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toyybox · 3 months ago

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Spiderwebs #56: Bunny

Masterlist

content: brief description of a dead body, female whumpee

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It was not so late as to be dark out, but the evening cast a vignette over everything. The cicadas buzzed outside, but he couldn’t hear their harsh songs inside the car.

Heather shifted the gear into parking, then glanced at Jackie in the rearview mirror. "“It was important that we allied ourselves with Mary Callaghan. The fact is, Mary has more power and resources than we do. I killed a member of her family. I pose a threat to her. If she had decided to kill me in retaliation, you would be in her custody, and I’m sure you don’t want that. It was necessary to make some sacrifices. You want to ensure our safety, right?”

"Yes," he responded on cue.

"I need you to be polite at the party. Speak when you’re spoken to. Be social. Don't be rude. Don’t drink, if it comes to that. Smile. Lie if you need to. Do whatever is necessary, so long as you don't embarrass me."

He nodded.

“I'm sure you'll manage." Her gaze returned to the front. She twisted the keys out from the ignition. "If you get lost, ask for help. If you get scared, pretend you're not. Don't cry..." She paused. "Actually, just don't cry in front of me. Don't die. That isn't acceptable, either."

“You didn’t tell them about the immortality.”

“Of course not. Nobody would believe that.”

Mary’s house was big, to put it mildly. Bushes of pink and white and yellow flowers lined the cobblestone walkways, curving around a sculpted fountain, which spewed out thin arcs of water into a wide cobblestone base.

All this scenery was viewed through a large gate, made up of black metal curls and engraved leaves, and narrow but tall bars in between. The property was fairly secluded as well, covered on all sides by a patch of pine trees, a forest even thicker than the woods on Heather’s property.

The view was beautiful, and it was getting better by the second. A pair of white peafowl came strutting down the manicured lawn. This is just ridiculous, he thought. There was a peacock with an impressive king’s-coat of a tail, trailing behind its reedy legs, and a less impressive peahen following close beside. He wondered who fed them. Or had time to tend the garden, for that matter.

A stately middle-aged man, wearing a formal suit, opened the gates. That answered Jackie’s question. The man could only be a servant. A housekeeper or the like.

Heather was already out of the car. Though Jackie was dreading this, he still followed her. It was evening already. The smell of roses and motor oil was making his stomach churn. He was not wearing the shock collar, thank God, but he didn’t want to see Mary again regardless.

What he wanted was irrelevant, however. Heather had already started up the pathway with her hand around his wrist. He followed. At least I’m outside. He could run. Past the bushes and the picket fence. Hilarious. I’m sure Heather won’t mind at all. And when Heather didn’t mind something, she locked him in a dark room for three months. There was nowhere to run to, besides, unless he wanted to starve to death in the forest. But there was the door, and they were already up the steps, and Heather had already rung the doorbell.

Even before the sound could fade away, the door swung open. There stood Mary Callaghan, her face bright and rosy in a full face of makeup, her eyes sparkling. Heather’s previous expression of mild irritation switched in an instant, to mirror hers.

Mary tucked a strand of hair away, cleared her throat, and clasped her hands together. “Heather!”

“Mary.”

“You’re here!”

Heather seemed to falter now that they were finally here, on the verge of falling into uncomfortable silence—but she managed to push Jackie forward. “Say hello, Jackie.”

“Hello, Mrs. Callaghan.”

Mary barely glanced at him. Her attention was fixated all on Heather, hook-line-sinker. “His suit is so cute—did you buy that?”

Heather nodded.

“I have to show Carter—Carter’s here, did you know? And my wife. Katie!” Mary turned around to call her wife’s name. “Kate! Heather’s here! Do come inside. The weather’s awful out there. You can give Peter the butler your things. He’ll take care of it.”

So that was the butler. Peter the butler. Mary disappeared around a corner, and Heather stepped forward, but Jackie lingered behind.

He was studying the fountain. It was some sort of siren. Like a deer in the headlights, her marble surface was lit up by the manor’s bright glare. Water spurted from her eyes, from the arrow wounds in her neck and chest and her spiralled fishtail, from the stigmata marks carved into her palms. Her stone muscles twisted in agony. It was unlike any fountain he’d seen before, certainly, but it still held a degree of serenity. The sound of falling water was gentle under the harsh cicada songs. He could listen to that sound all day.

It was interesting, but he didn’t have time to admire the architecture. Before Heather said anything, he hurried forward.

Inside, the mansion was even worse. It was absolutely gorgeous. The ceiling was way too high. And there were way too many chandeliers, three whole chandeliers in a row, and that was just the lobby. Two staircases curved up around the main hallway, the beginning of a double helix were it not for the last steps ending on the second floor. He was sure that there was a third floor, too, maybe a fourth. If Heather’s house was the height of luxury, this was… this was really something, all right.

