Inda

Abandoned Souls (Full for now)

Nina grabbed a cut glass whiskey glass from below the bar, dropped a couple of totally clear ice cubes into it, and poured from a cut glass bottle on one of the shelves. The liquid looked like dark amber honey flowing over the ice cubes.

"18 year old Aberlour. I think you'll enjoy it." She said with a grin. "Please, please, take some food, darling. You look skin and bones." Nina shooed Ryker away from the bar then, toward the table in the center of the room.

Quickly, as if she had plenty of experience behind the bar, a crystal martini glass was brought up from below the bar. Frost began forming on it as tiny tendrils of cold air smoked upward. She deftly slid a lemon slice around the rim and turned it upside down in a circular china dish of sugar tinged with a gold color.

Seemingly at the same time as she was dealing with the martini glass, the etched metal cocktail shaker was being filled in her hands with vodka, lemon juice, and simple syrup, all poured from their own glass bottles on the shelves behind. Her hands moved over the bottles, pouring and moving things with such a dexterous speed and so light a touch that it almost seemed as if a bottle was going to slip through her fingers and shatter on the ground at her feet. Her voice rose easily over the noise of the shaker as she mixed the drink almost by instinct.

"Don't be shy. I can make you anything you could possibly want." She said to the others still walking through the doorway. Her words drifted through the room, somehow ominous and sensual at the time.

Only a moment after reaching below the bar to bring out the martini glass in the first place, she was holding a lemon drop in a glass rimmed with golden sugar.

"Or, if you prefer, I can simply surprise you."

Stillwater Vale Asylum

Nancy nodded.

"Yep. Perfect." Elizabeth's eyes might not have been red anymore, but something about her seemed off to Nancy. Her empathetic skills were something she prided, but she was always worried she was going to cross a line. She had done so many times before, trying to see if a patient was alright only to have things thrown at her, to be yelled at for being a nosey- well, she didn't want to think about the things she had been called. Some people did not like being made to face their own emotions, and having someone they barely knew bring them up just made them defensive.

But it was part of the job. This was way better than when she had to strap patients down. The look of betrayal in those patients eyes always broke her heart, but she ignored her feelings when times like that came up. Her feelings didn't matter more than the well being of those people, and if she had to take a fall from grace in their eyes in order to get them the care they needed, even if they fought it, she would.

"If the nausea is really bad, I can stick around for a couple minutes to see if you need to be taken to the medical wing," She offered, trying to come up with an excuse to talk to her for a few minutes longer. It was a lame one, she knew. Nausea after the pills was normal for some people, and it was a small side effect that passed quickly enough- unless they hadn't eaten.

@Xandrya

The Cannibal

Hazel was loading up her arms with several jugs of water when the noise in the hallway exploded. Shouts and swears followed what sounded like a car crashing through the walls.

"Run!" She heard Amos yell, his voice echoing throughout the house. A gunshot went off, reverberating through the walls, threatening to bring the ringing back to Hazel's ears.

Haley came racing in, but Hazel was so loaded with the shotgun, crossbow, quiver, and jugs of water she couldn't see where she went or what she was doing.

"Get upstairs!" She heard Amos shout, and without a second though, she dropped the water jugs, forgetting about the fire burning in the hearth, and ran, the eagle's leather cord still wrapped tightly around her knuckles. Leaving the kitchen behind, Hazel saw the Tartok looming over Amos, his weapon just out of reach.

She didn't know how to use the weapons, but she did know how to use knives and skewers. She grabbed a crossbow bolt from the quiver on her back and ran toward the Tartok's back. She asked for all of the upper body strength she had gained while rock climbing to serve her now, and raised the bolt like a knife, aiming for the Tartok's neck. The eagle was held out in front of her as she ran to save Amos, the only person who really knew what was going on.

She was sure she was yelling nonsense, maybe even just yelling, wondering how she could be so stupid as to run toward the horrific monster.

Stillwater Vale Asylum

Nancy finished handing out the pills to the patients in the line. It was tedious work, and the other patient Nancy had jellybeans for was mysteriously not there. He was an older man, somewhere in his forties from what Nancy could tell. He always had interesting stories about his time as a sniper. He never told anything confidential, he was too professional for that. But he did like talking about the places he had gone.

He was supposed to be seeing a doctor at some point soon, though. He was probably still in his appointment. Nancy pocketed the remaining bag of jellybeans to give to him later. Now she had to deal with the people who had skipped their morning pills.

She sorted through several different pill cups that were left and handed them out to different nurses in order to get the meds into the patients before they finished digesting their breakfasts. It was never fun to deal with cleaning the vomit when patients took them too late and got nauseated.

"And I'll take... Elizabeth Kelton." After looking over her page to be sure the proper pills were included in the cup, she made her way down to the cell Kelton was supposed to be in. She knocked on the door, seeing she was in the room.

