sixthiterationlogs | mingle post

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mingle post | open

WHO: Jess Brightwell, Raven Reyes, a dead bear, and you!
WHERE: The inn.
WHEN: Nov. 9th.
OPEN TO: Anyone and everyone.
WARNINGS: Animal death, gore, conspiracy theories, etc. You know the drill.
STATUS: Open.

Come morning, the steps leading into the rear of the inn are a bloodbath. There's no kind way to put it; blood smears the wooden stairs like a patchy coat of new paint, dripping between the planks.

From a distance, the source looks like a heap of thick, dark fur sitting on the uppermost step. Up close is a different story: the animal is identifiable as a young black bear, splayed awkwardly on its stomach with all four legs spread as if someone laid out a bear rug without remembering to take the fur off the bear first. Its eyes are missing, as are some of its claws, and blood seeps from several deep gashes over the expanse of the bear's gored body.

Once Jess stumbles on it, word spreads quickly. Another mutilated animal, this time right in their proverbial backyard.

By end of day, the body will be gone and the steps washed off, but red still stains the wood, a reminder of the grisly discovery. This makes three deaths--and with no signs of slowing down.

_{(OOC: This is a mingle for the third animal find! Jess and Raven have found the body and will be present at the inn throughout the day. Specify in your posts if you'd like to thread with one or both, or drop an OOC line for plotting. Otherwise, go nuts and have fun with reactions. :3)}

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Sam was a regular visitor to then inn since it was where they kept all the logs and maps for the village and surrounding forest. Although, recent events had shown that the maps were more or less useless, but that didn't stop Sam from checking on from time to time. He wanted to keep tabs on things and the inn was the best place for it.

Sam wasn't expecting much that morning, things had been quiet aside from the disturbing animal corpses being found. It was only by chance that he was coming in from the rear -- he helped cook sometimes and he wanted to see if Miss Kate had anything he could use to make a quick meal before heading out. His stomach dropped, however, when he found a sight straight out of a horror film. There was blood everywhere and Sam stood stock still for a second processing this. His hand twitched for a weapon, but there was none to be had at the moment. He was going to have to investigate barehanded.

He cautiously approached the back door's steps, eyes darting from the pools of blood and back up for signs of attack or a fight. Nothing happened and that was somehow worse. It was another one, another of those disfigured and dismembered animals that had been popping up. This time it was right there at the inn, just waiting for someone to stumble over and fall into a mass of bloody fur and organs.

Sam swallowed, only slightly relieved that it wasn't a person. That didn't make the scene any less disturbing though and he was glad he wasn't alone in coming across this either. "What...how long has that been there?"

Edited 2016-11-14 04:13 (UTC)

Having strategically placed himself on a plot of grass near the body untouched by blood spray, Jess stood next to the stairs, waist-level with the carcass. He looked up at Sam's approach, frowning somberly (still frowning, something he'd been doing for a while already). "Not long. It's still fresh. I found it like this just a little while ago."

On the tail end of an early morning run, he'd only beaten Sam to the rear entrance by maybe ten or fifteen minutes. The sleeves of his shirt were still rolled up to his shoulders, cooling sweat having added a curl to the fringe of his brown hair.

That time had given him a chance to do all his processing. What was left was a stony severity, which he aimed at the body in another look. "We know it couldn't have been killed here. The others were inside the whole time."

Sam made a face -- a mix between disgust and worry. It was a difficult expression to describe, but it did involve the scrunching up of his nose and a deep frown. These had been appearing for awhile but the fact that one was so close to the inn, freshly killed, and no one the wiser.

His eyes flicked up to the inn, "Has Miss Kate or anyone else seen this yet?" He looked back over his shoulder, "Or are there any signs of it being moved here? A trail of some kind to follow?"

It was really too early in the morning for this.

Despite leaving the back door open, Raven still barged through it like a force to be reckoned with. In her hands was a metal box, one she'd haphazardly put together some time ago for the sake of tossing nails and other smaller bits inside. The sides dripped with water she'd kept in a bucket near her room, some of it sloshing over by how her touch wasn't as delicate as it should've been. There was a rag thrown over her shoulder, something that was dirtied with mud and grease and incredibly discoloured.

Standing at her full height with her hands splayed on the small of her back, she inhaled deeply and regretted it immediately. She hated the stench of blood; it took her back to the basement of Mount Weather where the tanginess of her own blood had flooded her mouth and nose. "As much fun as it is to stare at the dead bear, we're going to need to move it away from the inn. Blood's not a dull scent, boys."

"I've been looking, but... it might as well have appeared out of thin air for all that I can see." And he's confident of that, albeit in an uneasy way because he'd thought the same thing Sam's thinking now--there should be some kind of trail to follow. Under normal circumstances, even the most skilled assassin in the world would leave evidence behind moving a body this messy.

He'd looked for one in both directions, and was still rather hoping his eyes would catch on something he'd somehow missed, but so far the trail seemed to start and stop at the top of the stairs like the bear had crawled up there and maimed itself.

