2019-10-13 - NO KITTY THAT'S A BAD KITTY
Abby confronts ChickpeaMan and lives to tell the tale.
IC Date: 2019-10-13
OOC Date: 2019-07-14
Location: Park/Addington Memorial Hospital
Related Scenes: None
Plot: None
Scene Number: 2119
It begins as a perfectly normal day. Well, it would be perfectly normal if Abby didn't feel like absolute crap. Why is she even here at the hospital? Surely she has sick days! Indeed, in the back of her mind, this might not exactly feel right considering how sick she's been the past couple of days. But work is work, and the hospital isn't going to nurse itself, so she's going to have to suck it up.
At least her rounds are easy this evening. Everyone else must be at home sick with the flu, so her only patient is a young man in his late 20s who was involved in a terrible car wreck. His patient sheet is fairly standard, indicating significant lacerations to his face which required immediate surgery. This is why, when she walks into his room, she finds his head and face completely bandaged up, obscuring everything except his nose and mouth. The monitors steadily beep.
Sheep. Or clouds. Fluffly cloud-sheep on a sky blue background. These are Abby's scrubs. Then there's the mask over her nose, because she doesn't want to kill anyone with a compromised immune system before she actually gets her sick days. Which she probably should be enjoying now, but everyone else is sick too. And one strain of the flu is more than enough.
Abby approaches the bed. "Hello," she says, but very quietly, not sure if the patient is awake or asleep. Her eyes are first drawn to the monitors, squinting from behind sticky achy eyelids, focusing to make sure all the numbers are where they should be, and to register anything that seems off. Only then does the give the actual patient another, longer look.
There is no sound from the patient, only steady breathing. Is he asleep? Awake? Does it matter? The monitors have all the right numbers, though they do look somewhat blurry. It must be the sickness weakening her eyes. Beep, beep, beep they say, steady as they go.
And it was just the two of them, nurse and patient, until it wasn't. The doorway soon darkens with the presence of another, a tall dark and handsome type in a sharp suit. He touches his hand to his chest when he sees Abby, inhaling sharply. "Abigail," his voice is heavily accented, an almost overdone Spanish sort, and he manages to sound equally breathless and full of bravo in the moment. "My heart! Be still. It is I," there's a flourish of his arms as he comes into the light of the room. "Raul." Extra rolling of the R's there.
The beeps on the monitor quicken! Then slow again.
Abby blinks her eyes at the monitors, starts to bring a hand up as if to wipe at them, but stops herself and just shuts them tighter for a second before retrying to focus. She's doing this, and mentally assessing what this must mean for the progression of her sickness, when she sees something in the doorway, and turns towards the voice.
She blinks again, this time it's just surprise, and her brow knits faintly. She smiles, it's automatic really. The mask hides her mouth, but she smiles with her whole face, frown notwithstanding. "Hello," she offers. It sounds a little like a question. "Do I know you? I... should, shouldn't I? I'm sorry. I don't really... I can't really recall right now," she sounds appropriately apologetic, but that fades into businesslike focus as she turns to the sound of the quickening beeps and immediately approaches the monitor for a closer look at the patient's vitals.
"Has it been so long?" asks Rrrraul, laying a hand across his heart, stricken. He sweeps toward Abby, his arms open as if to embrace her - and stops dead some two feet away from the bed, looking down at the bandaged form there. "This is him, isn't it? This is..."
The beeps quicken once more, and a groan comes from the bandaged face on the bed. "...Abby... my... my Abby..."
Rrrraul puts the back of his hand to his forehead at the groaning from the man on the bed, so very woe-is-me. "Damn me and my commitment to the big cats of the South American rainforests! I shouldn't have stayed away for so long!"
"It must've been a while," Abby starts to answer, with that same look of apology. It's clearly her fault she doesn't remember this person. She's normally good at remembering people. It must be the flu.
