Babysitting Duty

The one time she decided to sneak behind Alex and do her own thing in bumfuck Dulvey, Louisiana swamps, she ended up getting knocked out in the face by none other than the head of the missing Baker household she's been investigating.

Premium southern hospitality right there.

"Fuck my life," Dana grumbled as she leaned against the metal bars of her makeshift prison. Her right eye wasn't hurting as much and the cut she gained from that sock that could split skin had sealed up. She tried not to ponder on that.

Louisiana sucks. Swamp sucks. Dank cellar beneath dank house surrounded by swamps sucks even more.

Maybe… maybe if she concentrated really hard, she could send a useful telepathic link or something, take advantage of whatever Greene did to her. Dana thought sarcastically to herself as she leaned against her metal cell. She squeezed her eyes shut really tightly and silently scream inside her head.

She waited.

"Nope." She shook her head then snorted and grabbed the round metal bars tightly with her hands, her knuckles white when she slammed and shook them violently. Nothing. "Of course I don't get any benefit," she muttered, rolling her eyes.

She was so screwed.

"You know, I'm not sure if I want to let you out…" She heard a young southern drawl from the girl who was looking at her suspiciously outside her bars. She had her hair short-cropped in a similar style to her own and wore a worn out singlet that was probably long overdue its laundry day.

"And I'm sure to trust a girl who has a psycho for a dad," Dana snarked back, then scowled more to herself.

Cool it, Dana grumbled. That girl was her ticket out of here and playing Miss Mean Bitch wasn't doing any favors.

"Well at least I don't lock up kids inside my car trunk," she snapped. "I can't believe this, I think I should let Lucas have you," she muttered.

Lucas? But what was that bit she said about a kid in the trunk? "What the fuck are you on about?" Dana frowned and leaned against the bars.

"The eight-year-old boy you have holding in the back of your car," the girl reminded angrily. "I'm actually wondering what kind of person would kidnap a kid and bring them out in the middle of fucking nowhere. What were you going to do with him?"

Kid? Kid… Dana paled. "You say he's eight, right?"

Nooooo, it couldn't be. It can't be. This was her ticket out? That little docile pitiful thing that pretty much did nothing, sit around, didn't eat, didn't ask, stares emptily with nothing inside that little head, with the creepiest shit it ever did was follow her head movement and tried to copy her smile when she tried humoring him.

He actually moved and did something on his own?

"Does he have green eyes!" Dana started yelling and shook the metal door. "Green eyes, does he have them?" she demanded.

"Wh- You have a thing for eyes?" The girl blinked at her rapidly, then gave a sharp huff. "I think you would fit better into this crazy family than I have," she muttered, shaking her head.

What! No, no! "That kid… believe it or not, is a stowaway!" Dana snapped and couldn't help grinning.

This was better than being handed a phone with a signal. If he was here… that meant Alex wasn't far behind, maybe she could prod the kid to send a quick message to hurry the fuck up.

"Is this what they all say, oh it's just a little stowaway, officer?" She snorted. "You know what, I shouldn't be wasting my time here. I should be getting that kid away from Evie." She turned around and hurried off.

"Wait!" Dana shouted.

Her footsteps quickly disappeared with a loud heavy slam of a door being bolted.

"I said wait!" Fuck.

Shit, shit… Great move there, Dana. Especially grinning in her face like a maniac. Maybe Alex was rubbing off her too much.

"So what's your name?" said the long-haired little girl as she leaned over him excitedly.

He said nothing, just glared through his bored half-lidded eyes.

"Say something," she said again and poked him roughly at his shoulder.

He decided to be nice and not let her finger melt from that. Though it was a bit disconcerting to find that he was dealing with something else. Usually, when people touch him they tend to shut up and ended up on the floor, pondering their life-choices that led to poking what seemed to be an eight-year-old boy that wanted to do nothing with them.

"C'mon you've been sitting there for an hour, do something!" She sounded angry as if denied of her favorite toy.

She was really, really annoying. Were kids her age this annoying?

