medusen_hapt (medusen_hapt) wrote in darkcarnivale, @ 2011-05-14 16:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | colette leroy, vered |
Who: Lettie & OPEN
What: Where there's smoke, there's fire.
When: 4 AM
Where: The Dumpsters
Rating: Mild for blood
A rustling near the garbage in the middle of the night wasn't so unusual, even when you didn't live as part of a traveling carnie freakshow. Even gated communities had raccoons, bloody little scavengers, and cities were full of old homeless types who went digging for recyclable cans when no one else was paying attention. That said, the rustling about in the trash in those places wasn't usually accompanied by the hazy orange glow of fire, or the harsh, acrid smell of smoldering chemicals.
Standing over the small blaze she'd built just behind the dumpsters, the flames licking through shattered wood, shredded canvas, greasy oil and what looked like broken glass, Lettie looked an absolute fright. Her hair was tangled and wild looking, stained with paint in places, and looking more like something rats might nest in than what would normally be found on the head of a twenty something woman. Her feet and arms were bare--she'd slept in shorts and a beater that night--and so the gashes up and down both, like claw marks, oozing thick, black blood were plain to see. Her fists were bruised, stuck with bits of what had obviously been a mirror in a former life, and her face was bone white, rendering her eyes--the one blank, white, scarred and blind, and the other a soulless, empty black--all the more terrible to behold. Some lambent flame seemed to grow from within them, stronger than the reflected light of the bonfire, and a rasping, hissing curse filtered from between her teeth on ragged breath, hot and rank with the smell of death.