket. He glared at Zack, his blue eyes sharp and cunning, memorizing his face. The others made no such effort – he was meaningless to them, a fly on the wall of their House of Horrors.
Another Butcher appeared at Zack’s shoulder, raising his arm to put out that silent call again. Late-comers arrived with their dead and damned, humbled and grieving. Bodies were piled next to Zack, loose-limbed and slack. He stared at them, numb with his own weakness. When he reached out to lift the body of a toddler up, the Butcher merely pointed to the returning cart, expecting Zack to obey.
“Zack, don’t do this!” Kadaj called, jostled by the crowd, his face set in panicked lines. “Zack! They aren’t like you! Don’t do it! Please!”
Zack swallowed hard, but even this mindful of his own sins, he was not ready for his penance. He gently lay the baby back down atop the other dead and it was immediately picked up by the bare, sinewy fingers of one of those boys, quick Rites performed over its tiny body before it was laid in the cart.
Slowly, Zack backed away, but they paid him no mind. He was allowed to step away, to be drawn back into the crowd as the windows to those booths opened. The last of the bodies and offenders were presented to the Butchers and their terrible, swift, and blind justice. As Zack backed into the crowd, offenders were slain, the dead were carted away, and the doors slowly swung closed on the despairing shrieks of that sentenced woman as the first hanging body was gutted.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Kadaj told him again, a sliver of concern shining through his anger and fear.
The lines began to form up again, moving slowly towards the windowed booths where each person was given two paper-wrapped packages – lunch and dinner, food rendered from suffering and death. Over every package the women behind the booths – wives of Butchers? Sisters? Daughters? – made a quick gesture of blessing, somehow even more horrifying than that woman’s screaming.
“Sacrilege,” Zack breathed, so bombarded by the heretical violations that he could barely make his mind work. He was sickened by the lines of people moving to the windows, ready and willing to feed off of one another. But what choice did they have? “Such sacrilege…”
Kadaj said nothing, he just hurried through the crowds back to the lift with a grim look on his beautiful, tense face.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 05:44 pm (UTC)Um... more later, after I've processed it a bit.
Just wow.
-----
What Natila said about the contrast is absolutely correct. The beginning is mostly fluffy and cute, starring Reeve and Yazoo. Rude's a bit scary but he pales next to what you put Zack through.
The Butchers are brilliant!
As scary and grotesque as they were built up to be but with something more... That one Saw Zack, weighed him and judged him worthy of life, and then he wouldn't damage Zack, even though Zack kept attacking.
Too freakin' intense but completely awe-inspiring.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:45 pm (UTC)But you were the only one who caught the judging. Before they acted upon any of them, the Butchers /looked/ - they did no less for Zack when he confronted them. The question now is, this great betrayal in Zack's past, this mysterious crime from which he has been fleeing...is he really guilty?
I'll try to work that in later down the line :D Halloween is getting to me, I guess, lol!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-16 12:33 am (UTC)After his experience with the Butchers, I can see Zack having nightmares of walking around naked with his 'sin' tattooed on his bare skin for all the world to see.
Really nice twist and so, so well written. *still happy sigh*
no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 07:37 pm (UTC)I'm soooo curious about Zack now. He's so brave to try and take on the Butchers. What are they? He's lucky they didn't decide to butcher him!
Awwww....Reeve almost admitted that Genesis was his boyfriend! He's so cute :3
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 05:02 pm (UTC)Zack's mystery may unravel soon, I'm not sure. He certainly was courageous to risk the Butchers, but he had no reason to think they could turn him aside. I think it was a shock for him to be so defeated. And he has more than luck to thank that they didn't butcher him - the truth of it comes out a little later, but in the end /these/ butchers don't murder on a whim. Nothing doing for the ones in the bad sectors...
And Reeve! YES! One step closer to being in a committed, unwanted relationship, lol!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 09:23 pm (UTC)And what a contrast with the start... Yaz and Reno in a nice jet.. I cant help wondering if Yazoo will become a member of the mile high club ;)
But awsome job with the underplate description !!! :O
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:58 pm (UTC)As for the Butchers...they will get explained later on down the line, but sufficed to say there was a clue in the mako-furnaces and the nearness of the reactor. After all, doesn't mako enhance people?
