It had no eyes, but it watched.
It had watched as Pisces pulled the cankerous chicken out of the dishwasher, plopping it onto a platter. From behind the glass, the heat charred and toasted it's flesh - it became angry.
But it watched.
It watched as the group grew sick, spreading about the premises. It watched with joy as they wretched and released their very souls into the trash bins and sinks. However, even though it watched and waited, it was still forgotten. And in it’s exile, it grew.
It watched.
Creeps crept back and forth in front of it, showing it no regard. In the dark, it sat and it grew. Once, it had no eyes, but it grew them; and it could see. Now, it had no legs, but slowly they sprouted and it plotted.
It planned.
It could not escape, but it tried - it pushed, it pounded. It mashed and moaned and grumbled and growled - it was half-baked and angry. In time, the bump in the night became a crash in the dark and it was free.
It was free and it would have it's time. It moved, manipulating the door open. It would find its place. It scurried down the stairs, heading towards the Underlook.
It would have it's revenge.
"It's ready!!"
Jacky squeals as she looks through the oven window. She flicks the light off and opens the door wide. There it is: Jacky's World Famous Apple Pie.
"Guys!" She slips a pair of pink oven mitts onto her hands. "The pie is done!"
Steam rolls off the top of the golden, flaky crust. She wafts it briefly under her nose before gingerly placing it in the window sill. She looks around.
"Guys?"
Nobody. Jaclyn pulls the oven mitts from her hands and sets them onto the counter.
Where is everyone?
"Tempy? Oh Tem-py!" She tries, this time in her best sing-songy tone. Smiling mischievously, she sneaks into the other room and up the stairs. She knocks at the door.
“Babe?”
“Come in…” his voice responds weakly. Jacky pushes open the door to find Tempest laying under the covers, the comforter pulled up just underneath his nose. She pauses.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“You’re not feeling well?”
He responds by making an exaggerated cough before groaning. She raises her eyebrow.
“Since when?”
“It was so sudden…”
“Babe…” she complains, crossing her arms, “Is this about the chicken?”
He says hesitantly, “No.”
“It is! Oh my god!!” She accuses, her already high pitched voice close to breaking. Tempest pushes the covers away.
“No, I’m really sick…”
“You had no issues eating my pie before I went downstairs!” she shouts just as Daedalus approaches, flipping through a stack of mail. He stops, turns, and walks back downstairs.
“Jacky…”
“What?” Her golden eyes stare at him in a blaze.
“I’m really sick.”
Her features soften, her arms drop to her sides as she moves to him.
“Really?”
He nods and clambors onto the bed, pulling his head against her chest. She coos “babe” sweetly at him, her hand gently caressing the back of his neck. His hand moves around her waist, his lips against her neck. She groans and then pushes his head away.
“Babe, you’re sick.”
He runs his hands up her sides, squeezing gently as he pulls her closer.
“Not that sick,” he mumbles, his hand sliding underneath her shirt. She bites her lip before swatting away his hands again, pulling back.
“Wait what?”
“I’m…”
“I knew it! You son of a bitch!” Jacky swings a hand to slap him but he catches it, pulling her close. She struggles, but his mouth presses against her. He rolls her over, positioning himself on top.
“My poison princess…” he grins.
“You-”
She stops complaining as his mouth moves down her neck and over her chest…
Tempest sits up and the pair look to the door and then back at each other.
"Tempest?"
It had waited - rooting itself in.
It had planned and plotted and schemed and simmered. It heard the clown's excitement as she finished her creation. Her precious pie. Who could forget Jacky’s precious pie? It listened to the footsteps as she bounced up the stairs. Pushing the door open, it looked around.
It moved, making its way to the kitchen.
“You had no issues with my pie before I went downstairs!”
It looked over the apron the clown had worn. Pink and frilly with the words, ‘Kiss the Cook’ sewn into the front, the apron stood no chance as it pulled it down into a pile, mashing it’s feet into the cloth.
It wasn’t enough - it was still angry.
It looked to the window and saw the pie. Hissing and murmuring it clambered up the cabinet. It could feel the crisp air against its half-baked flesh.
“Wait what?”
The pie slid from the sill, slamming down hard on something metallic. It shimmied away, scurrying towards the basement door.
