>.> Finally posting here.


This is sort of a quickly written independent short that is supposed to lead into RP, if anyone is so inclined. First interaction directed at Queze. However, if no one feels like joining in just disregard this as a snapshot into the life of Exorcist Eraline? Probably will be some typos and awkward syntax and so on.

Also: human reference drawn by the lovely Sleepything.

---



Eraline lights her cigarette before her chest has even stopped heaving. Before the devils have even stopped gnawing at her insides. Her back back pressed against the wall and her legs straight, spread, she shuts her eyes and tightens her lips around the cancer stick while the devils rage in her bloodstream. It hurts, always hurts, like having a new limb attached to her body without anesthesia. So heavy. A thousand pounds heavier than before. But eventually she quiets them down, pushes them deep into that space inside of her reserved for Hell, and when she opens her eyes her eyelashes are sticky, cheeks damp with tears. Damnit. She hates when they make her cry.

The room is in shambles. The sheets are in twisted heap beside the bed, nightstands and lamps overturned, shattered. Broken action figures and picture frames all lie scattered across the rug. And of course, the boy - the ten year old she'd been charged to heal, lying just inches from her feet, gasping and shaking while the rookies who'd "assisted" her this time around wash the dirt and vomit off his cheeks, muttering prayers of deliverance into his ears. They are amateurs. Incompetent fools. Experienced aids would have known how to keep the damage from escalating, how to hold the boy down so that when the devils in him threw him at her Eraline wouldn't have had to choke him to the ground. And this is why I hate working with rookies. Eraline thinks as she watches their shaking hands draw oiled crosses over his forehead, his mouth.

"You did well."

Eraline looks up from her cigarette as Padre Marcos maneuvers his way into the room, a sort of dance that involves stepping over puddles of unidentifiable bodily fluids. He's not wearing his robes tonight. Too heavy, maybe, for a field job like this. Still, it never ceases to amaze her how small he looks without all those layers building him up. In a button down shirt and black slacks, he almost looks like her. She takes a puff of her cigarette and breathes the smoke out from her nostrils, says nothing for a while. Inside the devils are quiet, but moving, reminding her that they're there now, forever. New residents are always hard to get used to.

Padre Marcos takes a seat beside her, back against the wall. The dim light is enough to bring out the shadows in his wrinkles. He looks, for just a moment, far too old. "You had trouble."

She snorts and waves the cigarette in the direction of her "assistants," two pink bottomed teens fresh out of basic training, now struggling to get the boy to sit up so that he won't choke on the puke they can't seem to stop.

"Their fault. Not mine. Tell me, Padre, do I look like a teacher? Do I look like someone who has any use for kids who don't even know what they're doing? Why do you always stick me with these babies?"

He is smiling when she looks at him again, a kind of easy, heard-it-all-before expression that makes her want to let go of her frustration, though she will never admit it.

"You're a better teacher than you think. They're learning from the best, after all." He says, and finally turns his head to look at her. "If it's such a big deal, though, there's still Mercedes."

"No." Eraline says, a tension building in the back of her neck that will soon be threatening as a headache. He knows how she feels about Mercedes working on the field. Why even bring it up? But now she's thinking about the girl with eyes like chocolate mothering the kids back at the orphanage and Eraline's chest aches for the first time since she left a week ago.

She misses her. Them. The kids.

Padre Marcos brushes some fallen ash off her shirt and it's then Eraline realizes she's been holding the cigarette in mid-air with her mouth half open. She frowns and brings the stick between her lips for one last, deep puff before she grinds it into the wall beside her, snuffing it out with a hiss. It makes no difference what the damage is like. The Vatican pays for the repairs anyway.

"The parents? When will you let them back in?"

"When their son is stable." Padre Marcos responds, no longer looking at her. "They're not very strong people. I think it's in their best interests if they stay away for a while."

"Smart." She says, reaching for her crucifix.

The green crystals are heavy with the weight of a difficult job well done. Like her, it exists possessed by things that are waiting for the right moment to undo it. Someday, both she and it will shatter into a thousand pieces at Hell's gate and the things inside of her will pick up the pieces. Will sweep her past the gates into her home. Sooner, probably, than later. She is already experiencing minor ticks. Sometimes she hears the devils in her whispering things she can't understand, yet. Too low, to far away to fully grasp. But someday....someday she will be able to understand them clearly. Someday they won't be whispering. They will be screaming, chewing at her mind until her time has come.

Damnit.

The moments a successful exorcism are always the darkest.

"I received a call from someone down in New Orleans, Eraline. They said they've been having issues down there. Monsters. Creatures of the darkness."

