"Hey...hey..." A voice whispered, waking Delilah up. "Hey...you ok?" The voice of a child, clearly not much older than her.

"You ok?"

The pain was exquisite. It came in pulsing shocks like someone banging a hammer on an anvil. Her had was a labyrinth of sharp and dull stabbings. The front of her head near her eye felt hot and burning.

There was a metallic smell in the air.

Delilah's agony pressed into her unconsciousness. It was as if she'd been pushed into a hot oven. And that oven was rolling down a hill.

A small voice was nagging at her. She opened her eyelids and immediately shut them tight. Even that one blurry glimpse was too much. Her right eyelid sank towards the socket.

"Susan?" Her voice was a tiny whimper.

"No." The girl's voice answered. "My name is Jody." The voice was soft and kind and filled with deep sorrow. But behind that, Delilah could hear something of experience. There was wisdom in the intonation of the way the girl spoke. Like the words were a hand reaching out to her.

"It hurts right now, I know." Jody said. "But you're still here, so that's something." She offered as the pain pulsed through Delilah's brain.

"You're still here. So, you know, you've survived so far. One less eye but you're here. OK? Stay with me, OK?" The girl said.

Delilah got the sense that the two were sitting on a metal grate, the metallic fumes of the forge familiar in her nose.

OOC: All bashing damage healed. Delilah at full willpower.

"Jody?" Delilah tested the name. She couldn't think of she knew named Jody, but her thoughts were focused on the feverish, pulsing pain radiating outward from her face. Her fingers traced up her cheek and stopped. She couldn't bring herself to feel it.

Apart from the screaming nerves from whatever nub was left behind in her eyesocket, she could still sense the sweatshop.

"My eye's...it's...the pig! Hogwash is gonna come back?" Panic twisted Delilah's whimpering into a squeak. She couldn't tell if they were hiding or if they were worse off.

Delilah shakily counted to three. On three, she would make herself look around.

Still Immobilized? Not that she's going to up and dash off.

"Yeah, Jody." Jody said.

Jody seemed to brace herself when Delilah spoke about the missing eye and the name Hogwash.

"I...I don't know what to say. I...really don't." She stuttered. "I...really am sorry. I mean, about your eye. I just..I don't know what to say. I'm sorry about it. I am. I think...I wish.."

Then Jody started to cry.

All around Delilah, there were those hanging slabs of meat. They seemed wet with sweat and condensation, even though they were dead. The ground and heat were still very much with them. Delilah was no longer on one of the meat hooks, she hadn't even left the room.

OOC: Delilah looses Condition Immobilized

Delilah looked up at the swaying sides of meat. She thought there was something different about them. The pig's forge and shop were just as she last saw them, but the difference was in her new, flatter perspective. She would figure that out later.

What mattered now was that Jody was not that awful, sketchy cartoon girl. Delilah could see that well enough. She squirmed over the metal grate to get closer. The tear through her back flared. She had only changed position slightly, but the exertion left her panting and beaded with sweat.

"H-hey...don't."

She wasn't sure what to say, either. Back home, she'd call Jody a baby for crying in front of everyone. Things were different here. It's okay wouldn't be right, either. Being chained up and worked to death by a beast was far from okay. She faltered for a moment.

"You're here still too."

If Jody meant well by saying it, then it might help her to hear it.

Still, Delilah kept a fearful watch for Hogwash. He was much faster than she'd thought. He could slip out from behind one of the sides of beef in a blink.

Is Jody maimed or missing any body parts?
This message was last edited by the player at 10:25, Sat 18 Nov 2017.

A sooty face. A grimy complexion to her skin. But Jody wasn't maimed or missing anything. There was a long scar that ran down her face on the right side and ended at the bottom of her chin.

"You're in pain." Jody said. "I know you are. I got my face cut by Esther. Get up though. We have to get moving before he comes back. I can help you with something."

She offered her hand out.

Delilah stared at Jody's scar as she struggled getting to her feet.

Jody held out a hand. Delilah reached for it, missed, then took a firm grip. She rose shakily and was grateful for the help. She hadn't needed to lean on anyone since she sprained her ankle in the third grade. Even then she was well enough to hop around on one foot.

Jody partially recoiled as she saw Delilah's eye, fumbling her grip before recovering.

"I'm sorry." She squalled, seeming to just throw that phrase out there over and over again to pretty much cover everything.

It was a living nightmare. A dream of horrors that had somehow become a reality. And it all happened so fast. One day, Delilah was the dominant person on the block. The one who called the shots. The kid everyone had to respect, or at least they better have respected her, if they knew anything.

But now she was a shell of who she was. Here in this strange world she was far from important. She was a one-eyed slave. Her skin was grimy and filled with the ash of the forge, just like the other kids. And soon, if she stayed here long enough, she'd get that gaunt-skinny look than all kids seemed to have.

Looking at Jody's face, it was clear that the girl had it too. The cheek bones were too visible. The eyes were too rimmed in purple and Jody's skin had a grayish-yellow pallor to it. Like a sick patient wandering the hospital. Or kid wandering the streets of a city like a stray cat.

