Chapter Text
Death was… fucking weird.
Time didn’t exist here or—when it did, it existed in some slow, viscous way.
Like syrup running over Amanda's chilled skin. She could feel it slinking through her ghostly form, clinging to her bones like a damp fog.
No windows, no light, no real markers that could help her figure it out either—just the constant, sticky weight of what had once been her life, leaking through her and mingling with the slow dispersal of moments in that fucking meat factory.
But Amanda was stubborn. She always had been, and even death didn’t seem able to strip that away from her. So, she kept track.
Every phantom heartbeat, every shallow inhale, and every sharp, faltering exhale was catalogued in her mind. She remembered, vaguely, that her pulse had run fast, and she tried, for a while, to use that reminder to keep track of the seconds. Each tick of her fluttering pulse, another second.
But… fuck.
Weeks—months—she didn’t know. Time had stretched bad, thick and molasses-slow. And in that endless, mawkish fog, there had come a point where her chest refused to rise, her pulse a barely-there whisper under her skin, until, eventually, it had disappeared completely.
When that happened, she stopped trying to make sense of the time passing. Instead, Amanda—ever the fucking joy—took to watching herself rot.
Her body… or what was left of it, at least, was unravelling. Skin sunken, softening, damp with decay. Hollow sockets where her eyes had been darted, flinched, and shifted as if still alive. Each wet pop, each gurgle of rotting flesh, made her shiver in a way that felt almost electric—like she was part of it and apart from it all at once.
She watched as her ghostly breaths came out stunted and pathetic as her skin turned hollow and mushy and listened with a cold, terrible indifference. Her limbs felt more and more detached from herself with every tick of her jaw, with every quiet, slick tear that her corpse intermittently discharged.
God—the sounds it made—the wet, gurgling noises of flesh slinking, slipping off her winding bones and sinew—
Amanda knew she should’ve been scared, should have been fucking petrified at the prospect of losing yet another thing that tethered her to her life, but—instead—her mind flashed to Lynn, to the idea that it could’ve, once upon a time, been her rotting in this factory, body thick with decomp, and suddenly Amanda’s chest was heaving, ghostly hands dropping to her knees as she doubled over.
Something had wrapped itself around her emptied arteries, squeezing and twisting until Amanda was throwing up lumps of something dark and gummy, congealing over her hands and wrists from where it had stuck to her, rising from her throat in a gooey froth before Amanda could even acknowledge the convulsing in her diaphragm or the familiar, acidic burn that laced the back of her mouth. It was a dark, tar-like bile that rose from her throat, sticky and molten. It was all she had left now—and the tar… the tar stuck, as if it were her last tether to some semblance of corporeal existence. Just… fucking taunting her.
Her eyes prickled, but the hot, streaming trails of tears never came; she didn't even think her eyes watered, and still, there was that familiar cotton-stuffed feeling in the back of her head that always came when she couldn’t stop them.
She could have analysed it. Could have tried to understand why the thought of Lynn made her rot-body hum with that inky, bile-like ichor, why her spectral form clawed toward the woman, demanding, craving, almost... possessive.
But Amanda didn’t want understanding. She just—fucking—wanted.
The thought made her chest—what remained of it—ache. Not in memory of life, not in mourning, not in longing. But in hunger. Cold, sharp, gaping hunger that wanted to slither through Lynn’s skin, through her pulse, her warmth, her breath.
Every thought of the doctor made Amanda’s body shudder, tremble, and twitch toward her memory like a parasite sensing its host.
Still.
Amanda drifted, sometimes, letting herself dissolve into the fog of nonexistence, letting the bright void bite and gnaw at her bones.
But the thought of Lynn—the heat she radiated—pulled Amanda back. Again and again, she returned, a ghost tethered by craving, by obsession, by a need that was neither rational nor moral, but fuck. When had Amanda ever been either of those things? She had tried to turn a new leaf, tried to live for something better than herself—not that she'd succeeded, but fuck trying again.
And Amanda could have tried to figure out why exactly that was, could have tried to pluck at the bloated remains of her brain and try and unravel what was happening to her, but…
It felt…
Stupid? Pointless?
Figuring it out, Amanda thought, would imply that there was something more going on than what she was currently experiencing, and that—Amanda seriously doubted that. This was it. She was dead.