"Oh, Padre, no." Receiving calls always means she's about to be shipped off for another job. Frustrated, she knocks the back of her head against the wall and leaves it there for a while, eyes squeezed shut, the headache finally blossoming across the right of her forehead. "Monsters are Herla's job. Not mine. I handle Hell. I haven't been home in a week. Haven't seen the kids..."

"They're not just monsters, from what I understand. Should be right up your alley." Eraline doesn't have to see him to feel him watching her again. His eyes are hot and blessed with the light of God. She feels it like a carress against her cheeks. "I know you're tired, but you must remember, you're doing God's work. You've been blessed, Eraline, and you know why you were placed on this earth. Most mortals go their whole lives without ever knowing."

He is right. Guilt stirs in her chest where only moments ago thoughts of Mercedes and the orphans had occupied it. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to whine. It's just that...most days this feels like a curse, rather than a blessing. You know, devouring Hell burns a little."

She opens her eyes just enough to peer at him from the corner of her eye. He is no longer smiling; there's a sadness in his eyes that makes her feel all the more tired. He had once told her that he had never gotten attached to a Blessed Vessel before. Until her. She wonders if he thinks about the day God will cast a shadow over her time on earth. Will he miss her? He had always been like a father to her.

Eraline keeps these thoughts to herself, sighing, and finally fishes for her phone beneath her thigh where it had fallen during the come-down.

"What are you doing?" Padre Madre Marcos asks. He sounds as tired as she feels.

"I'm going to get in touch with Queze. He has a place down there - a meat shop, or something. Sometimes he has room for guests." Eraline tabs through her contacts deliberately slowly, wanting to prolong the moment. "You know. I've always liked Queze. He's different from the others. Really likes to get dirty, isn't afraid of using his hands. He's nothing like 'Tall, Pale and Silent' and 'Madame Boobs.' Gun junkies. Too impersonal."

"That you even have a preference worries me."

"I'm sorry. It's hard not to develope a taste for certain things when you've done it your whole life. Here it is."

To: Queze

Hey Meatwhacker.
I heard there's been some trouble down there.
I'm going to be in town for a few days.
Need a place to stay that won't have me arrested when I come back covered in guts.
Got a warm carcass to spare? I have money.

God bless.

She runs her thumb over the screen, watches the words disappear into cybernetic space. Their absence means her time to rest is up. Exhaling deeply, Eraline pushes herself to her feet, bracing herself against the wall for balance. The cigarette helped some, but she is still feeling shakey in the knees. The rookies have finally calmed the boy down. They're getting him naked to clean the piss and blood off him. It reminds her of her own filth and suddenly she smells it on herself. His vomit, blood, the incense, her sweat. And somewhere, beneath all that, sulfur. The smell of Hell.

"Alright, Padre. If you don't mind, I'm going to get this stink off me. Will you be up for a while? I want to confess before I leave."

"Find me in the cathedral down the street. I'm holding a 5 a.m. mass there."

"Alright." Eraline pauses at the door to glance back at the boy whom she's just saved by consuming his evils and wonders what could be worse in New Orleans than what she's looking at right now.

Best not to think about it, maybe.

So she shakes her head, pushes on, her heels clicking against the hardwood floors, her blouse torn at the collar and hem where it's come untucked from her skirt. She'll have to buy new clothes before she heads down to New Orleans.

:>

I thought you would enjoy that.

Apel - respond in pictures if the words don't come.

((Your writing is amazing Cassie, you’re a tough act to follow! And Apel, I’d love to see either Ephiré RPed, alternate or otherwise! ))

((Mature warning on this for blood and ickyness and some language.))

It was all over her. Vampire gore. She wiped a hand across her face, flinging the offending goop onto thedirt floor where it splattered into…more goop. Thankfully she hadn’t gotten any of it in her mouth. Good. Not that it would harm her, but who wanted that crap in their mouth? Yuck. Her boots made a sickening sucking noise when she took a step. Her armor was coated in a slime of blood, tissue and bits of bone. That smelled like a 10 day old carcass left to rot out in the Louisiana sun. Wretched. But it was ‘dead’ now. Vaporized by a close range shotgun blast to the head. Well the whole upper torso really. And now it was all over the walls and her. She prodded the thing’s hip, it didn’t move. Stakes worked. Plunge one through the heart. Then cut off the head. That would kill them. Certainly with more finesse as well. She had stakes, they were tucked away in multiple locations about her body armor for quick retrieval, but the shotgun worked just as well too. And it kept her out of their reach. Dead was dead.

Too bad it made a horrible mess. She grimaced. The thing had gotten a jump on her. Sloppy. She was tired. Reflexes weren’t what they should have been. Forty-eight hours on the floor of the emergency room, then an hour on her bike to ride out to this god forsaken shack in the middle of the swamp. Urgent they’d said, no time to waste. The thing had made several kills, the Vatican wanted it cleaned out ASAP. Before it attracted any official attention. No time for sleeping. She rubbed her eyes with her mostly clean hand and sighed.