“Hello?” it heard, before mashing the door shut.
“Hello?”
Tempest walks just ahead of Jacky, his shirt off, baseball bat in hand. She has her .44 magnum clutched in her fist. Daedalus is already in the kitchen, looking out the back door. He turns to the couple as they enter.
“What was that?”
“I was speculating you two were…” he clears his throat, “...eating each other’s pie, but someone’s plate slipped away?”
They look to one another confused, just as Montague enters. He spots Jacky and turns to get away. Daedalus, desperate for a way out of this conversation, calls out to him.
“Mister Cervantes!” He stops, plastering a smile across his face.
“Oh, hello group!” He looks around for an exit. “I was just…”
Jacky’s face lights up with excitement.
“Were you here to try my pie?”
Tempest looks over to Montague who holds his hands up.
“I…”
“Where’s my pie?” she asks, rushing to the window. Sure enough, the pie is no longer there. She spins towards the group, her clown smile betraying pure hatred that seers from underneath. She whispers again, her eyes darting between them. “Where’s my pie?”
“Where did you put it?” Daedalus regretfully asks. Her eyes violently crash down on him.
“On the window sill.”
Tempest looks down at the apron and over at her. He cannot help but smile. Jaclyn turns to him.
“Oh? Something funny?”
“No, its the apron and the…”
“Where’s my fucking pie?!” She screams, raising up the oversized pistol. The hammer clicks back into place and the three men step back.
“I was with you, babe.”
“A distraction?” She levels the weapon at him. He shakes his head, raising his hands up in surrender. Daedalus clears his throat once more.
“Miss Pierrot…” The revolver rolls around his way. He stops for a moment, but pushes on, “The window is open. Maybe it fell?”
She raises the gun, looking over towards it.
Moments later…
The group stands around the pie, laying face down on top a stack of piled vinyl. The once golden crust is now shattered and crumbled amidst the splatter of aged apple. Flies flirt and dart around the discarded dish.
"Oh nooooo... I was looking forward to having a sliiiiice....." says Montague, dramatically. Tempest elbow slams into his ribs.
“See Miss Pierrot…” Daedalus begins, turning towards the clown only to find her .44 magnum inches away from his face. Tears flood down her cheeks.
“You…” Tempest moves quickly, wrapping both hands around her wrist. He is able to pull the gun up just in time. The gunshot rips through the air as he pins the wild woman against the wall. She shrieks over his shoulder: “You monster!”
“Jacky calm down!”
Upon hearing those magic words, Jacky begins to buck and push against the large man. Her jaws gnash at him, but he holds firm. Her pupils, now lost in the sea of gold, are locked on Daedalus.
“It was you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Miss Pierrot, with all due respect, if I wanted to destroy your pie, knowing you how I do...do you think I would remain here?”
She struggles for another moment before turning to Tempest.
“Let me go,” she whispers. He looks her over before nodding her head, releasing her hands.
“So if it wasn’t you or you,” she looks over Tempest before pulling his hand into hers, “or you…who was it?”
Silence.
Who else…
Jacky snarls: “Pisces.”
“No.”
“Who else could it be?”
Suddenly, there is a scream from downstairs.
“Help!!”
“Morgan!”
It listened to the screams of the clown.
Sweet revenge, but was it ever enough? Could one discarded pie make up for the weeks of agony it endured. Locked away. Forgotten.
It peeled away from the wall.
It’s body shifted and shimmied steadily. Some lingering workers milled about, putting pictures into place along the walls, pounding in finishing nails. It waited.
There was a gunshot from outside and the workers, suddenly removed from their tasks, took shelter. Morgan Freeman stepped into the hallway.
It watched.
He had a small plate of food in his hand as he made his way to the stairs. It crept up. It shifted. It shimmied. It struck, bashing against one of the bookcases, left untouched by the crew, still free floating. The case came crashing down.
Morgan pushed against the shelf. Unable to move it, he looked around.
It saw him. He saw it. He screamed.
“Help!”
“Morgan!” Jacky shrieks.
Tempest and Montague stand on either side of the large case, pulling it off the fallen actor. She drops down beside him, nudging his shoulder. He lies still.
“Morgan?”
She pushes him again. The group leans into the actor. His eyes shoot open and he sits up.
