there's something kind of freeing about just dumping these old short stories on wattpad. are they going to be read by more than, say, three people? probably not. but that's three more than if i continued futilely shopping these to magazines that will never be interested. perhaps someone beyond my immediate circle will even enjoy reading one or more of them.
it's just nice to post things publicly, i guess. been a long time since i did that with original fiction. liberating.
So, like I said, this took several months to get done. But here it is - a rewrite of Portrait from the ground up, to make it not a steaming pile of garbage.
————————————————————————————
Nine victims.
Alice knew every name, memorized them, so that they would never leave her mind. She knew every nuance of the pronunciation, every strange divergence from the typical spelling.
Stepping out of the break room at Dazed and Confused Records, she looked over the vast sea of music the store contained. Racks upon racks of vinyl lined the walls, while the center shelves held CDs, DVDs, cassettes, even a few 8-tracks. It wasn't much money, but it was a living, a supplement to her college fund.
More than that, it kept her close to Delia.
The boy sitting behind the counter, whose shift had just started, was enthralled in a French novel that Alice couldn't discern any details of from its vague, obnoxiously artsy cover. It took a full minute for him to notice her standing across from him, and his bored look irritated Alice when he finally looked up.
“What?”
“I'm going home. Make sure you lock up when you leave, or Delia is going to fire you.”
The stupid beanie-clad hipster scoffed, turning a page in his book. Alice's eyes narrowed, and he frowned in response.
“We're the only two employees, Alice. She's not going to fire me. Even you, Ms. Forensic Supergod, couldn't keep this place running on your own.” Satisfied that the conversation seemed to be over, he turned all of his focus back to his book.
Alice pinched her brow, swallowing down a flurry of insults that tried to force their way out of her. Next time.
Without responding, she turned on her heel and pushed through the door, narrowing her eyes at the sunlight assaulting them. She'd have to complain to Delia about him the next time they saw each other.
Alice's phone began vibrating in her pocket, and upon looking at the screen, she grimaced. “Speak of the devil and the devil appears,” she muttered, answering.
“Are you free tonight?” Delia's voice was light and airy, to be expected, perhaps, of an elderly woman. Alice knew better than to assume things of her, however. Assumptions never ended well when Delia was involved.
“Should be, yeah.” She scratched under her hat. “I have a project due next week, but I can push my work on that back a day or so.”
The response was a formality – when Delia came calling, Alice couldn't turn her down. Not in their line of work.
“Good, good,” Delia replied. Alice noted that Delia seemed to no longer be focused on their conversation. “I'll pick you up at ten. Make sure you have the materials.”
“Who's the target this time?” Alice asked, twirling her hair around her finger as she walked down the street to her apartment. The sidewalk was deserted – this part of town wasn't very active, which made running the record store easier. Delia only kept the store itself around as a hobby anyway; a hobby and a memento. She owned numerous other stores across the city, and used the profits from them to keep the record store open when it couldn't stay in the black for any given month.
Delia was silent for longer than what Alice was comfortable with, and she sighed, directing her mouth away from the receiver. When Delia did reply, her voice seemed weary and uneasy.
“It doesn't matter.”
Alice frowned. Delia never refused to tell her the details.
“That's not very specific.”
“It doesn't need to be, Alice. Now stop blithering on and make sure everything's ready for tonight. I'll see you in a few hours.”
“Oka -” The line clicked before Alice could finish her response, and she glared at the screen when she pulled it away from her face. “That's rude.”
As she unlocked the door to her apartment, Alice stared up at the ceiling, contemplating the events that would transpire tonight. Another target. Another victim.
Another name.
+++
Alice returned to the record store later that night, an hour after it closed, and dropped her bag on the table outside. She crouched down to reach under the mat in front of the door for the key, and found that it wasn't there. In a brief panic, she stood up and tried the door, which swung wide open in response.
“God damn it,” Alice muttered, noticing the key on the windowsill. That stupid douchebag would pay for this. She made her way to the back of the break room and shifted the fridge over, revealing a small cutaway in the wall behind it. Sticking her hand in and feeling around for a moment, she pulled out a Ziploc bag containing matches, Oxi-Clean, and detergent. With the fridge back in place, Alice left the store, making sure to lock up this time, and waited at the table outside for Delia to arrive.
On the table, her bag vibrated, and she heard a brief motif from Final Fantasy VII, indicating a text message. Pulling it out of her bag, she sighed when she saw the message, and who it was from.
