The problem, April thinks as she watches the latest scantily clad teenager screech her way across the scene, is that none of the people in horror movies know what they're talking about. Not really.

No one's ever told them about how the pieces of a skull look skittering across your hands. No one's ever told them about the way a chest continues to suck, suck, suck, at emptiness when you've ripped out the organs, the pulsing ruins left desperately clutching at nothing as they struggle not to crumble.

Blood, for example, isn't that ugly neon red that keeps popping up in this low-budget flick, chasing one victim after the next to a garishly painted end. It's so many shades of black and brown and red, a kaleidoscope wrapped up inside every pulsing vein and gushing wound.

For example, the blood she's currently grinding into her tits with her free hand is a deep, dark red, a color that makes her rapidly hardening nipples flash like garnets in the light from the screen. The light she's carefully massaged into her limbs is crusted brown in places, much like that of the dead girl two seats over.

The blood staining her thighs, meanwhile, is almost black. As is the blood adorning the head wedged between them, a striking contrast to his mask, the one thing he's kept from the old days.

" Mmmfth, Raphie," she moans. "Such a sweet little tongue you have." Raph whimpers, shuddering with quiet triumph at the praise.

"Odd, for someone who's always saying such dirty things," Donnie muses from where he's kneeling behind his brother, carefully prepping Raph's ass with bright red fingers. "Perhaps we should keep him gagged more often." He twists his fingers and Raph groans, flexing his wrists in their restraints.

They've got him wrapped nice and tight in a little straitjacket of entrails, lovingly woven together by Donnie from the very best specimens in the theater. Raph could break it if he wanted to--but he won't, he's very well trained, and he doesn't want to risk being left out of the next slaughter.

April doesn't like the prospect very much either, to be honest. Raph looks so damn pretty when he fights, a blur of fists and fingers and sharp-toothed madness, eyes glowing like fallen stars. But he looks equally pretty on his knees, bound and helpless and gazing at her with desperate want.

"Perhaps. We could scour the streets for the biggest men we could find and jam their cocks down his throat, changing them whenever one starts to rot. Let him suck the blood, but he couldn't spit out the skin." She pats Raph on the head. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" He lets out a little churr, snuffling like the darling animal he is.

"Why stop there? Let's nail his hands together," Donnie says thoughtfully, yanking on the entrails. "So that even if he does get desperate enough to break the rules, he can't."

"Oh, wouldn't it be awful?" April teases, rubbing Raph's head. "Being able to let us do all the wicked things we wanted, and you couldn't fight back? Having to fight and kill with your teeth like a dog?" Donnie reaches up to scratch Raph behind the ears much like...well, you know. He sighs, drools flecking his lips, and they both giggle.

It's just a joke, of course. At least it is now. If they're really going to spend eternity together, April thinks she might be able to give up the sight of Raph's deadly hands in action in order to...experiment. But that's a scheme for another.

She scoops up a handful of the eyeballs she's collected in a popcorn box. "Here, catch." Donnie obediently snatches them out the air and April gives an approving little clap, adjusting her legs from where they're propped up on his shoulders. Donnie turns and licks her left ankle, sucking and nibbling at the skin so that she lets out a soft sigh.

On screen, a pretty girl is cut in two, blood cutting through the air like a lightning bolt. April rolls her eyes--another thing they don't understand is the way that blood and shit and half-digested food unfolds from the body when it's been cut up, like the petals of a dark flower. She thinks it's quite lovely, to be honest, but moviegoers seem to be these bright, relatively clean flashes of gore anyway.

Real gore is messy. It gets everywhere, soaking into the seats and splashing around April's feet, and it smells. The scent of butchered meat, shit, piss, all the detritus of desperate, ruined bodies hangs heavy in the air. Killing is rarely as clean as films pretend.

Of course, it's true that April and her boys weren't very careful. It's hard to function when they've gone without feeding long enough, to feel or think anything other than more, more, more.

They'd barely kept things together enough before they got to the theater, instead of simply letting loose in the street. They were still being pursued by those idiotic do-gooders after all, even after that idiotic Time Witch's malfunctioning scepter had hurled them all into the future.

But they'd found a safe place to relax, to take the sharp edge off their hunger and clear their heads. Now they have time to play. To dress themselves up pretty in the carnage, to crown Raph like a king in chains of broken flesh and pulsing filth the way he likes it.

April leans across to the dead man tucked up in the seat beside her like a lover and dips her hand in the blood dripping steadily from the hole in his neck. He'd died slowly, that one, tongue twitching garbled pleas and prayer despite his lack of a jawbone.

Plenty of fresh blood to rub on her tits, then, smearing it down her stomach to where Raph's eager mouth waits. He pulls away just far enough for her to delicately rub some more on her cunt before he's diving back in, rocking her back in her seat with his hunger.

"Steady, steady," Donnie says, tugging on Raph's shell. He's got his cock out, deliberately brushing the tip over Raph's thighs as he slicks it up with blood from a nearby pool.  The three of them had ripped out some of the seats so April could have a better look at her boys, casting an already nice cock in a very appealing light.

Donnie puts on a sweet little show indeed, finding different ways to tease them both as he swirls red up and down his length. April lets out a little sigh, much more titillated by that than the sad pawing currently taking place on screen.

Raph whimpers, and April can see how badly he wants to grab Donnie and pull him close, the same way he wants to sink his fingers into her thighs and soak them in the blood drying there. He needs to be near them so much, poor thing. 

