Heartthrob

It wasn't the EKG machine, but something did break. Something worrying; something all too important to simply ignore. Something that threw Esper James face-first into the machine before her, that plasticine barrier of the treadmill's forward expanse ramming straight into her. Or, rather, she into it. It didn't matter, in the end - and she hardly had the wherewithal to make sense of it, at first.

An explosion of a new type, now. Stars whirled by Esper James's head in a cosmic blur, her conscious thought the center of its own galaxy, countless celestial bodies blanketing her vision. She could feel a wetness on her face - she could see nothing but the dark grey of processed dinosaurs and the bones of the earth. And, after a moment of collection, that astral abyss of gleaming, grease-toned blood. These things were her only perceptions, sound long since thrown away, disregarded with a religiosity to border on the fanatic. What good was hearing, anyways?

And then, the pain. She tried to breathe in through her nose, to gasp as one does, sucking in air to stabilize her body if not her mind - though her lungs instead drank blood, and that blood was not so sweet as it often seemed to be. The stinging, bleeding, catastrophic thing that had become her face as it had buried itself into the machine was wracked with an agony that was delayed, but not diminished.

Only one thought, then. 'I'm bleeding'. She spoke it moments after she said it, tone untinged with suffering, but wallowing in a pool of disbelief. She was bleeding. Why was she bleeding? What had happened? She had been running - she had been running, but now, her brain having slammed hard enough into its protective casing to concuss a peanut, she couldn't seem to really remember why she had been running. Where was she? What was going on? Where was Judas?

Judas. Judas would know what to do... Any time Esper James bled, it was always Judas's fault - but any time she got fixed, it was Judas's fault, too. That's what she had been told, anyways. If she... If she could just find her owner boss, she would know what to do. How to help. How to make the pain go away... With pills, maybe? Esper James had taken so many pills in her life. They always seemed to help, somehow.

She blinked; now, she was sitting. Something black, and kinda rubbery but not really, sat limp and unattended beneath her. God, her face fucking hurt, didn't it? EJ's tongue drifted the flats of her oral orifice, tasting teeth that were unsocketed and sitting free; tasting shards of plastic that were buried in her flesh, piercing her lips and cheeks, and the acrid, ashen blood that made a thickness of it all. It was like the world's worst tasting pudding, really, bitter as licking a freshly-used fire pit, and grainy. God, it was fucking grainy. Where was Judas, again?

Sound slowly faded in, like the start of a hot new single made for radio. People were yelling, maybe behind her? Metal spun, whirred, ground, clicked... It was an awful din, wasn't it? EJ wished, absently, that she had some kind of ear plugs in. Maybe some Tsang Airwaves... They always looked so cool, on the billboards, on the ads she saw when browsing the internet. Jesus, fuck, her face really hurt, huh?

The ghoul spat her own teeth out, and they landed on her lap. Oh! She was wearing something, some kind of shorts! Comfy. That was pretty nice. Somewhere outside of her hazed perception, she was aware of the way her gums bled and ached, new ivory beginning to form therein. That hurt too, she figured, aware of the pain but not really able to fully process that pain was bad and that she should be concerned about this. That is, until she tried to open her mouth to call for her supervisor.

Opening wide, she noticed that she didn't actually open her mouth at all. Not in the normal way, at least...she could get about an inch of leeway, a singular little O-ring formed by her lips, but nothing so accessible as she needed. She blinked, slow and lazy, like a frog in the rain. Maybe more like a cat - one that looked at its owner, heart full of love and trust, showing that they knew they were safe? EJ thought she was safe. Maybe she was.

Then, her body knit its grey matter back together just enough to realize she was in fucking agony.

A horrible scream erupted from the ghoul as mental faculties slowly returned, enough that she could actually parse what she was seeing, what she was thinking, what she was feeling. Before her sat the treadmill's actual control panel, rendered unusable by the second-living skull that had smashed into it like a cannonball. Below her, the treadmill's spool had failed - she had wanted to break it, hadn't she? She had succeeded. Something gave way, beneath the tread itself, unable to keep up with the drumbeat of her agility: repeated blows from ghoulish hands and feet had set something loose, and at that speed, something loose became a great many things loose.

Her face was full of shrapnel. She only became aware, then, that her right eye was... was unresponsive. She wasn't even sure she could see out of it. It hurt like a bitch, and she could feel blood and tears mixing to make the world's most pain-laden cocktail as they ran as rivers interlaced down her cheeks. She was missing teeth, more teeth than she dared count with her tongue - a tongue that was split, having been the victim of a stray bite during her impact. She was bleeding out fast, and while her body could make more, sure... would it even be fast enough?

Fear, then. Fear above the pain, the smoke above a fire, filling her mind and choking her brain. She continued to howl, as much as she could, as her consciousness brought itself back from the brink of nonexistence. Of course, the control panel of a fucking treadmill wasn't made to withstand the force of that sort of impact - hell, she doubted it could withstand any real abuse, whether from Wayward or second-living alike.

