Found it. Haven't re-read it or edited or anything since I put it together. My apologies if it turned out edgy tryhard as hell.
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Spoiler
VI
A murder of crows spiraled over head, cawing into the air in a cacophony of noise that made the constant and invading brush of feathers all the more horrific. Samantha had been running the length of dirt road between her house and her neighbor’s and the golden orb of sun was just finishing sinking below the top of the overlooking forest. She’d been on her way back, always told to be home before dark. That was when she heard the flapping. At first she thought it was a trick of the light, or even bats. Her and her dad had sometimes watched the bats dart around the summer skies, catching bugs stupid enough to fly by the lights that would light up her brother’s baseball games. The sport was dumb, but she got to spend time with her dad and they would
tore clean from the socket
She screamed, her arms flailing and trying to run free from the swarm of birds that had descended upon her. She could see the house in the distance, the warm glow of lamplight coming from inside her home. Her feet carried her even as those beaks and claws tore at her, hurt her, caused her to cry. She was almost home, locking her eyes on that window and running towards it. She was screaming and bawling like a child, because she was a child, running from a nightmare that had somehow become real.
The lights were in front of her, then slowly eased below her, and Samantha realized that she was no longer running but being carried. She thrashed, trying to coax the terrible birds harassing her to let her go, her mind refusing to believe that crows could pick up a child, even if there were so many, and that this was impossible and that this couldn’t be real and
ripped apart at the seams
She had given in, screaming, carried away from her home. Mere feet from safety and her parents and even her stupid brother and their cat. Her cat. She screamed and screamed until she couldn’t any longer, and that’s when she lost consciousness.
She became aware she was alive, and as soon as she could glance around at the nightmarish inside of barn she was sleeping in the crows descended on her again. She felt her hair being torn at, and when she reached up to fend them off she felt a claw take hold of her arm. Before she could shake it free, it yanked, and she felt her arm detach from her shoulder. Wordlessly, she stared in horror from the ground, unable to see any of the clear picture through the unending onslaught of feathers and beaks and that endless buzzing of cries and caws. She couldn’t see anything whole except for the corner of the barn where her arm had been tossed. It wasn’t the only arm there.
Her stupor was broken when her left arm had been unceremoniously torn off. It too was thrown onto the pile, discarded and useless amongst the pile of limbs that were all about the same size as hers. She felt she would be ill, and that’s when she caught sight of the misshapen clawed hand that reached down towards her stomach, below her belly button. A flash like fire danced across her and the claw came away red. Samantha began to scream in earnest when the claw descended, slipping inside of the incision and she screamed and screamed as the claw began to grip her insides. Samantha could feel them snapping loose and free like so many stubborn strings, a dull numb sensation as the claw gutted her and tossed the piles of gore and viscera into a trough. She didn’t know the word for it but she’d watched the pigs eat out of it when her class had visited a farm when she was in the third grade and
they’re pulling me apart oh god mommy daddy help they’re pulling
Terror overtook her, the pain a second thought behind the horrific things being down to her. She didn’t recognize the organs being ripped out of her but she did recognize when the thing doing this to her began to
Her eyes goggled when she realized what was doing this to her. At first it had been just the flock of crows, menacing her, but what stood before her was a devilish cartoon of disproportioned human shape with crow features. He wore overalls and a hat like a big farmer, in fact she was sure she’d seen him in a cartoon sometime. Tattered remains of a flannel shirt like the ones daddy used to wear in the winter were shredded by arms tapered off into useless misshapen wings, ending in vicious claws that had no purpose on either man or animal. She felt like she could laugh if she wasn’t being murdered by the creature.
The crow-farmer went away with a pile of her leaking, bleeding guts and returned with a huge clawful of straw. With one fiendish appendage holding open the now-hollow cavity that made up the deflated mass of her body, he began to stuff her full of it. It itched and burned and hurt and was awful and clawful after clawful came, expanding her stomach and chest and he kept going until she thought for sure she was going to burst. She didn’t however, and despite her being sure her lungs had been torn out of her body, she found she was still able to scream.