"Miss Kelton? I've got your pills for you. You skipped the line this morning."

Abandoned Souls (Full for now)

Hey all! So my posts have been a little lengthy, and I wanted to say that by no means is that length of writing expected from everyone for every single post! If you end up writing something shorter for the time being, that's totally cool. If you want any clarification about what's going on or something about the setting for an idea you've got, then just let me know and I'll give you the information you want.

The Cannibal

Hazel stared at the weapons on the table with wide eyes.

"I seriously don't know how to use any of these." She grabbed the shotgun and a crossbow trying to tell which felt better. "I'll decide upstairs." She grabbed the quiver, slung it over her shoulder, and stuffed her pockets with ammunition. She was glad her she had boots. She was getting cold.

"Oh! The fire! The Tartok might try to smoke us out if we leave it burning." Without waiting for an answer, Hazel dashed away, running for the kitchen. She didn't want to waste time on the sink just in case the pipes were frozen, and she went to the fridge to grab bottled water and anything else she could splash on the fire to put it out. She regretted building it up so much now.

Stillwater Vale Asylum

Nancy sighed as Xander walked away. She hadn't had a date in a very long time, not since well before her Grandfather passed away. It figured the first guy to catch her attention would be severely off limits.

Denying any chance that she had a crush developing, she turned her full attention back to the next ones in line, trying to process through them as quickly as she could.

"Hi."

"Good morning."

"Swallow all the pills then open your mouth please."

"ALL the pills."

"Thank you."

"Please lift your tongue. Yes, I saw you hide them."

"No, you can't have seconds."

"Yes, we nurses answer to the imperialist doctors, now take your medication."

"It's good to see you, too."

"Still not sleeping? I'll let the doctor know."

"You are not allowed to walk away until you take your medication."

"Yes. The yellow ones taste like lemon."

"No, I don't know if they're organic."

She flipped through the binder as quickly as she could, matching the faces and names to the names written on the paper cups. There HAD to be a better system, but while she was swamped with getting the pills passed out she could not spare a thought for how to improve it. She looked at the guard who came up to assist gratefully. When there was a guard there, simply standing next to the window with the patients, it always went a little smoother. She still didn't know the guards names. She barely knew the names and faces of the patients she dealt with regularly, much less people she only saw randomly every couple of days.

Stillwater Vale Asylum

After seeing him swallow the pills, Nancy slipped him the pill cup full of jellybeans.

"I'm not sure when we would be able to do that. I've not seen a lot of opportunities for it, anyway. Why, have you got some tricks hidden up your sleeve?" She eyed him, never able to tell when a patient was just joking around or partially serious about leaving before their treatment was done. And Xander worried her a little. Not because of anything he did, but because to her he seemed so... normal. She could easily imagine him out and about at the grocery store, at the gym, maybe at a nightclub... She honestly had no idea why he was there. The pills he was supposed to take indicated something about anxiety, maybe? Or maybe because of the combination hallucinations? Pharmaceuticals had always been the area of nursing she was worst at. She could sort pills, identify, all of that, but knowing exactly what the pills were for and how they combined, well, those tests she hadn't done quite as well on as others. So she really had no idea what they were supposed to treat.

In fact, everyone here for the most part seemed extremely high functioning. Her internship had gained her experience with people who could barely walk on their own, who sometimes needed help even being fed. This place was totally different.

Nancy decided Xander was joking. She didn't want to report his statement and get him into trouble.

"Maybe once we do, I can show you my favorite Indian restaurant."

The Cannibal

Hazel's hearing slowly came back as the conversation went on. Somewhere around "It only hunts at night."

She listened as her hearing came back fully. She highly doubted any story Mark could come up with would keep his family away from this place.

"The door to the outside is broken up. There's nothing saying it's not back outside already." She informed them, unsure if Haley had mentioned the door being destroyed while her ears were still ringing. "And I don't know how to use any of these."

"I think the police should still be called, that way they get here as soon as possible. Shouldn't this thing be recorded however possible? All the sightings and attacks and stuff? Anyway, at the very least we should tell them that Paulie is out there somewhere so we aren't held accountable for his death later on." Hazel pulled her phone out to dial the police. "Is it still 911 out here?"

The Cannibal

Hazel screamed when the gun went off, when the Tartok had rushed back at them, when Amos had grabbed her and Haley, when she had been thrown up the stairs, when she had been tossed to the ground. Or maybe it was just one long scream. She wasn't sure, she couldn't hear it.

She huddled on the floor, clutching the leather cord attached to the eagle so hard that it was starting to leave a hard across her knuckles. Somehow she hadn't let go of Haley's wrist. In fact, somewhere along the way, her other arm had gotten wrapped around Haley, and she had remained that way even after being thrown to the ground.

"Are you ok?" She asked Haley, the high pitched tone drowning out her own voice. She didn't realize how hard she was shaking or that she was still yelling at the top of her lungs.