Her hearing returned in full, then, a blessing and a curse. Zofia was... crying? Not sad tears, but the kind of awful wailing that comes at the site of a terrible tragedy. It shocked Esper James enough that she stopped her own expression of pain, halting the next scream of utter, ragged suffering in its tracks. The mother abbess, however, was panicked - and pissed. Not at anyone in particular, it seemed, but in more of a general sense. As Esper James turned to her with that gleam of intelligence having since returned to her eyes, the abbess calmed down... but only just.

"Sister Esper James, can you hear me? Nod once for yes. Don't speak - words are unnecessary." She glared sternly down at the bloodied blonde, pupils flicking to every little scrape and tear and pierce and scratch that she could find. Presumably, there were plenty. EJ nodded once, slowly enough to not jostle her bruised brain any further, though it still put an even fresher ache within her pounding, taut neck.

The abbess sighed, something that bordered on relief but didn't dare overstep its boundaries. She closed her eyes for a few moments, trying to focus, trying to think on what to do next... how to fix this, hopefully. She'd have to know what to do, right? EJ, through the pain that continued to send its countless foul tendrils crackling through her body and mind like lightning, could only hope that the mother abbess would have some kind of plan.

"Alright. Good. Sister Zofia? Go... Go to your room. Get washed up. Take a nap. Just... get the fuck out of here, would you?!" Now it was Zofi's turn to be jarred into silence, the profanity from her superior seeming to shatter whatever grief she could have been tangling with like it was... well, a treadmill, all things considered. The brown haired girl nodded hastily, giving Esper James one final apologetic glance before rushing from the room, sobbing to herself the whole way. EJ could hear the door to the lab unlock, open, then close and re-lock.

Just the two of them, then. Esper James, the ghoulish girl so far out of her own element, and the mother abbess, a stern and strict woman who seemed every bit the icon of authority she was required to be. EJ's own vocalizations returned, eye(s) locked in a perpetual wince of anguish, her body already beginning to feel light even as the scabs began to form.

It would take hours for this all to heal. Sure, it would feel better as it did... and sure, it would all be done before bedtime tonight... but it was going to be hell, wasn't it? Esper James absently searched, with what vision she could still exert, for the IV stands from earlier in the evening. Morphine sounded... sounded fucking excellent right now, honestly. If she could speak, she would've asked for it, but she didn't want to spit any more blood on the floor and risk the mother abbess getting any angrier. Even in the deepest pits of physical torment, Esper James could only seem to think of staying on others' good sides.

The mother abbess waited until Zofi had been gone for at least ten seconds before dropping to a squat, now only a foot from where Esper James sat like an abandoned plushie. A hand went up from the mother abbess, going to caress EJ's cheek - but stopped just as contact was about to be made, its owner having thought better of the gesture. It would only hurt EJ more, wouldn't it? And the little ghoul was being so good, keeping her sobs down, trying to remain attentive through the torture she was wracked with.

The hand instead raised ever so slightly higher, thumb and forefinger protruding, going to take something gingerly in their grasp. EJ felt a wave of nausea and raw, electrifying pain jolt through her system as the mother abbess made an exploratory pull upon whatever sort of debris had pierced EJ's right eye. Another tug made EJ retch, dry heaving from the nausea and torment of the action, coupled with the wet slurpch-grnnch emanation that came from a few centimeters of movement.

The mother abbess decided that perhaps it would be best to leave it where it was.

"Sister Esper James... I am not mad, not at you. Not at sister Zofia. This was... unprecedented. We had no idea that the... second-living held such capabilities. We didn't know that this would happen. But now, we're faced with a difficult situation..." She sighed, furrowing her brows and squeezing her eyes shut in exasperation. The hand that hadn't just touched the sopping wet shard of machinery in EJ's eye went up to pinch at the bridge of her own nose, the mother abbess drawing a deep breath to accompany it.

She released it in a great huff, one that made what strands of EJ's hair that hadn't been painted with ebony ichor flutter as if in a breeze. "Your people have... phenomenal natural healing capabilities. I am sure you can survive this, and through surviving it, you will learn a lesson in caution. But also, you will suffer, immensely, I am sure. However..."

Another breath in; another breath out. For a woman like the mother abbess to slow her speech to this degree, as if she was dancing around some conclusion so distasteful she dare not utter it, was anything but comforting. EJ felt her right eye attempt to move as she looked to the side, if only to avoid the mother abbess's own eyes - the feeling of aborted motion, prevented through being pinned by a foreign object, nearly sent Esper James back into a dry heave. Instead, she simply wept and cried as quietly as she could. It, unfortunately, wasn't that quiet.

