Prologue - Byron Riggs

[Shrike7]

((Not entirely sure on what a pathologist actually is... Morgue worker, right?))

Byron was having an easy night. Red Deer never had many dead brought in, but today there had only been a single one. Nothing special about it, and it has now beed sitting in it's shelf for a couple hours, leaving Byron with, once again, nothing to do. Not that that was anything to complain about, really.

His co-worker came rushing in from the morgue area, looking panicked. "It's gone! The body is missing!" He says hurriedly, running over to the other desk and checking the security feed.

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

((Yes, working at the morgue does fit. I am not sure if I found the right word to describe the job, but examining dead bodies for their cause of death would be the main task.))

Byron had just settled down on his desk, signing the usual paperwork that he so has come to like - silence and the lamplight being his only company. With a little luck he should be undisturbed for hours, while his coworker checks on the bodies and brings in the new ones while releasing those where they already completed their work on.

He was just going to take a sip of his homebrewed coffee from the thermosflask, as the door burst open and he is confronted with shouting.
In shock, Byron spills a good portion of hot coffee on his right leg, hissing in pain.

'Gods!! Storming in here and screaming like a maniac - What has gotten to you, man?',
he growls to his co-worker, his voice clam, but hinting boiling anger.

'Explain - quick. What do you mean by 'gone'? And what body? I have signed the release papers for only two tonight and as far as I recall you did not yet complete getting rid of any of them, else you had passed the office.'

As his coworker runs straight to the security camera feed, rewinding, he sighs and joins in.

'Now now.. ok then, if it calms you.. lets check the tapes. Being alone in here can make one imagine strange things.. I know that..'

 

[Shrike7]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

"The freaking body that was laying calmly in the freezer units until I opened the door to check the toe tag!" The guy said, rewinding the feed until he caught something move, and plaing it from there.

The video clearly showed the wall used to hold individual bodies on roll-out tables, completely fine, until one of the doors opened, and the aforementioned corpse calmly crawled out, looked around, and headed towards the camera and out of sight...

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron stares.. then slowly pushes the assisstant aside. His hands push the buttons, rewinding the tape.. zooming.. But the image won't fade. Clearly the body is moving.

'That cannot be... I examined that body yesterday - dead as anything can be.. the organs were a mess, blood so thick that barely a drop ran from the wounds. Nothing can look like that and live..I did NOT make a mistake..',
he gasps - staring in disbelieve as the body calmly just walks out of the morgue.
The fact that it must have just as calmly walked past his office to reach the doors now just occuring to him.. and making him shiver. He turns round and quickly moves to the room with the rollout tables, checking the number and data-sheet of the body to see how now just betrayed death right in front of his eyes here.

 

[Shrike7]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

((Bit of a 'huh?' With the 'how now just' part, but I think I got it.))

Checking over the sheet, Byron sees that the body had no explainable cause for death, but that there was second-degree burns on the hands and face, whatever wasn't covered by his clothing. The assistant stood smack dab in the middle of the doorway into the room, looking about at the entire place. If Byron didn't know better, he'd say the man looked... Hungry for something.

"Did you see it walk past you? It could still be in here, somewhere..." The man said cautiosly, looking around the mostly spartan room.

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

(( Sorry, typing mistake there from my part Started one sentence, finishes another.. Happens when posting at 6 a.m. *laughs* Should get coffee first next time..))

Byron sets the datasheet back on the table, cautiously looking around, checking the shadowy corners of the room, then moves closer to the assisstant.

'No.. I did not see or hear anything before you came in. You are right.. I would have noticed anyone walking past, I guess.. Which means, he must still be here..',
he replies, voice lowered down to near-whisper. Well, of course Byron often gets lost in his work - but something like that escaping his attention? He thinks that unlikely..or at least hopes it to be.

The behavior of the 'corpse' strikes him as odd.. awaking in a morgue, locked in a freezer unit. One should think that such must at least cause panic - but the motions of the body appeared calm, as if it just knew what awaited it.. or was in a similar situation before.

'We will have to search the building... I would hate to explain the missing corpse.. especially when it just walks out of here during my shift. Maybe someone just made a mistake.. we will talk to the person.. settle everything.. noone will be responsible.. everything is going to be alright..',
he mutters.. the last words more spoken to himself.

Carefully he moves to the door, gesturing for his assisstant to follow. Feeling a bit uneasy still, he stops at the door, looking through the room for something he could use as a improvised weapon at least.. a wrench, or hammer... or even a broomstick.

