tw: gore, creepy-crawlies & disturbing content; paragraph 13 contains spiders! skip to the tl;dr at the end if needed

    A week of bedrest plodded onward into the doldrums, as though he were a wounded slug abandoned by the march of time. Those outside the rotten walls of his houseboat-turned-hospice carried ever onward, as usual. A bitter reminder of how time abandoned him, paralyzing his grave condition in place as though he never picked himself up from the bloody forest floor his body sprawled on. Unlike Sam -- confined to her bed and under the medics' surveillance just as he was if not more given her fragile mortality -- he would fully repair. While she would heal, the scars would remain engraved into her flesh until the flesh decayed into nothing more than bone. Irrational guilt clamped around his broken throat at the thought. Did he deserve to recover without a trace of the torture inflicted upon them both? He had tried to be a hero and failed miserably. Just like all the times before.

    So in his sullied blankets, he lay, voiceless and motionless. Based on smothering texture of bandages wrapped around his waist, his wrists, his neck, and even his head, Beck assumed he resembled a patchwork mummy from a 30s flick. Selby frequented his dwelling, bringing with him new gauze and a bitter-tasting respite from the pain wracking him inside and out. Often, the anguish reduced Beck to a trembling heap, silently begging the sawbone to return with the next dosage. Oh, how he hated being so vulnerable in a town full of strangers. They may have risked their lives to rescue an entity without one of his own, but they knew nothing about him. Anger would overtake his thoughts, blinding him as he gritted his teeth and cursed every blurred face he could imagine. Then the bitter resentment would ebb into a hollowed sorrow, guilt-stricken for fearing the creatures that saved him in more ways than one. But there was nothing he could do. Nothing except wait as his apparition reset itself to his considerably less injured state.

    If asked, he couldn't answer what day it was. The hours seemed to all blend and mingle with each other, stirring up dust until he could hardly tell a Wednesday from a Saturday. Not that he particularly cared. Time never agreed with him anyway. A pellucid wisp of a shadowy paw pinned down the corners of a splayed comic page, its tar-colored digits uncharacteristically cruel and curving; this half-formed "paw" would have to do until most of his energy wasn't being expended on his quickened healing. Unboxing his collection of dusty horror anthologies might have been his best idea since his plans to reunite with Arrow. He absorbed the vibrant graphics and speech bubbles like a sponge, despite having skimmed the frayed pages years before. Immersing himself in the scary stories certainly warded most of his boredom away. And it was all illustrated! With his single eye flitting from panel to panel detailing interwoven tales of Halloween, Beck scarcely noticed the throng of dark rolling clouds covering the dull sky outside his window.

    A wet droplet plopped on his snout, prompting him to glance up from his comic and glare at the leaking ceiling. The once distant monsoon now thundered overhead, rainwater seeping through the decrepit attic of his houseboat in a damp blemish. Pulling his comic closer to him, Beck shifted in his blanket to defend its thin pages from the invading rain. Yet before he could return his focus to the story detailing an Antarctic monster dwelling in an expedition crate, a creak of floorboards snagged his attention to the dim corners of the room. Two beady lights gleamed back at him from the shadows, hollowed sockets glowing with enough intensity to send a tremble through the boy. Beck jerked up from his blankets, hastily slapping his comic shut with eye wide and glued on the shrouded figure, but it was no use. A cloven hoof stepped forth and soon the rest of the looming elk followed, a worm-like tongue swiping over sneering teeth as he steadily approached. The judge's thorned crown of antlers scraped against the ceiling; the vessel flattened himself against the wall, his broken chest struggling to heave air through a dented airway. The manifestation of Bael halted inches from him, bloat flies waltzing across the bridge of his skeletal snout. Static drowned out the heavy pitter-patter of rain, crescendoing into a squealing buzz of indecipherable voices.

    Beck squeezed his eye shut, tucking his head to his shoulder in anticipation for whatever the entity sought to do to him. Yet no voice hissed insults in his thoughts. No pain. No unwanted memories. Tentatively, an eye peeked open, finding the judge nowhere in sight, the dark-furred elk replaced by unwavering darkness. Before he could slump to the floor in relief, haggard breathing sounded from the other side of the shadowed room. The poltergeist forced himself to stand despite the pain. He paused in his investigation, blinking at the texture of dirt beneath his pseudo-paws, the blankets once tangled around him absent -- yet not at the same time. Unease stuck its claws into his heart. The labored breath only grew louder even as he remained in place, the soil-packed walls shrinking as though the burrow itself were pulling the source closer to him. A ragged lump of ticked fur sprawled in her sick could be discerned through the haze, its flanks heaving in time with a forceful retch. He winced, not for the sharp tang of expelled blood festering in the air, but the vixen herself. Moth? What was wrong with her? The little ghost crept closer to the look-alike, reaching out to poke her side with a shaky claw -- only to recoil as the diseased fox rolled onto her back, a sick-stained face gaping up at nothing while sunken eyes stretched open as though seeing everything. Her cracked lips parted, twisting to speak without a voice: run.

