things that go bump in the night ! violet in the dungeon

[✨ zozo.]

Despite Violet's best efforts to stay deathly silent in the dark, she couldn't help but let out a loud "ouch!" as her hip collided with a hard surface. Jerking to the right, free hand flying towards her skin to press down on her latest bruise, she gasped at the pain and bit down on her bottom lip. 

"Mother fffffff..." and the whispered curse died mid-sentence, silenced by fear hammering in her chest. She still couldn't see, and the past 20 minutes had been spent trailing her hands along the walls for a light switch only to find an archaic-looking torch - but it could have been hours for all she knew. Her side throbbed post-impact, dulling the ache in her busted ankle, pulse the loudest thing in this endless black.

Perhaps this was death. After some deliberation Violet concluded that her current situation was some sort of ironic hell, damp-smelling and cold, and she'd simply stumble into things in the dark for all eternity. It beat being murdered, or burned, or anything that the horrors of the games had taught her was associated with hell. But it was still shit, and she pondered what she'd done - or hadn't done - to deserve such a fate.

"Man," she sighed to nobody in particular, drinking in the solace of the dark. "This blows."

And just as she had gotten used to a life alone in the depths of death, someone joined her.

Fear crept up her spine upon the sound of footsteps and she froze in her place - knife held out in front of her for protection. It couldn't be so bad, stabbing. It was like digging, right? Like a shovel, but pointier. 

Swallowing hard, she pressed a hand over her mouth and stepped forward - half hoping that her knife would pierce air instead of skin.

- violet -

[ violet searches the old kitchen ]

[✨ zozo.]

Alone but not, Violet had come to the conclusion that she ought to find some sort of light within the darkness than on the outskirts. Creeping through the black, the tip of her knife connected with the woods of doors and the brick of walls but nothing within them felt like a torch. Growing restless, she hurried her movements and her steps - desperate to outsmart the darkness and they who lurked beside her.

Another door - colder than the last - with a knob right in the middle. Violet’s dormant senses had come to life down here, tracing each and every groove until she found familiar, muscle memory twisting open the heavier entrance with delicate hands.

When it shuddered open with a creak, Violet held her breath.

Somewhere in the distance another door creaked back like an echo.

- violet -

[ violet searches the safe ]

[✨ zozo.]

She’s not one to cry, but there’s a first time for everything. She’s desperate and sad and lost and lonely, trapped in the dark and left to rot. Back pressed against the wall, palm pressed into her teeth, a tear slides down her cheek when she hears the footsteps getting closer.

Wrapping her good hand around the handle of her knife, she pulls herself together and rubs away her fear. Now was not the time for tears. Baxter wouldn’t want her to cry. Neither would Fiora, or Indigo, or her parents.

But most importantly, Violet didn’t want Violet to cry. So she took a breath, braced herself once again for inevitable death, and pressed on into the endless night until her knife found yet another door.

- violet -

[ violet searches the old bathroom ]

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

The first time Whitney is sure she hears the noise, it comes from behind a closed door, and it takes everything in Whitney to work herself up to opening it.

She thinks, surely, that the light of the torch gives her away, that they will probably be able to see it peeking through the edges of the doorframe. She even considers putting the light out until she can figure out who exactly has tumbled down into wonderland with her, but she doesn't think she's strong enough to survive the dark, thinks that maybe that would unravel her even more than the thought that Malcolm's murderer is standing just beyond this decaying door frame.

So instead she pushes it open, and nearly cries when she realizes exactly who it is that she sees.

Violet stands, tear tracks not even dried on her cheeks, with a knife swung in Whitney's direction.

Whitney's heart leaps up her throat, and she doesn't even stop for a second before she's walking straight towards Violet, dropping the torch on the dirt floor and wrapping the other girl up in a hug that's too tight, too much, and yet still not enough. "Fuck, Vi," she says on a heavy exhale. "Fuck."

She pulls back, puts both her hands on the other girls cheeks and goes on.

"I'm so glad it's you."

[ whit finds vi!!! & searches the old bathroom ! ]

[✨ zozo.]

