Post by Veronica Strader on Mar 16, 2022 15:07:34 GMT -5
Unknown Forest
Location Unknown
Date Unknown
“Where am I?”
It’s nighttime; the sounds of Ravens, Crows, and Owls fill the forest. There was a soft, cool breeze blowing through the air. She was sitting upon a fallen tree; the orange, yellow and blue flames lit up her fair features. The flame’s dance reflected off her glasz coloured eyes instead of behind them, suggesting Veronica was not present.
“Where is she?”
Victoria is holding her knees up under her chin, hands folded across her denim-clad shins holding them in place as she looks up at the sky through the leaves of the trees. The stars flicker but occasionally are covered by heavy clouds of blackness, giving off the feeling this place was surrounded by a dark presence. The air condensation in front of her when she would exhale, but the fire kept the tip of her nose warm, her hands and feet nice and toasty.
The firstborn child to Meghan Strader was afraid. She was scared she was losing herself to Veronica, and the worst part of it all was that she knew it was her own undoing. She was the one that gave her control. Willingly gave her command. It was the same concept of a vampire not entering your home unless invited. She invited her, and she certainly made herself at home.
Ronnie was doing everything Victoria ever wanted: winning matches, being the Trans-Atlantic Champion, and making a name for herself. The “how” in how she was achieving those dreams bothered Victoria the most. Kelson Hewitt almost suffered an attack that could’ve left him on the shelf for weeks if Victoria hadn’t intervened. Still, even Victoria had to admit Hewitt’s whining and consistent excuses were starting to wear on her patience.
Victoria wanted to do it properly, making a name for herself, not gouging at eyes and dishing out low-blows.
“At least she didn’t have outside help. How did I even get here? Is she playing tricks on me?”
She looks up and sees a feminine silhouette emerging from the forest. Her feet hit the dirt after unclasping her hands, and she is standing within a second. Vee’s right foot has its heel planted, steadying herself for an attack, but the silhouette has transformed into a young athletic redheaded girl. She has her hands out.
“I come in peace. You must be new here! My name is Meg Thomas. What’s yours?”
“Umm, sorry, it’s just uh, habit. I’m Victoria, but everyone calls me Vee,” she replies, shaking Meg’s hand. “Where are we?”
“Legit no clue, but this is the safe place that we return to after our task is completed or we are sacrificed.”
Meg can tell by the look on Vee's face a deep worry has rooted within her.
“What is this place then?”
“It’s Hell, darlin’,” a raspy honey-coated voice with a twang answered her thought. Vee turns and sees a strawberry blonde country girl standing in front of her in cowboy boots, Daisy Dukes, and a tank top that reminds her of her grandfather's bandanas he wore on long rides. “I’m Kate Denson.”
“Victoria. Vee. Nice to meet you,” she replies to Kate, shaking her hand. Another unfamiliar voice fills the night air.
“Would be under any other circumstances, mate,” says a tall man with a Rugby haircut and a brawling English football hooligan vibe. His dark green jacket accentuates his tough but caring brown eyes. “Aye, the name is David.”
“How many of us are there?” she asks, looking at each of her new companions. Meg is the one who pipes up while she moves around the logs in the never-ending fire.
“Thirty of us, twenty-six of us came with one of the killers.”
“Killers?”
“Aye. The thing that brought us here has put our arses in a never-ending game.”
“Four of us are whisked away to a place, like a compound, and we have to fix these gasoline-powered generators to power up the exit gates and a secret hatch to escape and play another day.”
Victoria’s brow furrows, and her mouth is open slightly.
“So what is the role of a killer, then?” the apprehension in her voice is evident for fear of the answer. She also couldn’t remember why this sounded so familiar to her.
“They have to hook us once, twice and/or thrice to sacrifice us to the Entity and stop us from powering up our escape route.”
“What’s the point of it all?” she asks them all while staring into the dancing flames.