Any slower and she’d be dead. But despite her fatigue she was still fast, nearly supernaturally so. It was one of the things that made her a Slayer. Chosen by God or so they told her, to do this work. She wasn’t as fast as a vampire though. Her quickness, coupled with her martial arts and weapons training barely allowed her to survive against them. The shot gun did the rest.

Now she wanted a bath.

First thing was first though. Leaning down closer to the putrid corpse., she pulled out a vial of holy water. Splashing this about the remains, she chanted in Latin, letting the words spill out song-like in a soft, barely heard whisper. Beseeching God to keep this undead thing truly dead. Next she pulled out a small crucifix, touching it to her lips before laying it in the remains. She didn’t know if it made a difference or not but she wasn’t taking any chances with it. Protocol.

Standing, she looked around. This place would need to be incinerated. Pulling out her phone, she made the appropriate calls.

Then she looked down at herself and grimaced again. Vampire gore in every crevice of her leather armor. In her hair. She could feel it drying on her face. And she didn’t have a change. Damn. More sloppiness. Stepping out into the hot, humid night, she stripped, removing her armor and packing it away on her bike, the smell of the swamp a bit more pleasant than rotten vampire meat. So she climbed on her bike in scanty under garments. Lacy, black undergarments. Nobody would much notice in the city, she thought with a chuckle. Her blood encrusted face and hair might attract attention though, she relied on the cover of night to veil that.

She needed to get cleaned up. Pulling out the phone again, she shot a quick text to Queze: I need a shower. Be there in 60 min. Food would be nice. She laughed at that. Yeah, sure. He’ll have a warm meal waiting. She could hope? Casting one more look at the dilapidated shack, she started the bike and roared down the road, over grown with tree roots, Spanish moss draping from the overhanging branches. Back to the city. And a hot shower.


((Oh, Tera, you ninja'd me. Oh well, I think it still meshes okay XD ))

The ride through the dark New Orleans streets went surprisingly without incident. Really she’d garnered hardly a look. Stopping to check her phone at a traffic light, she read Queze’s text and grunted. Fine. She called for a pizza. It would be hot and it would be food. It was all that mattered right then. Her home was another hour away. She wanted a shower and food NOW. Pulling her bike around the back of Queze’s butcher shop, she dismounted, her boots with rocks imbedded in the treads, grinding into the asphalt as she stepped up to the back door. And stared blankly at it for a second. Keys. She looked down at her black undergarment clad self. Nope, no keys hidden here. She sighed and returned to her bike, bent over inelegantly, rummaging around. “Bloody hell, I’m too tired for this,” she muttered to herself. At least she wasn’t cold, fairly comfortable actually on this hot humid night. She should ride around more often like this, those leathers and armor were killer in the Louisiana heat. She couldn’t find the keys. She cursed beneath her breath.

Still rummaging unsuccessfully for the key, the abrupt sound of a woman’s voice, sent Herla bolt upright, shot gun in hand faster than she could think. To meet a nicely dressed woman in a skirt standing in front of Queze’s door. Eraline. She let out a tense breath along with a laugh. The shotgun was leisurely set to rest upon her shoulder, hand on one hip as she leaned back against her bike a smile on her face.

“O, honey, this is the deep South. The less clothes, the better!” she answered saucily with a wink. A look which probably didn’t come off so much as friendly as it did maniacal with her face smeared in blood and hair matted with gore. Herla wasn’t about to be shamed though. Vanity and pride she held in great measure. The shotgun was put back in its place on her bike. Lack of clothes was a minor inconvenience.

“You look as tired as I feel, dear, did you just get in then?” she asked, a bit more congenially, a hint of southern twang coloring her voice from years of living in the south. “Pizza’s on its way, Queze couldn’t be bothered to cook. Sorry, come all the way down here and the best we have to offer is a greasy pizza. Dontcha worry though, hun, we’ll go out for some proper fried catfish and hurricanes before you leave.” She tried to run a hand through her hair but it snagged in the tangled mass. Her skin itched from the dried blood. Scarlet eyes looked disdainfully at a torn nail. She grimaced. Certainly she’d looked better. Her gaze returned to the respectfully dressed woman, waiting for Queze to let them in. “I get first dibs on the shower. Just saying.”

I don't know if I should try with the "real" Eph or the secret agent Eph; the latter is rather different from how he usually is (and I think I like the real one better).

The real Eph would most likely take a more passive role, I think, but on the other hand I have no idea how he would have become tangled up in this secret agent stuff. :') (and he would also be a little more supernatural being.)

I'll have to think about this, hm. Any opinions?