 

[Shrike7]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron looks around and finds a scalpel. Not very big, but a finer cutting tool there never was. He went back to the door where the assistant is standing, still looking around intensely. "No, no he's still in this room, we need to-"

He is cut off as the corpse seemingly appears out of thin air and tackles him, sending him down to the ground as they both start fighting, rolling around and tearing into each other.

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Closes his hand around the scalpel tight, turning round. At the words of his assisstant he comes to starting:
'In this room? That is imp...'

Then he barely has time to dodge the falling bodies as his assisstant is knocked over by the corpse's attack. A scream of surprise comes from him and for a moment he totally forgets about the blade in his hand, only able to stare at the wrestling bodies.
Then he finally comes to, and he lunges down, trying to wrestle the mad attacker away from his coworker - the rolling and twisting of them both making it hard to find a way to apply the knife safely, thus Byron threatens:
'Let go !! Else I will make you! See the blade, asshole?!', he tries to scare the attacker into stopping.

 

[Shrike7]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Surprisingly, it's his co-worker that reacts to Byron's comment first. The man whips his head around and bares his teeth at him, revealing a pair of long, sharp fangs. He let's out a feral hiss, and some primal fear awakens in Byron, sending him scurrying to the other side of the room before he could help himself. Even after he composewd himself again, he couldn't make himself get close enough to the tumbling pair to sneak by and escape, leaving him without an exit, trapped in the room

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron breathes raggedly and deeply, his heart thumping in his chest and cold sweat all over his body. He clasps the tiny scalpel tight as he crouches behind his desk, watching the struggling bodies in the center of the room.

Unable to draw any nearer, his eyes dart from wall to wall, desperately seeking any opening, be it as small as an air vent. He does not want to spend another second in the room with this horror - every thought of saving his assisstant shattered completely at the sight of that visage.

Slowly, Byron crawls along the wall, putting as much distance between himself and the bodies as possible.

 

[Shrike7]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron snugs himself up in a far corner, still unable to get around the pair. watching them carefully, they both appear to have fangs, and seem to be spending the fair amount of the time trying to bite each other with them. Finally, his assistant manages to do so, clamping on to the corpse's shoulder as he wrestled the naked man to the floor underneath him. The pair continue to struggle for a moment longer, and all of a sudden the corpse starts going into convulsions, Byron's assistant hanging on through it all, teeth still in the dead man's shoulder.

Finally the man stopped convulsing and went still. His assistant waited a moment longer before pulling away, the body under him falling away into a pile of dust the second his assistant's teeth leave the body...

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron's eyes are wideopen, staring at the impossible as the body is reduced to fine ash, flocks blown away by the gentle breeze of the climate cooling.

The scalpell in his hand pointing trembling at his assisstant, feeling meek and pointless all of a sudden. The fangs.. the sight of the powerful biting..the sucking. Even though it cannot be..all of this screams vampire - there has to be a joke in this.. hidden cameras.. students maybe that are in for a laugh at him wetting himself. But the fear is far too real for that.

Trembling he manages to utter a question:
'What... what are you?'

 

[Shrike7]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

His assistant turned to look at him, an unusually cruel smile playing along his lips as he tilted his head to the side, amused. "Surely you're smart enough to have put the pieces together by now, Byron." He says teasingly.

((Feel free to come up with a name for him if you want, I can't seem to find a nice one at the moment :/))

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron pushes his body up to his feet, using the wall to support his trembling knees. Although the horror slowly starts to fade, his mind clearing a little, the attempt still looks quite feeble - yet he stands, scalpel outstretched towards his former coworker.

His voice has regained much of its calm and cool tone, though, as he replies:

'Oh yes, for sure, Mitch. The fangs are a clear hint.. you are a damned vampire, aren't you?'

Slowly Byron backs a little more back towards his desk, trying to put some distance between them - still trapped, though.

'Just as if having stepped right out of the legends.. too bad I am all out of crosses.. and garlic..',

he adds with a nervous laugh - the joke no longer sounding so funny when facing the actual threat.

'And now? You will not leave me running.. not after what I have seen.. So what are you going to do? Incinerate me like the fellow back there?',
he asks, scalpel thrusting to the pile of scattered ash on the floor.

'If so.. no point in the effort.. noone would believe me anyways. You know how it is - they all think I am crazy anyways.. depressed Byron, sitting all alone in the cellar with all those corpses.. his mind must have flipped.. imagining things..',
he tries to argument for his plain life.