“Super hot hospital gown selfie,” the message read, accompanied by a picture of Alice's brother, Nate, clad in a hospital gown. Though the message seemed energetic, Alice could tell that he was tired and weary in the photo. She noted the sheen from his freshly shaved head, frowning. Reasoning that she could be asleep at this time, she turned her phone off and dropped it into the record store along with her wallet. Delia refused to let her bring either of them with her when they were working.
A few more minutes of waiting gave way to Delia's arrival, pulling up to the curb in a Volkswagen Type II bus. The back door's handles were busted off, and a makeshift keypad was installed on the side door, to prevent unauthorized entry. The van conveyed a contradictory feeling to Alice; an ancient, decrepit vehicle, with strange hints of the present as well.
Delia herself conveyed that same feeling. Tall and lanky in stature, her face was not that of a woman in her fifties; rather, she looked twenty years younger, with gentle creases and pale skin. She smiled at Alice when she arrived, an empty smile that existed only to give Alice some sense of comfort, something it always failed at. When Alice did not reciprocate the gesture, the smile faded away, and Delia's face settled into a mask.
Alice climbed into the passenger seat and tossed her bag into the back without looking, jumping when she heard a dull thud and a muffled yelp. When she turned to look, she saw a squirming bodybag, tied up with several ropes on the outside and presumably the inside as well. She settled into her seat as Delia began to drive off, furrowing her brow.
“You already picked up the target?” Alice asked. “You never do that.”
Delia stared straight ahead, her gaze becoming more intense for a brief moment. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened as well, knuckles whitening.
“I had things to do, and I saw no need to wait for you, so I went ahead and did them.”
She turned to face Alice, eyes narrowed. “Is there a problem, dear?”
Alice gulped. “No.”
“Good, good,” Delia replied, nodding to herself, her body relaxing.
“Let's get to it, then.”
+++
Kenshin had struggled a lot. A natural reaction, one that Delia and Alice were used to by the time he was targeted. His end came swiftly afterwards.
Alice rested her head against the window of the Volkswagen, thinking back to their previous victim. The ninth one, he would have been an easy mark, but Delia was off her game for the entirety of the execution. Alice almost had to step in and do it herself, something she wasn't prepared for, and which would have surely resulted in something terrible happening to her, Delia, or both of them. Fortunately, Delia came to her senses in time to get the job done, and the clean-up – Alice's job – went off without a hitch.
Alice never held the knife, never used it – she had been pulled in solely to help Delia leave behind a spotless crime scene. Delia was even putting her through college for it – forensic science. In the three years since Alice began working for Delia, powering through her classes and applying what she learned to each successive mark, the two of them had become quite efficient. This all despite Delia's age, because she showed a surprising amount of strength and agility for a woman in her position. They had yet to lose control of a victim, despite the difficulties with Kenshin.
Evelyn screamed the entire time. Even when her voice blew out, her face was locked in a silent expression of horror, right up until Delia snuffed her out. Alice vaguely remembered Orion bargaining with them for most of the ride and the execution, only giving up when Delia stabbed him in the leg to get him to stop. Robert cried. Heather pissed all over herself.
Andrew had plenty to say.
Looking over to Delia, Alice considered her behavior the past day. Delia was never secretive with her, not about the job. She was secretive about plenty of things besides that, but those things didn't concern Alice, so she felt no need to know about them. But everything regarding what they did together was fully Alice's business, and to be left in the dark the way Delia was doing frustrated her.
“Alice.”
Though she kept her eyes on the road, Alice almost felt Delia's piercing gaze boring through her.
“Hm?”
“Are you really ready for this?” Delia asked. “You don't seem to be all the way here tonight, dear.”
“I could say the same for you.” Alice was taking a bit of a risk talking back like that, but Delia didn't seem to be affected by it.
“That is true, I suppose. Today was...stressful.” She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I've been pulled in a lot of directions lately. I'm thinking of selling off a few of my shops to ease the burden.”
Alice's lips tightened into a thin line. Delia was, once again, not telling her everything. It was clear from her expression that this was, if not entirely made up, then an excuse meant to divert Alice's attention away from her.
“But if I sell, it makes me worry about my other obligations,” she continued. “Your school fund, Nate's cancer treatments...how is he doing, by the way?”
There it was. That was where Delia was going – diverting attention away from her by reminding Alice of her debts. Alice felt her blood run cold, even as Delia's expression remained neutral.
“He's doing as well as he can be, considering.” She slid further down into her seat, knees pressing up against the dashboard. Delia enjoyed power plays, but Alice was not in the mood to push back this time.
“That's good, very good,” Delia said, her mind seeming to drift to other topics.
“You know, I'm very proud of you, Alice.”
Alice turned to look at Delia. “Well, uh, thank you.”