“I saw it!” he says. He turns his eyes between them. He repeats, “I saw it!”
“It?”
He turns down the hallway, his eyes going disastrously wide. Morgan Freeman points.
“It!” he yells, before falling back to the ground. The group turns just in time to see a small, hairy creature duck around the corner.
“What the fuck?” Jacky mutters.
They move Morgan from the Underlook and back upstairs in the living room. He is still asleep by the time Kosner arrives to watch over him.
“I still think it was Pisces,” Jacky says.
“I don’t see how.”
“Maybe she had on a mask?”
“It was only a foot tall.”
“Maybe she was crawling?”
“Unlikely.”
“Are those our chances of finding this...thing?”
“Pisces!” Jacky chimes in.
“Whatever it may be, it seems to have taken up residence in the Underlook.”
Their eyes move from the doorways and fixate on the Architect.
“Really? You think?”
“May I remind you, there are over fifty Astro Creeps expecting five star hospitality from us.”
“Really? Five stars?” Ragdoll interjects. Daedalus pauses and chuckles.
“Okay, maybe not five stars. But, I still don’t want the little bastard disrupting things down there. The last thing we need is some little critter like that snooping around the grounds.”
They all look at each other, apparently silently deciding who should go deeper into the Underlook.
“Why don’t I go down and check it out. Maybe a few of you check the upstairs, someone else continues to patrol the ground floor. Kosnar, you guard the door.”
Kosnar nods silently. Tempest turns to Jacky and gives her a heroic kiss before turning and stepping towards the basement steps.
He ventures beneath the farmhouse, passing doors on either side that have gold numbers mounted on each of them. The walls are wood planks, and dirt rolls through the cracks between the planks every so often. It’s the first time he’s really explored the Underlook, the hotel Daedalus and the Creeps designed to be built in the Labyrinth.
Each Creep resides in these rooms. How many are we up to?
He lost count, if he’s being honest with himself.
The hallways are dimly lit, allowing the eerie shadows to come alive anytime there’s movement down here. The carpeting is a contorted version of the Overlook from The Shining.
He pushes the pedals of his Big Wheel. His knees rise and fall almost comically as he speeds through the hallway of the first floor. Nearing the end of the hallway is an elevator.
But he ignores it and drifts a right turn. It looks like he’s going to pedal directly into the wall, but he instead appears to ride right through it.
At a closer look, a narrow opening can be seen, and the floor descends into a spiral handicap-friendly path that leads to the second floor.
The Big Wheel disappears behind the wall that the floor wraps around, Tempest giggling as he reaches a higher speed.
The opening spits him out onto the second floor as he brakes and drifts to avoid hitting the wall.
Jacky’s right, he thinks, anyone can be a NASCAR driver.
The doors pass by rapidly as he zooms through the second floor. He brakes suddenly, a groan behind one of the doors stopping him in his tracks. He tilts his head and peers curiously at the door.
237.
Stepping off the Big Wheel, Tempest looks around. He slowly moves closer to the door. He’s wearing a plaid collared shirt beneath a red sweater and bib overalls. One of the straps of the overalls isn’t fastened and hangs down at his side.
He can hear shuffling on the other side of the door, he thinks. He cautiously leans in and presses his ear against the door.
“Pisces?” he calls quietly. “Is that you?”
The shuffling stops, if it had ever begun in the first place.
“Pisces?”
He tries his luck looking into the peephole, knowing it’s not how that works, but logic disappears in these situations, doesn’t it?
As he anticipated, there’s not any way for him to see inside the room through the peephole.
He sighs, taking a step back, and feels a slight breeze on his hand. He looks down, first at the door knob, then the keyhole below it. Dropping to his knees, he gazes in, the cold air rushing through the keyhole into his good eye. He manages to ignore it as the room behind the keyhole comes into focus.
It’s dark. But there is a little bit of light coming from a room to the side. The door is nearly shut all the way, allowing light to escape the crack. Judging by the steam that’s lazily curling out with the light, Tempest assumes it’s the bathroom.
A shadow passes the light. Something is in the room.
Sweat drips from the edge of where his mask meets his face, stinging the places where the stitches and staples pierce his skin.
A hand grabs his shoulder. He yelps and falls backwards.