    A scrape of metal against the earth above the boy stirred the dirt surrounding him, the vixen no longer in sight. Light shone from overhead, although the unexpected respite from the tenebrous fog conjured around him was promptly interrupted by a shovelful of dirt flung into the exposed hole and his face. Spitting soil, a foreign panic wormed its way into his thoughts -- before he could act on it, another deluge of earth engulfed him, pinning his limbs beneath its weight. His movements did not belong to him as he shifted, fighting to free at least one paw to unearth the rest of him. Yet the dirt continued to fall in a steady rhythm, accompanied by the shovel's blade dragging across the packed dirt and the gentle hum of a funeral march. It was past his chin now. While he always wished his remains would find a proper grave, this was not his body. The loose soil engulfed his head, silencing the last of his pitiful struggles. As swiftly as the burial concluded, frantic paws worked to exhume the still-living son. Teeth clamped down on his -- no, not his -- someone's scruff, freeing him from the earthen coffin.

    Instead of setting him on the ground he was lifted from, the rescuing jaws coiled around his neck, shifting into a ropelike vine and tightening with unnatural force. More tendrils once drooping from their parent trees' branches moved to take part; soon, the little poltergeist's limbs were restrained in every which way by the vines. A wave of panicked thoughts invaded his mind -- they weren't supposed to be hurting him! He was their proxy! What did he do wrong? -- his confusion only heightened at this. But there were far more pressing matters at hand. Such as being crushed by vines akin to a mouse caught in the clutches of a boa constrictor. He shut his lone eye, face scrunching, to quell his panic. This wasn't real, it wasn't real. He just needed to wake himself up. Yet the suffocating vines only increased their strength until he could hear bones snap and organs burst.

    Then the pressure released him, abandoning him to hit the ground hard, albeit wrists and ankles still tethered. Stunned, he could only watch as the familiar sight of the sawbone looming above him once more. A silver dagger glinted in his grasp rather than any bandages or even a needle and thread. The creature beneath Selby's heart plummeted, as did his own. Beck felt the captive struggle against the restraints, finding no give and rubbing skin raw in the desperate act. Selby would never hurt him, would he? Single eye wide, a cruel sneer forced itself onto his snout, taunting the medic with mad glee. The gifted blade plunged towards the throat, aiming to sever its artery with vengeful certainty.

    The dagger never sunk into its target. Its replacement clattered before grizzled paws. Leroy's paws. The poltergeist shook his head in disbelief. The wolfhound seemed to be young again, his pelt possessing a healthy sheen and figure no longer gaunt and spindly. If only he didn't appear to be so battered. Was this his past? A straight razor coated in black ooze lay innocently before him, its wooden grip splintered along the grain. Baddest man in the whole damn town, a husky voice mocked from the shadows, quoting the lyrics of a song unbeknownst to Beck. The grey figure of Leroy shuddered at this, the tremors gradually more violent until the form of a dog was no more.

    A burly man sprouted from the proxy's shape, although it could hardly be described as a man at all. The silhouette appeared more akin to a humanoid beast with a grey hide and a yellow glare than anything else. But its physique paled in comparison to what grappled in its crushing hold. Elongated fingers entwined around the neck of a woman; with her back turned to him, he failed to discern anything about her besides her choppy brown hair. Her identity did not matter as the grey man's hands crushed her neck. An all too familiar cry of pain slipped from her; no matter how strangled the sound was, he could have recognized it anywhere. Oh no. He couldn't bear to watch her suffer again -- before he could uproot himself from where he stood, the grey man's grip enclosed in on itself and Sam's head separated from her shoulders with a wet pop. Her ragdoll body collapsed to the sand of the arena. The unseen crowd around them cheered. Beck screamed with little more than a whisper escaping, his vocal cords still rasped and damaged.

