knifemonopoly | IC inbox

[Daniel doesn't leave his apartment for over a week. He remains hidden inside of it, his laptop shut tight (so that he isn't tempted to check it), the blinds closed shut (so that he doesn't look outside). He drinks liquor and opiates, sometimes at the same time, letting the very notion of time fizzle away from him until he forgets what it is.

But the food -- and the sedatives -- don't last forever. He places a call for delivery, even though the phrase placing a call is foreign on his lips, and speaking to a voice inside a telephone makes him feel like he's already mad. When he hears the knock on the door, he painstakingly lifts his head from his writing desk and mumbles a tired and all-too-sober:]

Come in.

Edited 2021-03-28 20:04 (UTC)

[Holding a bag of food, pulling a pilfered delivery boy's cap off his head:]

Thank you. I think I will!

[He's quite familiar with the house. He found it before the portal sent them all into other-lives; he got Noa Kaiba to invite him in two weeks ago. He'd searched it for deeds to another property, in case there was a record of ownership of a warehouse, but found nothing; he'd placed everything back where it was and turned his search toward Bavan's industrial district.

But once he came back, he found the warehouse empty. That meant Daniel had crawled into another rabbit hole, and the other Yugi began to watch the house again. Sending off the delivery driver had been easy, a combination of fear and a generous amount of solars. And, here he is, stepping confidently into Daniel's entryway, striding toward the source of the voice.]

[He doesn't get up from the chair, but he does lurch away in it, the wood scraping against the floor as he scrambles to add some distance between himself and his former victim.]

Y-You... You're here!

[The last time he saw Yugi, he was engulfed in an explosion of blue light. Was he dead? No longer in this world? Either way, he was gone and it felt like he'd be gone for good. And yet here he is.]

In the flesh! What, did you think you'd seen the last of me?

[Ha ha ha ha haaaaa.

He approaches and drops the food on the desk, on the opposite corner from where Daniel's shrunk away. It's out of arm's reach, but it's reached its destination. The other Yugi won't need it for what's about to happen -- but Daniel might, when all this is over.]

[When Yugi drops the food on the desk, he startles, pushing himself out of the seat and tripping over his chair. He lands on the ground with his legs in the air, limbs scrambling as he attempts to right himself.

But he doesn't right himself -- he crawls backwards until his back is against the wall.]

I-I--

[He works his jaw, his eyes darting for an escape route.]

I didn't know what happened to you. After the-- the--

[Explosion, he wants to say, but he can't.]

Why are you here?

Why?

I'm here to offer you a deal, of course!

I died with unfinished business. That kind of grudge is pretty hard to let go of! Even going into another world didn't make me forget it...not for long, anyway. On top of that, you have something of mine -- something important, that you never should have taken, with your filthy, cowardly hands.

[The casual, sinister cheer vanishes a moment, and his wide, red eyes turn deadly serious, his voice a growl. But it's only for a moment, and then he's composed again -- if this mania can be called composure.]

But I'm willing to let it all go -- to forget anything ever happened, and forego any further personal revenge...if you can beat me in a game!

How about it? If you win, you can walk away from this with nothing more to fear from me. I'll leave you alone for the rest of your time here! You can even keep my Puzzle.

[His puzzle. His puzzle? Daniel's eyes dart back and forth as he tries to make sense of the word. He does have a small box of Yugi's belongings, but he doesn't remember anything especially puzzle-like about any of them.]

I'll give it all back!

[That should solve the issue, right? Later on, when he has a clearer head, he'll come clean about his crimes and ask for punishment. Right now, he wants them all to go away.]

They're-- They're in my bedroom! Over there. [He jerks his head towards the room.] I don't need them!

[Is that so? Good to know. The other Yugi's eyes cut over to the doorway. Daniel's a faerie, so he's telling the truth about that.

But that's not going to be enough to settle things. The other Yugi's blood-red eyes narrow, and he takes a step toward Daniel, and another step, and another step. He's a small person, five foot nothing, but when he gets like this, it's easy to forget that. His presence seems much larger.]

Can you give it all back?

[step. step.

Can you give me back the blood you took from me?

[step.]

Can you give me back my last days alive?

[loooooom. looking down at Daniel like, fittingly enough, he's an insect. his voice raises for a moment, spitting it.]

Can you give me back my heartbeat?

No. If you want to be free of me, without suffering everything I experienced....you have to play me for it.

[He can't. He can't do any of that, and Yugi knows it. He wants to crawl backwards against the wall until he folds up against it, until he becomes smaller than small, invisible, nothing more than a creaking sound in a floorboard. He wants to be nothing.]

W-What kind of game?

[The word 'game' evokes images from his childhood, dim memories of soft dolls and wooden bilboquets. The disconnect between childhood innocence and Yugi's face is enough to make him shiver.]

It's a courage game!

[He pulls out a piece of chalk, draws a circle on the floor, large enough for one person to sit in comfortably, but not lie down in.]

The rules are simple. If you can stay in this circle until it starts to get light, then I walk away, and what you did to me never happened. I won't push you out of it -- or even touch you at all! But, if you leave it while it's still dark out, for any reason...then I get to make you play a penalty game.

