Thread: A Friend to the Parasite [Bioshock]

Dr. Winston was feeling unwell. It was the noise - he was sure that he would be fine without the noise, but it was pounding into his head in a way that made his vision pulsate and left him sitting with his face in his hands because moving made him feel sick to his stomach - it made his small, glass-encased world spin out of control. He had work to do, didn't they know that? He had work to do, and they just kept making noise, causing a racket just on the other side of the door - he'd lost track of how long it had been since he'd had peace and quiet, it might have been days or weeks, but it seemed like an eternity because they just wouldn't stop, they wouldn't leave him to his work. He had to finish his work people were relying on him to finish it, needed it done faster, needed it done yesterday, but he'd lost his last assistant not so long ago - he had really lost her and he had no idea where she had gone to either. It occurred to him that there used to be other people in the lab too, but they were gone as well, he just couldn't quite remember where they'd gone to, he just knew they were gone - - but that wasn't important, what was important was finishing his work. He just needed some quiet. He just needed a little peace so he could finish up, that was all. If he could have that, then he could get it done it was important after all. As he walked around the stainless steel table, the heel of his boot dragged through a thick, congealing pool of blood and smeared across the otherwise pristine white floor. - Kevin wasn't entirely sure what to do he didn't usually make these sorts of decisions. He hadn't even really made the decision to move to Rapture, he'd just thought it sounded nice and he'd gone because his brother would be there, but he had been a little strange lately and hadn't come around since New Years - that was nearly two weeks ago - and that meant that Kevin would have to decide what to do on his own. He picked his brain for the solution and discovered it wasn't coming easily to him because, really, this wasn't something he'd had to think about before. He'd managed to bar his front door shut using a tea trolley, but the wild thrashing on the other side didn't seem to be dying down it had been happening a lot lately, but they usually gave up after a few minutes - this one had kept on for nearing an hour now, and it was making him think he might actually have to do something about it. Rapture had gone funny lately, and since New Years people had begun to act strangely - it had started off small, reports of violent attacks within the city. It happened sometimes, even in a place like Rapture, but after a day or two the reports had become more frequent until they had stopped coming altogether and now the radio would only play smooth jazz and had stopped giving any news at all. Initially, Kevin had thought this might be a good sign maybe there was just nothing to report, but he became certain something was off around the time people had started trying to knife his door open. They screamed, too not a normal sort of scream either - it was a piercing shriek and usually they were talking, but it was a lot of nonsense and they kept trying to get in. Generally he would just turn up the radio and wait for them to go away like unwanted Jehovah's witnesses, and usually it worked, but this one was very persistant and Kevin was sitting on the floor in front of the tea trolley trying to figure out what he should do about it. He reached up and plucked a stale sugar cookie from the tray above him and quietly chewed on it he didn't want to go out there - that was pretty clear. Of course, he couldn't stay in his living room forever either - eventually he would need to leave. He'd stopped worrying about getting to work he was sure that his excuse was a legitimate one - people were constantly trying to get into his home with sharp things. Not just one person, either, it was all different ones and it was just good carpentry that had kept them out. There was another of those piercing shrieks and the trolley rattled against Kevin's back so hard that he peered over the edge of it and found the end of what appeared to be a glaive sticking through his door, the tip roughly an inch from his own eye. Kevin swallowed the bit of cookie as the blade was wrenched from the other side and pulled back out over the weeks, the door had started to splinter in places, and now there was a sizeable hole that he could see through and out the other side - and he found a bloodshot eye looking back at him through it. Please go away. Kevin whined, leaning against the trolley as the pounding on the door began again, and the eye was gone, so he could only assume the person on the other side was throwing herself against it. Alright, maybe being polite wasn't the solution, I really - um, if you're trying to sell something, this is honestly getting ridiculous. Do you have a manager? I might need to speak to him. He was answered with a series of incoherent shrieks, more pounding the door splintered, Look, you sound like a reasonable person, he lied loudly, trying to make himself heard over the uncontrolled screaming, Can't we just talk this over? In fact, we don't even need to talk - you could just stop trying to knock my door down and go away, and this will be solved. I'll even deal with the damage myself - I can fix it, no problem. Really. The pounding stopped. The noise stopped. Everything stopped except for Kevin's breathing and he stood there for a long moment, stone still, listening for anything - there was nothing. He let out a breath of relief - only slightly too soon, because then there was hammering and the sound of metal on metal. He barely had time to think because the door was suddenly gone, and all that was standing between him and the crazed woman was the flimsy cart and a tray of cookies she was short and squat, middle-aged, dressed in a blood-stained purple frock, and her eyes were rolling around in their sockets without any real purpose. And she was very heavy, Kevin discovered as he tried to keep her away from his throat he didn't want to fight. He didn't want to hurt anyone. She was strong though too strong. He knew he should have been able to hold her off of him physically, but the power she was exerting was tremendous, and he ended up reaching for anything he could get a hold of - which turned out to be a stainless steel serving tray - and cracked her across the head with it until she stopped trying to kill him. And unfortunately, that didn't happen until there was a lot of blood everywhere, and Kevin stood clutching the badly dented tray over his head, ready to strike again if the need arose, but it finally registered that there wasn't much left to hit. Oh god. he said. This was why he didn't usually make decisions.