"the first miracle was that you were born" | HEART GAME

[miraculess]

Th- thump.

Th- thump.

Th- thump.

Darkness. Quiet. A heartbeat. Your heartbeat. Slowly, the murmur of sound. Footsteps. Voices—

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[mentifact]

[ even if they're all fairly dull, xe just picks out whichever is the sharpest and slices off a long lock of hair, twisting it into an acceptably singular cord of sorts

and goes back to the body to loop it through the empty buttonhole ]

Maybe this will be okay instead.

[miraculess]

Testing the scalpels was perhaps difficult to do with numb fingertips, but in the end they were all easily sharp enough for the job xe wanted to use them for. ...She doesn't respond, of course.

Xe's been there long enough for the silence (those whispers?) to start being oppressive, though. Maybe xe should go...

[mentifact]

[ it would be a little scary if the corpse actually responded to me talking to her this whole time

takes the scalpel and looks around for a door ]

[miraculess]

Well, considering where you are...

The door is directly across the room from the surgery table. Xe looks up just in time to catch a glimpse of someone's back as they hurriedly leave, lab coat flaring behind them.

[mentifact]

[ ... just how long were they watching me stumble around for a button

FFFFOLLOWS? ]

[miraculess]

The room exits into a hallway, with several closed doors along it. Again, xe's just in time to catch sight of the person rushing through the opposite door.

[mentifact]

[ WELL

LET'S DO A CHASE SCENE WHY NOT ]

[miraculess]

Xe gets about halfway down the hall before the quality of the silence changes, making the hair on the back of xyr neck stand up. It's hard to say exactly how xe knows, but—

Something is behind xem. Xe can hear it breathing.

[mentifact]

[ oh. well.

it's not that that's not a little unsettling, but-

>turn around to maybe talk to breathing presence? ]

[miraculess]

There's something crouched over the woman's body.

It's almost painful to look at, the form shifting and distorting as xe watches; it's like trying to focus on something in a pitch-black room, or perhaps something viewed through heat haze. Xe can make out claws, though, and glittering red eyes... and then sharp, sharp teeth, as it bares them in a parody of a grin and starts to rip into the corpse, deliberately mangling it.

[mentifact]

[ oh. ]

... Wait--

[ it's a delayed reaction, not nearly fast enough, but xe turns fully and runs back to them, reaching out as if to. push the thing off ]

Please wait!

[miraculess]

It laughs, a soft, almost familiar sounding huff— and the door slams shut in xyr face. As the lock clicks, the alarms that had woken xem up shrill back to life at a painful, intolerable volume.

[mentifact]

[ flinches at the sound and just sort of.

stays with xyr hands pressed to the door for a bit.

and with that xe's probably lost track of the other person, too, huh... xe really isn't doing well at this.

still, xe'll turn and go for the door xe saw the person in the labcoat go through. ]

[miraculess]

It opens to another hall— to a kitchen— to a break room to a foyer to a—

—the whole mishmash of rooms blurs, and then clears. What lies on the other side of the door isn't more of the building at all... but a forest.