The farmer paced around on horrible, buckled legs to her head, and with that red-stained and dripping claw, drew a line across the top of her head below her hairline. It burned again, like her stomach had, and she wailed with the implication of what was to come. With one steady yank, she felt the top of her head pop off with a wet and sickening schlop and she pictured the jack o’lanterns that she had helped daddy make for Halloween when they would hollow them out and he would draw a scary black cat and carve it and they’d put a candle in and
he’s stealing me
She felt the snapping popping of the claw sinking into her brain and tugging it free. Something was wrong with her eyes, then, and her vision collapsed into itself and went black. She continued to scream, panicked and terrified, dimly aware that her head was being filled with the same straw he’d stuffed her body full of. She felt like she would wake up any second now, any instant and she’d be crying in her daddy’s arms and she’d be safe again and maybe Mittens could sleep in her bed tonight and
daddy help
Something was wrong with her face. She was able to scream but it felt like she was doing it through a plastic bag over her face. It sounded strange to her, somehow different. It went on forever, this torture of a horrified child, blind and unfeeling. She became aware she was being held upright but her feet weren’t touching the floor. She felt something slip around where her shoulders were, when she still had arms. A searing pain stabbed through her vertically, through her stomach and neck and out of the bottom of her head, where her dad would sometimes give mommy massages after she came home from work.
After what could have been minutes or years of darkness, she was able to see again. There was a horrid stabbing pain in her eye socket, and the darkness peeled away and she could see the farmer up close and in front of her. He had a needle in his beak, long and shiny and with a shining silver thread looped through it. He held up a button, she could see, and felt it placed against her face. Again the piercing sting of fire and she could see out of both eyes. She was facing the sun, which seemed too bright and somehow off color, and then she was facing the ground, slung up over the impossible shoulder of this crow man monster and being hoisted out to a field.
He planted her, pillared deep into the fertile soil growing the sorts of vegetables she had never seen before. She was able to look around in front of her, and she became aware she had new arms in the form of stuffed sleeves of the long coat put on the pike she had been impaled with. The pike ran along her spine and through her shoulders, filling out the sleeves of the coat. For effect, the farmer had stuffed a wide brimmed hat on top of her head, mostly to hide the lazy stuffing job he had done sewing up the top of her head where he had torn out her brain and eyes.
In the field, at sporadic distances, were the other Scarechildren that had been placed. One had no head visible, torn free from the beasts that roamed the garden and feasted on the things growing there. Sometimes at night, she heard the crops screaming, as if buried below the earth.
Oh god please help us
VI
A murder of crows spiraled over head, cawing into the air in a cacophony of noise that made the constant and invading brush of feathers all the more horrific. Samantha had been running the length of dirt road between her house and her neighbor’s and the golden orb of sun was just finishing sinking below the top of the overlooking forest. She’d been on her way back, always told to be home before dark. That was when she heard the flapping. At first she thought it was a trick of the light, or even bats. Her and her dad had sometimes watched the bats dart around the summer skies, catching bugs stupid enough to fly by the lights that would light up her brother’s baseball games. The sport was dumb, but she got to spend time with her dad and they would
tore clean from the socket
She screamed, her arms flailing and trying to run free from the swarm of birds that had descended upon her. She could see the house in the distance, the warm glow of lamplight coming from inside her home. Her feet carried her even as those beaks and claws tore at her, hurt her, caused her to cry. She was almost home, locking her eyes on that window and running towards it. She was screaming and bawling like a child, because she was a child, running from a nightmare that had somehow become real.
The lights were in front of her, then slowly eased below her, and Samantha realized that she was no longer running but being carried. She thrashed, trying to coax the terrible birds harassing her to let her go, her mind refusing to believe that crows could pick up a child, even if there were so many, and that this was impossible and that this couldn’t be real and
ripped apart at the seams
She had given in, screaming, carried away from her home. Mere feet from safety and her parents and even her stupid brother and their cat. Her cat. She screamed and screamed until she couldn’t any longer, and that’s when she lost consciousness.
She became aware she was alive, and as soon as she could glance around at the nightmarish inside of barn she was sleeping in the crows descended on her again. She felt her hair being torn at, and when she reached up to fend them off she felt a claw take hold of her arm. Before she could shake it free, it yanked, and she felt her arm detach from her shoulder. Wordlessly, she stared in horror from the ground, unable to see any of the clear picture through the unending onslaught of feathers and beaks and that endless buzzing of cries and caws. She couldn’t see anything whole except for the corner of the barn where her arm had been tossed. It wasn’t the only arm there.