Then Rrrraul opens his arms and Abby takes a half step back, leaning away with her face scrunching up in confusion. "I'm sorry, I don't think..." she starts, and now that's her professional smile. The one reserved for patients in lots and lots of vague unspecified pain who need something for it, like, right now. And the psychiatric ones.
Then she looks at the bandaged patient on the bed. "What?"
Then she looks at Raul. "Hmmm. What?"
"Oh, Ab-eee-gail, you are still every bit as precious and beautiful as you were when last we were together," Rrraul declares, removing his hand from his forehead so that he can resume walking towards her. The monitor quickens its beeping again! But Rrrraul ignores it. Much like he's ignoring her confusion. He's a swell guy. "You swore when I returned that you would finally make your choice! I need to know, Ab-eee-gail, what is it? What is your choice?" He sweeps down onto one knee, reaching to grasp her hand.
"Okay! Well, I'm pretty sure that never happened," Abby insists flatly, face frozen into a tight smile behind her mask as she tries to take another step back, though that just makes her hip bump against the foot of the bed. Her eyes dart back and forth between Raul and the monitor. "I really don't know what you're talking about, so if you'll excuse me, I have a patient to attend to." She yanks her hand back to try to get it out of his reach and circle around the bed to check up on the patient with the oddly fluctuating vitals. And who is also repeating her name, but that can be rationalized away. He heard something and worked it into his dreams, or something...
"Am... am... nesia..." The word is torn from the bed-ridden man, ripped from his tortured throat.
His agony is echoed in the cry from Raul, whose hand falls into the empty space. "Say it isn't so! How could you forget our love, our passion! Oh, my heart! My soul! They weep tears of blood." So do his eyes. Huge, crocodile tears of blood roll down his impassioned cheeks and spill onto the floor, sizzling where they land. "The fires of my love burn hot for you still!"
"What?" Abby stares at the bandaged patient, blinking at the mention of amnesia, a second spent trying to make sense of it. Who has amnesia?
Then Raul cries, and Abby backs away another step. This time, her eyes go for the door. The door, the nearby table, the little cart in the corner with all the supplies and a handful of sharp pokey things. "Did someone put you up to this? It's not funny." She tilts her head, hands on her hips. Disappointed. She's disappointed in them. Which is when she notices the tears of blood.
"How did you do that!?"
Little bursts of flame jump to life where the tears land, sparking on the tile floor, splashing away from Rrrraul and his increasingly melodramatic performance. "Everything I do, I do for my love of you!" he answers, sliding on his knees toward her. The tears leave a trail of fire in his wake, and he crawls through them, reaching out to her once more. "Quench the flames of my sorrow, Abigail!"
From the bed comes a low, hoarse, crispy-sounding laugh. "...fool! ...mine, always loved me..." Pale, pinkish blood soaks through his bandages with the effort of movement. But at least it's not fiery blood?
"I'm... I have no idea who - what you are!" Abby insists as Raul starts crawling towards her while she hastily backs off. There's only so much room to retreat into, so she hits the wall and flattens herself to it, starting to slide along it towards the door. "This must be some other Ab... I don't know you either!" Her frantic voice turns towards the man on the bed next, though her eyes stay on the one trying to crawl towards her.
"Security!"
'SECURITY!' Abby's voice seems to bounce off the monitors and project around the room, but twist into some mocking reflection of her cry for help. It shouldn't be surprising that no one comes.
"You wound me, Ab-ee-gail! Your words are a sword to my heart!" Raul punches his fist into his chest to imitate, and though he has absolutely nothing in his hand, he seems to penetrate straight through the chest. Blood squirts out, spraying across Abby's shoes, and sets her shoe-laces on fire.
Meanwhile, the body on the bed starts to sit up, grunting and groaning as he goes. "Mine...first! Always!" he declares, and rolls himself off the bed to hit the floor.
There is a tiny part of Abigail that feels a sudden pang as the patient rolls off the bed and lands on the floor. It's the nurse in Abby, caring and professional, that almost wants to go check on him.