A clown face stares down at him, eyes wide, before honking laughter greets him. It’s Jacky. She’s wearing a blue dress. Tempest smiles, stealing a peek up her dress, before climbing back to his feet.
He turns to Jacky to take her hand, but she isn’t there.
“What?”
He turns, looking for her.
But no one’s there.
“God hates a coward, sonny,” he hears Daedalus whisper.
He turns again, looking down at the keyhole, then back at the numbers on the door.
“Daedalus?” he whispers doubtfully, then kneels down at the keyhole again.
He peers into the room. The red phone booth that he destroyed with the croquet mallet
Was it a croquet mallet? Or an axe?
A few weeks ago stands accusingly, towering at an impossible height within the room.
“You killed me, Tempy,” it says sadly. The voice is oddly familiar though.
“I thought what we had was special.”
That voice.
He pulls his eye away from the keyhole and ponders in frustration.
He sighs and presses his eye back against it.
Johnny Hitmaker charges at him from the other side, a guttural roar rushing out of his lungs as he swings a croquet mallet directly at the keyhole.
Tempest stumbles backwards again. “FUCK!”
He can hear the mallet connect with the door on the other side. Dirt falls from the wood planks on either side of it.
“Et voila!” Montague says cheerfully.
Tempest turns just in time to see Monty kick the chair out from under him. He hears his neck snap and his body sways back and forth (back and forth) lifelessly near the end of the hallway.
Tempest scurries backwards, scooting his butt against the carpet as he nearly flails onto his back. He reaches for his Big Wheel and clumsily mounts it, pedaling rapidly.
He reaches the other end of the hall and turns to the spiraling ramp that leads to the first floor.
And feels his Big Wheel come to an abrupt stop. But he doesn’t. He is launched face first into the wall where the opening is supposed to be. His head connects and he falls backwards onto the carpet.
Groggily, he rolls to his side.
A potato stands in his field of vision, grinning at him, two red horns protruding from its head. Hundreds of eyes blink as he laughs in Tempest’s face. He throws his head back, a full head of hair swinging with his movements, then does something Tempest finds to be impossible:
He flips him off.
“What the fuck?”
He closes his eyes, then opens them again. The potato is gone.
The opening is there again. He climbs back onto his Big Wheel and pedals up to the first floor of the Underlook.
“Jacky!” he yells. He continues to pedal until he reaches the basement steps, where he stumbles off the Big Wheel and races up the stairs to meet back with the rest of the Creeps.
He finds Monty first, and after frantically explaining himself, the two round up the other three and continue their hunt for the creature.
There’s a crash coming from deeper within the house. The group comically moves together, like they’re stuck in a Scooby Doo cartoon.
Another crash, closer now. They continue to move towards the sound.
“This feels…” Ragdoll starts to say.
“Like a trap?” Tempest finishes and she nods without looking at him.
“I was going to say a bit derivative,” the group approaches the kitchen door.
They step inside and Daedalus flips on the light switch. Fluorescent lights flicker, then go solid, pouring in light that shines brightly upon the stainless steel utensils, pots, and pans hanging around perhaps the largest kitchen island the group has ever seen. Daedalus looks confused.
“Have we always had these? I only remember our kitchen being small enough to gather around eating a pizza.”
“This is new, part of your Underlook project. It’s in the blueprints.”
“Oh! I must have forgotten about it. We’ll have to put it into good use!”
Something scurries across the floor and into a walk-in freezer’s open door.
“Ah-ha!” Montague exclaims as he sprints towards the freezer. The other four follow hastily. They all step into the darkness of the empty freezer, looking around and squinting. The door shuts suddenly behind them.
It scurries across the floor and slams the door shut. Putting its little hands on its hips, it glares angrily at the pathetic group before it.
“What is that?” Daedalus whispers.
Standing in the porthole of the freezer is a potato, complete with a multitude of eyes and a wash of cordyceps cresting over it’s head like a wild wave of hair. It smiles.
“Fools!” it begins, “Do you see?! You have fallen into a trap!”
It’s mouth opens and as it begins to speak, Jacky cannot help but laugh. It’s voice, shrill, gravelly and with an odd, forced Russian accent, tries desperately to yell over her, but is unable to.