This wasn’t a game she could trick herself out of believing—she was gone, and the longer she sat here with her dick in her hands, desperately clinging to the last remaining wisps of air in her lungs and the ichorous grime spilling from her throat, the more she felt her care, her should-have-been-anger, slip away from her, and sometimes, she caught herself. Never truly in the meat factory, just a drifting weight, neither rising nor falling.
Amanda didn’t see why she should have fought against it, that slow, simmering dispersal of self that threatened to tug too hard, too much at her fractured mind with every passing moment. She let herself stay gone, dipping her psyche into the fugue where everything went impossibly bright and dark at the same time, light biting, gnawing at her bones while darkness swept her mind off, unwilling to let the tar lift.
Amanda came back, though, sometimes.
Came to with a thunderous, shattering gasp that broke something inside her chest the first couple of times. But the longer she let herself drift, the more frequently she let her head fall under, and the easier it came. With every plunge into oblivion, she felt less of the anger that followed her in life, usually so gripping. The less desperate she was to keep it with her—willing, for the first time in her life, to let it go.
Until—
Her ghostly limbs twitched, her mind coming to an abrupt, tittering revival. A faint hum of vibration ran through the factory floor, unnoticed at first, brushing against the tips of Amanda’s fingers, body long since slumped back into her corporeal form as she drifted.
Amanda gasped, fingers curling and clutching at stale air as heat flickered across her hollowed chest, twisting through like a blade. Something real was pushing against her fog, tugging her away from the dark, swallowing waters. She could feel it.
—Heavy, metal doors shrieked open.
The warmth surged, flooding her senses in a shock so immediate, so violent, she flinched, muscles twitching erratically against nothing. Her chest hit a staccato rhythm, air rushing in like a living thing, like someone had pumped an electric current through her very fucking sinew.
It only intensified, dousing Amanda when she realised that she had come back.
Lynn Denlon had struck a match when she first walked into this rotting place, but when she came back? The flickering, emboldening fucker landed right on Amanda, and suddenly she was there. Falling back into her own head, heady waves of molten life teasing the epidermis of her ghostly skin. Her chest heaved a habitually heavy and thick mouthful of air at the sight of her, and Amanda ached.
Her chest hurt, somewhere further even than bone-deep, and Amanda didn’t know what to make of the feeling—she hadn’t felt anything in so long that she almost didn’t recognise the hurt for what it was.
Amanda had been craving to see Lynn again, even more than she realized because fuck. Fuck, fuck—
Fuck—she had missed the woman so much, she was frozen in place. She had missed the heat emanating from Lynn with a selfish, wolfish fucking need and had missed Lynn so intensely that she wanted to whine or cry or maybe kill the woman as her limbs jerked into motion, lunging herself at the other woman like a starved animal.
And it felt right. Like pouncing on Lynn Denlon in this twisted fucking meat factory was right where she belonged. Which wasn’t right, not at all. Lynn wasn’t supposed to be here again, wasn’t supposed to be here ever. And Amanda—Amanda had felt the draw of leaving, of being free of this place herself, and—
Amanda liked the heat, the warmth filling her empty insides, running down her throat as she buried her nose in the crook of Lynn’s neck, inhaling deeper than physically possible—and she—
She even liked Lynn, and fuck.
Dead, and Amanda still couldn’t shake the woman out of her skin. Still stuck on her like some pathetic mutt. She wanted to spit the thought out, tear it out of her skull, but it clung there—rotting, festering. Amanda had known before she died that something was there. Something… wrong with her feelings toward the woman, not quite right for what their relationship had been.
Her grip on Lynn faltered, her torso jerking as the thought of that truth hit her.
And yet…
...
Amanda could've grinned.
Lynn was here.
Amanda had always been one to tear into her gifts, blunt nails ripping through cheap party paper and ripping at the seams of cardboard boxes. She couldn’t do that now—no longer equipped with the right plane of existence, but fuck—Amanda wasn’t going to let Lynn go again. Doesn’t think she would survive being without her, being left untethered like that again.
So.
