#a few days ago this man was loitering around in this women's clothes shop staring at me

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Our Lady of the Underground || Morgan & Miriam

TIMING: Current/the Winter Solstice 

PARTIES: @meflemming & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan Beck, dead witch walking, gathers her final sacrifice.

CONTAINS: Violence, mentions of torture, death

Morgan tried trolling the Magic Circle for gossip about who was getting into dark shit and doing experiments they probably shouldn’t, but everyone was more curious about why she had stopped coming by Amity Row and why she wouldn’t take them up on their drink offers. So Morgan left it to chance, or fate.When the day came, she loitered around outside some other bar, her lonely act not much of one at all, and waited for someone to ask twice for her company. Somehow, he took all her grimacing and turning away as signs of just being nervous and offered to get some air outside with her before she could come up with a good excuse.

And now he was bound and gagged and unconscious before the Devil’s Gullet, which just went to prove you really shouldn’t follow women who invited you for a late night stroll in the woods after dark. Fog rolled in thick, obscuring the line between solid ground and bottomless pit and stifling the sound of any life around them. Even the rest of the air felt suspended, hiding. Morgan tucked her jacket sleeves into the rubber kitchen gloves she put on to search pockets for anything dangerous or distinct enough to get them caught, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, except for some runestones and a tarot deck. Not enough to prove spellcaster one way or the other. Miriam would have to be okay with a certain level of ambiguity when it came to their mark; they both would. The maybe-spellcaster guy twitched, groaning, and Morgan jumped back. She knew they needed him awake if they were supposed to get any paint out of the situation, but that didn’t mean it was her preference. She cast a furtive glance Miriam’s way. Was this how things were supposed to go? Was she doing it right?

Taking in Morgan’s caution and overall appearance of being uncomfortable, Miriam made sure to appear steady, confident. And, truthfully? She was. This was her element, just as much as the leather shop was. They were in a good location for body disposal, the Gullet being a location she’d used frequently years ago on the occasions that she hadn’t wanted bodies immediately found. It would certainly serve their purpose well. Miriam had waited to feed a few days just for this, and she was starved. It didn’t help that her fangs had been coming out at random times. She figured that it had something to with the hunger, but it was curious, and more than a little annoying. She wanted this done as quickly and effectively as possible. So she pinned her curls up in a bun, put on a pair of gloves, and pulled her skinning knife out of her pocket. As the man started stirring, and Morgan cast a look in her direction, Miriam gave the small zombie a nod and walked up to the man, an easy, lopsided smile on her face. She patted him on the cheek gently. “Wake up, sweetness. Join us in the land of the living, won’t you?” Though, looking at Morgan and then realizing she was talking around a mouth full of fangs, Miriam rectified her statement. “Well, semi-living. Come on, now, eyes open. Let’s talk.” She ran the knife along his jawline, drawing out a thin line of blood. Best not to wait.

If Morgan just looked at the guy without looking at him, as if he were a set piece, or part of the atmospheric scenery. On your left, observe the ashy remnants of bone and suspiciously stained rocks. Further back, the creepy mist gets a little thick and likes to take the shape of malevolent spectres, and in the center, a human vessel for ritual bloodletting! Morgan took out her own knife and her Nalgene, unscrewing the lid and looking for an easy place to make this go quick, well, quickly enough. Not enough pain, then they’d just have to hurt someone else, and that wasn’t something she really wanted to put out into the world. She had made it this far without needing a do-over. She could get to the finish line and hand the blood to her exorcist and have something to show for these last four months.

The maybe-caster grunted with pain, starting to life. He looked around him wildly, straining his arms and screaming through his gag. Morgan looked around them and saw nothing and no one from one end of the mist to the other. “It’s okay to struggle,” she said gently. “The more the better. You should try to exert as much influence as you can over your situation. It will irritate your injuries, which is good for my purposes, but it might minimize the severity of any PTSD you develop after this too.”

He looked at her, shouting muffled cries of confusion and anger.

“I would prefer it if you survived this, but that’s going to depend on what kind of influence you try to exert. Please bear that in mind.” This would be the part where she made a cut, like a spigot into a tree, and let the material flow. But the man thrashed and Morgan, for all her practice with animals, struggled to make her incision so easily. Instead she came around behind him and wrapped her arms around, squeezing him with her full strength. She looked to Miriam for guidance again and nodded toward her Nalgene. “Please don’t waste anything,” she mumbled.

