Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was the last moments of his life. He'd known this was coming. For weeks he'd known his death was inevitable, he'd just been waiting for the end. His food was gone, his water was gone, hell, he'd even thought about ending things himself. He had a gun, he could use a bullet on himself, and that would probably be less painful then whatever the elder mimic would do to him. Quicker too.

But no, he was wouldn't give in that easily. He'd shot it before, hurt it. If he could do that a few more times, then maybe, just maybe…

He knew that is wasn't going to happen, but that glimmer of hope kept him from a relatively peaceful death. Even as he rambled almost every thought that entered his head, he kept his stupid hope to himself.

He was going to die here, hope or no hope. But maybe he could at the very least hurt the hunter that sat outside of his room every day and night.

-

The thing about humans is, they are incredibly stupid. It had known this innately ever since it's node had fallen off of the crawl. But they were always trying to learn. They learned how to use radio waves, intruding on things they didn't understand, they learned how to work trimmings and meat snakes into their societies, they learned how to avoid and mark where harvesters and hosts lived in the wild.

They even learned where the singularity was.

But for all their learning, they were still idiots, and did things in idiotic ways. Hence the man, Dr. Farron Brones, he called himself, currently crying in the bathroom, rambling about being sent to this building to die, dispite having asked to be sent here in the first place.

Idiot.

And dispite that, and dispite the fact that almost as soon as it had entered the house he'd turned on the small radio machine (baby monitor, he'd called it,) basically begging to be caught and eaten by every carnis withing ten miles.

Lucky for him, they had gotten to him first, and no younger mimics would go after an elders pick.

So, they waited. Day after day, listening to it cry, pray, eat, cry, sleep, cry some more, and ramble incessantly to himself.

Humans had a saying, "Don't play with your food" but, well, that was most of the fun, wasn't it? Humans really were stupid creatures.

But, well, it had started to like this one. Even if he had shot it in the face. That showed he was s fighter, and for all his crying and begging, he wasn't as helpless as he seemed.

He was still pretty helpless though, as it found out when it finally got into the room. Dr. Brones fired wildly, not hitting any weak spots, and most of the bullets didn't hit them at all, flying off to the ceiling and walls.

He screamed as it caught him, pinning him to his own makeshift bed. His eyes were wild, and he actually tried biting its arm and hands. Not that it hurt at all, but it was… cute, in a way. It was a shame he had to die, wasn't it.

Wasn't it?

He was a scientist, a scientist who thought he was going to die, who had been about to die, who had a camera that he thought was a secret that very clearly made it sound like he was dying.

Well now. Maybe… maybe it could keep this one, just for a little while longer.

Dr. Brones passed out, and the elder mimic got to work.

Turning off the camera without moving it proved to be a slight challenge, but not an impossible one. Next was getting Dr. Brones somewhere he wouldn't be able to escape from before it got back to him.

It scooped him up, and carried him out of the room, leaving the bloody mess of their fight behind them.

The thing about young mimics, they never stay in one place to long. Humans will leave if the threat is to great, and there is no point in staying in hunting grounds that have too high a number of other young mimic either, as humans can kill them if they aren't careful.

Elder mimics have much more luxury when it comes to things like that, and can easily avoid human detection, as well as scaring off any younger mimics from their immediate territory.

And so, a long empty house not far from the one it had just come from was its current resting grounds.

It wasn't as big, but it was in better condition. And there wasn't the stench of death, as the elder mimic never ate at home. This place was for relaxing and sleeping when it wasn't hunting.

But now, it was for keeping its new… human… contained.

Locking it in another, different bathroom seemed unnecessarily cruel, so that's exactly what it did. It shoved a few pieces of furniture in front of the door, and left to finish the work it had set out to do.

Finding another human was easier. Finding another human who looked similar enough to Dr. Brones was a little more difficult, but once they found one of the correct hight they wasted no time in making a distraction and grabbing him, crushing his windpipe so he couldn't scream.

Then, it tooke him somewhere quiet to eat. Most of the blood at the scene should be Dr. Brones, just incase they decided to test it.

The new body, once mostly devoured, was now ready to be placed in Dr. Brones place.

It turned the camera back on, and began to finish eating its meal. Today had been quite a productive day, after all. It deserved to show off a bit.

-

Something was different. Farron noticed as soon as he woke up. The room was… spinning. His body ached, his head spun but… he was alive. He was alive! He let out a giddy laugh. Help must have arrived right as he blacked out, and scared the elder mimic off.

But, as the world came into focus, he slowly realized that didn't make sense. This wasn't a hospital bed, or the research facility, or even his own house. He didn't recognize where he was, or how he got there.

He sat up, but his body protested. When he looked down, he saw he was still covered in blood. How was he still alive anyway? Was he actually dead? This didn't seem like heaven or hell, it was just… a bathroom. A small, windowless bathroom.