“The Entity takes pleasure that we lose a piece of our soul with each time we are sacrificed until we become the killers,” the southern belle says in her reply.
The weight of the situation isn’t taken lightly by Victoria nor her new companions. She sits down on the log with the other three.
“Where are the other survivors?”
“Spread among other campfires like this one. The Entity moves us around to lessen the chance of strong bonds with one another to diminish the possibility of fighting back.”
“Huh. Well, who is your killer Meg?” she asks, looking over at Kate a second later to see her sitting there with her guitar, strumming a haunting tune.
“His name is the Wraith, Philip Ojomo. He was from Nigeria, and some bad things happened at a job he got at “Autohaven Wreckers” here in the States. Sorry, I still do that. Anyway, it is a place The Entity has reconstructed in this world of his inspired from where we come from. All the killers have their own advantages as well as shared ones. Wraith can turn invisible, and if strong enough, you can’t even see his outline….”
“Jesus….”
“He ain't here, darlin but aye, mine is The Huntress. Ever seen the film “Nelle” with that lass Jodie Foster? Well, take that, mix it in with a homicidal tendency in the wee mind of a child and a creepy tune she hums as she stalks you. She has razor-sharp hatchets she lobs at you from just about anywhere. It’s a bloody mess most times.”
“That doesn’t sound as terrible.”
“I have a phobia chasing me, darlin’. He’s just known as The Clown. He was a part of a travelling circus group and a homicidal maniac. Collects the pinkie fingers of his victims. Concocts this awful drugging agent that he throws at you infecting the air. Makes it feel like a bad acid trip mixed with LSD,” she adds, never missing a beat on her haunting tune.
“Now that’s truly terrifying.”
Victoria sits there staring at the fire as David shadowboxes not too far from the light of it, Kate continues to strum along, and Meg is making sure her laces are done up tightly. She looks over at Vee.
“Who’s your killer, Vee?”
She shouldn’t have been able to answer that question, but she felt a coldness travel down her spine, answering it for her.
“It’s my cousin, Thomas Rivers, but not really,” she says softly. The other survivors' curiosity peaked by how she said it. “In my family, we have what we call an affliction that can takeover. That’s what happened to my cousin, Tom. He is controlled by the affliction I mentioned, and it calls itself “Supreme Machine”, and he’s deadly in the real world… but here? I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.”
David stops his fighting workout and walks over.
“That sounds like another survivor that’s new here too. I think she said her name was Veronica. In fact, you two look and sound identical.”
“How is she here as a survivor? She’s my affliction, not a person….”
Victoria looks up at David.
“How do you know her?”
“Well, darlin’, not sure how time works here in this hell, but she got here before you. She’s with Nea, Bill, and Laurie.”
Victoria wasn’t going to reveal who Veronica was to her and played off the resemblance as mere coincidence. Still, the young Strader woman realized maybe there were answers to the family and affliction tree here in this place that belonged to The Entity, and she was going to find them. A bell tolls, and the survivors look up to the sky and then to Victoria.
“Alright, I hope you are ready, Vee. A match is about to begin. Stick close to me, and we’ll get you out alive.”
Unknown Forest
Location Unknown
Date Unknown
“This place is insane.”
David was right when he told Victoria that a young woman that looked like her had arrived here first and already had a few matches under her belt. Veronica had arrived in reality a few days ago, but the second she was there, time had seemed to change. Just like in the real world and in the sport of professional wrestling, she was unbeaten. She had just finished her third match, and while it frightened her, the adrenaline was pumping.
“Hatch escape in my first ever, hatch escape in my third. I either have beginner's luck, or I’m getting the job done as I do back home in OCW. The last thing I remember was taking back over after Victoria lost our championship belt to Leprechauns. That doesn’t even sound that bad anymore.”