I'm thinking the Mile High Club is a good idea. Yazoo's story is drawing to a close, so I want her to have all the happiness she can get, however fleeting.
Thanks again, honey! *snuggles you*
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 09:38 pm (UTC)and oh oh.. You shouldnt have told me about Yaz.Got a chest pain now.. I got so attached to that peculiar Yazoo. I never viewed Yazoo as a man, yet I cannot view him as a girl either, so I guess in my mind he is something in between sometimes.. something angelic. And your Yazoo is angelic physically and angelic mentally.. And terribly attaching !
oh well...
Have a great evening Honey XDDDDDDDDD
no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 11:33 pm (UTC)I loved how upset Rude became when he realized Yazoo was gone. Serves him write the sneaky bastard. And he's going to follow him. Beautiful. LOVES. But, poor Marlene.
Reno/Yazoo, they used to be my OTP, but even though they aren't anymore, I still find them endearing, so yes, in the soap, I'm cheering for them. There is a part of me that hopes Reno will really end up being Yazoo's hero. (the other part of me says 'don't bank on it' XD)
The butcher scene was a masterpiece. It was something straight from Clive Barker or Silent Hill, so I ended up with belly flutters. And you added hooks. I'm a fan of horror hooks. Dear, with this scene, "you had me at hello." I totally loved Zack in it. His chivalric nature forcing him to try to continue to save the girl was so IC it hurt, and his failure was EPIC. I want this scene to give that boy nightmares for the rest of his life. (ok, that might be the sadist in me talking)
Wonderful episode. Two thumbs, dear.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:52 pm (UTC)Rude's quiet freak out was about all I could do for him, really. He's such a closed down character that all we really know about him is that he's scary, scary, and scary with a dash of plotting :D
And YAY! Most everyone who was cheering for Yazoo at first is now convinced he's a Butcher and they're clamoring for her to run far, far away! But I think they have as good a chance to be happy as any, so here's hoping!
And WOOT! Belly flutters! I worked a long time on this scene while I was on the train, trying to get it right. I rewrote it maybe three times? The hooks were a necessity (I'm with you on that - you can't have horror without hooks), and the equipment all placed so that the reader, along with Zack, would be distracted by the surface fear-factor. Zack is a hero at heart, he couldn't just allow the girl to be hauled away to a horrible fate. His failure WAS Epic, and he's not likely to forget it anytime too soon. I have no doubts it will give him nightmares, but only on behalf of the woman still alive down there. His dealings with the Butchers are in no way at an end ;)
Thank you so much, honey! I'm so glad you liked it!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 12:10 am (UTC)You did a great job expressing the utter hopelessness of their situation. And poor Zack. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 01:40 am (UTC)I is O_O like that at work...
Poor, poor, POOR Zack *huggles him*
*huggles Zack some more*
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:41 pm (UTC)*snuggles you*
no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 02:33 am (UTC)Though, I was dreadully terrified when the Butcher was handling him and was so close to harming him O.O I thought I'd die if something happened to him, even in the slightest!
I couldn't believe how you had gotten me to feel a chill or two while reading this! :D
This is my new favorite horror story xD! < 3
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 05:46 am (UTC)Congrats, you made me vomit out my dinner. ;__; I really wanted the butchers to be a threat and that cannibalism didn't exist in that hellish world but goddamit, it was not to be. Seriously, that is really disgusting. If there was such a world like that and the only method for survival was to eat other people, I'd probably commit suicide. Maybe by blowing myself up so that other punks wouldn't eat my corpse. XD
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:20 pm (UTC)hey!
Date: 2009-10-13 11:14 pm (UTC)I can't say much more because I'm still tingling with the butcher's scene- Gods....
Hugs and kisses!
Re: hey!
Date: 2009-10-15 04:01 pm (UTC)I hope it left you feeling properly spooked for the coming Halloween season :D But really, thank you, Bela! The Soap wouldn't be here without the readers who love it, so I owe it all to you guys!
Snuggles and love!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-06 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 02:54 am (UTC)The Butchers made me think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A clan of Leatherfaces, but with much more focused purpose. Sends a chill, they do. Kadaj really should have gotten Zack out of there sooner.