He reached for the door and turned it, revealed to see it was unlocked, but when he pushed against it, it wouldn't move.

No, no no no no. He threw his entire body weight against it, but it didn't move. All he succeeded in doing was making his wounds bleed more.

Fuck. Whether he was dead or not, there's no doubt in his mind where he was. He was in purgatory.

He slides down the side of the door, exhausted, in pain, and nauseated. Maybe… maybe he'll try again later. Right. He just… needs to rest a bit. And then try again…

As consciousness faded away from Farron again, he had one final coherent thought.

He wasn't even catholic.

-

Dr. Brones had managed to make his condition worse somehow. It was really quite fascinating how humans survived as long as they did before the carnis arrived. It would have been a waste of effort for him to die before having a chance to study him closes up, so the elder mimic figured it should probably actually stop the bleeding.

The main wounds were ones it had caused to arms and torso. Not enough to kill him, hopefully, but then again, it hadn't ever tried to keep a victim alive like this before. It used the remains of his shirt to tie around the worst of the wound, something it had seen a human do on television once while hiding in a sofa waiting for the humans in the house to fall asleep.

Once that was done, it figured it should get something to feed him. But what did humans even eat?

The house it was in was to long abandoned for the food in it to be edible for a human, but maybe there was something near by a human might like?

It began its search. There were plenty of wild animals around, but humans were picky eaters. They would only eat cooked me and wouldn't eat certain animals at all.

It began hunting anyway. It didn't know if the human would want the food he was provided, but if need be it could force him to eat something.

-

Farron woke up to the smell of someone burning. Maybe he'd left purgatory and ended up in hell after all.

But when he opened his eyes he saw he was still in the unfamiliar bathroom. This time, however, the door was open. Okay, that was… well, it was to early to say if it was good or bad. It simply was.

He looked out into the house. He didn't have his flashlight, but it was getting to be light out at this point anyway, so as he looked through the new house, his eyes traced every surface looking for movement.

Then, in the living room, he saw it.

The elder mimic.

It had a pile of burning leaves and what looked like a squirrel over it. It had been completely skinned, gutted, and was being cooked slowly over the fire, held in the mimics bare hands. It made some soft noises to itself, that sounded almost… musical.

Was… was this mimic going to eat the squirrel? Did elder mimics eat animals as well as humans? What was it singing? Was that something all elder mimics did, or was it something this one specificly did? Why was it cooking the squirrel? All carnis ate their food raw, was this one an exception, or was that only what they did when desperate?

The elder mimic moved and all the question racing through Farron's head stop, replaced with the fear he'd momentarily forgotten to feal.

It stood up, studying the small dead animal for several seconds, before in a move Farron wouldn't have expected in a million years, it extended the animal out to him.

He stared, frozen in place.

Did it… really expect him to take that from him?

It made another noise, a louder one, Farron's adrenaline kicked in, and he bolted.

It was a stupid idea, and the mimic caught him in less the a second, wrapping its free hand around his midsection and lifting him off the ground.

"Fuck, let me go! Just let me go please! I just want to go home, goddammit!"

It made noise again, a terrible, inhuman noise, like the ones it had been taunting him with back at the other house, before it adjusted its grip on him, pinning him between its body and its arm, before using its hands to rip off small chunks of squirrel and shove them into Farron's mouth.

He was crying as he struggled uselessly.

What. The. Fuck. Was. Happening.

Each bite of the squirrel felt like it would be the last bite of food his stomach could handle before turning. Honestly, a part of him wished they would stop playing games with him and just kill him already. Was this not enough?

The mimic, after feeding him most of the squirrel, carried him to a bedroom like he weighed nothing. To a creature like this, he must.

The bedroom was on the second floor the windows had all been boarded up. The elder mimic put him down on the bed, before moving the dresser in front of the door, trapping Farron in the room with it.

He didn't know what the mimic wanted from him, what was going to happen to him now, or when this would all end. But he was exhausted. His body ached, hie wounds hurt, and his limbs felt like they were made of lead.

Still, there was no way in hell he'd be able to fall asleep with that thing watching him. He lay, starring at it, not wanting to look at it anymore, but not being able to look away.

Why had he ever wanted to study mimics in the first place again? It can't have been worth this.

Then, after several agonizing minutes, the elder mimic once again did something Farron wasn't expecting.

It lay down on the bed next to him.

Farron was crying again now too. Great.

The long limbs of the elder mimic hung off of the bed as it rested. It's breathing heavy. It wasn't asleep though, Farron knew. In all his years studying them, he'd never seen a mimic sleep, especially not laying down. Why was this one so weird?

Maybe he'd find out. Maybe it would kill him before he could.

Only time would tell.