"If you tell me your name I will tell my friends to play nice to that woman you were with," she said sweetly and crossed her arms in front of him in waiting.

Friends? He frowned. The whole place stinks. It stinks of rot and infection, a different kind. It was alive and moving, but not sweet. It didn't bring out gentle memories of comfort. It was just plain old rot, and this girl was emanating this strongly.

In some way, she reminded him of the many sisters he had. But she lacked something most of them had that made them tolerable and endearing to watch from afar.

For one they didn't talk.

She? "Maybe I'll show you Mr. Smiley," she said with a contemplative frown.

She made his skin tingle, a feeling he realized he didn't like it as much. A part of him wanted to move away as he sat motionless beside her at the dinner table. There was something wrong with her. Something rancid. It was like a fruit gone bad. The rotten kind where molds were already growing around the hole a worm had eaten through.

The feeling grew stronger when something burped and squelched loudly on the worn wooden floor by their feet, gurgling as a black slime twisted into stiff tendrils, molding into a humanoid form with long claws, pointy grinning teeth, and hollow eyes. Its body riddled, its muscles degenerating as it stood there. They looked stupid. How do they smell, how do they see, how do they hear? Can they do anything, do they just stand and look menacing before melting into a slop on the floor? They look so slow and awkward.

Pariah wasn't impressed one bit, so unimpressed that he felt the profound need to express this since the girl would not take any cue from his lack of speech or unreactive face.

"That's stupid," he said with a raspy voice.

She was annoying. That thing looked stupid. This was stupid, everything was stupid and annoying. He wanted to go back and be part of a couch or wall, or whatever mother's chosen had decided to prop him against, mostly in a wheelchair and in front of the T.V or opened windows where the doves and the lingering carrier birds from the Outbreak would gather. The thought of Zeus chasing down those carrier birds all across Manhattan and even over Hudson River still made him smile even now.

It was a sobering thought to realize mother's chosen got herself into this predicament. She did have something in common with his sisters, and it was their perchance habit of attracting trouble instead of playing smart and listening for once. While his sisters' simple-minded thoughts made it easier for them to be hunted down by mere humans - Blackwatch. Mother's chosen attracted the opposite kind, mostly the pets and children mother left behind.

Especially the big awful one that was tunneling a hive beneath Manhattan.

"I am not some fucking infected Disney princess or some shit!" She had yelled this out of the window when the earthquake had pretty much ruined whatever line connection and powers to the building they were staying at.

It was at least smart enough to realize he was there and went burrowing away to sleep after a directional glare from him.

"You're not scared?" The girl tilted her head at his lackluster reaction.

He remained unmoving from where he sat while her stupid friend made some creaky gurgling noise. Was it wheezing? It was kind of pitiful.

"Oh that's right, Papa Jack did say he found you in the back of that mean woman car. That's bad, right?" she said excitedly. "She locked you up in there, and you don't like her for that."

Oh… hmm, that might have caused misunderstanding. He put himself in there when she wasn't looking. It was dark, small, cozy, and a bit too noisy, smelled of new rubber, but nothing he couldn't sleep through. And all because, Zeus made him promise to watch out for her and even specifically told him to follow if she was going to do something stupid.

She did something stupid. Now what?

"She's my sister."

Not that he was wrong. If mother was alive and here, she would be brimming with joy. Or not. It was hard to tell when she was brain-dead most of the time and if not, distracted by her children and rather play with them.

"Oh, does your family likes to play rough too?" The girl actually brightened.

Depends, does his mother smacking the youngest only brother around as a welcome count? Does committing matricide count? Zeus said he killed mother. He begged to differ, he could hear her inside him. Her repetitive and broken whispering still alive, eternally a part of her child. Or was it a memory of her?

No different to the time where all she did was waiting around, and sometimes he could even hear her from mother's chosen, and only when she dreams deeply in her sleep. Did that mean mother was always a memory?

"I think your sister would like what Lucas put up for her." The little girl giggled.

He then gave a brief cold smile in return. The most common similarity his sisters shared?

None of them played nicely. Hopefully, she would surprise them and actually shut this little girl up, maybe show how stupid her friends are.