    Biting his tongue to silence himself, he moved to distance himself from the horrid sight, spinning on his heel to break into a frenetic run. Only to crash nose-first into the broken mirror leaned against the wall of his houseboat. Landing flat on his back among an array of scattered shards, Beck grimaced, not only at the latest pain but at the abrupt reversion to reality as well. Yet as he gawked at the still-leaking ceiling, the dripping panels of wood distorted into an angry red, blossoming into a taunting rose... roses? His face screwed into a bewildered squint. What traumatizing pain and misery could stupid roses bring? The little feline flipped onto his stomach, meeting his answer in the form of at least three dozen thorns puncturing his front beneath his weight.

    Instinctively, he recoiled, only to slip on more of the enveloping rose bush's branches. Thorns fixed themselves in his chin and the bandages wound about his neck now, drawing forth oily blood with every vicious prick. No herbs Selby could have administered to him would numb the pain wracking his system. Forcing himself back to his paws, Beck cast a wild glance around the darkened room. "Bael.. Bael!" he croaked, hardly able to hear his speech through the torrential rain outside. The barbarous thorns seemed to wiggle deeper in response; a shadow-formed paw snapped up to yank the spines out, only to tear away a fistful of his bloodied fur. Alarm plain in his half-bandaged face, the boy tried again. And again. And again. Each time he sought to rid his stitched chest of the burrowing thorns, his claws pulled away nothing more than matted clumps of fur. As the sky thundered, desperation usurped his mind. "Make it stop, Bael! Please!" he pleaded to a judge who refused to listen, writing and clawing his ribs in a frenzied attempted to unhook the thorns piercing his chest. "Leave me alone!" A quivering sob struggled to be heard as the thorns persisted, stuck far too deep to be wrenched out. No one can hear you. Beck ceased his flailing, gasping for air his windpipe could not allow pass. This was what the entity wanted, right? For him to be completely helpless on the floor of his home. Wincing, the poltergeist visibly clenched his jaw, his lone eye trying to fixate beyond the imagined roses and thorns.

    Gradually, the nightmarish phantasm dissipated from view. He finally released a sigh more describable as a wheeze, allowing his front paws to fall to his sides as he worked to process what he witnessed through memories and premonitions. An itch festered in his chest, prompting him to glance at the almost-impressive damage caused in his blind panic. Ragged gashes wove across his bony chest, forming tar-filled valleys in his flesh. When lightning illuminated his rain-dappled windows, the wounds glistened with embedded glass from the mirror. Beck allowed his head to droop back, teeth gritted as the last of his agonized tears slipped past freckled cheeks. The itch developed into a sting, pain smoldering within the slashes crisscrossing his front. The little ghost raised his head to investigate what had changed. His breath hitched -- something moved in the wound. A segmented leg as thin as a hair strand poked around until its owner emerged, blinking up at the horrified boy with eight beady eyes. Once the spider surfaced, its brothers and sisters followed in swift procession, swarming his grooved chest like a dark moss. A series of broken shrieks escaped him as he hastily scrambled to his feet, swiping at the arachnids to no avail. Instinct controlling him like a thrashing puppet trying to put out a fire, Beck was spasmodic in his movements, twisting this way and that to fend off the fictitious swarm. Bael's statement lingered in the last of his reasoned thought -- nobody would help him as long as he remained in his desolate houseboat. Clinging to the slightest ounce of rationale, the poltergeist stumbled to the door and flung it open to brave the relentless downpour, violently shaking himself with hoarse yelps and squeals of pain all the while.

    Not knowing nor caring where his panic-stricken paws guided him, Beck hared through the shadowed forest, narrowly avoiding obstacles as he clawed and nipped at imaginary threats. Brambles snagged at the bandages Selby bundled him in while the sutures he so meticulously stitched pulled taut, snapping from the strain. A trail of shredded gauze and black blood was left in his wake, nonsensical in its arbitrary turns and pivots. Only when a gully materialized in his flight did the hysteric boy skid to slow down, gracelessly tumbling down the embankment's muddy slope. He landed face-first in shallow water accumulated from the rain, moving to lift his top half from the puddle with a tremble in scraped limbs. Lost in the throes of delusion, he mustered the remnants of his strength to pull himself beneath the only nearby shelter from the storm: a red nightshade shrub growing haphazardly on the ditch's opposite side. There he collapsed from fatigue, feebly pawing at his bloody chest and face as cracked whimpers caught in his throat. Nobody ever said the road to recovery would be easy, right?