Watching impassively as Morgan talked to the man, Miriam stepped up again when Morgan moved behind him. “I’ve done this quite a bit,” she said, an easiness in her voice that didn’t match the intensity in her crimson eyes as she stared at the man. “Relax, darling.” She glanced at Morgan, then back at the man, smiling at him with sharp teeth. “Not you, darling. I don’t think you’re going to be able to relax much for this.” She got in the man’s face, pulling the deck of tarot cards out of his pocket. “This.” She threw them into the pit. “This is why you’re here. And for whatever she needs you for. You serve some purpose to her, at least. For me, you’re just a meal.” Then she grabbed the container that Morgan had brought and her knife, and she set to work.

According to Miriam’s research, back when she’d first realized the more pain meant that she was better fed for longer, the Chinese had perfected an art of torture called lingchi, or slow slicing. Some called it a death by a thousand cuts. It wasn’t dissimilar to flaying, and, the way she did it, it wasn’t as messy as skinning, though there was still quite a bit of mess that came with bleeding a person out. Miriam set to it, creating shallow incisions designed to elicit pain, starting on the man’s right arm. The wounds began to bleed, slowly, and the man began to scream against the pain of it. This would certainly be blood brought by suffering, Miriam thought, and the man was miserable, too, his pain and misery almost as familiar as blood on her tongue.

Morgan tried to shut her ears to the muffled cries of agony from the man in her arms. This was not going to be the first body she’d ever made, and for all she knew this guy who didn’t take the first ‘no’ for an answer had done something as bad as Cece’s coven friend to deserve being here. Maybe he’d earned this and she just didn’t know it.

Slowly, Morgan’s fingers grew slick with blood. Most was dripping into the Nalgene (slowly, so fucking slowly), but Morgan could sense it in how much more effort she had to put into holding him still. She’d encouraged struggle, encouraged anything to make this a little less terrible, but this was the price of torture. There was no room for mercy. No room for kindness. Miriam’s knife cut right through any ideas like that, shredding them along with the man’s skin. His cries grew throaty and desperate. He thrashed, messing Miriam’s handiwork, and groped blindly at Morgan’s clothes, like he could pull her into doing something different. “Y-you’re...you’re doing good…” she said faintly. This only made him scream louder, and it finally occurred to Morgan that all the affirmations in the world wouldn’t change what this must be like for him.

The phone rang in a short burst of sound: some anime sound effect Morgan vaguely recognized from Skylar’s recommendations but couldn’t place. She was sure she’d put it on silent when she took it, but apparently. “Shit, shit, shit...sorry…” She prised one bloody hand off the man’s anguished body and fished out the device. It was just some girl asking “u up?” And yet Morgan couldn’t help but stare at the lit up screen. There was a picture of a happy looking golden retriever being hugged by a kid in overalls on the lock screen, too messy to be a stock photo. Both of them couldn’t be his, right? “Mim, how much longer?” She asked, words wavering in her throat.

The poor bastard was quite miserable, as Miriam slowly sliced off pieces of his flesh and cut into him, but she still wasn’t satisfied. Not yet. It was a slow process, an agonizing process for both him and her, though she’d walk away from this encounter feeling full and sated, a smile on her lips. “Not much longer,” she told Morgan, the container filling up. She licked a bit of blood off the knife, grinning as the man in front of her whimpered. She set back to work. There was no need to take hours, and she could tell Morgan was probably getting uncomfortable with all of this blood and gore. Despite the name, slow slicing wasn’t a particularly long process. She only needed about half an hour, though she preferred longer, occasionally chatting and breaking bones. Not this time though. The man’s screams turned into whimpers, short, wretched little sounds in the back of his throat. Miriam didn’t know how a blood sacrifice was supposed to work, didn’t know if he was supposed to be louder for the full effect or whatever. She wasn’t the witch, wasn’t the one with the intimate know-how on all of this. Personally, she thought he could beg a bit, be a little louder. “There’s no one to hear you,” she told him, gently, next to his ear. “There’s no one that cares. So, please, by all means, continue screaming.”

The phone kept lighting up. There was no more weird anime sound to remind Morgan of Skylar or her dead student, who had at least been popular enough for the school club to turn out for her and make some memorial art of her as some magical girl character. But there was still the dog, dopey and excited and probably going to get shipped off to the pound after it had wandered the house going hungry, waiting for someone to come home that never would. The kid, definitely-definitely-definitely not his, but still tiny and happy and if this guy loved them enough to put them on his screen, they had to be important. And there was a group chat talking about a videogame release, a request for help with a calculus program on a tutoring app. And Morgan thought of the kids at Maxine Johnson’s funeral, and that clearing in the woods where she had begged that wolf to spare Deirdre, Ariana trembling her arms, the witch screaming in Cece’s house, the anguish on Deirdre’s face as she staggered home after a fucking week. The guy finally thrashed hard enough to get his gag loose, or looser, and he let out a scream that sounded so much like Morgan’s own. “Fucking fuck…” she whispered. The knife just cut deeper, scoring more holes into the universe, more loss. Nothing redistributed or balanced, it just spread, taking more and more, giving less and less.