The only logical answer was that someone was dumping these animal carcasses closer and closer to their living quarters without leaving a trace and that... was almost more unsettling.

"We let them know. It's not exactly the most subtle ornament," Jess was in the middle of saying in response to Sam's first question when the other half of the aforementioned 'we' returned with bucket in hand, prompting him to shrug, hands on hips. "Oh, loads of fun, this is definitely better than a shoebox."

A glance at Sam preceded what he said next. It went without saying that moving the thing would be a two-person job.

"I've got gloves inside. You up for some heavy lifting?"

It was hard not to jump when you were staring at a mangled corpse of a giant bear. Sam manages to keep his composure though when Raven comes storming outside. At least she isn't coming out empty handed. Sam's pretty relieved to see a bucket and water ready to wash this mess away. He glanced down at the body, "Yeah, no kidding, we're either gonna start repelling the others from coming to the inn or attracting things we probably don't want." Something that could do this to a bear was not really something Sam wanted to encounter.

Ever.

"Well, it's not like I can pretend to suddenly have an important phone call," Sam conceded. It looked like he'd been selected for dead bear removal duty. This was going to be another one of those things he'd never thought he'd have to do.

Raven's brows furrow at Sam's quip, not quite understanding its context. It's a question for another time, perhaps another town. She understands his meaning, however, and appreciates the fact he's another good guy in town who's ready to carry his weight when it's needed.

Even though she and Jess have this reasonably under control, there's no telling whether something else will arise to make the situation worse. The more they work together, the better. That's a lesson she learned from camp with the kids.

She looks to Jess, eyebrow arched. She's unsurprised; there'd been boys like Jess back at camp, speaking around her as though she wasn't capable of helping lift something heavy. "This bucket's for you, Pretty Boy."

He was starting to wonder if someone wasn't trying to scare them off from the inn--or just scare them, period. Senseless animal killing pissed him off, but what really had him frowning was the show of power behind it.

We could reach out and do this to you whenever we want was the message the body sent, and it was disturbingly easy to picture one of them in place of the bear.

Like Raven, Jess didn't know what a phone call was, either, but the gist of it was clear and he managed a faint, wry smile in the man's direction. "Sorry." Manhandling roadkill wasn't the way he'd planned to start his day any more than it was Sam's, which was why he merely rolled his shoulders in a shrug at the girl in their midst. "Hey, you want to walk through that mess and be picking innards out of the soles of your boots later, be my guest."

There was no way anyone going up or down those steps could avoid getting splatter on them; picking the body up would mean stepping in it no matter whether they started from the top or the bottom. Not the most glamorous of jobs for either gender.

It'd be even worse bare-handed. Gloves were a must. "I'll grab them. Give me a sec." And he jogged off toward the front of the inn, headed for the front door.

Making jokes like that could always be hit or miss around here, Sam had come to accept that. At least they were staying focused and not making him explain the joke. Instead, Sam looked over his shoulder, scoping out the surrounding area. While Jess went back in for gloves he turned his focus on Raven, "You got somewhere in mind to move the body? What's going to be considered a safe distance?" They were out of his realm of experience now, but Raven spoke like she knew what she was doing. Sam wanted to have some idea as to how far he was going to be expected to drag this thing.

Truthfully, Raven was talking out of her ass.

When one of the kids died, they buried them. Said a little prayer, wished them luck, felt fear swell and sit heavily in their bellies, but they'd laid them to rest. She wasn't too sure if that was the way to go with the dead bear, but she felt that getting it away from the inn was the first step.

Wasn't the scent of blood always so ripe?

She watched Jess go, letting her gaze linger as she thought it over.

"Far enough," she said. "Get it away from the inn. That way, it won't attract ants and other predators we don't need right now. Maybe we can dump it out in the trees or sacrifice one of those bungalows no one likes."

Fortunately, getting from Point A to Point B fast was a part of Jess' genetic code. It didn't take him long to bound in through the front door, take the stairs up two at a time, and bound back out with two sets of work gloves he and others at the inn had scrounged up while they'd first been taking stock of the town,scavenging usable supplies.

"Got it!" comes a cry. The vowels, rounded with a British accent, announce Jess' return.

In a perfect world, this would be all just a terrible dream and he'd walk back to a pristine lawn, a clean back porch--

And he wouldn't be in Mystery Town X at all, for that matter, he'd be running back to the barracks at the High Garda compound, or better yet, to Ptolemy House. To Thomas and Morgan and Khalila and Glain and even Dario, all crowded around the common room arguing about some obscure point in Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals.

... But that was the dream, not this. This was wearying, dismaying reality. The peeling paint, Sam and Raven's sober expressions, the trophy kill... All real and all still waiting for him.

Jess' face displayed only a willingness to get down to work as he walked up on them and tossed the extra set of gloves Sam's way. "Good to go?"