[size=8pt][b]tl;dr: beck has been in his home for the last few weeks, on bed rest per selby's orders to slowly heal. while trying to entertain himself with a comic, a storm arrives outside and bael appears, bringing with him a series of hallucinations -- visions vaguely detailing both the past and present. the final two hallucinations cause beck to claw up his front under the guise that "thorns" (in reality, glass shards) were stuck in his chest and to torment him further, bael gives him a reason to fear spiders. seeking help from his friends in town, beck managed to run from his home... only he ran in direction of the crater. leaving a trail of bandages caught on branches and blood behind him, beck can be found curled up in a hysteric state beneath a nightshade bush as the storm continues, his stitches torn and his nose broken from crashing into his mirror earlier in the night.

Although Worm aggressively tried to not worry so much about others even when he was trying to avoid himself, the anxiety that accompanied his every move was sunk into his bones, clinging desperately like a dying man to the last throes of life. Because of this, Worm found that even though he wasn't a medic, his life too revolved somewhat around the schedules of Beck and Sam, and everyone else involved in their care. Worm didn't go to visit the pair every day, but he did go occasionally, stopping at Sam's to shoot the shit with her and jokingly congratulate her on her new scars, because "chicks dig scars", and then would continue on to go see Beck. Most of the time these visits were short, since Beck was such a volatile soul that Wormwood could never tell if he was going to say something wrong. For the most part though, he had begun to learn the language of Beck, and because of this most of the time when he went to visit he came with candy, and whatever horror related thing that he could manage to find that particular day. It had become a sort of ritual, and Worm liked to think that it was his way of helping out with Beck's recovery, even though he wasn't exactly a medic. He was quite happy to leave the healing parts ot Selby and Moth.

Today had been one of the days where his plan had been to visit, and he had a little bag of sour candies and an old shitty horror movie clamped in his mouth as he moved carefully through the rain. His ears were pinned back in displeasure as his pelt became more and more soaked with every step, and he didn't lift his head until he heard frantic footsteps. He looked up just in time to see Selby rushing off from Beck's house, and a spike of worried nausea passed through him, wondering what could've been going on. Speeding up his former relatively relaxed trot, the hellhound managed to make it to the front of Beck's house, gently nudging the door farther open and feeling his heart immediately sink when he saw the shattered mirror, and smelled the thick metallic sting of blood. He let the candy and the movie fall from his jaws, and he quickly turned to move off after Selby and Moth, following their scents as quickly as he could before the rain swept them off again into nothingness. Thankfully they were fresh, and Worm's ears could still faintly pick up on Selby's frantic pawsteps.

Eventually he came upon the scene with Beck, Moth, and Selby, and his eyes widened in horror when he saw the state that Beck was currently in. He could see the mangled remnants of himself that the ghost had left behind as a trail to this place, and when he saw how the medics needed to restrain him as he thrashed and let out noises of pain and fear, such grand confusion that Worm couldn't even begin to understand the source of, he was filled with both a sense of pity and concern. Keeping his distance so that Selby and Moth could work uninterrupted, Worm swallowed thickly before he was able to speak, his voice directed at either of them but his gaze trained directly on Beck, "Jesus Christ... uhm. Moth. If you need me to get anything, for him... just ask." He knew that Moth and Selby both had their own little bags of supplies and various resources to call upon for their uses, Wormwood was still willing to rush off and grab anything that he could, just so Beck could stop suffering. For now all he could do was stay back and watch, praying that Beck would be alright and being utterly dumbfounded as to what had put his friend in such a state.

    A soggy bush proved to be ineffective shelter from a deluge as raindrops continued to pelt the boy, thoroughly drenching him. But not even rain could rinse the sticky blood he seemed to be coated in so often, now intermingling with mud to plaster his front and underbelly even further. Beck did not notice the rain, however. With intact eye shut, he had crossed his arms over his chest in an awkward hug, digging needlepoint claws into bony shoulders as though the pricking sensation could keep him grounded. It wasn't real. It couldn't have been real. But at one point, everything he had seen was real. Or will be in due time. His stomach pretzeled around itself -- he gagged then hacked, a slurry of blood and bile slicking his busted chin. A whimper escaping him, the poltergeist tucked his head close to his chest, willing everything around him to disappear, himself included if he were lucky.

