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With his undeath had come a gentle sort of horror, one that Chip was uncomfortably familiar with.
It was the lack of breath in his lungs, the silence that was now his body. It was the feeling of slow decay around him, skin turning gray and peeling away like the outer layers of a fruit, revealing his soft, slow rotting insides.
There was the reveal of white bone, first where his nails had blackened and fallen away, skin splitting along his broken knuckles. Then came the deep places of his ribcage where the flesh and fat had worn away to show the open hollows of his chest, the neat curve of bone.
All this was worsened by the toxic sludge of the Black Sea, the salty dampness of it, and the scrape of Chip against rough and jagged surfaces stealing away loose bits of him. He fell apart like some broken, decomposing thing- which he was.
His body held up rather poorly.
These things, however, only he was aware of. Chip was eternally thankful for his disguising bandanna, which he would tie tight around his stringy hair and will himself to look something like himself again. It wasn't perfect, since holding up this facade of himself required actually remembering what he looked like, and Chip found it hard to maintain that image in his head nowadays. Had never had a good mental image of what he had looked like, making this mimicry something of a challenge. But it was close enough.
So no one knew him as the cadaver he had become.
That is until the ligaments of his neck broke down and rotted, his vertebrae unclasping from their delicate puzzle, and Chip's head fell from its place on his shoulders.
It didn't just drop one day, some necrotic magic twining the bones together and keeping them from buckling in like they probably should have. Chip didn't just fall apart. Not yet anyways. Instead it had happened one day on the Albatross, in one of the most ridiculous ways possible.
Jay had accidentally smacked him across the face.
"Accidentally" is giving Jay the benefit of the doubt, as by this point her wild gesticulating and whacking Chip was a rather common occurrence. What was not common was the ripping sound that followed, Chip's head tipping back further than it normally would, then it snapping off of his neck in an instant, a surprisingly clean break.
Jay shrieked.
Chip didn't even realize that his head had disconnected from his body at first. He was just confused as to why he had had a very random bout of vertigo and why he was suddenly looking up at everyone. "Wait, what the fuck happened?"
Jay recoiled. "Fuck— are— Chip? You still— there?"
Chip frowned. "Of course I'm still fucking here where else would I— Jay? Whose body is that?" He had caught a glimpse of the still upright corpse, arms flailing as he spoke. It looked awful, sallow decaying skin with yellowing bones jutting out through it. More bone than flesh really.
He realized with an almost sickening dread that that was his body.
"Why is my body over there?" Chip asked, made the habitual motion of swallowing, failed when his mouth came up dry and when he noted the lack of throat and muscle to even try moving. Felt a small ounce of fortune at being only him and Jay out on the deck at present, the only ones to witness this embarrassment.
"Chip—"
"Jay. Is my head on the floor?"
"It—"
"Jay, please tell me my head isn't on the floor."
Jay nodded numbly.
"Shit," he hissed. "Can. Can you put me back?"
Jay's eyes seemed to bug out of her head; if he weren't in the situation he was currently in Chip probably would have joked that it wasn't a very nice look on her, that she looked funny. "How do I- What the fuck do you mean can I put you back?" she choked out.
Chip rolled his eyes, at least he could still do that, eyes fortunately still soundly in their sockets. "I mean-" His body knelt down and mimed grabbing at something on the floor. He could sense the movement, distant and faint like an echo. "Oh, that's weird- I mean pick me up-" Skeletal hands pretended to hoist the imaginary thing up into the air, setting it down in the empty space that was now Chip's shoulders. "And put my head back where it's supposed to be."
Jay had started looking a little deathly herself, pale as the blood drained from her face. "You want me to… how would that even work?!"
His decapitated corpse shrugged, which looked a little odd without the head, two shoulders rising a bit with nothing to scrunch into. "I don't know."
She stepped forward, bent and reached out for his head. Chip waited. Her fingers brushed against the side of his face, felt the leathery quality of his skin, stretched thinly against his skull. Jay blanched. "What the fuck."
"What!?" he protested.
"You feel weird," she said.
The upright corpse crossed its arms. "No shit, I'm dead," Chip snapped.
Jay looked at his body, then back at his head. Seemed to truly realize the state of complete disarray his body was in, rotting and necrotic, the slink of tendons visible through fragile skin. "But you don't look… at least your head doesn't."
"Jay I'm going to be so real with you," He flicked his eyebrows up, making a face that tried to point towards his hairline. "I've been using the bandanna overtime."
She stuck her hand out, hovered it over the red fold of enchanted fabric. "So if I…"
"Jay—"
But she was already lifting up the bandanna, tugging it loose from his hair.
The truly devastated expression she gave him made Chip wish it were possible to die— as in, shrivel up on the spot and cease to exist die, not this strange half-life. He thought distantly of the compass.
"Oh, Chip." There was pity in her voice.
He frowned. "Don't do that." There was a place in the side of his cheek where the skin had come away to reveal the upward slant of his teeth, the loll of his tongue. Even his voice was different, a low rattle, hoarse and dry and very much not his own.
She tied the bandanna back around his head, the illusion falling neatly back into place. "Why didn't you say something?"
