"Wait," Nicholas slurred, seeming significantly less intoxicated as he stood. In his doing so, he inadvertently splashed and slung water all over the floor in front of the tub. He tossed the cloth aside and yanked a nearby towel into his hand, wrapping it around himself as he swayed and put a palm against the wall for support. "I'm fine. Wha'd'you- what- what do you have behind your- your back?"

"Jesus fucking Christ, Nick, sit the fuck down. You're getting water on me." Mattie grabbed his arm, still managing to conceal her knife. It was kind of hard work, keeping the damn thing hidden. "I'll tell you in a minute." Shit. She was nervous. Who wouldn't be nervous about cutting off infected pieces of tissue? Ideally, her. Still, she couldn't hold eye contact.

"Nope," he insisted, significantly more alert and a bit panicked now. "Nope, bath time's over." Effortlessly shaking her hand from his arm, Nicholas stepped out of the tub and gently pushed her back while keeping the towel up with one hand.

"No, bath time is definitely still happening," said Mattie, and decided to drop the act with the knife. She let the hand holding it fall to her side. "That shit is majorly infected and it's gotta come off. Now sit the fuck down."

The longer that they stalled and conversed, the more the dark stripes on Nicholas' back grew. It was then that he started to gain his senses back. The pain was immense, but not unbearable. He simply disregarded it after yelping, and pushed past Mattie into the main room of the motel. "I'm fine," he insisted, voice still slightly slurred. "Just leave it alone. You're not cutting me up."

Mattie trotted insistently after Nick, clearly not willing to take no for an answer. In fact, she shoved him to the ground––on his stomach––and straddled his back, brandishing the knife in white knuckles. "You never fucking listen to me even when you're fucked up on magic-ass demon drugs," she hissed. "I am cutting that shit out."

And that was how she ended up making shallow, quick slices at an angle into Nick's back, surrounding the black stripes.

"What are you- no, wait!" Nicholas yelled, struggling underneath Mattie's weight. She was not a large woman by any means, but he was so weak that she had the advantage at the moment. The next thing he knew, he felt the knife that she'd had in her hand being dug into his back. He cried out in pain, resisting more and trying to wiggle out from underneath her. "Stop! Stop that! You're crazy!"

"Biatch, did you think I didn't already fuckin' know that?!" shouted Mattie. "I'm a crazy ass bitch but there is no other goddamn way these are gonna go away so be still before I snap your neck with my thunder thighs!"

"Fuck!"

It was a howling, desperate cry of pain and fire erupted from his palms, charring the wood that they were pressed against. Fortunately, he was able to subside the flames before he could flail and end up setting the building on fire or hurting one of them.

"Jesus, take it easy," muttered Mattie, despite the fact that she was in the process of peeling off parts of his flesh. His weak state didn't make her any less afraid of the fire that he was capable of producing, and the feeling of heat made her work faster. Keep it shallow. Minimize the nerve damage. Get it over with.

Slice slice slice.

She pulled three bloody, ragged bits of tissue off of Nick's back and tossed them upward into the trash. One of them missed, and she cringed at the idea of cleaning it up.

She slid off of him, breathing heavily. She was going to feel guilty as fuck about this. She knew that much.

Despite the strong urge to roll over, because being on his front with Mattie's weight previously drilling him against the hard flooring made him achy with what little sense he could recall, Nicholas stayed on his stomach. Arms outstretched, palms against the floor, as well as his cheek pressed miserably against the wood, he stared at the drab wallpaper in his line of vision until his eyes were unconsciously closing. "You fucking suck," he groaned, fingers curling his hands into a fist before they relaxed again.

The only thing the stripping of his skin had succeeded in doing was spread the blackened, lightning-strike portions to the fresh wounds. Abnormally orange-ish red ichor was flowing from the newly-sliced sections of his back, the edges turning papery and dark, like burned wood. It burned like it, too. A sharp, icy-hot sensation where the knife had been digging into his skin, as if the blade had been heated in a forge before use.

Sparks spit out of his fingertips, skipping across the floor until they bounced against the wall like sentient little fairies and dissipated. There was a heavy, nauseous feeling in his stomach as he was becoming increasingly aware of every sense. Hearing, feeling, tasting, sight -- it was all coming back sharply, and he was trying to will them away again to no avail. The distinct memory of being trapped inside of his own subconscious was coming back as well; every awful and euphoric feeling in his own mind that had been mixed together in one terrible, god-awful concoction as Alice had spoke to him about... What did she speak to him about? That part of his recalling was hazy.

"Where's Jacob?" he muttered against the floor, eyes opening to a blurry wall.

Mattie took one look at Nick's back and almost gagged.

Fuck everything, especially herself.

"Fuck if I know," she finally answered, her voice distracted and forced-sounding. Don't look at it. Stop looking at it. He'd be fine. "Taking care of things, whatever the mystery-shrouded fuck that means. But he left money. So there's that. Maybe I can get some iodine and like...spray you down with it. Anyway, uh, you okay?"

It took Mattie a geological lifetime to respond, but when she did, her voice sounded like it was being forcibly pushed out of her throat. Nicholas thought about trying to stand, or do anything really, but he couldn't. It felt like the skin around his wounds was literally cracking. He knew that if he tried to move, it would almost legitimately kill him.

"I'm okay," he said. His voice was surprisingly smooth and calm despite the pain he was in. "Just gotta kinda...uh...lay here. I'm starting to, uh, feel things again."

"Sweet hogfucking shit, please tell me you're kidding. No. I know you're not. Fuck. Fuck. Okay. I'll just, uh, carry you to bed and then get that––thing?––bandaged up and I'll just pretend it doesn't exist and isn't a problem and that I don't fucking hate myself. Anyways."

Mattie rose to a half-kneeling position, and heaved Nick up from under his arms. She shuffled him quickly into the bedroom and grunted with the effort of laying him down, again on his stomach.

"What? What thing? What are-"

It was too late before he could protest to her moving him. The shift in weight as he was lifted halfway to his feet, pooling against the wounds, worsened the leakage and created a fire-stinging, painful pressure against them. Instead of screaming in pain like he felt like he wanted to do, he let out a weak, miserable grunt as it felt like a white fog was clouding his head. He could have sworn he temporarily blacked out, because it seemed like he practically teleported to the bed, lying again on his stomach. While the pain eased, it was in a different way. The pressure was gone, but the stinging had multiplied.

"What does it look like?" he demanded, barely audibly or coherent because of the fact that his mouth didn't seem to want to fully open. He could feel the liquid dripping down his sides, tickling his skin in the most awful way.

"Yeah, okay, no, I'd rather not look at it long enough to come up with adjectives describing it," replied Mattie, shuddering a little. She scurried out to grab the bandages, returning seconds later with the roll of them. She was in a hurry as she started wrapping the wound on Nick's back, and her hands shook a little. "Maybe I can get some strong-ass booze with the money," she pondered aloud. "Then you can get fucked up and it won't hurt so bad. Right? I should have a medical license."