So this bald-head jackass in some hoodie getup, who thought he was a funny little twerp, came around, clanging the bars of her cell as he sing-songed, "It's dinner time! Ma and pa want to meet with you formally."

He sniggered to himself like a piece of shit he was.

Dana only curled her nose in distaste.

"I'm actually just fine here and would like only water, thanks," Dana said sarcastically.

He actually grinned and raised a hand as just you wait! gesture, his other hand going behind his back to pull something tucked into the back of his pants. She expected a canister of water but got a fucking gun pointed right back at her. What a surprise.

"No can do," he replied with a lazy smile. "Now we're forgiving folks around here, regardless of the circumstance we found you in. My old folks thought maybe we could get to know you just a bit more - just to explain yourself, you know!" He bared his teeth maliciously, a sneering grin as he added, "Before Eveline is allowed to play with you. Ma disagrees, of course." He rolled his eyes.

"Says she won't have a kid-nap-per." He made a mocking voice as he enunciated. "As part of the family and close to her precious little girl. Says you would snatch her right up and take her away from us." He snorted. "Like how?" He muttered to himself before he focused back on her with that slimy smile of his.

"She only relented when I mentioned I'll be there watching over you guys. Like a babysitter." He grinned. "Just like you were babysittin' that boy in the trunk of your car," he pointed out snidely.

Oh, fuck you. "He was a stowaway!" Dana snapped.

"Yeah, yeah," he drawled. "Now we can do this the easy way, or…" He paused and before she knew it the gun was shot into the right thigh of her legs.

"You motherfucker!" Dana screamed and almost buckled to the floor, she quickly clutched the growing dark red splotch soaking above her knee.

"Or the hard way!" he said loudly over her curse and scream back at him. "Stop overreacting." He rolled his eyes. "If you're lucky, and if Evie really likes you, a bullet in a thigh would be the least of your concern."

He then gestured up a roll of bandages from his pocket. "But I'll make it easy for you if you behave nicely for dinner. I'll even toss in a First Aid kit to you if you do."

"Fuck you!"

"The hard way it is then!" He grinned then pointed the gun at her head.

"Wait!" Dana shouted, her eyes wide as she breathed in quickly and deeply. "I-" She clenched her teeth together, her eyes blinking rapidly against the tears welling up from the pain. Her visions fuzzy and wavering as she glared through the bars of her cell. "I'll go," she breathed this out.

"What?" He turned his head and cupped his hand around his ears, pinky up with the roll of bandage hung loosely around it.

"I said I'll go!" she screamed.

"Oh." He then sniggered before tossing the bandages negligently onto the damp floor. "Hurry up now."

Dana glared and fumed incessantly when she snatched for the bandages. Her hands shaking when she gripped then stilled as she tightened her hold into fists. She focused on the task at hand, pulling her jeans up with a brief frustrated struggle and began rolling the bandages over her bloody thigh, careful to avoid the tender flesh around the bullet hole.

She felt slightly disgusted at having to do this in front of her sneering captor, but it was better than stripping or doing a shitty job while at it. She found with a grimace the bullet didn't completely go through her leg, but she certainly could feel the tear in the muscle and the pain in the bone the bullet had smashed into

"The bullet is still in me," she grated this out.

"So?" He gave a bored expression back.

"I need to get it out," she pointed out with annoyance.

"You can still walk with it."

"With a limp, if that's what you want," Dana snapped.

"Well in some cases it's better to keep the bullet in than out," he said cheerfully.

Fuck this guy, fuck him so much. She snapped her jean back down and covered her leg, tucking her foot carefully back into her boot. With that stupid smile on his face, he unlocked the door of her cell. Metal screeched as he did before he slowly stepped back, gun still pointing up when he gestured the general direction.

Dana followed silently ahead, wincing at each right step she made. They wandered a maze of concrete bricks corridor with him saying the direction out loud seconds ahead of the turn she had to make. Sometimes purposely too late, conveniently saying how he forgot as he made her grit her teeth through the pain in her thigh when she turned around. She wasn't sure she should be comforted at the carelessness of her captor allowing her to memorize the layout. Either he was stupid, or he didn't think she was going to live long enough to escape. They went up the steps with her having to do the grunt work of shoving the heavy door open, an awkward task to do what with her trying to avoid using her injured right leg.

