apocalypsehowcomm | Event - Appalachia: Into the Pines

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Event - Appalachia: Into the Pines

Appalachia: Into the Pines

Footage plays on the television as a new story comes on, showing a series of sweeping vistas, intercut with clips of wolves that have clearly been filmed at some local wildlife sanctuary. "As far as anyone knows it, the last wolf to ever freely roam the Allegheny Mountains was slain in West Virginia in 1897. Daniel Stoffer Hamrick saw to the beast's passing, and the woods in our part of the world have gone quieter ever since. Appalachia does not forget its history, though. It buries it beneath coal and flyash, debts and white powder and pills. And the blood of people taken before their time, by the mines, by the mountain, by things we don't have names for, just hurt. But Appalachia does not forget.

"This is Cindy Parsons with Channel 5, Wolf News." Footage cuts to a newscaster standing outside a gated apartment complex with FYRE's logo emblazoned on it. "As we know, our beloved Wolf Pen is home to one of the biggest FYRE worker housing complexes in Wyoming County. It is a monument to the history of our town, and this week, we'll be on the lookout for visitors from all over the country, coming to see the grand re-opening of the historic Bluestone Mine as a museum."

Footage cuts to a nondescript businessman, identified by the news footage as Carl Watts, CEO of FYRE. He's smiling blandly as he stands at a podium and gestures to the entrance of the mining tunnel behind him. "The Wolf Pen community has been a partner to us for decades now, and we knew it was finally time to give something back to all y’all. We'll have our soft opening on Monday with a full Rumble Down Under party in the old mines scheduled for June 15th. We'll have a live bluegrass concert and anticipate a huge influx of tourists to the area to help out our neighbors itching for a few more pocketbooks to tend to." A wink.

The footage returns to Cindy. "FYRE has stated that this new museum will provide an educational tool and tourist attraction for those wanting to learn about West Virginia, Wolf Pen, and the hard-working men and women who have made this beautiful part of our nation their home. Time will tell. Time is always telling when it comes to the promises of people who have used our land and our bodies to line their pocketbooks. They fill our blood and our lungs with black tar and-"

Cindy cuts out and is replaced by in-studio anchors. "Thank you, Cindy!" a blonde woman says, smile just a little strained. "I think we're all looking forward to seeing the big opening by FYRE on Sunday and that rocking good party next month. It should be a gneiss one! Now to Tim with the weather. Tim?"

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"No!" Well. There's no playing that down, is there? He runs a slow hand down his face, willing himself mightily not to shake and only just succeeding.

"Somethin'...something happened to me back there." He's leaving Donna out of it. If she wants to tell, she will. It was bad enough he doesn't feel like he ought to. "Something bad, and I don't think you should... It ain't worth the risk. I'm sorry I lied. I jes'..." He shrugs helplessly. "I don't want that happening to nobody else."

Malcolm looks intrigued.

“Why? What happened?” he asks.

"The vines. They growed up all over me an' made me do things." He points out the faint green stains all over his clothes, from where his legs emerge from the shallow water all the way up his shoulders and down his arms. He's not sure if he has welts on his throat or mouth or not. He feels raw, though.

Malcolm looks at the stains, then looks in the direction he'd been walking, then looks at George.

"What kind of things?"

"Things that hurt. Things I don't want to see happen to nobody else." He's still, no, he's not even processing it. Not yet, not really. The only clear thing is he'd prefer he not go.

Malcolm turns, starts to step towards George, about to say something when a vine shoots out, wraps around his ankle and drags him in.

"Shit! No!" He's lunging after him without even thinking about it. The moment the first vine clenches around his wrist, he's fighting harder than he has ever fought anything in his life, thrashing, splashing, jerking like a man jolted with a live wire for all the good it does. It drags him inexorably back, more vines wrapping as tight as wires. This time they cut him, but it's his doing, how hard he pulls.

The one thing he doesn't do beyond loud grunts of effort is yell. The last thing he wants is for Donna to come back, get trapped again.

"...What... what happened? I stopped. How... how did it get us?" Malcolm stammers, pulling on the vine to no avail.

"Fight it, Malcolm!" He gets yanked hard enough to flip him face first into the water, dragged back to land in a way that gets it up his nose, has him coughing and sputtering to the point he can't say anything else through the burn, can't warn him what's coming, and maybe that's no accident.

By the time he would've been able to talk again, something else has his tongue, that awful, horrifying paralysis that he already knows means something worse is coming next. Not with him. Please, not with him.

Malcolm wants to struggle, but why can’t he? He wants to answer. Why can’t he answer?

He can feel the words starting to well, his face set in a mask he knows all too well, the tightness, the pinching of eyes and disdainful sneer when he was giving Lennie his worst kind of hell. "Well, ain't that jes' typical. A fella says he needs you, and you jes' gonna sit there dumb as a sheep while I get half drownt."

