Episode 1: Fresh Cuttings

Click

We hear the sounds of a scratchy archaic recording.  A record player, with layers of static.  A voice cuts in, it is very strange at first, sounding far away and hollow, but the clarity increases rapidly.

Voncid: How will we know if it’s working?

Luca: This thing is old so there’s no read out?  We’ll have to listen back.

Voncid: I hope it succeeds this time, I’m excited to begin.

Luca: Well, *anticipation* leeeet's see.

We hear the sounds of the recording device, an antique wax cylinder, custom retrofitted by Luca to work for their purposes.  It stops.  Winds back.  Metal sounds.  Then the recording comes in again.  There is less static this time and the voices are clearer.

Luca: That should be clearer.

Voncid: Do I really sound like that?

Luca: Pretty much. *registers why he might have asked* Everyone thinks they sound weird.

Voncid: I like it.

Luca: You’ve really never heard your voice recorded before?

Voncid: You saw what happened to the other devices.

Luca: Yeeeaahhh..

Voncid: I’m just glad you finally found one suitable for our purposes.

Luca: And what are those?

Voncid: No time now, I’m late for an appointment.  Could you show me how to operate this thing?  It would be better for you not to accompany me.  Bit much for a first sit in. Apparently the subject of tonight’s interview is very badly decayed.  

We hear the recording cut again, when it comes back on it is in a new location.  Leaky pipes.  Buzzing wiring from a neon sign audible through an open window. 

Voncid: The deceased was found sealed in this apartment, something not unlike a tomb.  Wax had been melted around the doors and windows which is why the deceased was not discovered until the smell managed to permeate through the hardwood above.

The padlocks and chains on the doors interior, the bars on the windows and the state of the wax itself make it unlikely the scene was tampered with until investigators arrived.

The space is sparse.  The renter and sole inhabitant, one Mathew Gerrard, was apparently not interested in keeping a well furnished apartment.  Though the plants are watered and… well trimmed.

The body discovered in the apartment is believed to be that of Mathew Gerrard, though that is the source of some… confusion and ultimately the reasoning for my involvement.  While the deceased is in a state of fairly advanced decay, the face… * pause as Voncid checks his files* does indeed appear to match file photos and social media accounts of young Mr. Gerrard.

Decomposition is consistent with what we would expect to see around three weeks.  The fact that  Mr. Gerrard is still readily identifiable from the neck up, but that he and his easy chair have, from the neck down, more or less become one is, surprisingly, the second strangest detail in question.

The most unusual thing about this situation is that Mr. Gerrard - has been seen every day this week.  He has not been missed at his place of employment, where his co workers have in fact reported a significant improvement in mood.  He was seen at his gym this morning, and Mathew Gerrard’s parents, upon questioning, insist they had dinner with their son yesterday evening.

And yet… and yet…

*Quieter, thinking* How then, Mr. Gerrard, were you found entombed and going to pieces in your apartment earlier tonight?

*More direct, addressing the recording device again* Reclamation process will commence.  Statement will be compelled directly from the deceased following preparation.

We hear the recording device cut followed by a short pause while Voncid prepares.  The recording comes back on and we catch the briefest hint of the necromancy.

We only catch the very final moments of the proceedings, as they die down.  

Voncid: State your name.

*Mathew Gerrard’s voice is wet and choking with an odd hollow echo, but the more he speaks the more Voncid’s craft is able to repair and stabilize him and the more human and whole he will become.*

Gerrard: *after some struggle,somewhat strangled* Mathew Gerrard.

Voncid: You would not lie to me, would you Mr. Gerrard?  I am here to discover the truth of your end, and seek justice for you if I can.

Gerrard: I doubt it.  I fucking doubt it…. It hurts.

Voncid: I am sorry Mr. Gerrard, I will try to lessen it, but I must hear what happened to you.  I believe others are in danger.

Gerrard: I want to sleep.

Voncid: Soon Mr. Gerrard.  Soon, and I am afraid, forever.  Now, please.