Peter the butler shut the door behind them. At the same time, another woman entered. Her eyes were dark and her tawny braids fell long and straight, down and over her shoulders. She wore a plain blazer, unlike Mary, who wore a ruffled dark-pink dress. Kate, probably.

Heather greeted the stranger, but Jackie wasn’t paying attention. If this was the lobby, those rooms upstairs would be bedrooms, or guestrooms, or something similar. And forward, that would be a living room—or whatever name rich people used for the main room. If this was a dinner party, then there was probably a kitchen and a dining room. The floors were shiny, smooth wood, nearly the texture of glass. The ceiling was high, like that of a chapel. Leafy fiddle-figs stood in large ceramic pots, arranged near the main entrance, waxy and oversaturated in green. The only practical piece of furniture he could see was an elegant-looking table, placed in the perfect center of the two staircases.

And this was just one room. He could not imagine living in such a place. It was far too open, for one thing, and it would take forever to clean. Poor butler.

This train of sympathetic thought was interrupted by a harsh creak—the door swinging open. Someone entered the lobby.

The stranger lifted a hand in greeting. In his other hand, he was holding an assault rifle. “Hello. You’re Heather, right?”

The gun wasn’t pointed at anyone. But it was an off-putting sight, nevertheless. Jackie backed up a little.

“Yes, I’m Heather.” She put a hand on Jackie’s shoulder so he would stop moving. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. And who are you?”

“That’s Carter. My business partner," Kate said.

He gave a grin and a half-shrug. Which was all he could manage, because one shoulder was weighed down by the rifle. His teeth were an unnerving shade of white between his lips. “Hey, who’s that?”

“This is Jackie.” Heather pushed him forward a bit. “He’s my… friend.”

There wasn’t any real word for it, but the implication was clear enough.

Carter studied him with a half-curious expression. Jackie decided that he hated Carter. So cheerful and easy-going, that blight upon the world. They were horrible, every one of them. He hated them all.

Already, this was too much. He was tired and he was irritated. The clothes Heather made him wear were scratchy and far too hot for the weather. He wanted to go home. That would have to wait, however—Carter spoke again.

“It’s been lovely, but we’ve had enough chit-chat,” Carter said. “Go ahead. Heather and I will be just a second.”

Jackie watched sourly as Kate departed down the hallway. Mary trotted close behind, though she did give Heather a brief glance before she disappeared completely.

Again, he attempted to step away from Heather. This movement accomplished very little. She held him tighter. Carter hadn’t noticed at all.

“So,” Heather said. “I didn’t know Kate had a business partner.”

Carter laughed. It was a high-pitched sound, like the scraping of metal. “I guess someone has to do the dirty work. I’m not surprised she didn’t want to mention it.”

“Right.” Heather settled for a small smile.

“Yeah, well, that’s how it goes.” Carter ruffled Jackie’s hair, rougher than he honestly needed to. “Your friend’s well behaved. What’s his name?”

“Jackie,” said Heather.

“Cute. Did you name him?”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I… did, actually. Name him.”

“He’s different from Angie.” Carter, at last, leaned away from Jackie. “I can take him off your hands while you're here. The cellar locks from the outside. If that’s okay with you?”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll see you in the parlor, then?”

“Sure. Enjoy yourself.”

Heather disappeared quickly enough behind the shadowed corridor. The lobby was bathed in hollow silence, and he was alone with Carter.

Jackie stared at him. He didn’t have the choice to run, not here, but his posture was tense regardless.

Carter, on the other hand, had not shifted from his amused sort of expression. “What do you look so nervous for?”

That was an easy question to answer. The assault rifle was still poised in Carter’s hand. Magazines and handles stuck out at jutting angles, obsidian-black, and there was a rough fabric strap hanging down its side. The barrel was a slender stick, topped with a round muzzle, with the base braced against the handguard. Fine beads of dirt and grime dotted its surface.

He noticed Jackie’s staring, and held up the gun. “This? Oh, don’t worry. It’s not for you. You can relax now.” Jackie did not relax, but Carter kept talking. “Anyway, I haven’t got all day to waste.” He gestured down the hall, to a door on the right. “The cellar’s that way.”

Carter started forwards and, when Jackie didn’t follow, grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the cellar. Jackie reluctantly stumbled alongside him. The door led to a flight of stairs, leading downwards. They were built on a steep incline, but Carter walked quickly—he came down there often, Jackie guessed. Lights were studded along the ceiling in haphazard angles, but it was darker than the lobby, and the smell of mold and damp wood seeped through everything.

Carter put a hand on his back, ushering him forward through the cellar door. “There’s a water bottle in the freezer. Someone will be here in a few hours. Don’t break anything while I’m gone.”