She found nothing in the tiny little room, and as she shut the door once more Violet heard the footsteps yet again. Freezing, her body shook like something violent and it took all of her strength to peer through the crumbling wall cracks to find-

a light?

It made sense. People had talked about the light at the end of the tunnel, walking into a new life, she had never once thought to pander to nonsense about death but now she sort of accepted it. Falling from the floor into the darkness, maybe she'd been killed in that kitchen after all. Maybe she'd fallen to her death. But she had to be dead, stumbling into doors that offered nothing with footsteps and whispers chasing her through the dark.

So she stepped forward, hands pressed against the decaying, damp wood, warm tears streaming down her cheeks, and waited for the light to find her. Thinking about her friends finding her corpse hurt, but not as much as the thought of her parents dressing her dead body. She wondered if they'd give her cold, lifeless hands violets to hold. She wondered if they could handle burying their daughter.

Violet hoped they could.

The light grew, as did her pain - and then it consumed her, wrapped her up in her arms, breathed her name.

"Fuck, Vi."

Death carried a flame and had a face. Whitney's face.

"I'm so glad it's you."

The knife in her hands dropped to the floor along with her friends torch, a sad thump in the dirt, and she fell into Whitney's shaking embrace.

"You're not here to kill me, are you Whit?" Violet sniffed, laughing at her own words. They cracked, faltered, opened her up and exposed her fears. There wasn't a need to whisper any more but her pulse was alight in her ears and she drowned in their shared heartbeats - it felt necessary to stay quiet. For now she had Whitney and her light, but the unknown still surrounded them all the same.

"Wh-where are we?" Violet asked, breaking away to study Whitney's tired, wonderful face. Her friends soft hands found her cheeks and they felt real, but if Violet was honest she'd admit that she wasn't exactly sure what was real any more. "How did you..."

Escape didn't feel like the right word, but it made sense.

Violet was just too afraid to speak it aloud.

- violet -

[ vi & whit meet up! ]

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

Violet speaks, and Whitney loses her breath.

”You’re not here to kill me, are you Whit?”

It’s a fair enough question, but Whitney shakes with the honesty of it, doesn’t know what to do or how to feel or what she’s meant to do in order to convince her friend that she isn’t the one who put a blade in Malcolm Nox. Rationally, somewhere in the back of her head, she knows that Violet doesn’t really think she’s the killer, that she is just scared and afraid and making the only joke that either of them know how to make at this point, but still.

Whitney can’t breathe.

She laughs it off all the same.

”Ha!” She says, though her voice is sharp and all wrong and there’s a terrible hollowness in her heart. “If it were me, you’d be the last person I killed.”

How had they got here?

What have they all become?

Mice and monsters.

“I think we’re in some kind of basement,” she goes on, swallowing thickly and trying to go back to being practical. She picks up the torch from where she’s dropped it and looks for another mounted on the wall to light. “I found like a second library, or an archives of some sort earlier, but the place isn’t very finished, is it? All dust and mold and dirt floors. I swear if I find some kind of sex cave down here, I really will vomit,” Whitney rambles on, and on again, needing to fill the silence, fill the space, think about anything but the fact that there really is someone out there among her peers who killed a man where he sat.

She catches  sight of herself in a cracked mirror and wonders what omens that spells, a girl made of fire and broken glass.

”This place smells like fucking hell,” she says, looking around the dingy room. “And I really don’t want to look twice but I’m sure that’s a dead rat in the corner.” 

[ whit searches the old bathroom ! ]

KXZTvFUPkQ1-10

1-10

[✨ zozo.]

It was reassuring to hear that one, Whitney would kill Violet last had she the choice, and two, that the former has more sense than the latter to know where they were. Violet could tell Whitney was talking for the sake of talking, a habit that she was prone to holding, but hearing her friends voice was a comforting thing. No longer did she feel petrified down here. Now, in this basement of sorts, she felt only anxious. Anxious to find a way out, anxious to keep Whitney safe, anxious to stay alive.

