Greg saw this before he died

Who: Natalie and Nic
When: Morning, around 10 am.
Where: Her room/third floor bathroom

Natalie woke late as was becoming her habit, the taste of scotch gone sour on her breath. She lay there for a moment with her eyes still closed, debating whether or not she had it in her to fall back asleep. Upon deciding that no, she wasn't able to sink back into blissful unconsciousness just yet, she opened her eyes and spent some time staring straight up at the ceiling. Once she'd worked up the motivation to move, she threw back the covers and closed her eyes as she sat up, knowing there would be a lingering headache from last night's overindulgence. Self-blinded as she was, the sensation of something cold and thick on her feet and squishing between her toes came as a complete surprise. Her eyes popped open and she looked down, blanching at the sight of the blood - blood she didn't yet realize was fake. Her breath caught and she looked wildly around, some analytical part of her mind noting details and drawing conclusions that she'd look at later. For now, however, the part that was growing hysterical held the forefront of her attention. She stood, slipping on the slick plastic wrap and nearly falling before reaching the surer ground of the carpet, heedless of the foot-shaped bloodstains she was leaving. It was hard to care, of course, when one noticed the entrails strung across her furniture.

GREG SAW HIS BEFORE HE DIED. YOU WILL TOO. Both a threat and a cruel taunt, and Natalie's head was shaking before she'd even finished reading the first sentence clumsily fingerpainted in blood. She was screaming denial in her mind but the sounds couldn't get past her suddenly closed throat. She couldn't stare any longer and broke for the door, tearing a nail in her haste to get the door unlocked. Wrenching the door open, she tracked bloody footprints to the public bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time to throw up noisily. She curled up on the floor there, sitting with her back to the wall and her knees tucked up, face buried in her hands as she burst into tears.

Nic had been on his way downstairs when he came across the footprints, little splotches of 'blood' that moved from an open door towards the public bathroom. They either went one way or another, and Nic went for the bathroom first, knocking just in time to hear someone begin to sob. "Hello?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

If the blood was real, then probably not, but then he'd have expected someone to be making a much bigger commotion if they were really losing that much blood. If he were bleeding to death, he didn't think he'd have locked himself in the bathroom to cry about it.

It took Natalie a moment to realize someone was speaking to her and she immediately tried to get a grip on herself. She couldn't entirely stop the tears but managed to sound at least coherent. "My room," she managed to get out, forcing herself back to her feet. "There's blood... entrails..." That made her remember the current bloody state of her feet and she went white, reaching out to steady herself on the sink as her knees went shaky.

"But are you okay?" Nic asked, leaning in enough that he could see Natalie. Besides the blood on her feet, she looked okay, though definitely ill. But ill didn't indicate blood and entrails, so that was a good thing.

It was hard to decide what to do-- leave her and go check her room, or stay and make sure she was okay. When it came down to it, Nic decided that if there were entrails in her room, then whomever they were taken from was already dead. There'd be no saving anyone here, so he might as well make sure Natalie, who appeared alive, was fine. "Let's... clean you up," Nic said, stepping into the bathroom and moving for a towel. "We'll check on the mess afterwards."

He sure as God hoped this was just another prank. He didn't think he could handle real intestines thrown about the room.

Natalie slowly realized it rather looked like the blood was hers and she shook her head. "I'm not hurt," she said, closing the lid on the toilet and sitting down before she fell down. "It's not... mine." Greg saw his before he died. The words kept echoing through her head. Feeling rather dazed, she reached for some toilet paper to scrub at the red staining one foot.

Nic took a slow, deep breath. "Okay," he said. "I'm gonna go check your room. I'll be right back." He hoped. He really had no idea what he was in for, but he headed towards Natalie's room anyways. It was easy to find, considering the bloody footprints that tracked back to it.

The door was ajar, and as he stepped inside, he flipped on the lights. Immediately, his eyes went to the mess on the floor and his stomach did a little flip-flop in distaste. He'd heard about the meat man a while back; hopefully this was something similar because he wasn't yet ready to consider that this might belong to a person.

Stepping up to Natalie's desk, Nic picked up a pencil and poked at the intestines. Immediately, he knew something was off. Gross as it was, they should have squished. These were hard, as if made out of something... not real. His mind flashed back to the biology classes he'd taken, the anatomically correct dummies that had been in some of the classrooms. "What the fuck..."

Taking the chance that they really weren't real, Nic reached out and poked with his finger this time. Definitely not real. Well, that was nice. If that was the case... Nic moved over to the puddle of blood, then bent down to run his finger through it. He sniffed at his finger, then dared to taste the blood, unsurprised to find it wasn't blood at all.

Only once he'd confirmed that it was all just a cruel prank did Nic direct his attention to the message left for Natalie. "Seriously," he sighed, then left the room, heading towards the bathroom to tell Natalie and get the supplies to clean things up.

"It's all fake," he told her. "The blood, the intestines. All fake. We just need to clean it up."

Natalie had been cleaning her feet while Nic went to check her room, glad he was going to do it so she wouldn't have to. She'd given up on the toilet paper attempt once it became clear that it wouldn't clean the blood off entirely, instead just sticking her entire foot in the sink under the faucet and rinsing and scrubbing that way.

She stared at Nic for a moment when he returned, hands automatically moving to dry her feet even as she tried to absorb what he'd said. "Fake?" she echoed, still looking rather shell-shocked. Her face twisted as a wave of tears threatened and she quickly turned her gaze back to her feet to hide her expression. After a moment to get a rather tenuous hold back on her emotions, she threw away the bloodied tissue and stood. "I'm glad no one's hurt," she said finally. "Do you know if anyone else was vandalized?"