...

You know, normally, that's pretty scary! But I don't think I've ever heard of a penalty game that was worse than what you did to me. So really, either way, you're getting off easy, don't you think?

Edited 2021-04-12 23:55 (UTC)

[Slowly he makes his way to his feet, his wings shifting behind him to best accommodate his weight. He eyes the chalk circle with skepticism. It sounds easy. Deceptively easy. He can't help but feel like he's walking into a trap.

Still, he isn't in any position to argue. ]

What will you be doing?

[He steps into the circle. So far, so good.]

[He crosses to the desk lamp, and flicks it off.]

Turning out the lights.

[All but that one -- one beneath a closed door in another room. A room the other Yugi isn't in, one that promises safety.]

[As soon as the first light goes out, he cowers, his wings folding against his body to make himself smaller. His legs bend at the knees. His arms wrap around his chest.]

I c-can't.

[And other Yugi knows it. How does he know? His paranoia tells him that he's rooting around in his head somehow, wrenching his neuroses straight out of his thoughts.

His eyes dart to the remaining sources of light in the room: two lamps that feel impossibly far away.]

W-What else is there? What's the 'penalty game?'

[Oh, you can't, Daniel? You know what the other Yugi thought he couldn't do? He thought he couldn't be inside a burning bull any longer. But he was wrong!

....man he was going to go much harder here. He was going to bring the room down to total darkness, let Daniel sweat, talk to him from different places in the room, turn the menace up really high without technically touching him.

Huh. This guy...really is a coward.]

If you lose, I take from you what you took from me.

[The other Yugi is already by the second lamp.]

I've never bitten somebody before. I don't know if I'll be able to control myself! You might lose all your blood in the penalty game.

[He flicks it off.]

We'll find out together.

[That settles it, then. He needs to stay put. Already, the walls around him are beginning to warp, pulsating like the organs of a great beast. The second light goes out and he inhales, steadying himself on his feet.]

Alright.

[He tries to sound resigned, a solemn hero in the face of adversity, but his voice trembles. He flexes his hands, already slick with sweat.]

Turn them all off.

[He crosses to the final lamp.]

Something happened to you in the dark, didn't it?

[It's not asked kindly. It's asked like Daniel's being pinned to a board for observation, forceps prying his wings apart.]

It's a funny thing for a torturer to be afraid of! There are much more rational things, like heights, and fire, and murderers -- things that can actually hurt you.

[He says, knowing this will be a less unequal game than Daniel might suspect -- Adam, the other-other Yugi, suffered in total darkness and feared it, too, and the other Yugi will have to force those memories and fears back down himself if he wants to win.]

But something happened that made the shadows unbearable.

[Click. Off goes the last light. All that's left is a thin strip from under a door in another part of the house, so so so far away, a false promise of safety.]

Were there monsters?

Or were you just terribly alone?

Edited (no I can do better) 2021-04-27 13:15 (UTC)

[Something happened. What was it? The memories are sparse and interwoven with dreams. His father's booming voice, echoing from an impossibly tall stairway. Glass shards stained with blue. Brennenburg provides clearer memories, but even those have a dreamlike quality to them, like they didn't quite happen. Warped faces in the dark become shadows before turning into twisted body parts, agonized limbs moving out of sync. He sees a brazen bull, not unlike the one he forced the other Yugi inside. He hears church bells.

He hugs his chest.]

I-- I don't--

[He flexes his fingers, trying to kill the numbness that is spidering down his veins.]

B-Both. It was both. I --

[Again, he pictures the brazen bull. He's pulling someone out of it, a man this time, with blistered skin and swollen eyelids. 'Very good, Daniel,' says a voice, and he feels his stomach drop.

Oh God. He does deserve this, doesn't he?]

I-- I'm sorry for what I did to you! [The words come out quickly, halfway between a yell and a cry.] I didn't know any better! I thought I was saving us!

You "didn't know any better"?

[The next time the other Yugi speaks, it's closer. There don't seem to have been any footsteps.]

Is that the truth, Daniel? Tell me honestly. Did you really not know better, when you did what you did to me and Mr. Dandy?

[Better think this one over, pal. He knows what Daniel thought he was doing. He thought he was fixing the monster problem, where everyone's forced to kill to live! But did Daniel not know better than to break all of Dandy's limbs? Than to put the other Yugi inside of a burning bull, until the only place it didn't hurt was where he couldn't feel anymore?]

[Sometimes, Daniel tells a lie without realising it. He believes himself in the moment, but the second someone questions him, the belief collapses underneath him. There's always a split second before the hallucinations start when it feels like his stomach is lurching, like he's falling, and he feels that now, teetering in his invisible circle.]

I-I--

[The walls sag inward, and he gasps, recoiling from nothing. He imagines insects wriggling behind his eyes, their silhouettes blotting out his vision.]

I knew! I knew! [He makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his fingers rubbing at his eyes. The bugs aren't disappearing, and the walls haven't stopped breathing. It's too dark for him to regain the ground he lost with the lie.