Her clever friend was right - this place did stink. In the light Vi could see pipes and cracked porcelain, the reflection of flames dancing in broken glass. Violet wondered what unlucky bastard copped seven years of bad luck for that one - perhaps the rat that Whitney mentioned. Craning her neck to look where Whitney could not, the flower girl nodded and screwed up her nose.

"Yep, that's definitely a dead rat. Two of 'em," she squinted, "I think?"

She turned back to her friend, eager to find a way out of this dark, dingy dungeon. "Let's look for a door, c'mon," she hushed, taking Whitney's free hand and tugging her toward the dark. "I think I walked into a kitchen earlier, still got the bruise, ha, still hurt-

Whitney?"

Bruises and aches and pains were all Violet could think of, but her friend seemed transfixed on something else entirely.

- violet -

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

Whitney barely hears Violet.

Maybe there’s an irony there, that she’s here with Violet at the scene of such violence, a kind of false glory or twist of fate that is nothing but cruel. Maybe it’s Ripred playing with the both of them, toying about with names and fate and kindness and callousness and light and shadow. The girl who’s name means white, means light, and the girl born of night dark flowers and ultravioletnce.

“Let’s look for a door,” she hears from her friend, but in the back of her own head is the voice of her sister whispering that there’s something she’s missing, that she doesn’t have all of the pieces and she needs to keep looking. It makes Whitney’s stomach roll to do it, but when Violet takes her hand, Whitney says “in a second” and steps further into the bathroom, dropping her friends hand.

If she wants to follow in her footsteps, Violet can, but Whitney refuses to pull her into the shadows.

The water gets deeper, soaks into her socks, fills her sneakers and kisses her ankles, grazes the bottom of her rolled jeans. She is already covered in dirt and blood, and when she sees herself in the mirror, she is more horror than girl.

It’s no wonder Violet wondered if she might kill her.

Whitney looks around, needs to not see her face in the mirror anymore, needs to look at anything else, so she drags her eyes to the single remaining sink. The others are in pieces, broken porcelain and ruined alabaster, but this one before her looks like it might even still work if she flipped the handle. She reaches to see, but a flash of shadow catches her eye on the rim, and before turning on the water she bends to look closer.

Crimson in the flame, she realizes it’s blood.

She can’t breathe.

Be calm, she thinks to herself. This is evidence. Did Violet see? She tries to stay rational, to not panic and by proxy send Violet into a panic either. Thekillerwasherethekillerwasherethekillerwasherethekillerwasherethekillerwas—

“It’s nothing,” she says, turning back to Violet. What would her friend do if she realized? This girl that Whitney found, alone in the dark and crying—would she handle it calmly? Whitney isn’t sure. Whitney isn’t even sure she’s calm. “It’s just a speck of blood,” she says, trying to convince both Biolet and herself. “Probably from another creepy crawler like those dead rats.”

She steps back towards the door, reaches for Vi’s hand again.

“It’s fine.” She tries to smile. She isn’t sure it works. “We’re gonna figure all this out.”

[ whit goes to the old kitchen w vi hehe ]

[✨ zozo.]

"We're gonna figure this all out."

Violet nodded, breathing out a quiet "okay." What 'this all' was she didn't quite understand, but she felt safer with Whitney. Safer than she had with Adrien and Adam and Poppy playing a sick joke on her to land her in this dark, damp mess of a place. Violet wondered what was happening above them in the mansion, whether anyone had discovered that the two girls were missing.

Whether anyone cared.

Gritting her teeth, she guided Whitney through the dingy halls until they found the kitchen. The light made it far easier to search the cupboards and ancient white-ware, coughing as creaky pantry doors filled her lungs with dust and spiders skuttled across rusty pipes and bone-dry taps.

"Found anything?" Violet asked, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. Almost all of her efforts had been useless, turning up empty boxes and decades-old boxes of salt and flour. She'd picked up a thing or two watching Fiora and Indigo cook, but even Violet knew that they couldn't survive on dry ingredients alone.

As the flames flickered and lit a halo around Whitney's profile, anxieties danced in her chest. The torch wouldn't burn forever, and who knew how long they'd been down here. There was no way to tell when and where they'd lose their newfound vision - and Violet wasn't sure if she could keep it together again in the dark, even with a hand to hold.