Sam caught the gloves without any trouble. He pulled them out without complaint, though of course he was NOT looking forward to this job in the slightest. He glanced in Raven's direction, "Sure. But let's just put it in the woods. I really don't want to see what a rotting bear corpse does to a bungalow and that's still a little too close to the village for my liking." It might invite other problems if they started putting corpses inside buildings -- animal or not. He'd prefer they just take it back to the woods and let nature take its course.

Although, the more immediate problem was moving it at all, "Are you sure we're going to be able to move this? It may be ripped up, but I swear I read somewhere that some of the bigger bears can weigh over 900 pounds."

Raven puffed out her chest, standing taller. It didn't matter whether she was a girl or not, three might have been a crowd elsewhere, but right now it appeared to be a godsend of a solution.

"Good thing there's three of us."

She looked to Jess, her look pointed. It was almost as though she was waiting for him to tell her to sit this out, to give her some sexist-driven reason why she couldn't help in lugging a bear from Point A to Point B.

Despite being a girl, Raven wasn't afraid to get her hands a little dirty, even if it was with bear blood.

"Come on. He's not going to move himself." She made a move toward the bear.

"It looks young. Closer to Baby Bear than Papa Bear to me," Jess mused, pulling on his own set of gloves. He did his best to look at the bear cub objectively as just an obstacle that needed tending to, like a sack of flour or a heavy piece of furniture. "Seventeen... maybe eighteen stone, I'd wager?"

As long as the job got done, how they did it didn't matter. Jess picked his way across the stained walkway and climbed the first two steps, taking up position at the body's side without another word.

His boots were sticking. He ignored it. He ignored everything except the immediate task at hand, which was getting a grip on the thing without anything... falling loose. (And he definitely ignored that thought. Pushed it as far down as it would go and slammed a lid on it.)

"Let's roll it. The stomach seems pretty badly gored."

Don't think. Just do this.

Sam eyed the two, feeling a lot like a third wheel himself. He certainly wasn't about to tell someone not to help carry a possibly 900 pound bear into the woods -- girl or not. He was pretty sure he knew several women who could kick his ass. "It is a good thing," he finally added. Since the decision was made, Sam approached on the other side, careful to dodge any...bits. But there was too much blood to avoid that completely.

"On three then..." Sam advised, figuring rolling it might take two. It would at least give them a feel for the actual weight of the creature. Sam glanced back at the inn to make sure no one else was coming out to see this. "One...two...three." He pushed on the bear to get it turned over, unknowingly following Jess's lead and not thinking about the fact they were rolling an animal corpse around in the snow.

Raven got into position, squatting so she wouldn't strain anything in her back. Had she had experience moving bears from one place to another? She couldn't say. It couldn't be any more difficult than shifting rubble off of someone.

Pulling a face, she tried to focus on anything but the bear. At the count of three, she pushed to roll it, and found that it was the most disgusting thing they could've done.

The bear smelled bad. It looked worse. Moving it would only make this all the more messier, but that was a fact of dealing with something as disgusting as this. He hands felt slick with something, but she paid it no mind.

"You know, it'd be easier if we could push it onto something." She breathed heavily, finding the effort to move such a beast to be tiresome. "Like a stretcher, maybe one with wheels."

Sam's suggestion got a nod from Jess. On three, then. When it came time to push, he bent his knees for leverage and heaved against the bear's side; it rolled like an overly large toy, all loose limbs and flopping head, still fresh enough that rigor had yet to set in.

Seeing up close the gashes bisecting its body like an angry artist had taken a razor blade and cut up a canvas in a moment of aimless temper threatened to fill Jess with a strange sense of... sadness? He didn't know why one dead animal bothered him so much when they were up to their necks in dead animals already. Maybe it was because it felt like another message he didn't know how to translate. Maybe it was because he'd found the thing, alone and discarded like garbage, and a part of him was afraid to be it one day.

"You're probably thinking of a wheelbarrow," he answered Raven dully. He looked between her and Sam, leaning back on his heels so his hands were no longer touching the matted fur. "Getting one will take more time. I say let's get it over and done with, but majority rules."

If the consensus was bring in added help, he'd wait. The body weighed as much as a hefty adult male; Jess couldn't very well lift it by hand without at least one other person.

Sam made an involuntary noise of disgust. He hadn't dealt with a corpse in a long time and certainly not like this. Not without the chaos of battle to keep him focused and on the job. Mission objectives, getting out of there unscathed, not having to roll it across the ground like a pile of garbage. It was very different and he couldn't believe he was doing this with a couple of teenagers no less. Good Lord this place was just awful.

He resisted the urge to wipe his brow. Who knew what it was covered with now and he'd rather keep it to his hands alone. "All right. But are we going to be able to push the wheelbarrow through the snow and how much time is it really going to save us?" Sam frowned down at the bear, thinking of other options that might be even less pleasant.

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mingle post | open

Either of them; set prior to any kind of substantial clean up

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