Gerrard: It started with a break in…I think… I think it did.  It’s all pretty fucked, but the way I felt that night… it makes sense now.

As you can see I don’t really live in the nicest neighborhood.  I moved into this dump when I was a young and couldn’t afford better, and then, just never left.  No time, I was always on the hamster wheel, always had next month or next year.  So fucking stupid.

One night, after working late, which I always did, I was so tired I basically didn’t make it out of my suit. Just collapsed, face down.  Friday night and I was too tired to do anything fun, not that I had hobbies anymore, not that I had friends. Whatever, I went to sleep, face down, in my pillow, dead tired, slept like a rock.

Except.

I woke up.  

I know people wake up, like in the middle of the night with no reason, or from a dream they can’t remember, but I don’t.  I’ve got myself trained.  I wake up six am, every morning. I’ve got myself trained.

So my eyes pop open and it’s so dark, so quiet.  It’s not right.

I'm laying on my stomach and I just get cold. Like a chill. I know…  *with emphasis* I know something is right behind me and I panic, kick and panic and scramble over.

I pushed up against the headboard.  Scared like i’ve never been scared, not since I was a kid.

But it’s quiet and so dark and still… I can hear my heart or the blood in my ears.  There’s nothing or I think there’s nothing, but I notice my curtains, my curtains are fluttering.  That neon sign outside is catching light on them… they are just sort of waving a little back and forth bright pink red like raw skin just kinda waving.

Then I can see, as my eyes adjust, the light from outside reflecting in the broken glass all over the floor.

The window’s gone.  

And then I see a shadow kinda detach from the others.  I’d been looking right at it, but it was so dark, but now the light was behind him.  There was a man in my living room.

You just…you can’t imagine fear like that unless it happens to you.  Nobody could get it.  It’s like a nightmare, but it’s in high definition.

I’m so fucking scared I can’t even move.  People shit all over deer and stuff for freezing up and just dying, getting hit by trucks?  Well if that guy had wanted to kill me, he just could have. He could have just walked over and killed me, no fuss, because I froze up like a block of ice.

But he, I’m assuming a he because he was kinda big, but I never did see their face, anyways, they just leave.  Like the way they came in.  Just steps up outside the window and drops.

I’m on the second floor, it’s not super high up, but you wouldn’t want to jump.  You wouldn’t.

The cops said that there had been a bunch of break ins like that.  Someone just busted in, and didn’t take anything, he didn’t, all my stuff was where I’d left it, even the video game shit and like I had a bunch of cash on the counter, all just left there.  He didn’t do anything, he didn’t take anything, just broke in and left.  They said the guy must have had a ladder,  *scoffs* basically called me hysterical when I said he jumped out, more or less looked at me like, what am I a guy in a nice suit doing living in a bad neighborhood like this… like it was my fucking fault, like, you’re a little to blame for just living here?

I was mad, and freaked out, and these fucking guys, who are supposed to be there to help me by the way, that’s what they are for, are like giving me shit for crying?  Telling me to calm down?  Calm down as I tell them how some freak had decided on a whimNOT to gut me like a fish in my own bed tonight…*clears throat*

So anyways I get kinda mad and I just start saying whatever to get them out of my place… I think that’s why I didn’t notice… I think that’s why I didn’t notice it until later.

It was Saturday morning now, but there’s no way I’m going back to sleep, no way I’m gonna get in the shower, alone, in my apartment, so I pack up a few things and go down to the gym.  I don’t normally like to shower there with like a bunch of early morning gym guys but I needed it and I couldn’t be alone.

So as I’m in the shower at the gym, shampooing, *drawn out, shaky* I– that’s when I notice…

I said earlier he didn’t take anything?  Well that wasn’t exactly true.  He did take something.

So as my hand runs over the back of my head and I feel it.  There's a bald patch. *increasingly emphatic* There's a big chunk of my hair missing right off the back of my head.

Because I’d been sleeping on my stomach.

I screamed.  I screamed like I’d been burned.  Fear like a hot iron.  