“Jacky…” Tempest pulls at her arm. After a moment, she finally rolls her eyes and allows it to speak again.
“You laugh, clown, but who laughs now?” Something the cousin of a guffaw escapes its starched lips. Tempest hand wraps around her face. “Do you remember me? Of course not! You tried to trick me. To trap me. To murder me. You attempted to burn me alive…”
“Burn you alive?” Daedalus asks.
“Da! However, you did not count on my strength. My power! My…” it looks around, searching for the right word. “My brains. And now who is trapped? Is it the potato? Or the yamkees?”
Jacky begins to sputter underneath Tempest grip.
“You tried to bake me? Well...I will freeze you alive like the steppes of the motherland!”
The group looks around. While they are in a freezer, it is not at all cold. In fact, it is slightly more warm than the hallways. Montague shrugs, “At least it isn’t on.”
Jacky pushes Tempest's hand aside for a moment.
“I don’t think it realizes that.” she begins to choke with laughter as he covers her mouth back up.
“Be that as it may, even if it eventually tires out, this is a sealed chamber. The oxygen will only last so long,” Daedalus warns.
“How does it feel to feel feel” It stops, then tries again, “To feel feel.”
It scowls, before speaking slowly.
“Feel. Fear. Welcome to your own personal gulag. You fools. Who has chip on shoulder now? I’ve watched. I’ve watched you try to kill me. I’ve watched you try to forget me. Now? I watch you die. Frozen to a crisp.”
“Is it finished?” Tempest removes his hand from Jacky’s mouth and she doubles over.
“You laugh now when you die later clown! You-” It devolves into what seems like a mix of gibberish with a few Russian phrases sprinkled in between. The glass drops with thick, viscous fluid.
“Sounds like it,” Daedalus nods.
“Good” Tempest pushes in the safety plunger and the door swings open with a rubbery release sound. Everyone looks startled at Tempest, the potato stumbling backwards. Jacky pushes past, aiming her gun. She pulls the trigger.
Click.
"Damnit! It's not loaded!"
“Were we out of sour cream?” Montague offers
She glares at him, shoving the gun into his hand. There is a flash of steel and the large butcher knife Pagliacci is in her hand.
“Dasvidaniya, motherfucker,” she giggles, rushing towards the tuber as it tries to turn, her hand catching the cordyceps cap. The group watches from the doorways as the potato writhes and screams in pain.
“I guess he learned not to tater-taunt her.”
The sound of the dagger being plunged into something wet can be heard.
“He shouldn’t have been an agi-tater.”
Its shrieks and shouts turn to groans and gurgles.
“Don't starch nothin, won't be nothin.”
More slicing. More stabbing. It tries to groan for help but is cut short.
“He doesn’t seem to want to re-hash it.”
There is one final whimper and a loud ripping noise.
“I think he just got decap-potatoed.”
There is a splash of potato juice that squirts across the group.
“Jesus fucking Christ….”
Five AstroCreeps are gathered in a horseshoe beneath the skeleton of a lightning-struck tree, a cracked and crumbling picnic table. Someone has taken the time to spread out a red-checked tablecloth with an old brown stain on one edge, and a platter of fries is placed in the center. The fries are covered with melted cheddar and colby cheese, as well as chopped bacon and green onion.
The white and gray arboreal corpse reaches over them protectively, as if its barked claw could protect them from the autumnal gusts that strip the still-living sentinels at the edge of the property. Soon, those gales will have the entire grove looking like their electrified, natural pergola.
At irregular intervals, one of the Creeps will reach out and draw another fry from the platter and devour it, savoring it with half-lidded eyes.
Eventually Montague speaks up:
Montague: What does it mean to be “Baltimore Elite”?
Ragdoll: Well, that’s kind of like being the prettiest girl in the trailer park, isn’t it? Baltimore is the gutter of the Mid-Atlantic, just saying.
Montague: Now, far be it from me to disparage a city that has given us the country’s premiere collection of art created by lunatics, including the master of macabre l’art brut, Mr. Edgar Allen Poe himself.
Everyone bows their heads for a moment in respectful silence for the master of gothic horror.
Montague: Truly, more than one member of the Cabinet of OutCasts calls Charm City home, and the AstroCreeps wouldn’t be out of place in certain harbor districts themselves. With that in mind, however, we must also remember that Baltimore is the City That Breeds crime, teen pregnancy, xenophobic officials, ravens that stab falcons, and crabs.