“You've turned out to be such a sweet girl, and your grades are impeccable. So helpful to me, as well. I think your parents, if they were here to see this, would be proud of the woman you've grown up to be.”
Alice doubted that, but she nodded to appease Delia. She turned her focus back to the dark road ahead of them.
Their “base,” so to speak, was several miles out of town, roughly a thirty minute drive into the countryside. It was in a remote location, on an unmarked dirt path sprouting off from the side of the main road. The house was simply furnished, with only the basics, electricity and water. Delia did not directly own it – instead, its listed owner was a shell company, not easily traced back to her, and that company made the payments for electricity and water as well. Every execution, with the exception of the very first one, had been done here, with the same routine every time. No one ever heard the screams, no cell phones got reception for miles around. Delia found it to be the perfect place to commit her sins.
As they turned onto the dirt road for the final stretch of the trek, Delia's face became pensive.
“I'm getting old, Alice.”
Alice pursed her lips. “Nah.”
She received a quiet chuckle in response, yet another uncharacteristic action. “You know it's true. We can't do this forever.”
The expression on Alice's face turned sour again. “You can stop now. This can be the end of it.”
“Not yet.” Delia's eyes hardened a bit. “Not this time. But eventually, sure.”
The conversation dropped there, with Alice becoming very interested in her hands, folded in her lap. Delia remained silent until they reached the garage, the door opening automatically as they approached. When they parked, Delia turned to Alice.
“I'll handle moving this one to the room. You go ahead and get everything ready.”
Alice paused in the middle of undoing her seatbelt, leaning back and staring at Delia. “Wait, what? Are you sure? They look pretty heavy -”
“Alice, just go and set everything up!” Delia shouted, her eyes widening for a moment. She took a breath, and closed her eyes. “Just...go and let me handle this.”
She turned and got out of the van without giving Alice a chance to respond, and Alice grabbed her bag from the back, eyes lingering on the bound body, before she made her way into the house, to prepare for the execution.
Alice reclined on the plastic-wrapped couch in the living room, surveying the room. Delia was never very good about being clean; she left those parts of the job to Alice.
She never would have picked this line of “work,” but with every kill, it became easier for her to cope. The screams didn't keep her awake at night any more, and the nightmares of their victims rising from the dead to get retribution had faded away. Delia promised that she would be able to move on soon enough, and Nate would get better eventually. They always had a way out, if it came to that.
When her mind turned to Delia's behavior, she felt more uneasy. Keeping secrets was a huge no-no between them, and Delia had done nothing but that for the entirety of this run. She couldn't rationalize it in her mind – they'd been in this together right from the start, ever since Andrew Watson.
A portrait of Andrew hung on the wall opposite her. She avoided looking at it.
“Remember, Alice, these people deserve what they get.”
Those were the words Delia used to reassure Alice whenever she had doubts. Those doubts started after Heather Ao was targeted, a college student who, according to Delia, regularly abused and cheated on her boyfriend. Delia had heard her bragging about it in a coffee shop she owned, and just days later, her blood was spread all over the tarp covering their base's carpet.
Delia was not, in her own words, an indiscriminate killer. Just like Andrew Watson, the people she chose were violent, terrible people, betraying the trust that she believed was an essential part of relationships.
That reasoning seemed to become less and less important to Delia as they continued, but Alice made herself overlook that. Delia knew what she was doing, and the money needed to keep flowing in any case. Just a little longer. Just one more. Each time, Alice told herself that there would just be one more. One more, and she was out. But it was never just one more.
Alice was broken out of her reverie by Delia's arrival behind her. She got up and brushed herself off, gloves squeaking against the apron she wore. She turned to tell Delia that everything was ready, but fell silent when she finally laid eyes on their victim.
Bound, gagged, and shaking with terror, there stood the hipster from the record store. There were stains on his pants – it seemed as though he'd gotten soiling himself out of the way already, probably in the van. Alice looked from him to Delia and back a few times, and then pointed at him.
“What is this? Delia, what is this?”
Delia pushed him over, and he fell hard onto the ground, still tied at the hands and feet. Alice could hear muffled sobbing from him.
“This is our next victim,” she answered, as if nothing were wrong with the situation. And, Alice could tell, it didn't seem like Delia really cared what Alice thought about it.
The hipster, lying in a small puddle of his own sweat, attempted to inch his way away from the two of them as they spoke, to which Delia responded by kicking him in the stomach, rolling him over in an almost complete circle. He threw up, prevented from opening his mouth enough to let it out, and cried even harder. Alice gulped back a bit of her own bile, unable to take her eyes off of the spectacle before her.