Then there's the rest of Abby, and the rest of Abby is screaming, "Help! Security! Someone!" She will beat them through volume and repetition. She slams herself back even flatter into the wall, stomps her feet and tries to jump and dance away when her shoelaces seem to catch on fire. And then she's off, running, grabbing at the little supplies cart, trying to shove it behind herself as she does her very best to get out the door and away from this... fever hallucination? Hopefully she's just going temporarily crazy.
No one's coming, Abby. Quit screaming and figure that part out. Through the little window in the hospital room door, there is only pitch black, like the whole rest of the hospital is gone, sucked into quantum darkness. Leaving only Abby and Rrrraul and the man in the bandages.
The man in the bandages.
The MAN in the bandages?
The thing on the far side of the bed, the thing in the bandages, lands on all fours like a cat would, stretching with an arc of its back. Still wrapped in bandages, still faintly pink with the ooze of blood, it begins to stalk around on the far side of the hospital bed. "My... Abby... my... hammy... my... sammy..."
The impaled Raul clings to the handle of his invisible dagger, gasping, "Take the blade, save yourself!" And gushes a gout of flaming blood from his mouth, stumbling backward into the useless door through which no security guards or orderlies are rushing.
Abby still tries to thump her fist into the door, hammering into the dark silence beyond before she rolls away from it and into the corner. "Who are you? You have the wrong..." she insists adamantly. It's all a case of mistaken identity. Her hallucinations have mistaken her for someone else. They're in the wrong fever dream.
She flinches at the sight of the thing in the bandages, fingers tearing at her mask like she's almost having a hard time breathing behind it. "What blade!? I don't see any blade!" She yells back at Raul as he stumbles by against the door, jaw hanging open as she tries to squint at his chest, to see something. Then at the bandaged thing. "What do you want?"
"My... Abby... hammy.... sammy," groans the bandaged thing, though the last words turn into something of a snarl, or actually quite like a rumbling growl of a rather large cat. It begins to stalk forward on all four limbs, swinging its bandaged head about until it laser-focuses on Abby. It's fingers - no, wait, those are definitely claws - dig into the ground, ripping up tile as it comes forward on a prey-like prowl.
"Oh dios mio!" Raul declares, "Nevermind saving yourself. Save me!" He shoves the invisible dagger at Abby. She can't see it, but she can feel the weight of something heavy and pointed in her hands. It's also hot, like the metal is burning. Raul flails helplessly.
Abby has a wall behind her, there's really nowhere else to go. There's the cart, but she's already kicked that way from her, so her eyes dart all over the room, searching for something. Even Raul, though it's clear she's not at ease with him either. Maybe slightly more than with the cat. Just enough to not run away when she gets the dagger shoved at her.
She closes her hand around it and looks down, staring at her hand. Then she moves it to the other hand, switching it back and forth, trying to avoid the burning. "What do you want?" She repeats the question, louder, more insistently. It's not aimed at anyone in particular. Maybe both. Maybe the world at large. She slinks back, further into the corner, eyes big and wild, holding the blade in front of herself, swinging it from side to side in a menacing manner. At least likely to cut anything that crosses into her immediate personal space, she hopes. "You're... are you... what are you?" She points with the knife at the bandaged cat thing.
<FS3> Abby rolls Melee (8 7 5 3) vs Pretty Kitty (a NPC)'s 4 (8 6 4 4 3 1)
<FS3> DRAW!
<FS3> Abby rolls Melee (7 7 3 1) vs Pretty Kitty (a NPC)'s 4 (7 6 5 3 3 1)
<FS3> DRAW!
<FS3> Abby rolls Melee (6 6 3 2) vs Pretty Kitty (a NPC)'s 4 (6 6 5 4 4 2)
<FS3> DRAW!
"...WANT... HAM... SAMMICHES!" The thing that used to be a car crash victim growls this out in a meow-y rawr, leaping up onto the bed on all fours. It snarls and leaps forward, sending the bed careening back toward the helplessly flailing Raul and his burning blood. Fortunately for the hospital staff in Pretend Land, Raul is a self-cleaning mess: his blood pools in on itself, bubbling and burning and evaporating till he's just a pile of charcoal next to the door. All burned up.