The girls waded through the maze of hanging meat, Jody leading the way. Their feet shuffled and scraped across the grated floor, their hands pushing against the cool, slimy exterior of half-butchered carcasses, the smell of steam, ash, metal and death filling their nostrils.

"It's just up ahead." Jody promised. She was pushing by a piece of meat, guiding Delilah by holding her hand.

Delilah caught Jody's squeamish expression. She quickly looked down at her feet.

Jody looked like one of the kids on tv: 70 cents a day could save her from hunger or buy her shoes. Jody was getting beat up and scarred up by some other haggard slave while they all worked and starved to death. But Jody felt sorry for Delilah.

A new ache smoldered in Delilah's chest. Like a fault line cracking open to reveal a smoking pit. Part of Delilah wanted to curl inside of it and never be seen again. Another part hung on, clutching Jody's hand; too afraid of the dark.

Jody told her it wasn't far. Delilah nodded and muttered something like thanks.

Jody pushed past one piece of hanging beef, the heavy slab swinging like a boxing bag. Delilah could see she was being led into the corner of the room. They came to a stop in at the joining of two brick walls, the mortar chipped and worn, bits of red rock crumbling and strewn across the iron grate beneath their feet.

Jody pulled out a small, glass pipe.

In her other hand, she held a small bag that was a lavender purple color. She opened the bag and took out a spoon and a lighter.

"It's soul rock." Jody said. "It's hard to explain. But if you smoke it, it will take the pain away."

Delilah followed Jody to empty corner. A part of her was worried this was some trick and Hogwash or his minions would be waiting. Then Jody pulled out a weird tube and some other junk.

She squinted at the bag in confusion and pain. Smoking was bad. Really bad. Mom and Dad agreed on that much, at least. But lots of things were bad for you if you used them incorrectly.

"Like...medicine?"

Jody shook her head to demonstrate complete disagreement. "It will work like medicine. Probably better than medicine. It's not like medicine at all though."

"It's doing drugs." She said, a hint of repulsiveness in her voice, as if Jody knew that it was wrong.

"It's bad. I know. I used to think so to. But when there aren't any choices left. And you're in pain. It's the best thing for you. That's what I actually learned from being down here."

"It takes all the pain away so you can think."

Jody was giving away drugs? Any other day, that would have raised a fight out of Delilah. How could drugs make anyone better? Drugs were the worst kind of bad thing there was. Ever. Drugs fried your brains up like on tv. But Jody didn't look like her brains were cooked.

Delilah pressed the right side of her face against the wall. Back home when she was ill, she'd move her pillow and lie right up against the curly, brass headboard. The cool, metal tubes leeched away a bit of the fever for a short time. There was no such relief here. The slaves kept the shop running and the forge hot. A heatwave pulsed out of the furnace, through the bricks and into Delilah's skin. Worse, the throbbing in her skull pushed back at the wall one beat at a time. She sagged against the wall, but was too sickened and fatigued to move away.

"Okay."

Just once. Just to get better.

Jody extended her hand and pushed the glass tube into Delilah's space, right near her chest. The glass was yellowed and brown on the inside and Jody's hand was brown and grimy.

"Take it." She said. "It's gonna be...it's gonna be weird, OK? I'm gonna try to do it as quick as possible." Jody said. "Because, its gonna take all the pain away. And, when it comes to you, it's gonna feel like getting shot out of a cannon. But that means its working."

"Then you gotta make a wish? Ok? Are you still with me?"

Jody pressed the pipe into Delilah's hand. She couldn't clutch it as tight as she'd like. Once she felt the pipe, it dimly registered as glass and not some clear plastic.

Grimacing, she parroted a bit of the instructions. "Make a ... wish ... quick ... quick..."

Delilah shifted her shoulder against the wall and reached for Jody with her free hand. Her remaining eye focused on the girl's face. Remnants of tiny, torn muscles twitched to direct the eye that wasn't there.

"Don't leave me?" she rasped.

The pipe was shaking, Delilah's hand unsteady. Her arm quivering, her eye--the one that wasn't there--twitching. A spasm traveled through her face and settled into her lips before petering out.

Jody's face remained focused.

'flit...flit..flit' - the sound of the lighter as Jody tried to light the flame. And suddenly, it appeared: A glowing, flicking, orange flame. Through her one eye, Delilah could see Jody's eyes fixed and hungry, as if all of this was familiar. As if Jody herself was maybe two seconds away from snatching the pipe and the soul rock within, and just using her herself.

The flame and Jody's hand came closer still, moving towards the quivering pipe in Delilah's hand.

Delilah stopped slouching against the wall. She used two hands to hold on to pipe and the girl, in case Jody decided to run. The dingy glass was at her lips. Delilah took a quaking breath in and closed her eye.

OOC: Delilah Rolls Stamina + Resolve -5 (Soul Rock). Failure on the roll does not determine whether or not the drug 'works' but rather whether or not the 'trip' is bad or not.

20:32, Today: Delilah Gray failed (no successes) using 1d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD, Chance Die system with a target of 10, rerolling 10s ((9)).

Bad Trip!

OOC: Delilah Joins Thread:

Delilah: I Wish I May, I Wish I Might...