“What did he even do?” she said in a low voice, as Delia surveyed the room, making sure that Alice had prepped everything properly.
“The store has been in the red every month since this asshole began working there,” she snapped, pulling a sheathed knife out of her bag, twirling it around her gloved fingers. “That hurts my bottom line. That hurts your education, Nate's treatments. This cannot be allowed to continue.”
“Then fucking fire him, for Christ's sake!” Alice shouted in response, turning to stare at Delia.
“This is insanity! We can't do this! This is petty, even for your standards!”
The look Delia gave her sent chills down her spine, but Alice refused to step down.
“What do you mean by that, dear?” Delia growled, running a finger along the shining blade of the knife. “Please, do tell.”
“What I – what I mean is, this isn't how we do things, Delia. Don't you remember what you told me? We only get rid of people like Andrew, people who deserve what we're doing! He doesn't deserve to die,” Alice said, gesturing at the hipster on the floor. “We can't do this.”
Delia looked down at him again, a look of contempt forming on her face.
“Well, Alice, what do you suggest we do now, hm? Now that he's heard everything – where do we go from here? Let him loose? Send him on his merry way?” She smirked. “I've lived a long enough life, my dear. But you're just getting started. Do you really want everything you have to be taken away, just because you won't kill a worthless boy?”
Alice gritted her teeth, eyes widening. So this was her plan – Delia wasn't even trying to hide the metaphorical knife any more. Instead, she was just twisting it around in Alice's stomach. She had Alice pinned in a corner – if they let their victim go, both of them would be arrested, and their previous crimes would be discovered, leading to a likely death sentence. And Nate – his revenue stream for his treatments would be cut off, and he would join them in the grave.
She rubbed her temples, averting her gaze from Delia's sick expression.
“Come on, dear, you know what we have to do.”
Delia held the knife out. Alice stared down at it, confused.
“What?”
“Take it.” Delia flipped the knife upwards and caught it by the blade, offering the handle to Alice. Beads of red seeped out of her palm, sliding around to the top of her hand, dropping off onto the tarp below them.
“I'm not going to last much longer, Alice. You need to keep up our good work.”
Alice's gaze remained fixed on the knife. In the corner of her eye, the hipster had stopped moving, seeming to resign himself to his fate, but his soft sobs continued to provide a backdrop for them. She looked back up at Delia.
“Why did we keep doing this? Why, after Andrew?”
Delia's hand dropped to her side, still holding the knife.
“Because I liked the rush, Alice. The power.”
She picked at her sleeve, reverting to a younger version of herself, a wistful expression growing on her face.
“You remember what he did. What he always did to me.”
Alice frowned. She did remember – the bruises, the cuts, the welts. Andrew Watson had been a terrible husband, despite all that he gave Delia. In the monetary sense, of course. He never gave a single ounce of true love, or affection.
She remembered her parents, how, after they died, Delia told stories of when they first touched down in America, immigrants fresh from Iraq. They moved in next to Delia and Andrew, and would have Delia watch over Alice on a regular basis when they needed to be away from the house for a while, be it work, a date, or something else.
Alice remembered every detail of the day her parents were killed, in a multi-car pileup on the highway. Delia gained guardianship of her soon afterward.
“We didn't have to keep going,” Alice replied, her hands shaking. Delia tilted her head to the side, her smirk twisting into a grin.
“But the rush of it, Alice, I already told you. We always had to keep going.”
The night Andrew died, Alice had been in her room, browsing around on YouTube. She tried to block out the shouts, the fighting, like she always did – the cold reality of Delia and Andrew's marriage had already set in. This time, however, it seemed much, much worse, and she made her way downstairs to see what was going on. The sight she was greeted with exceeded expectations.
Delia had Andrew pinned against the wall, a long, double-edged knife in her hand, held just inches from his throat. Her eyes were red, dried tear streaks on each cheek, while Andrew's expression was cold, like it always was, even with the threat of death looming before him.
Alice immediately retreated back up the stairs, peeking out over the railing. Neither of them seemed to have noticed her, so she watched with apprehension.
“You won't do it,” Andrew said, looking down at Delia. “Where will you go from here, without me? I built this whole world up for you. Even if – and it's a big if – if you can cover this up, what will you do?”
“I don't need you.” Delia pressed the knife against his neck and cut the skin, drawing blood. “I just need your money. I'll never, ever let you hurt me again.”
Andrew's facade of apathy began to slip, and he gulped.
“Think of Alice, Delia.”
Something about that sentence seemed to provoke Delia. She straightened up, and leaned in close to Andrew, her face an inch from his.
“I am.”