But this cat-thing leaps! It lands on Abby, taking a swipe at her abdomen with a beefy paw, taking a scrape from the blade along its bandaged face. The bandage cuts away, revealing the darling, puzzle-piece like face of Chickpea, right down to the green-gold eyes. "HAM SAMMICHES!" human-sized Chickpea roars, launching off of her, coiling itself next to the wall for another spring.
"Ham... no!" Abby finally seems to grasp what the horrible cat thing was demanding, and her eyes go wide. Wider then they already were. Yet before she can do anything about it the monster is jumping on her, and she's swinging the blade. There's a touch more method to it than pure adrenaline-fueled flailing, like she's at least practiced holding a knife and stabbing with it. Not actual people, probably. Definitely not cats.
She slumps against the wall once the cat jumps back away from her, reaching down to touch her belly where the cat's paw swiped. The knife still held out at the end of her other arm, white-knuckling around the invible thing. "Ch... chickpea?" She asks, her eyes huge, disbelieving, narrowing. "Bad cat! Bad! That's not how we ask for food!" She's furious. And, somehow, on the verge of laughter.
<FS3> Abby rolls Leadership (8 8 6 6 6 5) vs Chickpea (a NPC)'s 4 (8 7 7 5 5 2)
<FS3> Victory for Abby.
Chickpea crouches low, its backend high in the air, clearly ready to pounce. It lets out a strangled sort of mrowl sound, "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM SAMMMMMMMMMMIES!" and hisses at Abby. But before it flies through the air for another round? Abby has to go and chastise it.
If this Chickpea monster had a tail, it'd be between the cat-monster's legs. Instead, it falls back, Chickpea's puzzle-piece face tilting to the left and then the right. Confusion sets in, but it starts to stalk forward again, with its rumbling mrowl. "Haaammmmmy ... sammy?" Is it nicer if it puts a question to it?! Is that how you ask for food?!
At least Abby has a moment to catch her breath, still panting, eyes flicking towards the pile of charcoal by the door. Then back to the cat. Thing. She's frowning, mask half off her face, knife still held out. She uses it to accompany her nod, bobbing up and down. "That's better! That's better, see? That's how you get a treat," she continues, a little breathless, pitching her voice to the tone one uses to praise little children or, apparently, cats.
The hand on her stomach moves away to start patting down her pockets, retrieving a... cereal bar! She glances at at it, squinting feverish, reddened eyes. "Tsk. But this has raisins and raisins are bad for you... but! If you can open that door, that door over there... I can... make you a ham sandwich! I can do that. How does that sound? Yummy! Yummy sandwich. Outside that door!"
You know the thing about cats, Abby? They only listen when they feel like it. Her critical error is the fact that she shows Chickpea the cereal bar and then immediately tells Chickpea no. Suddenly, Chickpea rears back and all the bandages rip off, revealing Chickpea's ultimate form: some sort of weird human-cat hybrid conglomoration, with patches of skin and fur across an overly muscular form. It's head twists and it's mouth opens, and it screams:
"ABBY! HAMMY! SAMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYY!" and it launches right at Abby.
<FS3> Abby rolls Melee (7 4 4 2) vs Chickpea (a NPC)'s 4 (8 7 5 3 2 1)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for Chickpea.
SLASH! Goes Chickpea's claws across Abby's hand, freeing up the cereal treat and opening her hand up with a bloody wound. HISS! goes Chickpea as it grabs the cereal treat in its mouth and runs back towards the bed to devour its prize.
<FS3> Abby rolls Cat Wrangling (8 3 2 1 1) vs Chickpea (a NPC)'s 4 (8 8 5 4 2 1)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for Chickpea.