Amanda latched on to the woman, soaking in that disruptive, tantalising heat that she radiated without even trying. Amanda’s hands skirted over Lynn’s shoulders, fingers digging into the worn fabric, and she was hit with a hunger so invasive, so strong—
Amanda closed her eyes, desperate to keep a hold of the woman. She moved behind Lynn, pale, trembling fingers clawing at Lynn’s shirt as she let her head drop, leaning against the woman’s back, blocking the sight that Lynn had situated herself in front of.
Because Lynn had moved into the room with a purpose, Amanda realised, striding in with a single-minded focus that had led her straight to—
John.
John’s bed. No—not his. He didn’t get to die in the familiar warmth of his bed, and in some twisted way, that was on her. But—
Amanda swallowed down a clump of heat, moving her head to rest against Lynn’s shoulder.
The woman was planning something; Amanda could feel it. As tangible as if someone had stuck a needle in her brain and injected the fact directly into her cerebrum.
Even only half aware of Lynn’s plotting, though, Amanda immediately hated it. On principle, maybe.
Whatever Lynn was planning on doing—whatever idea had planted itself in the doctor's newly fucked-up mind—courtesy of her's truly, Amanda briefly thought, with a sick sort of satisfaction—Amanda hated that it involved John somehow.
Hated that Lynn had any sort of thoughts whatsoever about him while having spared barely a fucking glance at Amanda’s rotting corpse, and it was that thought that had Amanda growling, a low, rumbling sound that she absolutely revelled in when it came out audible, even as it seemed to sap the heat straight out of her core.
But Amanda barely noticed, barely cared as she heard it. Like someone scratching at an old, matted carpet under water, distant and vague, it could’ve been mistaken for anything, really, but it was Amanda, and that—warmth licked at her insides as Lynn shuddered, one or maybe both of the actions refilling the cold cavity that had formed.
Lynn, whose chest heaved, drew in a deeper, fuller breath of stale, decrepit air as her hands rubbed at her arms, goosebumps rising as she tried warming herself. Amanda’s hungry eyes tracked the movement, fingers instinctively wrapping around Lynn’s arms to mirror her touch.
Lynn shivered again.
Amanda was starving for her to do it again. A third time. And then another. Amanda wanted to drown in the sensation of Lynn feeling her.
She wrapped herself fully around Lynn, shuddering when the woman made a sweet, pained little noise. So entirely consumed—both by avoiding John and by the fire Lynn licked into her—it took Amanda a long while to notice what exactly Lynn’s plan was, too lost in the wracking physical sensations.
But hearing the soft, sudden snap of latex, Amanda stilled.
Lynn had brought gloves?
She tugged them on with a sharp, clinical precision, fingers flexing beneath the pale blue material, testing the fit. A mask came next, one of those cheap painter’s ones; the elastic straps pulled tight over her dark hair until it sat flush against her skin. Amanda stared as the woman twisted her hair up into a bun, baring the sharp line of her neck, and was harshly distracted by the sight.
Amanda couldn't smell anything anymore, save for the few lingering moments where her nostrils flared with the sudden, almost distant scent of death and rust. It overpowered her, even far away and ghostly as it was, and Amanda had had time to get used to it, inhaling the sharp, milky scent of decay for however many weeks she had been left to rot here. There was something bitterly nerve-jerking, then, as Lynn looked prepared to do the same.
It was on instinct, really, the way Amanda’s body winced and deflated, arms jumping away from Lynn as if she had been burnt when the woman moved to touch him. To touch John. Heat flooded her chest, flushed and anguished, and Amanda had never felt more willing to drop to her knees and fucking cry at a sight. Deft fingers moving softly over the yellowing, greasy bridge of his nose, caked, days-old blood flaking off as Lynn moved on, hands moving off of his face entirely.
And Amanda would do a lot of things to keep feeding off the life pulsing out of Lynn in waves, but this?
Her ghostly hands shot out before her brain could stop them, a reflex, a desperate shove at Lynn—anything to keep her from touching him.
But—obviously, nothing.
Her arms passed through empty air, futile, weightless, ghostly. Panic coiled in her chest, tight and white-hot, clawing down her throat, biting at her jaw. She growled, low and guttural, the sound hollow and thin, this time, still somehow, damningly satisfying, feeding the tiny flicker of herself that still felt alive.