Jackie barely had time to find his bearings before the door shut, its latch screeching and locking into place. The damp smell was even stronger, now mixed in with something metallic and rusty and deeply unpleasant.

The floors were wood planks and the walls were wooden too, although they seemed off-colored and wet in places. The ceiling was comprised of wooden beams, closely fitted together until they almost formed a flat surface. The cellar door didn’t look too well. It wouldn’t break under pressure, but it wasn’t pretty, not like the lobby doors. The wood was roughly carved and poorly fitted to the frame, and the metal doorknob seemed dull in the dim light. Nobody had tried to tidy this place up in a long time.

Which was really quite rude. If Jackie had to spend a few hours somewhere, he would at least appreciate a chair, or something—the only pieces of furniture, he discovered when he turned around, were two full-sized freezers, a metal table, what appeared to be a toolbox, and a pair of oddly familiar handcuffs in the far left corner. One end was attached to a metal loop stuck in the wall and the other, he discovered as his stare drifted downwards, was attached to a wrist. The wrist was attached to a person. Not a corpse, but a living person, sitting down and attempting to gnaw the metal off.

Her head lifted so quickly that her hair, straw-blond and tied into a short ponytail, was thrown sharply backwards. She stood to face Jackie. She was tiny, only reaching his shoulder. There was a long moment as they both stared at each other. The stranger’s eyes were narrowed, and her irises were a blue so dark that they seemed waterlogged, not pale like Mary’s eyes. Her button-up shirt was mostly a clean white, save for a few places where the fabric was stained or torn, and Jackie didn’t notice any injuries.

Jackie didn’t come any closer. In the corner, shadowed by the freezers, the stranger was cast into near-darkness. The only lights were the reflections in their eyes, sharp and bright as sparks of flint.

A prisoner in the cellar. Nobody had mentioned this before. It was apparently irrelevant. Two captives and four killers walked into a mansion—it sounded like the start of a bad joke.

Jackie hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, as if any loud sounds would startle this sudden apparition. “Are you… Angie?”

“Angie?” The stranger didn’t recognize the name. Angie was dead, anyway—it was a stupid question. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

“I asked first.”

“I’m not the one handcuffed to the wall, am I?” Low-hanging fruit, but Jackie didn’t trust her. “Spit it out already.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, but she spoke. “I’m Mackenzie-Clarke, private investigator, currently employed by—”

“Mackenzie? Is that your first name?”

“No, but if it’s really that important, you can call me Bunny Macken—”

“Your first name is Bunny?”

That must have hit a nerve—Bunny, or so she was called, did not finish her introduction. She continued tugging on the handcuff, somewhat half-heartedly. There was one injury, actually. Her wrist inside the handcuff was ringed by a bruise, splotched purple and blue, turning green in some places like a rotted fruit. “Don’t interrupt me.”

“My bad.” He lifted his hands in apology. “Keep going.”

“Never mind. It doesn’t work anymore. You ruined it.”

“I don’t know. It sounded pretty impressive to me. Private investigator. That’s a cool job.”

Bunny took this the wrong way. She shut her eyes, perhaps to avoid looking at Jackie any longer than necessary. “If you’re here to kill me, can’t you hurry it up? I don’t care to listen to you prattle.”

“A lot of people say that. But I really like your voice, actually. You have a nice accent. Ireland, right? Keep talking.”

“Go to hell.” Bunny Mackenzie-Clarke opened her eyes to size Jackie up, possibly ruminating on the idea of a physical altercation. “You don’t need to introduce yourself. It doesn’t matter.”

“That’s kind of nihilistic.”

Bunny had no retort. She glared with those deep, dark eyes and waited.

Jackie should have been panicking. He sort of was panicking, but it was a viscous sense of alarm, slow to settle in and slow to be noticed. He wasn’t sure what to do. He never ever imagined such a day would come, finding another person in the same situation as him. Jackie, perhaps irrationally, assumed that he would always be alone here. There was something uniquely unlikable about his being that warranted getting locked in a cellar, and nobody else shared this quality. But here was this stranger, like a mirror-image, scrutinizing Jackie the same way Jackie scrutinized her.

Not the kind of meet-cute he was expecting, but another prisoner was an enemy of his enemy, and everyone knew what great friends those people made. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be rude. I’m Jackie. Jackie Rockwell. How long have you been here?”

“Three days.” She glanced at the door. “I assumed Heffner would kill me herself. She doesn’t usually leave it to someone else.”

“Heffner?”

“Kate Heffner.” She paused for a moment, as her gaze shifted to meet Jackie’s. “You do work for her, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Why are you here, then?” Her hostile expression eased into something more gentle, something that might have even been hopeful. "Are you here to help me?”

“If you want.”

“Great. Unlock these handcuffs.” She shook her wrist for emphasis.

