Tick: Grazing 1.2
“You really are interesting, Taylor.”
A shock ran through the brunette at the utterance of her name and Julie giggled, the sound a mockery of the joy that it advertised. She let go of the man with her hands, leaving him strung up where he was with her tail as she turned to face Taylor fully. Her other tail receded into her back, disappearing from sight as it returned to wherever it came from. Taylor tensed as the other girl moved and Julie smiled at her fear, seemingly relishing the taste of it.
“Oh I'm sorry, you're not Taylor right now, are you?” Julie looked Taylor up and down, “You've got that mask on, not to mention that costume. It looks good on you. Much better than that big hoodie you're always wearing.”
Julie's tone was teasing, almost friendly. It was like she thought they were just carrying a casual conversation, completely ignoring the fact that she had a man bleeding out behind her. Taylor's jaw clenched as Julie took a step towards her, trying to muster up the courage that brought her out here in the first place only to find it missing.
Julie’s smile widened as she saw Taylor standing there, still as a statue. She took another step towards the girl, “I figured something like this might happen, but not here and definitely not with you. I've had the heroes on my tail for months now. I thought I was being careful.and here you come, stumbling upon me when I'm the most vulnerable. It's almost funny.”
As she drew near Taylor, the tail impaling the man behind him pulled from the wall. It held him aloft by the gaping wound in his stomach, making him cry out in agony and clutch the appendage to alleviate the pressure. Taylor's eyes darted to him and the subtle motion of her head turning clued Julie in as to where her attention had shifted.
“You’re a hero, huh? I don’t know many villains who'd try and save someone from me of all people.” Julie brought the man forward, dangling him in front of her. She lifted a hand, running it along his jaw in a gentle caress, “You're brave. It's too bad you can't be that way when it comes to that little redhead.”
The man's whimper of fear and pain jolted Taylor out of her fearful daze. He was staring at her through the clouds of agony in his eyes, pleading with her to help him.
She called on her swarm and the alley walls came to life with the sound of chittering and buzzing as hundreds of thousands of insects reminded the Ghoul of their presence. Julie glanced around at the blackened walls, and Taylor stepped forward.
“Put him down or they'll attack.” She said as the droning grew louder.
“Do you think you'll still be able to save him?” Julie seemed amused by Taylor's threat, “He's pretty hurt, you know. I don't think a doctor would be able to help him now.”
Taylor didn't think any hospital in the world would be able to help that man, but there was some distant hope that Panacea might be able to save him. And even if she couldn't get him there, Taylor couldn't stomach watching someone be tortured like this.
“Put him down.” She repeated her demand, voice full of confidence she didn't have.
Julie tilted her head, glancing from Taylor to the man she was holding in her grip and back again. Her eyes lit up with a special cruelty as she met Taylor's eyes once more.
“Alright, if you insist.”
Julie’s hand suddenly moved from the man's jaw to his throat, and before Taylor could react, verbally or otherwise, her fingers clenched around the man’s windpipe with the constricting power of a python.
There was a moment in which his throat held but it was only that, a moment. The man's eyes bulged and her scarcely had time to reach up and grab her arm in a feeble attempt to pull her away before, with a sickening crunch, Julie's fingers met one another through the man’s throat as she crushed it completely.
As Taylor stared, Julie pulled her arm away and angled her tail, letting the dying man fall off of it with a dull thud. He gasped and wheezed, a sickening, dull sound that didn't do a thing to actually get oxygen in his lung, and Julie turned away, disregarding him completely in favor of addressing Taylor once again.
“There. I put him down.” Blood dropped from Julie's tail and she collected it in one hand, slurping it up with one long lick. She shivered at the taste and her eyes locked onto Taylor's once more, “Now that we're done, maybe we can talk about this before you do anything you regret.”
Taylor responded to her words by flooding the entire alley and even the street beyond it with her insects, covering the entire world in a black mass of roiling chitin and buzzing wings as she turned and ran in the opposite direction, hoping her swarm would cover her tracks.
As she fled, she could distantly her Julie laughing underneath the droning buzz, distorted by the vibrations in the air. She picked up the pace, running faster than she ever had before in her life and calling upon her swarm to cover her tracks as she fled from the violent monster masquerading as a person.
She ran and ran, ignoring the burning in her legs and lungs as she pushed her body to escape. She called upon her power, creating pockets of insects in alleys and on the streets, places that she could feasibly hide in a pinch to hopefully throw Julie off of her trail. She could still feel the other girl in the alley, but that was rapidly leaving her rang and she didn't know how fast she was. There was no telling whether Julie could catch up to her or not.
She ran far longer than she ever had in her life but eventually, around six blocks away from where she began, exhaustion began to set in. She darted into an alley, flinging herself behind a dumpster and huddling up to it as adrenaline and potent fear coursed through her veins.
She pressed her head against the cool metal, barely feeling it through her hair and the sweat on the back of her scalp as she tried to get her breathing under control. As she heaved, her mind delved into her swarm, searching for any sign that Julie may have followed her.