Ragdoll: That’s right, Baltimore has crabs.
Montague: It’s a city of ‘almost.’ Almost as cultured as San Francisco. Almost as dangerous as Detroit. Almost as big as New York. Almost as historic as Philly. It’s almost a big city, but not quite.
Tempest: It’s dirty. It’s eclectic. It’s unique. It’s low-rent metropolitan, and it’s okay with that, hon.
Ragdoll: So when you style yourself Baltimore Elite, that carries a lot of weight.
Montague: Now as much as the Carnage alums have tried to put on a plastic face in UGWC and style themselves the Ken-and-Barbie answer to Incendium, their Mobtown upbringing in the industry is barely veiled beneath the surface. Jacky overheard her share of dark stories.
Tempest: Speaking of Jacky, the Ragdoll came to UGWC with no intention of hiding her real face(paint) behind a false plastic mask. She came in, both barrels blazing, and hasn’t stopped shaking the Coalition since she fed the future Keymaster to their own embarrassed champion.
Ragdoll: Who defeats a five time World Champion at the beginning of the night and then helps him humiliate two current World Champions by the end? A future AstroCreep, the Baddest Bitch from Baltimore.
Tempest: Shall we continue the comparison?
Montague: I’ll gloss over the foundation Tempest laid in year one, and later drew me into in year two. I didn’t know what was being planted at the time, so while I’m still rather proud of the panache and style with which I entered the Coalition, I can’t claim full credit for what came later. The Spider King was still casting his web during that time, and the two strands he was crafting with the most care had yet to be anchored.
Tempest: The web was in place before anyone knew what was happening, before August 30. And Then the AstroCreeps Came. In 75 days we’ve dominated three championship divisions, just to see if we could. In 75 days we’ve staked a claim on one of the company’s newest badges of honor, just because it was there for the taking. In 75 days, we’ve dominated and risen victorious at one of the four historic flagship events that define the calendar year for the industry.
Ragdoll: We came together like a storm cloud and swept the viewing audience off its feet… on a whim. Because we felt like it. Because it was fun. Because we could. Imagine what we’ll manage to do in another 30 days, or 75…
Tempest: Or 125.
Montague: Speaking of 125, that’s how many days it’s been since Kyra Johnson and Ken Davison inked their contracts. Since then, they’ve…
Ragdoll: Languished inertly in the Chaos Division.
Montague: Complained endlessly because Orson won’t book them in Cooperative matches.
Ragdoll: Blamed their lack of traction on the most basic scapegoats possible.
Montague: Hired the increasingly ineffectual Johnny Hitmaker to, I don’t know, shout about them on Twitter? Pay Danny Danger to put some bias on their names during the Johncast? What does Johnny do exactly?
Jacky chomps down deliberately on a particularly meaty french fry while giving a Kubrick-esque smile.
Montague: In the meantime, they haven’t managed to amass enough momentum to unseat the two Cooperative teams currently ranked above them despite both of those teams consisting of at least one member who has been inactive for some time.
Ragdoll: The AstroCreeps have been testing their reach almost entirely in singles competition, and they’ve already become the most talked about faction in the UGWC. Who is talking about Baltimore Elite?
Montague: This moment, right here, may be the most anyone has talked about them since they went on leave some time ago in Carnage.
Tempest: So. What does it mean to be ‘Baltimore Elite?’ To come from a background of violence and twisted art and filth and individuality, only to put on an elastic veil to pretend you’re a normal young couple trying to make an honest go of it while raising a cute rugrat?
Montague: It means you’re almost interesting. You’re almost convincing. You’re almost threatening. You’re almost an effective team.
Ragdoll: It means you’re almost an AstroCreep.
Tempest: But not quite.
Tempest shifts, crossing his legs beneath him and resting his elbows against his thighs.
Tempest: Now, let’s talk about what it means to be a “Deathwish.”
Montague snatches a french fry and tosses it into his mouth. He savors the taste, and Jacky seems tickled to death.
Tempest: In Gnaw Bone, Indiana, if you call yourself a Deathwish, we expect you to live up to the hype. We expect violence…
Montague’s eyebrow perks up, a half-smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. Ragdoll bites her lip and nods.