“I don’t have the keys.” Jackie turned towards the two freezers. “Do you want some water instead?”

Bunny did seem a little disappointed, but she stopped glaring at Jackie, and the thought of escape seemed to cheer her up. She nodded.

Jackie opened the first freezer. It did not have any water. There was a garbage bag, wrapped around two arms, two legs, a head, a torso. The silhouette of a person. Proof for a client, perhaps. He closed it quickly.

“Say,” Bunny said, “if you don’t work for Heffner, why are you here? You weren’t expecting to see me. And that freezer seemed to have… surprised you, so you can’t be a client.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” He opened the second freezer—it was empty, except for a single half-frozen plastic bottle of water. “Kate’s sort of like… a friend of a friend. It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’s complicated.” He closed the freezer and tossed the bottle over. Bunny caught it, despite her limited range of motion. “Someone asks me to fix their car, then one thing leads to another, and now I’m locked in here. It’s none of your business, anyway.”

“Oh.” Bunny tilted her head to the side. “You’re stuck in this cellar too.”

“I am not.” He tried not to look at Bunny, but it was a lost cause. Those eyes were like sea-glass, with their strange color and their hadal depth. “Okay, I am. But only for an hour. Don’t think we’re in the same boat, Mackenzie-Clarke.”

“Why not, Rockwell?”

“Let me guess. You went after the wrong person.”

“No one is above the law,” she said. “There is no wrong person, just criminals and those who are too incompetent to care. I have proof that Heffner’s been keeping the police quiet. There’s been about four separate missing people, all in this area, and nobody investigated? Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” Jackie lowered his voice. “Well, I figured that out weeks ago! The police don’t do what they’re supposed to, so what? You got caught anyway. It was all for nothing.”

Bunny ignored his comments. “How did you meet Kate Heffner, then?”

“I didn’t. There’s a lot of criminals in Seattle. There’s a lady with freckles, I don’t know if you’ve seen her. Heather Rodriguez? Does that ring a bell?”

She shook her head.

“Whatever.” Jackie sat down beside the freezers. “We’re never going to see each other again after this. I can’t help you and you can’t help me. You should just forget I was ever here.”

“Maybe so.” Bunny sat down as well. Her cuffed wrist was suspended at an odd and probably uncomfortable angle, but she seemed strangely confident, despite every piece of good advice Jackie had just given her. “How would you describe this Rodriguez person? I’m curious. Does she work with Heffner?”

“No, she’s just friends with Kate’s wife.” For all the times Jackie wanted to complain about Heather, he felt too shy in front of this stranger to speak completely honestly. “Don’t ask me how that happened. She’s easily impressed. You’d think she’d have more self-respect, but they drink tea together once and suddenly they're all lovey-dovey. It’s unbelievable.”

“So what you’re saying,” Bunny said, “is that this Heather person is easy to manipulate. Easily… convinced.”

“I guess. I don’t know. She’s just acting weird lately.”

“Only recently? How long have you known her for?”

“I think…” He counted back the months in his head. “About a year.”

“A year? That’s a long time. You must know her well.”

“I know enough about her.”

“Enough to, maybe, if you think about it…” Bunny trailed off, trying to act nonchalant and failing miserably. “Oh, I don’t know, convince her to… let you visit me? And, you know, hypothetically, maybe this Heather person has a set of keys that unlock these cuffs—”

“Forget about it,” Jackie interrupted. “I’m not going to trick her. It’s not going to work.”

“Well, you can do whatever you’d like. I am going to leave this cellar, and I would really appreciate it if you found me the keys to these handcuffs.”

“How am I supposed to do that? I don’t know who keeps them.” And trying to escape never worked out in his favor. He didn’t want to even entertain the idea. “Besides, it’s too obvious. There’s no reason I’d want to come back to this place.”

“You’re right.” She tapped her knuckles to her mouth and glanced down at the floor. “But we need to communicate. If we’re going to come up with a plan, we should discuss—” At once, she sat up straight.

“What happened?” Jackie asked, his eyes wide.

“I have an idea.” She gestured for Jackie to come closer. “Listen. It’s important. I overheard something yesterday, when Carter came down here. I need you to remember exactly what I say…”

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Taglist:

@theelvishcowgirl @lthrboy @whumpy-wyrms @yassifiedinformation @creppersfunpalooza

@vidawhump @dont-look-me-in-the-eye @inkwell-and-dagger @neverthelass @whump-since-2010

#spiderwebs toyybox #my writing #whump writing #whump #Finally Jackie meets a normal person ˙ᴗ˙#Also I realize I never explain what “dirty work” Carter actually does but it's not about the killing people for money part #He's more so talking about counting their inventory and cleaning up afterwards and things like that #All the boring work basically ~_~

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