I was so freaked out. It was so fucked.  

I scared the shit out of a bunch of guys in the locker room, but man, they were actually super nice… it was really fucking weird of course, like nakedly explaining to all these guys why I was screaming in the shower at like 8 am, but they were really nice. Lotta  “Dude that’s so fucked up” and “We can come back with you, check it out, help you get bars on the windows and new locks and shit.”

It was almost fucking funny for a minute, towels and creatine and bros being bros…

I took those guys up on that shit too, it felt a lot less exposed pulling up to my place with four big dudes.  We got bars and lock and shit.

I hadn’t made any friends in years honestly.  Making friends in your thirties is weird.

Needless to say, when it got late and I was alone again, *exasperated noise* the fear came back.  I called my parents.  Told them what had happened, an edited version, I didn’t want to tell my mom some freak had taken my hair, and then I went and stayed there.

Thought I could get some sleep.  I didn’t.  I woke up kicking a few times from dreams where it felt like someone was *beat* touching my hair.

I had a nightmare, god I hope it was a nightmare, where I woke up I, like, noticed my foot was sticking out of the covers… it was pitch black.  I could hear my dad snoring down the hall, then…  I felt something… pressure on my foot and heard… like a click. 

We hear the sound of a toenail clipper.

It felt like someone had just clipped one of my toenails.

I fucking kicked and screamed and my mom and dad came into my room like I was eight.  I honestly have no idea if I had been asleep or imagined it, or freaked myself out… though… I suppose considering what happened next, it's more likely than not isn’t it?

Anyways at the time, I couldn’t tell, I don’t keep good track of my toenail length, but my left big toe sure seemed short and squared off…

Needless to say I was exhausted and still freaked out by the time Monday rolled around, so I did what I hadn’t done in ages, I took time off.  I called in, it was short notice, but honestly I’d been to the grind so long I think Kristie was happy to hear I was taking a break.

I went out of town, visited college friends on the coast… met their wives, husbands *beat* kids. It was nice but it showed me just how empty it was to be me. But it was nice.

So now it had been four days away, but work anxiety starts creeping in. And it crept in enough that I started stressing about how shit was inevitably piling up, so I call to check my messages, our office still has phones on the desks, and it rang twice and… someone picked up.

I was surprised.  “Hello?”

Nothing.  But I hear someone breathing.  Someone is there.  Then it just hangs up.

I call back and it rings, rings, goes to the voicemail, and I check it, and find I have no new messages, which is fucking impossible.

I check my work email now, and there’s nothing.  No new messages.  Which is impossible.  But I look a little further and realize that it’s not that there isn’t anything new, it's that it's all been read… there are responses to shit.  

So I open one and it’s like

“Yeah Kristie sounds good, we will circle back at the Wednesday afternoon conference and see what Bob thinks.”

Work shit.  *emphatic* Work shit about my work, the way I would respond.  

I don’t know what to do.  I’m scared, but I’m pissed.

I go home.

I call Brent, one of the giant guys I made friends with at the gym, ask him and any of the others to come over, honestly they seemed like they relished the idea of putting their muscles to work for something like this.  I tell them I’ll be back in town that night, that I’m heading back from a week away and the creep is still messing with me… but then he gets quiet.

“A week away?”

“Yeah a week away,” I say, I’m like yeah “I’ve been out of town all week, this fucking creep must have hacked my emails now, he’s messing with shit at my work…”

But he’s real quiet.

“You’ve been away?  All week?”

And then he says

“Yeah, man, you know, maybe better if we don’t get involved, might be more of a police thing.”

And then he HANGS UP.  So I think so much for testosterone making you tough.  I’m panicking at this point, and I think about my father’s gun.  My father owns a gun and I decide I’m not going to live scared of some freak identity theft.  I call my parents to see if they are home, it might be stupid, but I'm planning to stop by there to get the gun from his closet. Maybe my minds kinda fraying, but that becomes my plan.

I get my mom on the phone, they are at the Flannigans.