"Hush," April says, running her hand along the top of his head. "You'll be good, yeah?" He will be. The urge to be good has been buried under Raph for so long, tucked away under so many layers of anger and fear.

But vampirism undoes everything. Now that he's in the deep throes of the change, he doesn't have the ability or desire to resist.

On screen, a spear rams through a couple when their bodies are pressed together, killing them both. Pretty stupid weapon-wise, but nevertheless...April casts a thoughtful eye a few rows ahead. There is, in fact, a pair who continued bumping together after she and Donnie ripped out their spines, trapped forever in a lukewarm makeout session.

April has no sympathy. If people can't fight for their love the way she and Raph and Donnie can, what is the point of it?

The three of them didn't just have their bond fall out of the sky, after all. They won it through a desperate struggle for survival, through the terrifying, shattering nature of undeath. She won't shed tears for those who haven't earned such a thing.

Raph jolts with a cry, fresh vibrations buzzing through her folds, and April knows Donnie's finally put that adorable cock to use. She gives Don an approving look, gently scratching the back of his head with a slightly trembling foot. He leans into the touch, eyes hooded.

"Come closer," she whispers. Donnie obediently shuffles nearer, pressing Raph right up against her folds so that he's gasping for breath between each movement. Not that he seems to notice, or even care, he just keeps lapping away as April offers more flesh blood.

His restraints squelch, squelch, squelch against Donnie's plastron in time with the movement of their bodies. It's curious to April how that sound is the one that strikes, not the snap of Donnie's thighs against his or the muffled noises they're all making.

Perhaps she likes the reminder that Death is the fourth member of their relationship. And oh, how eagerly they've all accepted him into their lives.

On screen a girl cowers in a corner, hands pressed to her mouth, hiding from the killer. Lucky her, to wind up with one of the blander, smaller monsters, the ones whose only powers are a chainsaw and a ridiculous amount of luck.

There's no hiding from April. Her powers are sharper than they've been since the crystal was destroyed and she can stretch her senses over this entire building, even while she's being tongue-fucked into oblivion. She does it now, relishing the strength that pulses through her veins.

The fear that filled this room when she and her boys first appeared is long gone, snuffed out along with its owners. Even the projectionist is dead--April doesn't know how long they have until the film breaks down, doesn't know how far film technology has advanced at this point in time, doesn't even know the year she's in. And she doesn't really give a fuck.

Nothing from the ushers, at least yet. They undoubtedly thought the screaming was part of the soundtrack, and it appears that so far there hasn’t been any visible blood spilling under the door. Eventually they will come in, of course, and then she and her boys will have a nice little midnight snack.

And later the others will find them, and the fights will be harder, and...But she doesn't want to think about that, not right now. She wants her boys.

Her boys, who love her so much it would be frightening if April remembered fear. They hunger for the blood she's wearing, yes, and they lust for her body, of course, but it's more than that.

She's the queen of their coven, the one who rose when their first master fell and guided them to safety, to the final steps of transformation and rebirth. The love they feel is by no means pure, but that doesn't make it any less true. And soul or not, she still manages to feel the same way about them.

"Come on, babies," she purrs, hands flexing on the chair like the throne it is. "Take me home."

And they do.

Donnie's hand blurs and shoves Raph's hand between her legs, grinding face down into blood and flesh. Fuck! April hurriedly grabs for more blood with trembling fingers, smearing it over Raph and Donnie's heads like a baptism.

"Love you," she sobs, feeling the release start to splinter through her. She considers whether he might suffocate on her cunt, but it doesn't matter--none of them really need to breathe, even if they're still young enough they find themselves doing it out of habit.

She plants her feet on Donnie's shoulders and shoves, forcing him even deeper into Raph so that they both cry out in shock. "Love you both so fucking much," and her voice is building to a scream.

They don't quite come together, but it's close, bodies heaving and gasping. Raph twists his head and sinks his teeth into her thigh. Donnie buries his teeth in Raph's shoulder. April falls forward, sinking her nails into Raph's shoulder as she buries her teeth in Donnie's neck. They crash to the ground together.

There is no blood, not from the bites. They can't give that to each other. Lucky for them that they can give everything else.

For a little while they just lie there, panting. When Raph speaks, his voice is sticky and strained. "So, who's gonna go out for cigarettes?"

"Oh, you fucking--" April slugs him and he snickers, entrails squelching some more. Fuck, is that sound going to make her horny from now on?

"Told you we should give the cock thing a try," Donnie mutters, leaning over to give April a kiss. She can smell his latest kill on his face, and she knows he can smell hers.

"Like you jealous freaks would ever let me do that," Raph snarks. Donnie grabs an eyeball where it's fallen out of April's spilled popcorn container and throws it at his head.

On screen the slasher falls. The final girl screams, triumphant, blood staining her face and hair. April wonders if anyone's going to tell her how monsters plant little bits of themselves under their skin when you kill them, that they live there into something that gives them the opportunity to flower inside you instead.

She and Donnie and Raph, they've killed so many monsters. So many ugly seeds have grown up around their skin. The curse was just the last little pressure they needed to sprout.

Now the vines have grown high and dark and impossibly tangled. Raph may be the only one physically bound, but they're all tangled up in the same wicked web. Even if the do-gooders managed to steal this curse from them, it wouldn't change a thing, not really. They're connected to each other forever.

April wouldn't have it any other way.