“Stop!” Morgan’s hand shot out to Miriam’s wrist and pushed it away. “We need to stop now. You have to be full, he’s been screaming forever, this has to be over a-and this is...it’s done. This isn’t helping anything and it’s finished.” Her grip tightened. It was the only thing steady about her.

There wasn’t any enjoyment coming out of this, and she’d nearly been done, almost been willing to let this man and his annoying phone and his incessant whining leave with nothing more than a few bad feelings and some terrible scars, but Miriam still felt slighted at being told to stop. Stop, as if she had no self-control. Stop, as if she was a child to be scolded, being physically held back. This was a new low, even for Morgan. For all of her holier-than-thou attitude, she’d still agreed to Miriam’s help, had known going into this that it was just as much about Miriam getting a meal as it was about Morgan getting her blood sacrifice. And she’d commanded Miriam to stop? Put her hands on her in an attempt to make her. Miriam felt something inside her tighten and tighten and tighten as she looked down at the smaller woman, her teeth gritted. Something snapped, and Miriam relaxed.

Then, with her free hand, Miriam gripped the man by the shirt, pulled him close, and ripped his throat out with her teeth. Grin bloody, she shoved the container of blood towards Morgan, though she was controlled enough in her movements not to spill it. “There,” she said. “No more screaming. All done, sweetness.” She smacked her lips but didn’t wipe away the smear of blood that lingered on her chin. Miriam pulled herself away from Morgan and set about cleaning her knife, taking the gloves off of her hands and preparing to dispose of them.

“NO!” Morgan screamed and pulled the man back, but it was too late. Miriam bit, and his body flopped back, bleeding and lifeless. “What the fuck! That’s not what I wanted, that’s not--he would’ve been fine! I said stop to let him go, not to--! He didn’t even DO anything! He was no one! Tarot cards are just glorified mind tricks! Fucking---” Morgan’s screams broke with sobs. The mess of his throat was all over her hands now and Morgan couldn’t stand it. She got out from under him and edged away. She shook off as much as she could, but the blood stuck to her hands and made a home in her nail beds. “Fucking universe, I changed my mind, that’s it! Why couldn’t you…” Listen. Or see; see anything besides her own pain and want. But Morgan wasn’t even sure Miriam could see her right now. She was polishing her knife, like cutlery was really the thing that mattered right now. Morgan’s voice tapered off, shattering between horror and disbelief.

“Well, now he’s certainly no one at all, is he?” Miriam mused, though she swallowed hard, refused to look at Morgan at all. This was no place for regrets. She was not one to feel regrets. If she did, they would crash down around her so brilliantly, and she’d never get up again. She’d sooner be able to rip out her own throat than allow that to happen. “You’ll want to make sure the body goes over the side, and make sure there’s nothing plastic on him.” She looked over to the body. “Or I’ll do it myself, actually.” She finally looked at Morgan, scowling at the expression on the zombie’s face and refusing to let it feel small. She hadn’t buckled under the woman’s scolding before, and she wouldn’t do it this time, either. “I didn’t change my mind, and I wasn’t finished. That’s simply the way things are, sometimes. You got your blood. I got my meal. I think that both of us came out on top in this situation.” Certainly much better than him, she thought but didn’t say as she looked at the dead man on the ground.

“That’s not how things are! You don’t get to say that about something you did!” Morgan screamed. She pulled on Miriam, trying to make her look at her. She reached up and held her face, blood smearing all over it as she tried to get a grip. “You have choices, Mim! You have fucking choices. We all have choices! We don’t have to be like this, it’s too fucked. Look at me--no, really look at me Miriam and tell me that wasn’t so fucked and you don’t feel one bit better! Maybe you’re full, but better? Really?” She could barely see her for the tears streaming down her face. She’d waited too long to figure this out, and Miriam needed to eat no matter what, but this was reckless, this was just more unfairness and aching. Someone was going to miss that man and go looking and ache, wondering, and they’d never know that Morgan was the reason behind the worst day of their life and it would all just keep spreading. “Tell me you can feel how wrong this is.”

