Dead By Daylight Novelization

Part One - Awakening

Chapter 1

Fire.

I think humans became human as we know them when they learned to tame fire.

Wood on wood, grinding and turning in opposing lines making friction that sparks to smoky ignition across a pile of dry brush.

Fire is a very ‘human’ kind of thing, you know?

Just like how we saw grey wolves and thought that if we fed them they might stay beside us. We met these terrifying pack predators of the woodlands and didn’t think of danger, instead we thought: ‘friend?’. In that same way, we saw lightning strike a dry tree and split it in half, and watched fire spill across the choked forest floor like water over a jetty, biting and chewing and consuming everything in its path and thought: ‘warm?’

Yeah, warm.

And then we learned to yoke fire to a little circle of rocks filled with debris.

That really must have seemed like magic to our still-evolving brains, right? Make a circle of rocks, put sticks in the circle. Throw on some dry grass, rub the sticks together, and the dead tree is suddenly bleeding fire and warmth all over us.

Fast-forward an epoch or two and you’ve got that same species turned into a bunch of glampers sitting around a prebuilt firepit roasting weenies and drinking cheap beer while they lie about the size of the fish they caught the year before last.

I wonder what happened to that fire that was in us back then. The fire that learned from lightning and tamed wolves, and now it’s just an ember.

I don’t know why I’m thinking of this now.

No, that’s a lie. I know exactly why I’m thinking of embers and cold fires.

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“Miss Thomas?”

The doctor’s voice is far away, or it feels like it anyway, which is impressive considering he’s only about a foot from me.

I wish he wouldn’t look at me like that.

With that scrunched brow and those dark, tired eyes full of pity. I don’t need pity, I needed him to do his job, and apparently that was too much to ask.

“Yeah?” I answer with as much energy, and as little anger, as I can manage. “What?”

Well, I tried.

The doctor sighs, and somehow that just makes me want to punch him in his stupid, well-educated face even more as he holds out the thing I’m trying not to look at, practically shoving it under my nose. I know that’s the anger talking, and I know Coach Winslow would get on my ass about it.

‘Ya can’t just run, Meg, you gotta run towards something.’

I grab the clipboard Doctor Merriott is holding out to me more roughly than I probably need to and glare down at the piece of paper on it.

Part of me wants to be sick all over it because of what it represents. The paper is an evil thing, or at least that’s what my brain is telling me. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong! It looks like a regular piece of printer paper, half-faded because whatever printer they’d used had been running low on toner, and it’s still warm from the machine that had vomited it out, but I know that it's evil.

I try to focus on it. I try to read the stupid thing but my eyes won’t stick to the words because they keep filling up with tears the same way the burning in my gut is filling my chest.

“Miss Thomas, there’s nothing I can say to make this easier,” Doctor Merriott's tone is low and soft like he’s trying to soothe a spooked cat, which is more than a little patronising. “No one your age should have to make this decision but, at this stage, I can guarantee you… she will never wake up.”

“Shut up.” I grip the clipboard hard enough that it bites into the flesh of my palm, and I swallow down a lump in my throat as I card my fingers through my hair.

Knots of carrot-colored strands catch in my fingers, and I yank them loose. It hurts, but the sharp pain barely even registers as I stare at the most important part of this miserable piece of paper.

Date and signature.

“Your mother knew this was coming.” Doctor Merriott sounds tired. How dare he sound so tired. He didn’t even try! “She fought as hard as she was able, but even without that signature, she will-”

“FINE!” I snarl as I rip the pen out from where it’s stuck half under the clip of the board, bite down on the cap, pull it loose, and put the tip to the dotted line.

I scrawl out my name: Megan Thomas, date it, and shove the board to the doctor’s chest.

“There.” My hands are shaking and I can barely breathe, but I don’t look away from him. “Just… just do it.”

He sighs again, and this time he sounds more than just tired.

“Miss Thomas, I-” Doctor Merriott starts, but the words die in his throat as he meets my eyes, and instead he just puts a worn brown hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Megan, we tried, but this wasn’t a fight that could be won.”

I know he tried. Doctor Merriott tried for a whole year and got nowhere, and it’s not his fault.

Part of me wants to say that, but I can’t get it past the angry, obsidian clot that’s stuck just past my tongue. I can see the lines in his care-worn skin, and the guilt in his brown eyes. I can see how his salt-and-pepper hair is greying enough that he looks a lot older than I’m pretty sure he is, and I know that when he flicks that switch it will age him a little more, and I want to say it’s not his fault.

I don’t.

I just follow him into the hospital room where the woman who raised me has been confined for the last four months of her life, and watch as he turns off her life support.

There’s nowhere for me to run this time.

All I can do is stand still and watch my mother’s fire go out.