With one swift motion, Andrew Watson died, in a splash of his own blood, spraying from his throat. Alice yelped when it happened, horrified. It gave away her position, and Delia turned to face the stairs, the hints of a smile tugging at her mouth.
“Come on down, dear. I'll need help cleaning this up.”
Delia held the knife out again, handle pointed at Alice.
“Do it. Take it.”
Alice's eyes were fixed on the handle, watching a small droplet of blood slide down the blade to the hilt, leaving a dark scarlet streak on it.
This had to stop.
Delia wouldn't stop. Not until she was dead.
Alice looked up, and took the blade from Delia, whose smile widened.
“Good. Now, kill him.”
Alice knelt down and pulled the hipster to his feet, then pushed him onto the couch. By this point, he had gone silent, and his eyes were devoid of any sort of emotion. She felt sorry for him; he didn't ask for this, and he didn't deserve it.
As she mulled her options over, Delia hovered over her shoulder.
“You have to do this, Alice.”
Alice's eyes moved up to the wall, where a painting of a desert hung. It reminded her of her parents' home country. They always talked about the vast expanses of sand, in the Arabian Desert.
“Think of Nate, Alice.”
Alice's grip on the knife tightened, and she took a deep breath.
“I am.”
In one swift motion, she spun, knife raised, and plunged it through the side of Delia's neck, grabbing her shoulder to bury it deeper. Delia's eyes looked as though they might pop out of her head; as blood began spilling out of both sides of her neck, she moved her jaw as if trying to speak. Her eyes settled on Alice, and Alice thought she saw something – satisfaction? – in them, as Delia fell to the ground, her knees giving out.
Delia Watson died much as Andrew had, in a puddle of her own blood. The knife came loose from her neck as she fell, remaining in Alice's hand. The hipster on the couch screamed when Alice stabbed Delia, and his sobbing began anew. Alice stared down at Delia's corpse, watching as blood pooled around her feet on the tarp. After a minute or so of this, she turned back to the hipster, who cowered at the other end of the couch. Raising the knife, she cut the gag from his mouth and removed it.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” he said, over and over. He never took his eyes off of Delia's body. “That's our boss, she's a psycho, holy fuck, holy fuck -”
“Shh, shh, listen, it's alright now, it's over.” Alice grabbed his shoulder and gave him a shake. “Stop.”
He looked up at her, terror still dominating his expression.
“I promise I won't ever tell anyone. I just want to go home.”
Alice kept her grip on his shoulder, looking down at the carpet. Think of Nate.
“No, you won't ever tell anyone,” Alice said. She sized him up, and then thrust the knife forward, between his ribs, straight into his heart. The hipster barely was able to react; he hunched forward, a gasp of air escaping his lips. His death came quickly afterwards, as Alice removed the knife and tossed it to the side.
She moved over to the other side of the couch, where she had been sitting earlier, and dropped down onto it again, ignoring the two bodies in the room. Instead, she looked straight at the portrait of Andrew, now looking at Delia, arm wrapped around her waist, as well. Andrew had an easy smile on his face; Delia had an expression of thinly veiled discomfort.
Alice remembered a story her mother told her, when she was ten years old, about the origins of her name. It came from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Her mother had named her so because they had viewed America as a wonderland, a place of promise and fulfillment.
“This is not what I had in mind when you dragged me into this stupid road trip!” Nona shouted, kicking the flat tire that had stranded them on the side of a long, empty stretch of road in Kansas. With civilization miles away and not a hint of a satellite signal, things were looking grim from her perspective.
Dave sighed. “Isn’t this exciting, though? Just the two of us, no phones, no radio - “
“No food, no water, and a fucking Prius that won’t drive!” Nona retorted.
“Not true! We have vitamin water!” Dave reached into the car and pulled out a half-downed bottle. Grape flavor.
“We have, like, four of these!” He shoved the bottle in her face. “Four!”
Nona’s frown deepened. “We’re going to die out here.”
She walked to the trunk and rifled through it again. “I can’t believe you took out the spare tire for a cross-country road trip.”
“We needed space for the vitamin water!”
She glared at him. “We’re going to need room for your corpse, next.”
Dave shrugged off the threat. “Oh, Nona, don’t be like that! Surely some incredibly convenient, if highly suspicious, trucker will barrel down the road and pick us up in exchange for dubious services any minute now!”
Nona stared, opened and closed her mouth wordlessly, and then turned on her heel and retreated to the comfort of the Prius, hiding under a blanket in the passenger seat.
“Any minute now,” Dave repeated, staring down the road with optimism.
Three hours later, Nona was shaken awake by Dave, perpetually excited expression staring down at her with wide eyes. She sat up, staring out the window to see a truck idling on the road, a large, mustached man staring back from the driver’s seat.