Ronnie’s mind always circled back to OCW. She was always so focused on her career and making her name and Victoria’s name great. Every opportunity to win she never let slip by, and whatever this loop of a game she is stuck in currently, was no different. Her fellow survivors had begun to pick up on that trait of hers.
“You must be a great wrestler in your actual life, Ronnie,” Nea commented in her Swedish accent. “You have picked this up quickly. A lot quicker than Dwight and Quentin, and Dwight has been here since the beginning.”
The others chuckle, thinking about how they caught Dwight in a locker instead of focusing on the task at hand, surviving another day.
“Let’s just be grateful we haven’t gone up against my brother yet,” Laurie interjects. The way she had described him to Veronica sounded like he was a completely mute evil Knifeman, which was hard to picture. Knifey was a sweetheart and wouldn’t do those things like smashing car windows with his bare hand or murdering teenagers; it went against his oath as a physician and mechanic.
“Well, at least you all can heal yourselves without a med-kit or the air of others now,” a smooth French accent adds on to the conversation. This was Claudette. The survivors could be interchanged at any time, and old man Bill Overbeck had switched places with the botanist from de île de Montréal.
“Again, totally appreciated. That Trapper guy with the mask made of skull hits pretty hard, and his bear traps are the worst on your ankles. Don’t get me started on how the Hillbilly’s chainsaw feels on your calf,” she says with a chuckle. She was able to turn off the fear since no matter what, they ended up back at this campfire, but then again, she hadn’t been sacrificed yet either. From how the others described it, she didn’t want to know.
One half of our heroine had learned one of her abilities was it took two more hits for the Killer to be able to put her into the dying state, and like everyone else, she could attempt to pull herself off the meathook, but she had two more attempts than the possible three. Plus, the meathook would be rendered useless until someone had been hooked elsewhere.
“I feel… different here. Not as angry? Whatever, it is nice not to feel trapped and surrounded by hate.”
“We all escaped, Ronnie.”
“Qui, time to tell us about the evil that followed you here.”
“Ladies, if she isn’t comfortable—“
“No, no. It’s ok, Nea, a promise is a promise,” she says, keeping her promise.
“Huh. I am suddenly very agreeable … and it’s not to Christian. I hope he’s ok; he must be worried sick.”
Ronnie is brought back to earth by one of them clearing their throats which would generally set her off, but it doesn’t, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by her. They all sit on the log around the never-ending fire pit, the orange and blue of it illuminating their faces. The fire dances in the glossy reflection of her glasz eyes, but just like Victoria, it isn’t dancing behind them.
“Here goes nothing….”
“It calls itself The Raven. See in my family, on my dad’s mother’s side….”
“Dad? Not Birdman?”
“We have a disorder that’s commonly referred to as the affliction that is its own… soul, for lack of a better word. Maybe demon would be a better word? I don’t know.”
Tricky Ronnie, leaving out the part she is in Victoria’s psyche, she is the affliction… right?
It takes different forms. It could be a hellspawn, a mutilated raven, or even my dad’s dead mom. I don’t know its perks and abilities, but manipulation would be its base for sure. If it speaks to you, don’t listen.
The other survivors looked at one another, and Laurie puts her arm around Ronnie.
“It’s ok, Ronnie. As long as we stick together, we can handle anything the Entity throws at us.”
It wasn’t so much The Raven Affliction that was starting to scare her.
“Thank you, Laurie. Nea, Claudette,” she replies, each of the women giving her a nod as they get ready for the next call from the Entity. She was bonding with these people, and Veronica Strader doesn’t bond well with others unless their name is Outcast and a two-foot murderous doll as head of her security detail. She couldn’t remember the last time she talked to Roxxie and Marcy.
While Veronica worked on the med-kits in front of her, she couldn’t help but wonder…
“Am I here to learn something? If so… what?”
Time will answer that question, and the answer will be scarier than the Spring-Ahead time change.
"Should I bring the salty lips as an offering to the Entity? Or... Bloody Party Streamers? Sounds... lovely."