The mother abbess continued, rising up to a stand. Her robes fluttered from the motion, reminiscent of the veil put about a statue before its revelation. "Your people are, again, resilient. Your... subspecies, we'll say. Ghouls. They are quicker to heal themselves than any other, and you've drank blood recently... so it will be even faster, won't it? But... Even still, you will be put through an affliction I would not wish upon my worst enemy. And so, I... I must propose a second path."

She shut her eyes again, gathering up some sort of internal strength. Esper James was even more worried now, frankly - with her mental faculties still working on coming back in full, and the pain in her brain and eye and face and teeth and this and that and the other thing? She couldn't really imagine why the mother abbess was so nervous about whatever she was about to say, but it caused fear to blossom anew for the second time in the last fifteen or so minutes.

"There is a simpler solution, and one that... One that I would not level upon you willingly, not after your willingness to work with us. But, it is for that same compliance that I provide this offer, because... Because otherwise, perhaps I would think it better, safer, to let you suffer through it." She grimaced, looking over to one of the cabinets which lined the wall. She took a few steps towards it, black blooded hand gripping the handle and opening it. The door concealed what was inside, at least to Esper James.

There was a sound, the distinct sound of heavy plastic and polymer against metal, as the mother abbess reached in and took something. From the cabinet's depths she withdrew a sleek black object, streamlined but heavy all at once, modern and iconic and horrible and nightmarish. It was the exact sort of thing Esper James had night terrors about; it was also the exact sort of thing that would, admittedly, speed this whole ordeal along.

The mother abbess pressed the release switch, dropping the handgun's magazine out and into her other palm to be inspected. She set the handgun down, going then to remove the bullets one by one, setting them on the tray which held that half-finished blood bag. The silvered pellet of each potential projectile caught the light, death's heads meant for a true finale for any second-living that may have breached the convent, presumably. Now, though? Their lethal nature wasn't quite so necessary.

"I could kill you. In the... temporary way, you understand. Kill you, condemn your soul to purgatory for as many moments as it takes for the vessel to be renewed, and then... Well, er... We'll figure something out for afterwards." She began to load the empty magazine with new, standard bullets, from a box inside the firearm cabinet.

Esper James was petrified. Paralyzed, absolutely - she couldn't even cry anymore, her body refusing all input. The ghoulette's head felt light now, senses beginning to fade out now, slowly but surely... no longer from concussion, but from blood loss. She knew she didn't have long to make a choice, but if even if she made a choice, what would that choice be? To die, literally die, at the hands of a woman she had only met a few days ago? To trust that the mother abbess wouldn't just burn her or something after she was corpse'd, and be rid of the ghoulette forever?

Or, to live through a sort of torture that even the cruelest inquisitor would consider inhumane? To be forced to sleep, wake, sleep, and wake again, bleeding less each time but still enough to feel her wounds ache and sting and plead for that death she would deny? To sink into that black lake of the reaper's own design, surface anew for long enough to get her bearings, and then drop back below the waves?

The mother abbess finished loading her weapon, turning to regard Esper James once again. She approached, then, with the solemnity of a reluctant executioner. Esper James may not have been her friend, but it still seemed to weigh heavily upon the mother abbess that she may need to put the ghoulish waif upon the chopping block. With another heavy sigh, the question was posed once more, the mother abbess having concentrated the strength required to actually look Esper James in the eye as she asked again.

"Alright, sister Esper Ja-... Sorry. EJ. That's what you prefer, right? EJ. Hold up your left hand to die... Hold up your right hand to be spared, and cling to your pain."

Shakily, so very shakily, EJ lifted an arm. It felt as though the weight of the world was leveled upon that one limb, straining against her at every inch of distance, fighting to keep her from making a choice at all. But, Esper James thought of a song she had once heard, back when she was still truly alive - of a line from it, about making decisions. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. And the choice of apathy would have been far too much for her heart to bear, even despite her current trauma.

Once the ghoul's left arm was fully raised, the mother abbess used her free hand to lower it, gently, back down to the blonde's side. The Wayward matriarch nodded once, curt and stoic, a new resolve forming like concrete in her countenance. She raised the gun up to EJ's forehead, slowly so as not to startle her, though this had the added side effect of giving Esper James plenty of time to worry about what came next.

Of course, they both knew what came next, didn't they? Esper James had seen this plenty of times on TV... Executions of second-living carried out by Easterners, condemning them to that unknowable place beyond the realms of death. A macabre thought formed in Esper James's mind as she waited, teary-eyed and bloody, vision having begun to swim. Even now, even after being able to raise the dead, no one could really agree - or prove, definitively - what came after death.

"Close your eyes, EJ. I... I hear it's like a kiss, sweetheart. I hear it's like greeting an old friend, or a lover... And though your stay with them may not be long, I... I'm sure it will be better than this. Close your eyes, my dear..."

Bang.