Turns out I forgot to publish the second printing of TITAN. Here it is. The original will be deleted; no need for two when the changes are so minor.
The room's seats were arranged in a curious manner for a doctor's office – a perfect circle, with a single hole cut out of it to allow those patients to come in and out of it. Of the nineteen chairs, five were filled in. One seat removed from the gap in the circle sat a scruffy old man with dirt covering much of his visible skin, his clothes ragged and torn, his hair and beard a dirty grey. His nervous, twitchy gaze rapidly moved between the four other occupants of the circle, and his hands were in a constant state of circling each other in his lap.
This sucks.
Sitting on the opposite side of the circle's entrance from the homeless man, a teenager with a deep tan, fire engine red hair, and a sour expression, kept her eyes trained on the top screen of her 3DS, ignoring the strain the 3D effect put on her eyes, already damaged to the point of needing glasses. She knew that she was the person who wanted to be at the office the least; indeed, she was sure of it. As sure as she'd ever been of anything in her life, in fact.
Across the circle from the homeless man was a mother with her young daughter. The mother, a dark-skinned woman with straight black hair, kept a tight grip on her child's hand, as the lighter-skinned, curly-haired girl tried every three minutes to escape the circle in some unorthodox manner. The mother's eyes were locked onto the man across from her, his apparent homelessness being a great personal offense to her.
The woman's child reminded the teenager of her own mother, when they started visiting this doctor for her mother's regular checkups. She didn't remember much of the visits, other than the fact that her mother liked the man for more than his jovial nature and speedy appointments.
Her expression soured. Familial memories were not what she wanted to deal with today, or ever. She turned her focus to the last occupant of their circle.
He was a clear businessman, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar with a newspaper open in his lap, wearing a high-priced, dark gray suit, seven seats to the left of the homeless man. The chomping noise he made was consistent and disgusting, and several times the teenage contemplated pegging him in the face with her 3DS.
The TV above her played a news story about some sort of costumed superhero. The report consisted of rumors and speculation, calling the hero “Titan-Girl.” What an idiotic name.
She felt a tap on her knee, and twisted her face into an expression of irritation as she lowered the console in her hands, revealing the young girl that sat three chairs to her right. Not even the child's unassailable face of glee could break through the teenager's aura of faux-angst.
“What?” the teen snapped.
“Are you playing Pokemon?” the child replied, her wide eyes sparkling.
The mother stood up and grabbed her daughter's hand, dragging her back over to their portion of the circle. “Sorry about that.”
The teenager shook her head, and brought her attention back to the game, a small smile crossing her face as she destroyed a Bug Catcher's Caterpie with her overpowered Typhlosion.
The creak of the doctor's door caught her ear, and she looked up to see him standing in the doorway. A tall, incredibly dark-skinned man of African-American descent, he had an imposing presence, radiating an air of authority even as he wore a casual smile. After a moment of looking at the chart in his hand, he pointed at the cigar-chomper. “Mr. Valdez, come on back.”
Folding up his newspaper and tossing it to the side, he stood up and made his way to the circle's exit, banging his knee on one of the chairs on his way out. “Grrrrgh,” he seethed, biting his lip. “Why are the chairs even like this?”
Dr. Hunson chuckled, his voice deep and gruff, running a hand along his scalp. “It's to foster a sense of friendship between all my patients. Did it work?”
“No,” the cigar-chomper, the overbearing mother, the curious child, and the surly teenager all said in unison. The homeless man's nervous rocking intensified. The teenager rolled her eyes. This sucks.
The doctor shrugged. “Ah well, better luck next time!” He laughed again as the cigar-chomper followed behind him. The teenager turned her focus, once again, back to the game in her hands, bringing her knees to her chest. “I'd better be next, Doc,” she said before the door closed, stopping the doctor in his tracks. He gave her a stern look.
“You're after the gentleman next to you, Molly. Wait your turn.” The doctor's eyes fell upon the homeless man, narrowing a bit as he considered the man. Without a word, he turned away and closed the door behind him.
She let out an exaggerated sigh, slumping more into the chair. “Whatever.”
Not more than a minute later, a rustling noise followed by the mother's scream caught her attention. She looked up, and was greeted with the sight of the homeless man holding a grenade, his fingers on the pin, ready to pull it.
Molly sighed, closed her 3DS, and stood up.
This isn't what I needed today.
“Don't you fucking move!” the homeless man shouted, waving the grenade in Molly's direction.
She held her hands in the air. “What are you even doing, dude? Where did you get that grenade? You look like you haven't bathed in, like, ten years.”