Nothing. There was nobody on the streets as far as she could tell. When the insects covering Julie left her range, she was still in the alley. Did she… say behind so she could eat that guy?
“I need to get the heroes. Real ones. There's no way I can fight her alone.” She muttered to herself.
The PRT hotline was always available, a twenty-four hour emergency service meant for reporting cape disturbances and things like that. But Taylor didn't have a phone and payphones might as well have not existed in this part of the city. She'd have to find an open business or get people's attention to what was going on.
But wouldn't that put them in danger? The Ghoul had racked up a kill count up there with minor natural disasters, literally hundreds of people dead in only a few years, yet she had never been caught. There was no chance Taylor was the first one to see her while she was feeding, but nobody had ever come forward. There was only really one reason why that could possibly be.
As Taylor debated what to do, a noise further in the alley made her freeze. She stayed still as a statue, hoping that it would just go away and when it didn't, she slowly leaned out from behind the dumpster to get a better look.
There, only a few feet away, rooting around in a fallen trash bag, was a cat. It's tail flicked lazily through the air as it gorged itself on whatever was inside, and the instant relief that Taylor felt was like a cold shower on a hot day
As the cat took notice of her and darted off into the darkness with a hiss, Taylor breathed a silent sigh of relief and returned to leaning against the dumpster, only for her blood to freeze in her veins as she came face-to-face with two glowing red lenses only a few inches away from her.
“Hello there~”
As Taylor screamed and scrambled away, Julie giggled, the sound distorted and wobbly as it pushed through the mask. The girl was hanging by her tails from the fire escape just above Taylor’s head, dangling upside down by two bright blue tendrils as she watched Taylor get to her feet, “You made pretty good time over here. I mean, I know I gave you a headstart and all so I could sneak a few quick bites and hide the body, but you really got some distance! You’ve got a future in this career, I can tell."
Taylor’s bugs flooded the alley, cutting off whatever she was going to say next as the young heroine’s wits returned to her. As Julie disappeared under millions of tiny legs and gripping mandibles, Taylor began to put as much distance between herself and the cannibalistic cape as she possibly could once again.
As she rounded the mouth of another alley, Taylor skidded to a stop and fell in her chest as she saw Julie already standing there, walking out of the darkness like a pale-skinned wraith. The girl’s gait was lackadaisical as she approached Taylor with her hands shoved firmly in her pockets. She wasn’t taking this seriously. If anything, she found it amusing.
“Come on, Taylor, there’s no need for that, right? We’re both friends here. Or well, classmates at least.” The red lenses of Julie’s mask seemed to glow and Taylor could detect a hint of a smile in her words, as if she was actively enjoying hunting Taylor down like some kind of animal.
Taylor’s mind tingled, interposing the figure of this Julie over the slouched, constantly-tired silhouette of the one in her mind. Was this really Julie Henderson? This monster who killed a man in cold blood and enjoyed every second of it couldn’t possibly be the same one that visited the nurse’s office because she showed every possible sign of having narcolepsy.
Julie took another step and was obscured by a cloud of insects, and this time it was more than a mere diversion. Though before Taylor had kept her insects from actually attacking Julie, hesitant to actually hurt someone, even if it was a monster like the girl before her, now she had no such conniptions. She used everything at her disposal, hornets, spiders, horseflies all biting and stinging the girl all over her body.
The assault provoked no reaction from the girl inside of the swarm however. Even as stingers slid into her skin and blood soaked the mandibles of the bugs crawling under her clothes, she didn't move. She just stood there, hands in her pockets, face turned vaguely in Taylor's direction.
And as her insects crawled all over Julie's body, searching for entry points under her mask where they could freely sting her eyes and mouth, Taylor froze before launching herself to the side just in time for a tail to spear through the air where she just was.
She could feel what happened next. In an instant, two more tails burst from Julie's back and launched through the swarm directly at Taylor before she even landed. She dodged the first tail by rolling to the side, but the second slammed into her chest and sent her tumbling across the cold, hard pavement. It knocked the breath out of her but her armor luckily prevented anything from breaking.
As Taylor tried to roll over and get her feet back under her one of Julie's tails slammed into the concrete right by her face. The hardened black spike on the end sank almost a foot straight into the asphalt, spraying her mask with shrapnel and making her flinch before freezing as she felt Julie leave her swarm
“You need to calm down, little bug. I just got to this city; I'd hate to have to move because I killed a rookie hero.” Julie said as she meandered over, keeping Taylor in her sights as the girl stared at the scaled tail mere inches from her face, “That brings said, I'm absolutely willing to. I don't eat very often, so I'm sure you can understand that I get a little cranky when my meal is interrupted. So how about you put the bugs away before this gets ugly?”
Taylor felt through her swarm as Julie stopped behind her, hands still shoved firmly in her pockets as she stared down at the prone girl. Taylor swallowed harshly before doing as she asked, knowing that there was no way she was going to get away again with Julie this close to her.