He can't even change the set of his eyes, completely trapped behind this mask of his worst self, the one that sometimes keeps him awake at night sick with regret (and too much gin.)

Is this his fault?

He wants to answer that he would never let anything happen to George, if he could help it, but he can't, so he just stares at him through dumb eyes he can't control.

"The hell is wrong with you? You jes' gonna set there staring? You hearing a word I'm saying, boy?" And now, it's not as much his own voice or his own tone he's hearing as another Milton he swore up and down he'd never be like no matter what happened.

But look how often he did it to Lennie anyway. Look what he's doing now.

The vines force him to stomp a couple of steps closer, fists clenched and eyes narrowed. The face of the mean drunk.

Boy.

C’mon, boy!

Malcolm flinches.

“I should have stopped you,” he says.

Is George even who he’s talking to?

“I should have stopped you sooner.”

"Should'a stopped me from what? You gonna start talking some kind a' sense, or am I gonna have to beat it into you first?" He can feel the redness in his face, bulging veins, fists tight enough to creak his knuckles.

Another step and he'll be close enough to make good on the threat. He tries as hard as he can to stop himself and hold back. He'd have as much chance of holding back a train hurtling down the tracks with him inside the boxcar.

I was a good father. But you were never a good son.

“You’re going to kill me,” Malcolm realizes. “Ten seconds ago: that’s when you decided.”

"What kind a' bullshit are you on about now? Starin' at me all moon eyed like some God damned cow. I ain't gonna kill you. Jes' gonna make you wished you was dead."

He rears back his fist. Please no. He can feel the power building in his shoulder and back. It's going to be a dead to rights punch. Not this. Not him. He pops it hard, right toward his nose.

Malcolm feels himself about to deflect the blow, to turn it back on the man attacking him, but then he stops, halfway through shifting to the side, takes it in the chin and stumbles back.

He's in a closet; the door swings shut.

"No! Nicky!" he shouts desperately from the ground.

The vines advance him as smoothly as if it were his decision. (It's not.) He's incapable of reaching his own emotions with his body, a prisoner in his own head, the rage contorted face a stiff, uncomfortable mask. He's never worn it like this, not like the old man, no matter how sore he got or how much hell he gave Lennie.

His fists are hard, his body, too, honed from long years of backbreaking manual labor. He lets loose a flurry of punches, feels his own knuckles split from the force. "You're gonna start talkin' some god damned sense if I have to beat it into you the hard way!"

Malcolm turtles as soon as the assault starts.

"WHO TOLD YOU?!" he screams, slightly muffled through his arms.

"Who told me what, you God damned cuckoo?" He aims several vicious kicks, starting to pant from exertion. Then just like that, his body is his own. The suddenness of it sends him tumbling forward to hands and knees, almost falling on Malcolm. He takes a face full of kudzu and rolls to his back.

"Shit. Shit." It takes him that long to gather the tatters of himself together enough to roll back up and feel for him in the dark.

"Malcolm? Malcolm? Can you hear me? Jesus, please be OK." He's scrabbling over the undergrowth with both hands, trying to find him again. "It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't me doin' all that. Saying it. It's jes' like it was before."

The vines release him, too, but Malcolm’s hand doesn’t stop shaking when they stop controlling him.

He looks around, then looks at George.

“Was… that something that really happened to you?”

Only guessing, because it had been things that had really happened to him.

He orients on his voice, crawling closer then drawing up from touching him. After he'd laid into him the way he did, he wouldn't blame him if he wanted nothing to do with him for a while, if ever. "Sorta. It was like...actin' like my old man." His voice is gruff.

"You awwright? Did I...I didn't bust nothin', did I? You think you can walk? We gotta get off this island." Before they're seized again and it gets worse, possibly makes him kill him.

The leaves rustle as he climbs to his feet. He's hesitant in offering his hand, but he does.

“I’ve had worse beatings,” Malcolm tells him, taking his hand. “No offence,” he adds awkwardly as he gets unsteadily to his feet. “But yes. We should get out of here,” he agrees, though he limps slightly from a kick he took.

"Come on." Noticing that limp, he steps in and tucks himself under his arm, drawing it in a wrap around his shoulders. One of the few men he has met shorter than him, and it's just their luck, because it makes the mechanics of it more awkward.

They can talk about worse beatings or whatever else needs saying after they've managed to beat feet from this place. If they run into anybody else on their way to that damned island, he'll tackle them bodily if he has to in order to prevent it from happening to anyone else. They splash loudly through the water on their way back to the far shore. Beyond that and his heavy breathing, he doesn't make another sound.

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CW: ableist language

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