“Shut up! Don't fuck with me!” His voice shook in time with his body, staring at the teenager across from him.
Molly pointed at the screen. “Let me give you a minute to put it together.”
His eyes darted to the television, which was now detailing a story about abnormally large goldfish, and then back to her. “I swear to Christ I'll pull this pin and blow us all up!”
Molly tilted her head to the side. “Well, you wouldn't kill me, but I don't really want to have a bunch of bodies on my record, so could you just hand that grenade to me or something?” She took her eyes off of the homeless man to look at the young girl cowering in fear behind her mother. “Am I doing this whole 'superhero' thing right? This is what Spider-Man would do, right? I'm more of a DC girl.”
The mother stared at her in disbelief. “Wh- are you her? The one all the news channels are covering?”
“You could say that, yeah,” Molly replied, smirking.
“Then would you do something about this!?” the mother screamed back at her.
“Give me a second! Geez!” Molly responded, rolling her eyes and turning back to the homeless man. It took her a moment to notice that he'd pulled the pin and was in the process of releasing the handle.
“Shit.”
Molly had no idea how long a grenade would last before detonating. Four seconds? Seven? Five? In any case, she had to act fast. She uncurled the index and middle fingers of her right hand, and shot a thin beam of energy through the man's wrist. Breaking into a sprint, she grabbed the grenade as he dropped it, shouldered him out of the way, hopped over the chairs, and smashed her way through the door, into the office complex's courtyard.
Three seconds was all Molly needed to escape the office, sliding to a halt. More than three seconds for a grenade to detonate. I'll remember that the next time some maniac sets off a grenade in a doctor's office.
Without even looking at the grenade, she lobbed it straight up into the sky. Less than a second later, a couple hundred feet in the air, it detonated. The resulting explosion was surprisingly small; she'd expected something more extravagant.
The mother screamed again, and she turned to see the homeless man attempting to escape. Narrowing her eyes, she held up a hand, measured the shot, and sent a much larger bolt of energy through the man's knee, destroying most of it. He let out a shriek, and collapsed to the ground. Molly made her way over to the man, taking her time. She placed a foot on his stomach and rolled him onto his back.
“You're a fucking moron,” she growled, putting all of her weight onto that foot, causing the man to wheeze and sputter.
After a few seconds of causing the homeless man additional pain and suffering, she let him go, and stalked back towards the doctor's office, where the mother had been in the process of calling 911. Molly grabbed the phone and closed it, glaring at her.
“I was not here. You didn't see me. Sure, Titan-Girl did it. Whatever. But I am not Titan-Girl. Are we clear?”
The mother nodded, her eyes wide and fearful. Molly slapped the phone back into her hand.
“And don't call me Titan-Girl, either. That's an awful name and whoever came up with it should feel bad.”
She pushed past the mother to get back into the room and retrieve her 3DS. When she found it, she noticed the young girl staring at her. Her expression wasn't one of fear; rather, it was more a sense of wonder, or perhaps awe. Their eyes locked for a moment, and Molly pulled her 3DS out of her pocket, handing it to the girl.
“If you call me Titan-Girl, I'll take that back from you. Got it?”
She responded with an excited nod. Molly's faux-angst field failed her, and she ruffled the child's hair.
Sirens wailed in the distance, and Molly sighed, running out the door, her hood pulled up to obscure her face.
He's gonna be mad.
+++
Familiar sights, sounds, and smells zoomed by Molly as she ran, following the path to her hideout.
Left turn, two blocks down. Right turn. Down the alleyway, hop the fence as a shortcut. She used to smash it down, but it would be put back up within a week, and she began to feel bad for whoever had to fix it.
It took fifteen minutes from the office to her house, but Molly didn't so much as break a sweat the entire time, arriving at her doorstep looking as refreshed and grumpy as she always did. She pulled the keys out of her pocket, unlocked the door, and tossed herself face-down onto the couch, reaching for the remote on the table without looking. In the process, she knocked over a glass of water and dunked her hand into a bowl of stale chips, but her hand found the remote, and the sounds of classic cartoons soothed her.
Being a superhero is stupid and it's hard and I don't want to do it anymore.
This thought popped into her mind once a week. It tended to be followed shortly afterward by this:
But who else is going to do it?
Several hours later, the front door opened again. Molly had not moved at all; in fact, she was asleep when the door opened and the house's other occupant returned home, but the noise jolted her awake.
“If you're going to lecture me, do it now while I'm still groggy and prone to falling asleep again,” she said, her voice muffled by the pillow her face was still shoved into.