Her swarm slowly dispersed, skittering into the street and buildings around them or simply flying away. Taylor had a few of the more dangerous ones slide into the panels of her armor and even her hair, hiding them on her body just in case.
“Good girl.” Julie's tails disappeared into her back, sliding into her body like they weren't even there before. She then bent down and picked Taylor up, planting her back on her feet without even a grunt of exertion, “Now since I can't really leave you here since you know my identity, you're coming with me. Me and you are gonna have a nice long chat.”
Her words were filled with a dark promise if Taylor even considered trying to run and, faced with no other choice, the brunette nodded slowly.
Julie led her through the darkened, empty streets towards the more empty part of town, a place of abandoned homes and empty businesses that relied too much on the long-dead shipping industry to keep their lights on. One of these homes, a dilapidated two story house with chipped paint and boarded windows, was where Julie stopped.
Taylor's classmate sidled up along the side of the house and bent down, moving one of the long boards keeping the basement window covered. Light leaked from inside through the dirty glass, which Julie pushed aside before gesturing for Taylor to climb in.
Knowing that she had no choice, Taylor obeyed, getting down on her hands and knees and crawling through the small, dust-covered window. She landed unsteadily inside, finding herself in a small, cluttered basement, and her heart nearly leapt out of her chest as Julie appeared behind her, entering as silently as a ghost.
“Come on. This isn't really the best place for much of anything, don't you agree?” Julie ushered her towards the stairs at the far end of the room and together, they pushed their way through the clutter, making use of the path that has seemingly been made amongst the junk. Whoever lived here were clearly some form of hoarders, but Taylor was actually somewhat glad for it. She already found several useful additions to her swarm.
Though she wasn't sure she'd even get the chance to use it. Where was Julie taking her and more importantly, what did she plan to do with her?
The answer to that question made itself apparent as they crested the top of the stairs and entered a large open living room.
Julie turned around, spreading her arms wide and gesturing all around them, “Welcome to my humble abide. Please kick your feet off at the door and don't check the freezer in the upstairs bathroom.”
Humble was an understatement. The houses on this street had been abandoned for nearly a decade and it definitely showed. The wooden floor was warping and covered in stains, and the wallpaper was peeling in several places, revealing the true color of the plaster underneath. The light in the room wasn't the best, but Taylor could see the room wasn't that dusty. Julie had clearly been living her for a while.
There was a pile of folded clothes in the corner and Taylor couldn't detect anything from them, meaning they were at least relatively clean, and the only furniture in the room was a couch, a desk with a shattered mirror, and an armchair.
The couch had clearly seen the most use, with a blanket and a couple pillows scattered around it and a healthy indent on its cushions, but the desk wasn't far behind. It had one of those hairdresser mannequin heads sitting on it, alongside a brush and a candle burning merrily a small distance away, half-melted wax dripping in the wood.
“Oh shoot, I thought I put that out.” Julie walked over and stared at the candle and the small puddle of wax with something akin to disappointment, “That was a good one too. Oh well.”
Julie reached up and pulled off her mask, tossing it on the desk haphazardly. She then brought a hand up to her hairline, seemingly searching for something, before sighing in annoyance and grabbing a handful of hair, pulling harshly. The full head of silvery hair slid off of her head like pulling off a glove, revealing the dark strands laying underneath.
“That's so much better. That thing is so itchy you wouldn't even believe it.” She sighed, shaking her hair out to let it rest messily on her shoulders. “It’d be a helluva lot easier if I just went bald, but even I have some pride, you know?”
Taylor was silent as she watched Julie carefully place the wig onto the mannequin head, showing far more care with the disguise than she had ever shown that man she killed. Or any of her previous victims, for that matter.
She looked around. This didn't look like the kind of place that would hide one of the most infamous serial killer capes outside of the Slaughterhouse Nine. It was actually relatively tidy other than the ‘bed’.
Taylor's attention returned to Julie as the girl turned to face her, eyes lidded in that familiar way that indicated she was bored or tired. It was what Taylor was used to seeing but after the display earlier that night, she couldn't help but wonder: was it all an act? Was that tired, gloomy girl with the devil-may-care attitude who couldn't even stay awake in class the real Julie? Or was that just the facade that the sadistic, bloodthirsty serial killer donned to fit in with the rest of them?
“I can see your mind working behind your eyes, Taylor.” Julie's words startled her. She looked back at the girl to find her staring at her. “I bet you're wondering what my deal is, right? It's not every day you see someone like me willingly going to school and pretending to be a normal teenage girl.”
Taylor's mind caught on a specific word in that sentence, “So you are just pretending.”
“Who could say. Maybe I just have a split personality. One that likes being bored out of her mind, surrounded by bratty teenagers whose only outlet is bullying another, lonelier teenager.” She smirked as Taylor twitched.
“That's not funny.”
“You’re right, it's not funny. It's just sad. I personally think there's much better ways to relieve stress, but I know my methods aren’t for everyone.” Julie said, wandering over to sit on the couch. She stared at Taylor, her eyes glinting like blades in the dark, “Take a seat, Taylor. We have a lot to talk about.”