Palinopsia

[tee-dot-jay-dot]

Trotter faltered at the thought of following these two strangers into a confined corridor. The cramped conditions had the potential to steal away his size advantage should things get dicey. His looming figure haunted the doorway as the girl and the cripple's backs disappeared, swallowed up by the shadows of the hall. He looked over his shoulder to the long, pale digits that twitched impotently upon the slick floor, like cricket legs in mustard.

His hesitation quailed, but a tense tunnel awaited him, and Trotter braced for what might be waiting for him as he rounded the corner into the light.

A kitchen. Just a kitchen.

The only immediate danger here was the flecks of mold that dotted the drop out ceiling tiles. It was like stepping into a monochrome photograph of a once white room; everything was sepia. The smell of mildew was pervasive, but he'd take it over the fetid stench of the chapel.

Trotter ignored the banter of his two fellows, instead trying to listen for the front door. For the return of something most unwelcome. His subconscious mind nagged him that the immediate threat came from within. It was right, of course, and little after he'd acknowledged that did he hear the sound of a pitched voice and a scuffle.

He turned his head in time to see the invalid pull a knife. In an instant his hand shot for his cudgel, but there was little need. The man's already compromised footing gave way, and he was on the ground before the surly drifter could finish fishing out his club.

A heavy boot fell on the skidding knife. The sound of the stomp imparted a sense of finality, a weight beyond any man's poundage.

Things were very still…

The calm lifted as abruptly as it had fallen. In a matter of blinks, Trotter'd picked up the knife and kicked the crutch that much further out of reach. There was a conditioned response at work here. Like a cagey animal, there's a switch that tells you it's time to kill. Kill, at the expulsion of all other concerns. Kill to keep on. This earth, damned by forces unforeseeable, had refined that trigger to a hair's thread in this man. And, were he in his right mind, he'd wager, too, in this pitiful heap he now towered over.

It wouldn't be quick… stabbings never were.

Don't think about it.

Trotter coiled his arm like a spring, a white-knuckle grip on the knife...

 

[Doctor Jax]

Therese knew that sometimes, she could be hasty in her actions. She had always chalked it up to a certain kind of optimism, an innate belief she held that - regardless of circumstances - things typically worked out for the best, one way or the other. With this wellspring of good will, often she forgot that others did not think much the same, and it was this realization that struck her when she heard the invalid man shout at her to get out of his stash of cans in the back of the pantry.

Uncomfortably aware of her awkward position halfway inside the cupboard with an angry man behind her, she scrambled to back out of it, smacking the back of her head against the lip of the opening. While her hat did much to cushion the blow, an ache spread around her skull as she held her arms over her head and neck, standing up and backing up against the counter top.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't re--"

Her eyes widened as she stared at the knife the invalid had pulled, but his leg got the better of him, sending him straight to the floor, the knife skidding across the tile, and she barely registered the big man behind the cripple go for the knife himself, his boot landing heavily on top of it with a certain amount of finality. Almost involuntarily, despite the danger he had presented just a few moments before, Therese found herself putting her own body between the two, putting a hand out.

"W-wait! Please, I-I, that's not, we don't have to do it this way, please, don't," she stuttered, standing over the downed man. It was too apparent to her that the burly man could easily overpower and kill her with little effort - and perhaps little remorse - before moving on to the man behind her, and it was this reality that weighed deep into her gut. And it was all because she'd wandered into a man's stash of canned beans without asking...

"We're all okay. Okay?" Therese tried to stress, hoping to defuse the situation she had inadvertently caused.

 

[Red Thunder]

Pitiful death for a pitiful man.

No, not pitiful: weak, cowardly, foolish. A reprobate and outcast in life, he'd die an outcast's death, alone, mauled by the very people he'd stupidly allowed inside his hideaway. It was perhaps fitting; even as woman moved in his defense, even as the wall of a man extracted the fallen knife for himself in obvious intention of eliminating the perceived 'threat', Gregory knew without a doubt that he was receiving recompense for his failure with his former team. Recompense was long overdue, he supposed, and it was certainly better than falling to the creatures Outside.

Make it fast.

But the damned woman would not afford him that release. Greg didn't move, despite her intervention: his leg aches severely from trying to place too much weight on it, though it didn't feel broken, and he still felt sure that the Wall would end up knocking the female aside to off the only other male and have his way with both Greg's stores and the woman.

Hopefully the Wall killed him before thinking to do the same to him.