Her stupor was broken when her left arm had been unceremoniously torn off. It too was thrown onto the pile, discarded and useless amongst the pile of limbs that were all about the same size as hers. She felt she would be ill, and that’s when she caught sight of the misshapen clawed hand that reached down towards her stomach, below her belly button. A flash like fire danced across her and the claw came away red. Samantha began to scream in earnest when the claw descended, slipping inside of the incision and she screamed and screamed as the claw began to grip her insides. Samantha could feel them snapping loose and free like so many stubborn strings, a dull numb sensation as the claw gutted her and tossed the piles of gore and viscera into a trough. She didn’t know the word for it but she’d watched the pigs eat out of it when her class had visited a farm when she was in the third grade and
they’re pulling me apart oh god mommy daddy help they’re pulling
Terror overtook her, the pain a second thought behind the horrific things being down to her. She didn’t recognize the organs being ripped out of her but she did recognize when the thing doing this to her began to
Her eyes goggled when she realized what was doing this to her. At first it had been just the flock of crows, menacing her, but what stood before her was a devilish cartoon of disproportioned human shape with crow features. He wore overalls and a hat like a big farmer, in fact she was sure she’d seen him in a cartoon sometime. Tattered remains of a flannel shirt like the ones daddy used to wear in the winter were shredded by arms tapered off into useless misshapen wings, ending in vicious claws that had no purpose on either man or animal. She felt like she could laugh if she wasn’t being murdered by the creature.
The crow-farmer went away with a pile of her leaking, bleeding guts and returned with a huge clawful of straw. With one fiendish appendage holding open the now-hollow cavity that made up the deflated mass of her body, he began to stuff her full of it. It itched and burned and hurt and was awful and clawful after clawful came, expanding her stomach and chest and he kept going until she thought for sure she was going to burst. She didn’t however, and despite her being sure her lungs had been torn out of her body, she found she was still able to scream.
The farmer paced around on horrible, buckled legs to her head, and with that red-stained and dripping claw, drew a line across the top of her head below her hairline. It burned again, like her stomach had, and she wailed with the implication of what was to come. With one steady yank, she felt the top of her head pop off with a wet and sickening schlop and she pictured the jack o’lanterns that she had helped daddy make for Halloween when they would hollow them out and he would draw a scary black cat and carve it and they’d put a candle in and
he’s stealing me
She felt the snapping popping of the claw sinking into her brain and tugging it free. Something was wrong with her eyes, then, and her vision collapsed into itself and went black. She continued to scream, panicked and terrified, dimly aware that her head was being filled with the same straw he’d stuffed her body full of. She felt like she would wake up any second now, any instant and she’d be crying in her daddy’s arms and she’d be safe again and maybe Mittens could sleep in her bed tonight and
daddy help
Something was wrong with her face. She was able to scream but it felt like she was doing it through a plastic bag over her face. It sounded strange to her, somehow different. It went on forever, this torture of a horrified child, blind and unfeeling. She became aware she was being held upright but her feet weren’t touching the floor. She felt something slip around where her shoulders were, when she still had arms. A searing pain stabbed through her vertically, through her stomach and neck and out of the bottom of her head, where her dad would sometimes give mommy massages after she came home from work.
After what could have been minutes or years of darkness, she was able to see again. There was a horrid stabbing pain in her eye socket, and the darkness peeled away and she could see the farmer up close and in front of her. He had a needle in his beak, long and shiny and with a shining silver thread looped through it. He held up a button, she could see, and felt it placed against her face. Again the piercing sting of fire and she could see out of both eyes. She was facing the sun, which seemed too bright and somehow off color, and then she was facing the ground, slung up over the impossible shoulder of this crow man monster and being hoisted out to a field.
He planted her, pillared deep into the fertile soil growing the sorts of vegetables she had never seen before. She was able to look around in front of her, and she became aware she had new arms in the form of stuffed sleeves of the long coat put on the pike she had been impaled with. The pike ran along her spine and through her shoulders, filling out the sleeves of the coat. For effect, the farmer had stuffed a wide brimmed hat on top of her head, mostly to hide the lazy stuffing job he had done sewing up the top of her head where he had torn out her brain and eyes.
In the field, at sporadic distances, were the other Scarechildren that had been placed. One had no head visible, torn free from the beasts that roamed the garden and feasted on the things growing there. Sometimes at night, she heard the crops screaming, as if buried below the earth.
Oh god please help us