Dana entered into a large opened symmetrical hallway with an interior balcony above bridging across the space. In a sunny day, she could see it had a certain colonial old house charm, but in the damp humid night of Louisiana swamps, it was stifling and had the making of a haunted house. With a stabbing pain in her thigh, Dana could only think the house, its family and occupants can go fuck right off a cliff somehow.

"Huh, Evie isn't here," she heard him commented behind her at the empty dejected couch and seats placed around a circular wooden table with a dimly lit yellow lamp. The group of furniture sat right between the two columns holding up the white balcony above, stained and littered with a careless display of filth with the rug beneath them beyond saving. "Well onward to the kitchen!" He gestured straight ahead at the grand white door beneath the stair opposite to them.

Urgh, she withheld muttering numerous unflattering words about her entire situation she was stuck with. It wasn't a maze of corridors they entered this time, but even from other end of the long narrow corridor, she could hear the sound of stomping and rowdy screeching between two happy hillbillies couples.

"Now you don't go stuffing yourself like that, Jack!" screamed a harpy. "That's for our special guest tonight."

"Oh, Marguerite." Laughed the sound of a goofy, heart-warming family man. "You know our guests never gets to finish them, I might as well get my early start!"

"Don't you dare!"

And the smell, the rancid tang of rot, garbage and something else burning. Dana withheld the urge to vomit as she staggered down the corridor. Oh my God, oh Jesus Christ, her eyes watered as she gagged from the air filled with fuck-know-what. She would kill for a bottle of antiseptic mouthwash down her throat and some Vicks she could inhale right now, anything to get rid of the smell that had lingered in her mouth.

If a gun wasn't going to kill her, then dinner would.

Now was the time to embrace your inner Greene, right now, Dana. She muttered this internally to herself as they turned around the last corner. And where the fuck was that boy? She needed to stay alive long enough for Alex to get here.

They walked in time to see a hag smacking a bearded grizzled old man hard enough to give him a crooked jaw, the food comically spattered onto the wall as she did. The old man just gave a hearty laugh as he corrected his jaw with a loud snap.

What the fuck were these hillbillies, Dana stared before she felt the nudge of a gun digging into her back. She shot an ugly glare back at the shitbag behind her, he just pointed at the empty seat by the dining table with that nasty grin. Her toes curled as she held back a violent shudder when she saw what was on the menu tonight. There was too much squiggle shapes she recognized on there, rotting squiggles shape. A part of her wondered why it had to be the human intestines they seemed to be so fixated.

"Have a seat, have a seat!" said the scraggly-haired lady and gave a familiar toothy grin when she motioned her over.

Dana immediately saw the family resemblance, the nose and cheeks was the dead giveaway, but the grin sealed it. She took her place at the family dinner table, her breathing sharp and rapid with her eyes flicking back and forth for something, anything she could make use of. Not even a single utensil she could see besides the plates of godawful servings.

"No spoon and fork?" she inquired as she breathed through her mouth, but even that didn't help when her chest jerked to heave.

"You have a good pair of hands, and we don't mind getting messy here," said Mrs. Baker cheerfully. "We'd much prefer eating this way."

Haha… she was so fucked. What the fuck happened to these Bakers that made them into these crazy folks.

"C'mon now, dig in!" said the fucker who had socked her lights out and dragged her into this hell - none other than the head of the Bakers, Jack Baker.

Dana gave a twitch of a polite grin. "I'd rather have maggots."

At least maggots can be nutritious if grown right. But she doubted human rotting remains though was the right stuff to grow safe maggots, even if they were burnt and sterilized maggots. Perhaps it was the fact she was breathing through her mouth and had lost some of her obvious acid through it, but to her despair, Marguerite grinned back and quickly snatched for a pot by her husband. She quickly opened it to reveal an overwhelming stench and still-writhing larvae that looked like they were feasting on some remains.