Mom: “Honey, honey oh i’m glad you called, I was just telling the Flannigans about that amazing joke you told at dinner last night, which was so nice by the way, let's do dinners more often! You gotta come see your mother! But how did the beginning of the joke go, i’ll mess it up.”

Gerrard: My blood is ice.  “What the fuck are you talking about mom.”

Mom: “Language! I’m talking about the joke, you know the one the punchline was like : No the cardinal is with me! Oh! It was so funny and it was so nice to see you. See you and your father getting along. Oh, my God. Oh! Haha Donna Flanigan says I gave away the punchline!Oh geez, I’m no good at jokes, you tell it, I'll put you on speaker.”

Gerrard: I just hung up.  Drove faster. They weren’t going to be home.  The gun was where I remembered it.  Black, easy to load.

I felt like I was losing it.  I guess I might have been losing it… can I ask… was I crazy?  Was this all in my head.

Voncid: I’m afraid… I don’t think so.  

Gerrard: Anyways, when I pull up to my apartment… the lights are on.  Someone is in my place.  And I know it’s shitty and empty and lonely… I know it isn’t anything… but it's mine.  I don’t have anything worth taking… why would you steal my life?  It wasn’t much of one, but it was mine…

I’m furious, I storm upstairs, I go to unlock the door, but it isn’t locked.  ‘Cause they aren’t scared of me. But they will be.  I hear laughter from inside.  He’s watching my favorite show.  I can smell my popcorn cooking.

I shoved the door in.

I smiled back at me. And I panicked and I just shot *beat* myself.

I don’t, I still don’t understand what happened… I shot me, I mean the other me, I shot at them and it just smiled at me and I shot it, but I am the one who’s stomach opened up… I’m the one who started bleeding… and then I stood up, *corrects himself* it stood up, and pushed the gun aside, took it from my hand… It sat me down in the chair.  I tried to hold my guts in… I couldn’t move…

Mr. Patterson, upstairs, he called down… asking if everything was ok, but Me… the other me, stuck their head out the door.

“Everything’s fine Mr. Patterson, sorry, popcorn bag exploded!  Didn’t get off the burner in time.”

It was me.  Everything about it was like me. Or like the me I pretended to be to other people I still don’t understand…

The other me crouched down, so we were eye to eye.  It was like looking into a mirror… have you ever looked in a mirror too long?  When it stops seeming like your reflection and starts seeming like another person?

It took my hand… I thought for a moment, it was trying to, like, comfort me or something, but then

I heard a click.

*We hear a nail trimmer*

It was… clipping my fingernails.

*we hear more clipping*

“Keratin” it said “Keratin”, like it was explaining, as it tucked the loose nails into its pocket.

When I tried to yell, to scream for help, its smile opened up… Turned upside down into a terrified frown… It showed me my own agonized face as it swallowed up the sound.

Voncid: *clears throat, breathes deeply* That is enough… Thank you.  ***

Safe journey on your travels afar.*beat* 

Fuck.

The audio cuts, there is a rasp and a pause and then it resumes.

Voncid: Reclaimer’s final notes:  the entity mimicking the life of Mathew Gerrard seemingly continued to do so for several weeks after these events.  Preservation of the face is consistent with the habits of several nameless.  

As to why the entity wished to be Mathew Gerrard… it  likely had something to do with his work, as there was little else of value here… though a full necropsy will be performed by the Order and they will perhaps be able to determine if Mathew Gerrard carried some spark or other intangible quality that made him a target.  

Silvers take note, you may be able to identify the creature for the next several days, even should it change its face, it will make a heavy use of perfume and deodorant it would need to cover the smell, and  will likely wear high collars and long concealing sleeves and gloves to cover the discoloration of its limbs as its connection to Mathew Gerrard’s body is, likely, still in effect.

Further measures:  

We will need to scour for reports of break ins where nothing of obvious value was taken and anyone who has made such a report should, by now, be considered… compromised.

*pause, then to himself*

It’s starting again.

*The audio cuts harshly as Voncid has struck the button in anger.*