Montague: We expect blood…
Now it’s Tempest’s turn to half-smile, but his smile being only half is for different reasons. Ragdoll nods again emphatically, and nearly moans as she speaks.
Ragdoll: We expect to be covered… in kisses… and kerosene!
Tempest’s dead eye rolls in her direction.
Tempest: Later, Doll.
Montague: We are the embodiment of what people call us.
Tempest: We are…
Ragdoll: Brats out of hell. We are…
Montague: Showmen. We are…
Tempest: Spider kings. We are…
All of them: Astro Creeps.
Tempest: And you? Hide Yamazaki? You are a fraud. You’re a billboard of false advertising, and your mouthpiece, Johnny, is at the forefront of it all. He’s constantly criticized by the lies he’s always spouting. But you? And your lies? They’re hidden beneath the smoke and mirrors of your loud-mouthed manager.
Ragdoll’s eyes go dark.
Ragdoll: But we’ve been watching you. And we know that your name is just that: a name. It has no meaning behind it. No violence. No blood. No fire! Just an empty, weightless name. Deathwish.
Montague: Strong Style Satanist. Another empty moniker. A bark with no bite, if you please.
He makes a dismissive circular motion with his hand. Tempest grins behind the mask. He likes the way Monty speaks with his hands.
Montague: There’s no umph behind you anymore, Hide. You’re sputtering, nearing the bottom of the downward spiral that Tempest knew you were on a long time ago. Do you remember that, Hide?
Tempest: ...well do you? Because I do. I’ll never forget the way you treated me, Hide, when we were Cooperative partners in that one instance on Synergy. The way that you used me, as a weapon, then left me on the ground because your ego was so goddamn big at the time. You thought that match was about you.
He pauses, looking down at the golden french fries. Ragdoll takes one and pops it into her mouth, chewing loudly, her lips smacking obnoxiously.
Tempest: You probably don’t even remember. But I do. Isn’t that how these things work? You didn’t think much of me at the time, and now I’m taking it out on you every single time I stand across from you. And you can’t figure out why I inflict a little extra aggression on you. You can’t figure out why my punches have a little more POP in them as my knuckles crack against your skull. Well, that’s why. You looked down on me and I noticed. And I remembered. And I’ll do this to you until you remember, too.
Ragdoll runs a hand along Tempest’s back, smiling as she plants a kiss on the side of his neck, the side that’s ugly with burn scars and bubbled skin.
Tempest: This week isn’t about the Baltimore Elite, or Hide Yamazaki, or even you, Johnny Hitmaker. This week is the first time Ragdoll, Montague, and I get to work our magic together. All of us. Together. It’s just another chapter in the book that we’re writing together. It’s another spot in that book where our Constant Reader says, ‘Oh shit!’ as we make another statement.
Montague reaches behind him in the leaf-covered grass and pulls up a shovel. The blade is caked with old dirt that was never cleaned off of it from its last use.
Montague: The Season of the Creeps has only just begun. Everyone seems to think that because the Coalition has regained a few of its championship belts, that means they’ve buried us and put us into the earth where they think we belong. But, as we know… it isn’t about how you get buried, or how deep they plunge you into the earth…
He tosses the shovel to Ragdoll. She catches it and reveals a toothy grin. Her golden eyes are piercing and excited.
Ragdoll: It’s about how you resurrect yourself!
She honks laughter and Tempest joins in. Montague grins like the Cheshire Cat, his eyes almost seeming to glow.
A fry on the camera-side of the picnic table unexpectedly dislodges from the melted cheese and weight of bacon and onions on top of it. Impossibly, tater cartwheels over the edge of the plate and continues it’s somersault off a splintered plank out into thin air.
Daedalus gasps as his eyes go wide. Kosnar tenses up and goes into a defensive position. Jacky scratches her nails down her cheeks and lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Tempest rolls his eyes so hard he throws his head back with the effort. Montague claps both hands over his head and simply sits as he ducks under the table.
Before the rogue fry escapes into the grass, the camera cuts out.
![[Hey! Phrasing!]](https://c.tenor.com/jZC7Qb-ai6sAAAAC/hey-phrasing.gif){kind=link}