It jolts toward them, it's awful, it's wrong, it's like someone took a tape and broke it, playing it backwards and forwards and all wrong, all wrong, one arm raised and outstretched as if in greeting.
Its hands. Its hands aren't hands. Those aren't hands at all. That isn't skin. It's like someone lacquered it over in the tautly stretched skinstuff that made up that thing's face then burned it. There are ridges and bumps and seams that bubble out of nowhere then are gone again in the slips between eyeblinks. It shivers. It's a mosaic. It's wrong.
"I am not fucking leaving -" Tim whispers in furious indignation, because Jay is about to do something completely and utterly fucking stupid, which he does. He pushes Tim, and charges it, and it charges him, a slithering pale thing that collides with the man whose body folds and crumples like paper against it.
"Jay!"
Tim takes a leaf out of Jay's book.
He does something equally fucking stupid.
He scrambles upright and bull-rushes it, slamming into them both so they tumble in a chaotic downslide. For a minute Tim's fingers slide across the spot where the mask would meet skin, only to realize with an awful heaving in his chest that the mask is its skin, its head smooth and bald and slippery and cartilaginous. His nails bite into it, sink into rubbery flesh and pull away in the same instant - Tim's stomach seizes. Its body batters his in their disorienting skid downhill, then uphill, then -
Then Tim smashes into a tree trunk, bright spots exploding over his vision, and his scream wrenches and cuts out halfway when two twisting, struggling bodies follow and crush into his. There are too many limbs and too many white streaks against his vision, and he can only hear Jay's grunts and the inhuman, terrifying silence of the other thing, the whisper of its flesh striking theirs.
tw: MAJOR body horror, also pain
Its hands. Its hands aren't hands. Those aren't hands at all. That isn't skin. It's like someone lacquered it over in the tautly stretched skinstuff that made up that thing's face then burned it. There are ridges and bumps and seams that bubble out of nowhere then are gone again in the slips between eyeblinks. It shivers. It's a mosaic. It's wrong.
"I am not fucking leaving -" Tim whispers in furious indignation, because Jay is about to do something completely and utterly fucking stupid, which he does. He pushes Tim, and charges it, and it charges him, a slithering pale thing that collides with the man whose body folds and crumples like paper against it.
"Jay!"
Tim takes a leaf out of Jay's book.
He does something equally fucking stupid.
He scrambles upright and bull-rushes it, slamming into them both so they tumble in a chaotic downslide. For a minute Tim's fingers slide across the spot where the mask would meet skin, only to realize with an awful heaving in his chest that the mask is its skin, its head smooth and bald and slippery and cartilaginous. His nails bite into it, sink into rubbery flesh and pull away in the same instant - Tim's stomach seizes. Its body batters his in their disorienting skid downhill, then uphill, then -
Then Tim smashes into a tree trunk, bright spots exploding over his vision, and his scream wrenches and cuts out halfway when two twisting, struggling bodies follow and crush into his. There are too many limbs and too many white streaks against his vision, and he can only hear Jay's grunts and the inhuman, terrifying silence of the other thing, the whisper of its flesh striking theirs.