Predator (DWT x OC)

46

Eret looks even more defeated. "I just found him Tommy."

Is Eret alright in the head? Tommy would suggest some therapy, or maybe just a good lie down and some water because he's talking like an insane person. 

"Jesus did you go mental while we're away as well as stupid Eret? We're the only ones here."

The moment the words leave his mouth, he wishes he could swallow them back down, because everything fucking connects and it's awful.

"That's Jack."

"No- no you're wrong Eret, Wilbur's right, you are working with Schlatt! this isn't real it's a trap right? Right?" He hates that his voice falters like that at the end, but he's getting desperate here. 

"This isn't a trap Tommy, this is real." Eret says sorrowfully, kneeling down behind the mound and sweeping off the foliage. 

Tommy wants to vomit. The smell is putrid, like the steak he chucked behind a pot plant hat he didn't want to eat at dinnertime then forgot about for three days, and rotten eggs and like- literal fucking shit. Eret reels back, both of them pulling their shirts up to cover their noses, the stench so horrific Tommy's eyes are watering.

He should have left it at that, really, but he had to go and be nosy, he had to be sure.

It's a head, and a face, eyes closed like they could be sleeping, if it wasn't for the gash line of  blood across their throat, dried dark red-brown coating every inch of bloated skin, thick, deep cut down in their windpipe.

It's also unmistakeably Jack's. Despite everything, Tommy knows who this it. Despite the mottled grey face, splotched with varying degrees of colours that can only be described as death themselves, stiff and puffed up horribly in the wrong places, like someone had inflated and deflated the skin on his usually clear cut cheeks. 

Dark veins trail up the skin, spider legs sprawling up over the jaw and across the cheeks, like vines curling over trees, except very, very wrong, poking the edges of his lips. There's the tiniest bit of movement in the corner of Jack's eye.

Tommy leans in, when the fucking maggot crawls out of his fucking eye socket.

Then he does vomit. 

They're all over Jack's body, wriggling little white worms, crawling down under his skin, in his ear, in the knife wound, burying themselves under his eyelids, pushing past his rigid lips into his mouth. His whole body is infested, crawling with maggots. He didn't know how he missed the flies, buzzing around in the air, landing on his nose, his forehead, his throat. 

"What the fuck!" Tommy spits, coughing next to the trunk of a nearby tree. "What the fuck is that!"

Eret stands back up and comes next to Tommy, offering out his hand. He doesn't take it, pushing himself up on shaky hands and trembling knees. 

"Jack attempted to escape L'manburg with Ro and Niki six days ago, but he was caught by Schlatt and executed for it." Eret says emotionlessly, like if he let himself feel anything for it he was going to lose his mind. "We couldn't find the body because they moved and hid it." 

"Escape? Wha- Wait are Rose and Niki okay? Eret what the fuck is going on?"

"Rose and Niki are fine, Schlatt didn't get them. He put a new rule in place, no one is allowed to leave L'manburg because they could be finding and helping you."

"He knows we're alive?"

"He doesn't want to take a chance, and he isn't stupid, he won't get cocky like that. It's also just to control people, all he needed was an excuse."