 

[Copper]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Mitch chuckled, following Byron's movements with only the slightest turn of his body. "Not that your crosses or garlic would do you any more good than that pen knife you're holding. But you are right. I can't let you go, though likely not for why you might be thinking."

The other man started to move, his steps becoming a slow stalk as he narrowed the distance between the two of them. "You see, I'm not one to let opportunity just pass me by and you, my good man, will be just the distraction that I need."

Fangs still bared, Mitch lunged, this time attempting to latch onto Byron's shirt, arm, whatever he could reach to get a grip on him and pull him even closer, there being no doubt as to what he was going to do next.

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron lets go a shout of surprise at Mitch's lunging forward, the scalpel quickly slashing his direction.
A gesture nobly meant and maybe even holding enough threat against a human body, but as Mitch already mentioned: Not the right thing to stop the lunge of a man undead.. in fact only offering him the chance to grapple that arm, if the slash means little harm.

 

[Copper]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

((Again, better biting available upon request.))

Mitch's taunt about opportunity seemed to echo in his ears as he did, indeed, latch on to Byron's arm and use it to jerk him closer. If the scalpel even touched him, he gave no outward sign. Instead, he wrapped his arm around Byron, pulling on his shirt to expose enough skin for him to latch his fangs into his neck. What should have hurt, didn't. Or at least, didn't for long. Despite his struggles, Byron soon found him mind succumbing to a blissful haze that soon overrode his will to think or even continue to fight against the feeling. The more the feeling washed over him, the weaker he began to feel, the more clouded his mind began to become. Still, as the darkness began to creep in, he attempted one last stab, one last struggle, one last...anything...before it completely washed over him.

Once his soon-to-be Childer stopped fighting, Mitch let him go, Byron's body sliding to the floor. Growling, he reached around behind him and pulled the scalpel from his back where the other man had stabbed it into him. Tossing the instrument across the room, he knelt down and opened his wrist with his teeth, letting some of his blood trickle past Byron's lips. Pushing himself to his feet, he licked the wound shut as he strode over to the drawers that lined the wall, rolling out one that had come in from natural causes not that long ago. Not the freshest blood, but it would do. Enough to sate the Hunger he knew the other man would be feeling. And who would think to be suspicious of exsanguination on a corpse already in the morgue, already slated for--Wait, why was he even thinking like this? This was their problem now. He hauled the corpse out, putting it close enough that it would be the first thing Byron would come to upon waking. That final "courtesy" done, he headed out to take care of those pesky security tapes.

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron at first grunts, muscles tightening in a desperate struggle as those fangs sink into his body. But the pain just won't come - instead his body feels delightfully weak.. then blissfully mindless as the blood streams from his body more and more, leaving his knees buckling.. his vision fading.. Byron dies, darkness swallowing his vision.

But instead of the delightfully lit tunnel, the next things Byron feels and sees are an unbearable gutwrenching hunger.. and the cold tiles of the morguefloor.

'Damn.. works as my assisstance and cannot even tell when a body is dead..', Byron utters with a final streak of humor, unable to grasp the situation otherwise. He knows that he should not be moving.. or thinking. And gods that hurt in his stomach. 'Nnnrrgh..', he groans, eyes suddenly falling on the body besides him.

 

[Copper]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

A body he knows contains blood, blood that he can taste in his mouth, blood that tastes good and blood that both his mind and his gut are screaming for.

As such, he may or may not realize that the door to the room is starting to swing open again, two voices, both male, able to be heard through the widening passage.

"...said he would be here."

"Yes, but if I were him, I'd have gone back to hiding."

"I'm a little more concerned that we haven't run into anyone yet. Something doesn't seem right."

"The less people we encounter, the less we'll have to explain. Let's just find this guy and--" A curse interrupted whatever was going to be said. "Alexander."

Another curse. "Now things just got a little more complicated."

 

[Grashaboras]

Re: Prologue - Byron Riggs

Byron at first indeed does not realize anyone entering the room, the pleasure of feeding mixing with self-disgust as his fangs sink into the dead body, sucking in the barely fresh blood of the recently deceased.

As finally the voices come clear, Byrons turns round, fangs bared, blood still trickling from the pointly ands and his lips. The situation is more than horrifying to him - knowing that he is about to be caught right at the spot, blood dripping from his mouth, bodies disappeared. He knows that there is nothing that could save him now and with a grunt of fear, he runs for the exit, aiming to knock the two persons out of the way with his shoulder and hoping to catch them in surprise so that he may make his escape... whereto is another matter alltogether, which does not really occur to his still dazed mind.