Who: The Girl, found by Fun Ghoul
Where: Northtown - about twenty minutes away from Foodland.
When: Thursday, October 24th - sun down
What: Girl tries and fails to escape the newly-awoken scarecrows. One kills her.
Warnings: Violence, blood, character death
[Closed]

She never liked scarecrows.

It was the implication: back home they named an elite unite after them, had them hunt down 'Joys, had them exterminate her loved ones and so many others. Go against Bat City's laws and you're dusted. Live out in the desert and you're risking annihilation. It tampered with her nerves that they were keeping all those ravens away, no matter how much of a relief it was to have a moment when they weren't pecking at her windows or somehow managing a bite or a scratch - like one that had gotten through a narrowly open window just a couple of days earlier. Her hands were a mess but it kept her face mostly safe and after a few days she was much better off than some people she'd heard about.

When the 'crows popped up everywhere and the birds started going away, she thought it was fine. She waited around most of the day, waited until it started getting late and there were barely any birds left - and that's when she made a mistake.

She thought she could make it: take a run all the way to foodland (she wasn't risking looking for the discarded bicycle from the library incident just yes, especially not at sun-down), look for something to get the household through the night. It'll be fine, she told herself, even left a note for them to see. Be back in an couple of hours scribbled as neatly as she could have without much practise.

But it wasn't fine and she only realised that too far from the front door and too far from the building she'd been headed off to.

It started with a rustling noise; a bird, she figured, and it got her to pick up her pace. She ought to hurry and make it to Foodland and back before the sun set completely. But there was no typical caw, no flapping of wings, just an odd rustling like a bag or fabric on fabric.

It was about twelve feet away to her left when she noticed - a dim ray of light had her blinking and looking to her side and fear had her freeze in her spot.
It was moving. The scarecrow was moving, all odd joints and long limbs and metal sickles like someone wearing a costume - but it wasn't one, she could tell, because right behind it was another one, and maybe twenty feet to her now right was another one blocking her path.

It wouldn't take more than one to tower her and it didn't take more than one to almost lop her hair (and part of her head) off before she began sprinting back home. Luck was not on her side, however, and she'd not manage more than five minutes of narrowly dodging lanky limbs until she ran right into one and, though tiny as she might have been, failed to escape its grasp.

It was gruesome. She wasn't sure what started it, but next thing she knew the metallic sickle was digging into her skin, slashing neatly like a warm knife through butter.
There was a moment when she thought time might have stopped; her breath was caught in her lungs as she looked down at the injury, too deep to even keep a hold of properly, much less to run off like that. She wanted to scream, but her voice wouldn't cooperate.

The second slash was as much of a surprise and it completely threw off her balance.

All the blood, a bright red stain all over her hands, her arms, dripping onto her jeans and mixing with the dirt, mixing with the tears clouding her vision. There was a warm and metallic feeling pooling behind her teeth and she remembered Volume, the way he coughed it up when he got hit square in the chest. And she got cut up right on her side, she could still feel it until awareness hit her for a split second and she was all but trying to screech while a metallic weapon dug back onto her side.

And after what felt like an endless amount of time, she couldn't feel a thing. Not her hands, not the blood dripping down into a pool under her and when her face hit the floor she was sure she couldn't hear anymore rustling, either.

The last thoughts on her mind were jumbled - there was a rerun of excruciating pain, of masked faces and sickles, but there was Ghoul, Ghoul, and Steve and Bucky and Cola and--

--the sun finally set when it all went black.