"Let me try over here," she pondered, taking a few steps back in an attempt to re-trace her steps. The first thing she remembered after hurting her foot was cool glass on her fingertips. Perhaps there were more secrets hidden in this place than they thought.

"Don't go anywhere, okay?" Violet begged, adamant to keep the torch in her field of vision.

As her hands found a familiar feeling of old wine bottles stacked from the floor to the ceiling, Violet's curiosity took over.

- violet -

searchin' the wine cellar for clues!

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

Whitney has to bring her arm to her face.

The smell is different in here. It's not the decay or the musk of the archives, and it's different from the scent of the bathroom. That had been all rot and death—that had been bearable.

That had been understandable.

There were pieces in both of those places that despite all of their brokenness were still being used, things that were still loved and used and appreciated, even if they weren't being cared for. But this place?

It's different.

It's abandoned.

The table is in splinters, crumbling to pieces in the corner of the room, an old plate still left out. The porcelain is ruined, covered in dust and dirt and probably rat poop if the creatures crawling in the dark corner are any indication. They are the only signs of life here, as if whoever used to use this space hasn't come down here in years, hasn't even thought about it.

Without being able to stop herself, it makes her think about Margot.

It makes her think about abandonment, and cruelty, and the terrible things that Whitney would do just to be selfish, to protect her own heart. It makes her think about family and love and death and how she might just get murdered without being able to tell Margot how goddamned fucking sorry she is for leaving her behind.

How goddamn sorry she is that she would do it again.

"Found anything?" Violet calls, and Whitney comes back to herself.

"Nah," she says, mouth a frustrated flat line. She doesn't know why she thought there might be anything in here, should have known better than to think a place abandoned to time would hold any answers. She keeps poking around though, and just as Violet says "Let me try over here," she turns to leave as well. Violet is already gone when Whitney spots the box in the corner of the room. She goes over to it without much thought, thinking that surely it's just another box of grain.

She opens it, and swallows.

There are no clues in this abandoned place, no answers, no life, no light. The box doesn't give her anything she wants, only more questions, but she tucks what she finds into the back of her jeans anyway. Maybe death will become her friend.

"Don't you go anywhere," Whitney replies, shoving the box away. She jogs lightly after Violet, follows her down the damp hallway. She sees another door as she goes and wonders why Violet walked by that one, but she doesn't ruminate too long when she walks into the wine cellar and sees all the bottles. "What a fuckin' waste," she says, mouth wide. "It's way too warm down here. This wine is probably all spoiled."

She shakes her head, focuses on what matters.

"Spot anything?"

[ whit follows vi to the wine cellar ! ]

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

It's a strange thing, being surrounded on all sides by spoiled things.

It feels like some kind of metaphor, the spoiled girl in a spoiled world, the girl with too much surrounded by piles and piles of things that do not give a fuck save for the the one's they have for the rot growing inside of them. I have to swallow, try and not let the fact that I have always indulged the morbid run away from me.

Now is not the time to let Death get the better of me.

He has, so many times. Or, not even so many times, but the thought of him alone. That one time Marcie Meadows fell off the swingset at recess and cracked her head open and I ran away crying, didn't run to a teacher or one of my classmates, just ran and ran and ran until I was alone in a bathroom stall sobbing. She was okay in the end. Head wounds just bleed more, Ms. Evans had told me, tucking my unruly hair behind my ear. Next time come get me though, okay? It hadn't mattered to me then at all that she was in pain, that she was crying. I had been able to think about was how I felt, was that I was afraid, was that I would never be able to unsee that.

That I wouldn't be able to handle it.

I had only been seven then, and I think that's probably why everyone excused me, but that's always been the way with me ever since then. I have always been on top of the world, a girl who could set fire to her life just because she was bored and have enough money to built it all back up again in the blink of an eye. A girl with a birds-eye view of the world and all its horrors, and the second I was brought down to earth, I crumbled.

Marcie Meadows led to Margot Le Blanc, and my absolute refusal to stand vigil at my sister's bedside as she lay dying.