Marguerite herself took a candy bite when she snatched for one and popped it in her mouth without a bat of her lash.

With that one single look at the content, Dana quickly turned, bend over and gagged violently. The smell didn't help, the sight of food overwhelming what control she had, she vomited the bile that had been growing down the back of her throat and in the pit of her stomach.

"Why you ungrateful bitch!" Her sweet sugary tone turned into the wrath of a crazed hag in one minute.

Said hag smashed the pot of maggot helpings right at her head, spilling the rice of living critters all over and down into her clothes when she was smacked off her chair and onto her own bile she had hacked up. Her shitbag of her son burst into laughing, but a knock of pain was the right reminder she needed to forget her place. Dana snarled and gave a kick at the table, flipping it and its entire content all over the floor with a loud smashing of plates and pots.

She didn't even want a taste of their beer anyway. It probably had gone rancid like everything else in this family.

"Now why did you have to do that, young lady," Mr. Baker said disapprovingly when he stood up with the rotting flesh of the dead all over his pants and shirt.

"I told you, Jack! I told you she's good for nothing! She doesn't deserve her gifts!" Marguerite screamed and stomped a quick tantrum from beside him.

"Fuck you," Dana spat and got up with a quick shake of her head, backing away from the family as they slowly marched around the mess and towards her.

"You have nowhere to go now, you know."

"No one's coming for you," their son pointed out snidely.

"So you had better behave!" screamed the hag.

Three Bakers blocking her way out ahead, she tried to burst into a sprint, towards the white double doors by the side past the sneering runt of the family, only to be grabbed and shoved back with a smack against the window sill. She grunted from the pain but was quick to find her balance again. With the window behind her back, Dana elbowed helplessly at the thick glass but only ended up giving it a pathetic helpless thumping against it instead.

"Now you go trying to smash my windows. Young lady, you're even worse than our Zoe!" said Mr. Baker with an unhappy frown on his face before he quickly marched towards her.

"My brother is going to kill you all when he gets here." Her glare towards them unrestrained with hate. Their deaths wouldn't be the ones she would shudder at and look away when Alex gets to them. It was the only small victory she could only cling to when once again Mr. Baker just shook his head then smacked the lights out of her.

"You want one?" The ten-year-old girl gestured a cockroach right up to his face.

He just stared.

"No?" She then took her bite and crunched on it. "It's tasty," she said. "You don't talk much, don't you?" She turned to look back at him. "You can't even walk or do anything. You're lucky Papa Jack got a wheelchair around. Something about belonging to their late granny."

He remained quiet, not even an expression of gratitude nor awe at the fact one of her Mr. Smiley was lurching behind them, pushing his wheelchair.

She then pondered deeply at that. "Are you sick?" she asked and actually smiled down at him. "I can do something about that if you say something," she told him playfully. "We can be family you know! I can be your big sister."

He ignored her, and she frowned. "Fine! I'll just leave you here alone instead," she snapped. "No one wants you or going to come and get you anyway! And the rats will eat you."

Not even a twitch of a facial muscle. His green eyes just looked back at her with a disinterested gaze. Eveline pouted then inched her face closer to him, she narrowed her eyes and poked his cheeks with her small fingers, pinching and pulling them hard to force a smile on his face.

The poking of a little brat playing with his face was nothing to the mountain of patience he had learned from dealing with forty-years of Blackwatch constant surgeries and series of endless testing. He took after his mother after all.

She stepped back at the response of a doll who seemed not to hear her nor even acknowledged even when she was actually there. He was so boring; can't he do anything? Hmph, it didn't matter anyway. Lucas had something fun planned ahead, she would think of something up and by then, he would surely have an interesting reaction.

Ignoring whatever she had said, she skipped ahead with her Mr. Smiley twitching and jerking right behind her, pushing her only companion down the long corridor as she led them ahead towards the family barn.

AN: This is a terrible idea. And mindless dumb. Aiming to keep this short and sweet. So expect two-three chapters to finish this off sometime next week.