    Fortune never wanted to be in his favor. The safeguard of nightshade was disturbed, a gentle voice calling to him. Before he could gasp in shock, paws gripped around his ribs and dragged him into the open. The urge to fight returned to him and prompted the boy to wiggle once more; yet the unexpected touch pinned his arms to his flanks and effectively restrained him. In spite of the assumed attacker's grip, he tried to thrash further, kicking at her belly but never connecting with the vulnerable area. The remaining layers of stitches tugged at flesh as Beck furiously struggled to free himself. He squirmed beneath her weight even after the sutures succumbed to his erratic movements, exposing pale blue viscera as though he newly arrived on Leroy's tired back all over again. Pain shot through his abdomen at this, distracting him enough to weaken his struggles. Through irregular wheezes, he panted as though his missing heart was keeping rhythm to a ballroom quickstep, his body still twitching like a rabbit caught in the jowls of a hound. As a pinprick pupil finally locked onto the face mouthing gibberish above him, lucidity could be seen chipping away at the mindless glaze clouding his halved vision. Confusion contorted his distressed features. Hurt? Then realizing the full extent of the damage he obtained, he sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth, cringing at his nerves firing pain signals every which way. How could he have been so stupid? Selby was going to have a heart attack --

    Selby. The poltergeist's expression shattered as the sawbone's voice echoed over the gully. He couldn't be seen like this! Considering it was all he could do at the moment, Beck licked the inky blood flowing from his crooked nose before Selby hovered over him. But as the tabby approached, the boy's stare turned vacant once more, fixating on the nothingness looming over Selby. All of Moth's efforts to calm him seemed to be reversed as a fearful shriek broke through the howling wind and Beck resumed his struggling tenfold, writhing in the mud and flinging his upper half side to side. Without reason to his frantic actions, no one could have predicted when he abruptly jerked upwards, potentially smashing his forehead against Selby's jaw with an audible click of bone. Momentarily stunned by the impact, his eye flitted to the cloud-veiled sky and stretched wide as a flash of lightning outlined the silhouette of an elk above Selby, who seemed oblivious to the entity as he insisted on shoving herbs towards Beck. "Get away from him!" A strangled cry slipped from waterlogged lungs, his last word hiccuping as sobs wracked his frame. His face, previously screwed up in fright, distorted into one of volatile wrath aimed past Selby and he snarled, blood running past his top teeth, "You... you used me! I did everything for you and you used me!" Tossing his head back into the puddle, his frustration bubbled over the brim as globs of tears rolled down his intact cheek and he let out an anguished wail reminiscent of the screeching banshees from archaic folklore. Bael continued to whisper in his ears even after he flattened them to his skull, venomous words reducing him to nothing more than the state he nearly escaped moments ago: incoherently weeping, fiercely combative, and utterly hysteric.

When Beck's head snapped up and collided with Selby's, all Worm could manage was a soft shout that had come a moment too late. This was one of the few things he didn't blame himself for, however, since he really had no way of predicting the ghost boy's erratic movements. He seemed to be in a genuine panic, his eyes seemingly searching off in random directions, focused on something but not anything that anyone besides him could see. When Selby ended up spitting out a tooth, Wormwood's eyes widened and he stared before quickly shaking his head and moving forward a bit, ready to help Moth restrain the male more if it was required. However, it seemed as though she had it handled, as after a similar moment of stunned silence, the younger of the two medics kicked into action, and was pinning Beck down effectively again while Selby forced something into his mouth. The hellhound winced a little bit as he imagined how the lack of air must've been effecting Beck, since he felt the desire for it even without the need, but he knew that it was necessary. Instead of focusing on the worrying wild symptoms Beck was exhibiting, the canine focused on Moth's words, quickly nodding and turning to rush off. Even if Selby did have dry bandages, it wouldn't hurt to have backups, and thankfully he had some of his own stashed away.

It was a few minutes before he returned, a large roll of dry bandages clenched in his mouth, and little flames running along the "hair" going down his back. If he were in his normal lion form, he would've just used his wings to block the rain from the bandages, but since he wasn't, he was forced to use his flame manipulation to make the pouring rain evaporate before it could truly hit him and drench the bandages he was holding. Moving back over to where Beck was being pinned down, Worm barked softly around the warm bandages clenched in his mouth, "I've got some bandages here if you need them, guys. Nice and warm too, don't worry.... and if you need me to take over holding him down, I can help with that. Hopefully that herb will kick in pretty soon and he'll calm down..." He was really feeling for Selby, considering the freak out that the other had recently that had ended up with him having several injuries of his own, yet now he was being injured yet again, with teeth even being knocked out. He knew Beck probably wasn't doing this intentionally – he actually almost certainly wasn't – but he still couldn't blame Selby for sounding a little pissed off.