I pull a bottle down off the shelf and hand it over to Violet before plucking down another. "I think we deserve a drink," I say as I search around quickly, looking for a bottle opener. When I find it, I pull the cork from my own bottle and trade Violet for her. I want to say something else, something quippy and honest and funny and brutal and real. But I don't.

I can't.

And instead I leave, take the torch and walk back towards the final door that I spotted following Violet down here.

"Last door," I say. "Are we ready?"

It doesn't matter.

I push it open anyway.

I am ready to not be the girl who crumbles.

[ whit searches safe room ]

474.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

The smell hits me first.

It's not rotten anymore, not like the musky smell from the wine cellar. I try and push against the door ahead of me, but it doesn't budge, and a part of me gets set on fire. I am tired, so fucking sick and tired of not being in the know, of being weak and small and of being held back—even if, often times, it was me doing the holding back of myself. And maybe that makes me some kind of hypocrite, some kind of terrible, horrible, no-good selfish monster, that I would demand the world work on my time table.

Maybe maybe maybe.

Maybe I don't fucking care.

Maybe I am as selfish as my mother used to call me. Maybe every time that she called me too romantic, she was dead on. But so what? I have tumbled into hell here and found my own way to create light, have been turned upside down and cast down into Wonderland but I am no lost girl named Alice and I will find my own way back home, no need for help from a white rabbit and his eyeglass. I remember, breathlessly, the key that I swiped when I was searching Malcolm's nest, and when it fits perfectly into the locked door in front of me and Violet, I am filled with a sick sense of selfish self-satisfaction that I refuse to let anyone take away from me. I almost cried when I fell down that trap door, and the bloody cuts on my hands are still leaving trails everywhere I go, but who fucking cares! Because I did something right!

And I feel like I could conquer any fear.

Until I find the horror in front of me.

It's a metallic smell, all tang and gun-metal gray, and at first I think that it must be all the machinery in here, the glowing light of the computers. I think it must be that, surely, because what else could it be?

But then I see, and my stomach drops.

"No, Vi," I say, swallowing and taking a step backward. "No, you don't want to be in here." I grit my teeth, try and block all that red from her view. "Please," I go on, turning around to look at her, to try and stop her from coming further into the room and realizing that the smell of iron isn't from anything so kind as metal. "Please, let's go, you don't—" but I can't shield her from this.

"We need to get out of here; whoever did this could come back."

My jaw does not quiver, though it certainly wants to. My friend, my friend, my dear sweet friend, who did this to you? I think, heart on fire.

I will the flames to give me strength before they must turn me to ash.

Who did this to us?

[ whit searches safe room (again, bc reasons) ]

452.

[✨ zozo.]

The smell eventually hit her, after Whitney's protests found her ears, after her hands found the doorframe and her eyes had found Blaine, dead and rotting. Her fingertips reached for the knife, long-discarded somewhere on the dirty floor, and her heart dropped at its lack of presence. The time they had spent down here had made her feel a little safer, tongue still bitter with the sharp taste of wine, but now it just made her feel ill.

"It's just a dead body," she whispered. To herself, to Whitney, who even knew at that point. "It's just a dead body."

But dead bodies were getting more and more frightening when they looked like her housemates. When they looked like their host. The dull, twitching light from the torch flame saw Blaine's pretty face now gaunt and pale, speckled with blood and dust and buzzing flies. This was not a corpse at peace, not like the ones that sat in her home sometimes. This was a haunted shell of a boy. A warning sign.

In death, Blaine told them to run.

"We need to get out of here," insisted Whitney, and Violet - dumb-struck and transfixed on Blaine's face - could only nod. "Whoever did this could come back."

It's just a dead body it's just a dead body it's just a dead body.

"How?" Violet croaked, desperately studying Whitney's worried, albeit alive, face. "I fell through the ceiling. I don't think we could climb back out..."

As she spoke, she took a few steps back - until Blaine's face faded from the light and sat back into the dark.

"Let's find a door. A trapdoor. Anything."

- violet -

gaps it to the archive and finds the exit