{ raining blood, from a lacerated sky

[tobeclosetohim]

WHO: Jo Harvelle, a dead elk, and you!
WHERE: In front of The Inn
WHEN: November 13
OPEN TO: Everyone (Especially those in the inn or close enough to hear!)
WARNINGS: Animal Death's w/ Mutilation, Manipulation, Gore, Blood
STATUS: Open


People have been sticking close to the buildings, to each other, to not being out late after dark if they can help it, and even then, almost never alone. There's a charged air to everything, like a shot about to crack, or like they are strung up and held in a never ending loop on that second of shock the moment after the crack sounds, before the body can relax again.

Mapping has slowed to nothing this week, and Jo's among the many who remind people to be more careful when hunting right now. The Village seeming less and less safe with the animals that had appeared in the wide open of the buildings and fountain, with no one seeing anything, which made the dark, closed in shadows of the forest seems even darker and even more closed in.

She's as much not expecting it as expecting it, whens she opens the door, intending to head to the house she's sharing with Kol and Thorfinn, and there's a huge hulking animal form mountained right in front of the path into and out of the Inn. The same path people walked all day to get food, and everything else.

"Fuck," is revulsion for the smell, black and bloody and something else, the sheer size of the body, the still towering form, with its cracked and somehow dangling antlers, before her hand is tightening on the door still in it and she's calling back inside. "We've got another one!"

Jo goes for the knife in her boot even though there hasn't been an attacked attached to one yet, before she's headed down to the huge beast. It looks like the others have all reported in, and gotten written down by her. Ripped apart by teeth and claws, chunks of flesh hanging here and there, but nothing taken, nothing missing. Limbs twisted and contort in impossible ways, pointing toward the door.

The blood everywhere all around it. On the steps. On porch. On the door.

More like it was thrown than like it sprayed in an attack.

The same as the animal that looks like it was dropped -- no, placed -- so far from where it ever might be found in this place. Leaving Jo looking quickly all around there. The whole wide space of the creeping, settling early night dark of this place.

Comments

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's used to that not quite flinch about the weapons. The way people stare just a second too long before they get on with what they are doing. It itches something down her spine, but it's not discomfort about him, or his reaction. It's about the fact that this place has nothing near reasonable weapons. She'd like a number of more guns and less knives on her.

She's already expecting the answer, but she can ask the questions. She can hope against all hope she's wrong, they've been wrong, and he'll find something. In a way she couldn't. "Does it look like it could have been done by anything we've seen?"

[zomboligist]

"If there's an abnormally large bear or cougar or something else hiding in the woods that's an apex predator with ridiculous claws, I might think yes," he says, but this is the problem with that theory. "The only trouble is that none of the meat is ever taken. A hunter hunts for food or sport or something, but it's a necessity. These are pleasure killings." If he were back home, they would be the sort of thing that got a person on a watchlist because people are worried about 'the next step'.

Ravi exhales and starts to investigate the wounds, searching for any indication of residue or something from a transfer. "Honestly, and I hate to say this out loud because it, frankly, terrifies me, but I'm leaning more towards this being done by a person and not an animal."

"Do you have problems with anyone here?" he asks her, given the location and the violence of the kill on her doorstep.

[tobeclosetohim]

"Not specifically." Jo wasn't exactly the best at making friends, and she didn't make very many efforts at being social in this newest, and second, place to steal her from across the multiverse in less than six months, but people respected the work she did here. The way she collected all the information she could on anything and everything to try and make sense of anything that was happening to them and everywhere changing and static around them.

"I didn't even know we had elk in this area." Jo said, with a shake of her head. She hadn't seen them in the longest ranging of her map surveying, and she hadn't heard one of the hunters mention it. She couldn't' even imagine any of them trying to take down something this large, even for food, in their desperation as winter set in. Not with the very limited and rudimentary tools they had on hand.

The rest -- everything else he had said in there -- that was already a given for her. It had been since the first death. Since arriving.

[zomboligist]

"Maybe it was delivered especially here to be murdered," he says, not sure that his conspiracy theory can actually be called such a thing when there might be a grain of truth in the words. It's not something that he wants to think about and yet, he finds himself wondering what other animals might be coming. "This is a lot of meat," he says. "I don't suppose you're strong enough to help me with this? Because me? Kind of weak, considering I skip arm, leg, abs, and everything days on the regular."

And doesn't he get a glare from Major about it already, it's a chilly thing he's learned to live with. "So if this isn't some sort of warning to you by some other person, do you think it could be an omen from ... well, whatever sentience governs this place?"

[tobeclosetohim]

"Or delivered here already murdered," Jo added to his list of possibilities. The was her job, after all. Here, but before all this. Looking at gruesome murders and putting together the pattern of which monster, how, and how to make it stop ever happening again.

And she levels him a look at the idea she can lift it. Jo would be stubborn enough to try if he pushed it, but she was maybe 110 lbs soaking wet, and the thing, given it's size was probably five to seven times her weight.

"I don't believe in omens," Jo retorted, but she followed it up honestly. "But I do think it's from whoever or whatever is running this place."

[zomboligist]

"I wouldn't believe in omens, if not for the fact that this place seems rife with them," Ravi seems compelled to point out, though it hurts his scientific brain to have to think of it that way. Omens are mysterious and supernatural and he's a man of fact.

Unfortunately, this place does seem intent on proving that science and facts can't quite answer everything. Frankly, it's very rude. "We shouldn't have to leave it here. Besides that, we need the meat. An elk? This could feed us for days."

[tobeclosetohim]

The multiverse was good at that game. The one where everything you had, and everyone you had, no matter how smart or how powerful from wherever they came in whatever universe, it still wasn't good enough. It still didn't give you the answer, or any ability to have any more control over what was happening than anyone else next to you.

"Thorfinn went to gather some of the men to take it away." Jo looked to one side. She supposed if she wasn't stopping Thorfinn from taking the pelt, even if the whole thing creeped her out, it was an efficient thought. Skin, and meat. "If you're going to do that, you could have them take it to the butchery. I think the lawn--" Or lack thereof at this already ramshackle enough inn. "--has seen enough of the inside of him already."

[zomboligist]

"I'll wait until they arrive, then, and help," Ravi says, not sure what he can do, but he's got two pairs of hands and he's as good with a blade as anyone can be in this situation, so he figures that he might as well do his duty and help. "I can come back and help you clean the blood later, if you want," he offers, as well.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo nods an affirmative at the offer, her eyes tracing the spots of red in the snow. The red seeping around the carcass. With the knowledge there will be so much more under it, too. It'll look like a goddamn murder site, even when it's gone. Red blood seeped into tons and tons of snow, under all of that weight. "Yeah, thanks. That would--" She's nodding, and rubbing her hands in the cold, looking toward the road and the people hopefully coming soon. "--that would be good. Both of those."

It's a second late, but it's meant, even hollow with this event. "Thanks."