“That is exactly how things are, and if you’re foolish enough to not see that, then open your fucking eyes, Morgan!” Miriam snarled. She tried to pull away, but the little zombie was like a damn vice, forcing her to look and see. She did not want to. She did not care to. “I made a choice. A rash one, certainly, but it was my choice, and I stand by it. I do.” She looked Morgan in the eyes, red meeting blue like a clear warning sign. Did she feel better? No, not really, not much at all, but she’d never admit that, never give Morgan the satisfaction that she was spot on. If Morgan hadn’t pushed her, if she hadn’t literally grabbed her and forced Miriam’s hand, things might be different. She forced herself not to look away at the tears streaming down Morgan’s face, steadied her resolve and her feelings, her anger and her rage. She was angry that Morgan tried to stop her. She was upset over the thought that Morgan didn’t think she could stop herself. “None of that matters. It’s done now. I made a choice. It’s done now.”

“Because why!” Morgan demanded. “Because of your pride? Because I’m the one saying it? Because then you would actually have to do something different instead of just being so fucking scared? You are so terrified that things could be different, because it would mean you and everyone else has suffered for no good reason and it really was as shitty as it felt this whole time!” Her voice snapped and she cried again, though she no longer knew for who. “You could’ve stopped. We could’ve had someone do a memory charm, do something, so he wouldn’t tell about what happened. He could’ve been okay if you’d just stopped, Miriam…” Her hands fell and she backed away from the whole mess. “I really thought you were better than this.” But maybe she wasn’t. And hadn’t Miriam tried to tell her so this whole time. “Keep the blood,” she whispered. “I don’t want it. I need to fix something about this mess…”

“I am not scared!” Miriam screamed back, avoiding the questions because they did scare her. “Any part left of me that had anything to fear died before my heart even stopped. I’m not scared! I have never been scared.” She gritted her teeth so hard that the taste of blood in her mouth was less of that man’s and more of her own, the dead taste of it unsatisfying and bitter on her tongue. She felt prickles of tears in her own eyes, but she blinked them away, swallowed the taste of her own blood like bile. She would not cry. She wouldn’t. “But I didn’t. I didn’t, and playing around with what ifs and should haves and could haves does no one any good at all, darling. It simply doesn’t do any good.” She choked back a laugh. “I have been trying, so hard, to get you to see that I am, in fact, not better than these. I can’t be! I’m incapable!” She looked down at the container, disgusted with it and everything that it represented. She wasn’t disgusted with herself, though. No, she was not disgusted with herself. “I don’t want the fuckng blood, either. It was gotten for you.” She couldn’t imagine it’d taste alright, either. The man’s blood had turned sour the second it entered her mouth. She didn’t want it.

“Everyone is scared, you complete dumbass!” Morgan cried. She kicked the Nalgene over, letting the blood spill into the grass and drip down the sides of the hole in the earth. “But fine, you don’t want it--” She kicked it again. “There you go. Keep the bottle for the next time you get miserable.” She stood still, hands flexed. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do to Miriam, if she could shake more sense into her, fight her, or wipe the tears building so clearly in her eyes. But the exorcist was due in town tomorrow, and she needed to solve Constance another way before then. “You’re only incapable right now because you’re a fucking coward. But you know what? Mission accomplished! You win! You’re a monster and a liar, but it’s not because of the magic boogeyman universe that made you. It’s just you. Alone.” She stalked off into the trees, wiping the blood on her jeans and fumbling for her phone. She’d already ruined one person’s life, but maybe there was time to save Constance and whatever was left of herself.

“Fuck you!” Miriam screamed after Morgan’s receding figure, but there was little fight in it, nothing more than the petulant words of a child that she so desperately tried not to be. Because that’s all she was, wasn’t it? A child, one that found out the boy who teased her on the playground really was only teasing her and not simply pulling her pigtails because he liked her. She was a child, one that threw a fit every time she didn’t get her way. She was-- No, she was stronger than this, better than this, and she wouldn’t be reduced to anything less than she was by one tiny zombie who couldn’t keep her nose and her wretched moral compass out of other people’s lives. Miriam shook her head harshly, closing her eyes, not even realizing that tears were running down them and making rivets in the blood on her cheeks as she did. She thought about just kicking the bottle into the fucking hole, consequences be damned, but she didn’t. Instead, she continued cleaning up the mess. Determined not to get herself or Morgan caught. She didn’t watch the body disappear over the edge, just picked up the phone from where it had fallen out of the man’s pocket. There was a dog on the screen, a few messages. Miriam felt a pang in her chest and picked up a tarot card as well, stuffing them both in her pocket. She wiped away a few tears, sure that Theo was laughing at her in whatever corner of hell he’d slithered off to. In the distance, she could see eyes watching her. Fucking Wildes. “Do you like the mess I’ve made of myself?” she muttered, and, everything cleaned and packed up, she walked away.