He chokes out another sound.]

I didn't think it mattered! You were supposed to forget!

That's more like it. That's the honest man I'm looking for! You shouldn't lie to yourself, Daniel -- doing so is particularly dangerous. It leads to terrible mistakes.

[If he had a heartbeat, it'd be picking up. It's very dark, dark like where the other world's faerie had kept him; if he were alive, he'd be sweating. But he's got to endure it, he's just got to last longer than Daniel, long enough to push him into fainting or fleeing and then, he can take Daniel's blood, and they'll be even--

The other Yugi's voice comes from a bit behind Daniel.]

Like thinking something doesn't matter just because you forgot it.

[Then, he speaks from off to the side, as though there were more of him than just the one, as though Daniel were surrounded.]

Even if you don't perceive something, it still exists! After all, if there's a monster in the darkness...

[From a third direction:]

Even if you can't see it...

[Finally, he speaks from in close behind him, as close as he can get without actually breathing on his neck, and the other Yugi's got that tone from right before he died, the one where a round innocent's face gets twisted into something terribly wicked:]

...it doesn't go away!

[His eyes dart around the room as the other Yugi speaks, seeking out his face in the pitch black room. The shadows (and hallucinations) have twisted it into something unfamiliar and inhuman, with chasms instead of eyes, with a gaping mouth instead of a jaw.

And then he's behind him, and Daniel staggers forward in a blind panic, his legs crossing the border of the chalk circle. He doesn't notice at first, but when he does, it feels just like telling a lie, a horrifying pit in his stomach, the sensation of falling from a great height.

He swallows a gasp. ]

Edited 2021-05-05 15:04 (UTC)

[He does wait for Daniel to notice before he says anything.]

Looks like you lose!

[Now that Daniel's out of the circle, touching him is legal. A hand in the darkness catches the front of Daniel's shirt and pushes with the strength and speed of a monster: Daniel will be pushed backward, and if he loses his feet he'll be held up by his shirt and dragged, until his back hits the wall, hard.

It's meant to knock the wind out of him, and also to pin him at the height the other Yugi wants Daniel to be at. He wants to loom, and wants to get him by the neck. A wrist or arm is no good; he wants to feel like he's ripping Daniel's throat out, wants it to be personal.]

Penalty game.

[The object is for Daniel to survive a newborn vampire bite! He wonders what he'd call this. Normally, the penalties have names: Mind Crush, Illusion of Avarice, short and punchy. What should this one be?]

Bleeding Heart!

[That sounds about right.

Daniel's got a moment to react, if he's able. The hand at his chest pins him to the wall at an awkward height for him, but he might be able to get his legs under him if he's quick, or kick out. That's the price you pay if you want to posture.]

[Daniel's breathing stutters as he collides with the wall, as the boy -- once his victim -- names the game that just might kill him. He has time to react, but doesn't. His legs are awkwardly splayed below him, unable to find their footing on the ground beneath. Not only that, but the fear has all but paralyzed him, a prey animal in the face of a predator.

He doesn't close his eyes. He doesn't even flinch. Instead, he looks at Yugi with sheer terror in his eyes, his wings plastered on the wall behind him. ]

[He's seen that kind of terror before. He's seen it many times. It's the look everyone gets when they lose a game to him, and understand what the penalty is.

It's time to balance the scales.

The other Yugi's free hand gets Daniel by the hair at the top of his head and pulls him to the side. His face drops to Daniel's exposed throat. He can smell Daniel's blood, hear his racing heart, and his mouth opens.

Rip his throat out with your own teeth. Get his blood. Get even. Never lose. Not to anyone.

Ungentle teeth crush through chitinous plates, and into Daniel's veins.

For all his fantasizing, though, he doesn't take a chunk out of Daniel's neck. He bites down, and tastes blood, living blood, hot and alive and pushed by a beating heart, and his mind goes white.

It's nothing at all like sipping from a bag. It's like he's spent the last few weeks living on stale, broken crackers, and something substantial's finally been put in front of him, and he's so hungry. But, more than that -- Daniel's pittering heartbeat -- the other Yugi can feel it, as though it was in his own chest, and at last, at last the unsettling empty stillness between his lungs that reminds him all the time that his body isn't right is gone. It's moving again, he's himself again, and as he pulls hot fearful blood from Daniel and swallows it down, he understands that this is the closest he'll feel to being a living person ever again.

A sound crawls out of his throat that might be a predator's growl and might be anguish. Hard to say. It's muffled by faerie blood.

The crush of his mouth is merciless. If anything about this bite is soothing, it's undermined by the painful pressure of his other teeth, the cracking of Daniel's neck scales, the force he's pulling Daniel's blood out with. In a mood like this, the deadening effect some vampire bites have isn't blissfully relaxing. It's paralyzing.]

Edited 2021-05-06 15:08 (UTC)

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action, cw: alcohol, drug use

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cw: paranoia

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cw: hints of abuse, torture

cw more than hints of torture

cw: hallucinations, insects, eye horror

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cw ideation of violent throat attack, how else do I describe,

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cw vampire feeding and slight body dysphoria

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