Abby grimaces at the sight of the horrible werecat thing, and tries to shrink back into the wall, flailing knife in hand. "Owww, shhh..." she cries out as her hand gets slashed up, yanking it towards herself and allowing the cat thing to get away with the cereal bar. She's backed into the corner, breathing fast through clenched teeth.
"You shouldn't eat rasins. You could get very sick," she admonishes the thing in a calm voice, a litle shallow as she winces and looks down to assess the damage to her hand. "Fuck! You're not getting any scritches like this. Or sandwiches, I'm sorry. So, I'm going to... How do I open the door?" The knife is briefly lowered.
"MRRRRRR!" ChickpeaMan is not feeling wrangled here, Abby. It's all puffed up, making that low, growling noise where it hunches over its cereal bar, looking nothing like a burrito (just to clear that up). It grabs it in its mouth, shaking it violently, chewing through the plastic and warning...
...warning...
Its strange meowy-growly sounds change. ChickpeaMan is ticking now from its insides - tic tic tic tic like a clock. Like a timer! "Ham sammy?" it asks, falling down off the bed and laying on its back. But all cat owners know this trick! If she goes in to pet its tummy, it will attack the shit out of her.
Still, the thing is ticking like a...
<FS3> Abby rolls Alertness: Good Success (8 7 6 5 5 3 2 2)
...bomb. It's ticking like a bomb about to go off.
Abby lets her hand bleed against her scrubs. After a silent pause, gritting her teeth and swallowing, she squares herself and pushes away from the wall to take a few small steps towards the bed. Slow. Slower. No startling the cat-thing. Pausing as it wrestles with the cereal bar and off the bed. Then she takes another step closer, grabbing the covers off the - wait.
Abby tilts her head, listening. "Bad cat!" This time it's barely admonishment, it comes out sounding like an angry expletive directed at the world at large. She scans the room in a fraction of a moment, looking for cover. No cover. Instead, she makes for the bed, for the mattress, growling as she tries to yank it off the bed and onto herself, like an incredibly awkward shield before dropping to the floor.
<FS3> Abby Takes Cover (a NPC) rolls 4 (8 7 7 5 2 2) vs It Doesnt Matter (a NPC)'s 4 (8 7 6 4 3 3)
<FS3> DRAW!
<FS3> Abby Takes Cover (a NPC) rolls 4 (6 5 5 5 4 3) vs It Doesnt Matter (a NPC)'s 4 (8 7 5 5 4 3)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for It Doesnt Matter.
Tick.. tick.. ticktickticktick
BOOM!!!!
Chickpea explodes so violently that it shakes the hospital walls. So forcefully that it blows the mattress right off Abby and into the wall. But it doesn't explode into bits and pieces of cat-human-hybrid skin and blood. It explodes in a shower of tiny raisins, pommeling Abby like a thousand teeny tiny pebbles. There's so many raisins that Abby may momentarily fear she's going to be buried alive in them.
But this is not how she dies.
In the next moment, after the boom, but before she suffocates under the shriveled grapes, she awakens on the floor of her kitchen. She's still sick, so very fucking sick, and for whatever reason? There's raisins everywhere. Ugh. The real Chickpea is not far, having pulled down a box of cereal bars and is currently clawing one up, attempting to remove the wrapper in order to get to the raisiny-cereal goodness underneath. Meow.
The shock is still enough to daze Abby for a moment, before she's batting away at the raisins raining down and piling in front of her face, "What the..."
When she comes to, she wheezes, coughs, and continues to bat at the raisins. They're on the ground now, just on the ground, so she stops herself, staring at the floor through bleary, fuzzy, crusty eyes. She blinks, touches a hand to her brow and starts trying to climb back up and onto her feet. Well. Her hands and knees will do for now.
"Chickpea, that's bad, you don't even like..." she starts crawling towards the cat, to relieve her of the cereal bars. She glances across the kitchen to Chickpea's food bowl. Then she glances down at the back of her hand.
Everything seems back to normal. Chickpea is normal, her food bowl looks normal. But there are scratches on her hand still, and raisin bruises EVERYWHERE. Crazy.
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