Amanda hadn’t been able to even look at the man’s dead body, not once. She couldn’t stomach the thought of it, even in her floatiest, most-detached moments. So when Lynn left the room in a staunch hurry, taking the pool of warmth with her, Amanda didn’t think to stir when she came back in a few beats later, holding a neatly folded black tarp under her arm as yellowing plastic flaps warbled behind her.
Amanda let herself watch, her corpse filling the empty space around her as she forced herself away from the doctor, letting herself drop unceremoniously into the place her real body sat, unmoving.
Lynn paused, fingers flexing over its folds like she was rehearsing something. Amanda’s stomach tightened, a needy, addicted part of her clawing to return to the doctor, desperate to smooth over the sharp lines of her forehead and pull out more of these washing, heady waves of emotion flooding out of her. Partially, Amanda wanted to stop her. Wanted to hit, to bite, to force Lynn away from him. But Amanda wasn't stupid, she knew that every push would've just dissolved into air, every snarl doomed to vanish into silence. But even in futility, she growled, rocking herself back and forth, fists curling and clenching at empty space, low, keening noises ripping from her throat as the reality of helplessness clawed at her.
And still… she sensed it.
That gnawing hunger around her, the longer Lynn worked, moving and shifting John’s body—Amanda tried desperately to ignore the soft hisses and pops of the decay working its way through him, the slick sounds of his joints and ligaments, slippery and festered from weeks of deterioration—Amanda wasn’t the only one on the verge of spiralling. She could feel it pulsing off of Lynn in devouring waves, leaving the older woman shaking and trembling, something sharp and demanding being pulled from her the more anxious she felt, and Amanda…
Amanda breathed it in. Inhaled sharply through her bloodied and crusted sinuses, unable to stop herself from taking all that Lynn was pouring out of her. Amanda’s body trembled, lungs shaking and quivering, and she could swear—she—
Amanda could hear her breath rattling out of her, the quiet, shaken hum as she drew in a sharp, unfamiliar breath as Lynn pulled the now full tarp towards the yellowing flaps of plastic.
Amanda startled at the change. John's bed sat empty.
Each careful adjustment of the tarp pulsed through Amanda like an electric current, her body absorbing the feeling of Lynn’s muscles straining, the pulse of her effort echoing through Amanda like a second heartbeat.
A moment.
And then Lynn was groaning, dropping the top end of the tarp down, and Amanda felt her chest buckle with the intensity of emotion she felt as John’s soft, decomposed body hit the floor with a sickening, creaking thump.
Amanda wanted to pull herself closer to Lynn, sap more of that warming, addictive anxiety that she had been offering, but she was too close to John, so overwhelmed by him and what she was doing that even Amanda felt the need to draw back.
Still...
When Lynn let her eyes run over Amanda’s corpse, softening; those dark, muddy pools swirling into something wet and droopy; Amanda—
Amanda had never felt more wanted or more seen in her entire life.
And then… they were gone.
For a long moment, Amanda was frozen. Trembling, pulsating with stolen warmth, unable to even blink. The heat she had been feeding on was still there, ruminating even after Lynn had sniffled and started pulling the John-filled tarp out of the room.
It took a while for the warmth to fully flicker out of Amanda, but she could hardly find it in herself to care. Not when John was gone.
Gone—and Amanda had wasted the last offered bits of time she had with him in avoidance. She couldn’t face what she had caused, not even in death, and she knew that it would haunt her for as long as she was herself.
Amanda let herself float back into her corpse, limbs melting, skin cold and pitted, Lynn gone and the hollow echo of her body swallowing her now in her absence. Amanda, left alone now with the faint pulse of stolen warmth, realised death here wasn’t a sort of stillness—it was a ravenous waiting—weightless drifting between everything she had lost and everything she still wanted.
The thought bit at her, nipping at her insides, a sharp, bitter reminder of what exactly that was.
As the last remaining bits of pulsing, alive warmth trickled out of her limbs, leaving behind a vacant, emptied ache, Amanda knew that she wouldn’t let Lynn go again.
Not now, not ever—not if it meant Amanda could feel alive like that again, not if it meant that she wouldn’t have to keep waiting for the woman to return, to sate that devouring hunger in her that demanded Lynn fucking Denlon—and not a single thing more.
And when the silence stretched too long, she acknowledged that the next time Lynn appeared—and she would, Amanda was painfully sure of that—Amanda's next move would have to be more than just watching.