Skeletal arms splayed out wildly, waving around in the air in frustration. "Cause this would happen, okay! Stop looking at me like that." Jay turned away, unable to look at him. "Jay can you please put my head back I don't like this angle."
She muttered something under her breath. Tried to take hold of his head again. Fingers involuntarily recoiled before even making contact with his skin. "Nope." Jay turned heel, and ran off all of sudden without another word.
"Hey!" Chip shrieked. "Don't leave me like this asshole!"
Jay came back a few moments later with a very grim looking Gillion, who made a face when he caught a glimpse of the state Chip was in. "Chip," he said warily. "Your head is on the ground."
"Gill!" Chip tried smiling; it looked more like a wide, yellow, grimace. "Come to put it back on? Please? I'd really like to not be at shoe level again, thanks."
Gillion was trying to stare out at anything but Chip, avoiding both body and head. Chip didn't think that he had ever seen Gillion look so uncomfortable before, like he'd rather be anywhere doing anything but this. He almost seemed to squirm, like a fish, Chip thought, and almost laughed.
Gill frowned. "What is funny?"
Chip snorted. "Nothing, nothing, it's just— your faces." He broke out into a wheezy, rattling laugh. It was easier to laugh at their, in his opinion, overly dramatic horrified expressions, than to think too long about why they were making those faces. To think about what he had become. Laughter, or the illusion of it, came easier.
Gillion could barely look at him.
"Gill? Buddy." Nothing. Chip's heart would've sank if he, you know, still had one. An edge of panic creeped into his voice. "We're still friends, right?"
Gillion nodded quickly, too quickly, something frantic and desperate. "Yes. Yes, of course. It's just—" He wrinkled his nose. "You stink." Jay nodded solemnly in agreement.
Chip knew he didn't mean in the usual way. Knew he meant, hey you reek of death and of unholiness and it is setting off the divine sniffer right now and that's really bad. Knew that, surely, what Chip was went against everything Gillion believed in.
Still Gillion steeled himself and with a grit of teeth, lurched forward, going to grab at Chip's head, trying to just get this over with as immediately as possible. His claws sank into Chip's skull uncomfortably, not painful, his nerves to feel pain with being dead, but the pressure being unpleasant. Gillion pulled him upwards quickly, Chip's surroundings blurring around him in a colorless haze.
Then came a flash of something bright and burning (Oh hey! Not all his pain receptors were completely dead, apparently!), holy energy twining hotly through his skull where it connected with Gillion's hands. Chip shrieked in surprise. A distance away he heard Jay's "Oh shit!" Gillion flinched and dropped Chip, who landed on the deck with a thud, soon to be lack of nose squished in a way that would have broken, if it weren't almost completely rotted off at that point. His head seemed to steam, the only indicator that any harm had been done, the rest masked over by the illusion. Chip knew there were likely concave and black dips in his cheeks now, burned away muscle and bone— but with how he was face down, unseeing, unfeeling, he figured he had more important things to worry about.
"Chip!" Gillion wailed. "I'm sorry! I did not mean—"
"Didn't mean to smite me yeah," he said, half muffled due to how he was face planted on the deck. Gillion didn't respond. Chip tried rolling himself over, failed. Remained exactly where he landed. "Gill s'not your fault."
"It was involuntary. I should've have warned you that that could happen."
"No, s- s'fine. Prolly shoulda guessed that'd happen. Stink and all." Chip sighed, miserably noted to himself to keep a reasonable distance from Gillion now, for both their sake. Mostly for Gillion.
"Now what?" Jay asked.
Jay and Gillion stared at his decapitated head.
There was a very tense and uncomfortable silence as they both considered to themselves whatever they should do, as neither of them seemed very inclined as to actually pick him up. Chip broke the silence. "Oh what the hell," Chip said, realized neither of them were going to be of much help, and started trying to guide his body over towards his head. It stumbled awkwardly, shuffling about like someone very drunk.
Chip couldn't quite tell if it was going in the right direction, still being mostly face down. "Which way do I go?"
"Left," said Jay at the same moment Gillion said, "Right."
"Great teamwork guys." Chip grumbled. He went with Jay's suggestion. He careened forward, grabbing wildly at the air. Eventually, he did get to his head, scooping it up with clammy, bony hands.
He held himself out, turned his head so that he could study his corpse. Decided he really didn't want to do that— those are exposed and rotting organs and bones— and turned his head back around, towards his co-captains and their still rather horrified expressions.
Chip hefted up his head, holding it just over the hollow cavity of his neck. "Moment of truth, I guess." Slammed his head onto his shoulders. Missed, head rolling back on to the floor. "That didn't happen." Chip said, ignoring the small snicker from Jay. He tried again, with a degree of carefulness this time.
There was an awkward clasp of bones, a necrotic energy holding the ligaments fast to each other. Not healing but at least putting him back together, for now. Chip stood upright once again, mostly whole. He blinked, illusion of life sweeping over his entire body. Smiled. "There. All good."
Things were not all good, judging by Jay and Gillion's faces, facing seen what they saw. Knowing what they knew. This reality of Chip's death. The rotted thing he had become.
There was a gentle horror that came with undeath, one that disappeared and became brutal and all to real and impossible to ignore when bones buckled and collapsed.
Chip tied the bandanna tighter.