Dr. Hunson sighed, dropping his bag next to the chair to the right of the couch and slumping into it. “You need to learn how to control the damage you do being a 'hero', young lady. That door is going to cost me quite a bit, not to mention the fact that I had to close my practice for the rest of the day because of the swarm of cops tearing my office apart -”
“You're welcome for me saving your life, asshole.”
“You didn't even have your mask on -”
She rolled over, using her hands to emphasize her irritation. “Sorry, there was a dude with a God damn grenade in your office! I didn't think about pulling on the stupid mask!”
“And you really need to start wearing gloves -”
“I don't have fingerprints, gloves are useless, you of all people should remember that little detail -”
“What if you had hit something with that grenade? And that man, you severed his leg -”
Molly sat up, glaring at him. “Are you going to thank me, like, at all? And that dude was a fucking psychopath. He had a grenade, in a doctor's office. How many times do I have to say that? There was a little girl there! What was I supposed to do, huh? What would you have done?”
Dr. Hunson pinched his brow, gritting his teeth. “I-I don't know.”
“Then don't you fucking lecture me on how to do my God damn job! You're not my father no matter how many times you fucked my mom behind my dad's back! You don't run my life!”
Molly grabbed the pillow she'd been resting on, and threw it full-force into Dr. Hunson's face, tipping his chair backwards and causing the pillow to explode. She stood up, tears streaming down her face, and ran to her room, slamming the door so hard that it broke through its doorframe.
Dr. Hunson pushed himself to his feet after a minute of lying on the ground, recovering from Molly's tantrum. Setting the chair back into position, he sat down again, cracking his neck.
“You really did it this time, Djimon,” he muttered. “She's gonna kill you one day with that pillow thing.”
Reaching for the remote, Djimon turned the TV back on, flipping through the channels until he reached a news station. They were running another story about Titan-Girl, following up the incident at Djimon's office a few hours earlier. He smirked at the mention of Molly's media-given “superhero” name; every time Molly heard it, he knew she hated it more. He watched the report for a few minutes, giving himself and Molly some cool-off time. Once it ended, he stood back up and walked down the hallway to Molly's room. The door hung from its top hinge, the doorknob crushed, the outer doorframe lying in splinters on the ground. Pushing the door aside, he stepped over the wood into her room, where he found Molly hiding under her covers.
“Molly?” he said, his voice quiet. The sheets shifted.
“Look, I know you're mad,” he began, sitting at the edge of her bed. “And you're right. I wasn't being grateful, and all I did was focus on the negatives.” Djimon covered his face with one hand. “I'm not very good at this.”
He looked over to the lump where Molly was, and saw a patch of red hair popping out from under it. She mumbled something unintelligible.
“You're going to have to speak up.”
She pulled the covers further down, exposing the rest of her face. “You sound like my mom when you talk like that.”
Djimon frowned. “Molly -”
“'You'll never amount to anything. You're dead weight. Get up off your ass and do something.'” The words came out as if they were lines from a play, recited dozens, even hundreds of times before. “Stupid bitch doesn't even have the balls to be alive, watching me make something of myself.”
Her voice dropped in volume. “We both should've died.”
“Don't say things like that.” Djimon reached up and pulled the covers away from Molly, revealing her to be curled up in a ball, clutching a stuffed stingray. He scooted further up on the bed, and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Listen to me. You survived for a reason. The accident – that wasn't your fault. Drunk drivers are everywhere, and you can't see them coming.”
Molly gripped the stingray tighter. “What's the point of these stupid powers if I can't help anyone?”
With a sigh, Djimon began rubbing her shoulder. “You have these, these extraordinary abilities because you can do so much good with them. Your mother, whether you believe it or not, would want you to use them for good.”
His voice became introspective, descending into a low rumble. “That man earlier today, he almost took five innocent lives.” His grip tightened. “But you stopped him, and now he'll never hurt anyone. That's because of you. And you can do more, because you're still here, and you'll be here for a very long time. The world needs more than a regular hero. They need people like you. And there's nobody else like you.”
A crackle from Molly's police scanner broke the subsequent silence, and the voice of a nervous police officer cut through the airwaves.
“Requesting backup, we have a situation at First Union Bank. Repeat, robbery in progress at First Union Bank, requesting backup.”
Djimon shook Molly's shoulder. “Looks like a job for Titan-Girl,” he said, smiling. She responded by kicking him in the stomach, though the hit was quite restrained, and only caused severe pain, as opposed to throwing him across the room.
Molly sat up, and rolled out of the bed. “I guess I'll go deal with that.” She removed her hoodie and pants, exposing her full superhero outfit – red, with blue stripes running from the center of her chest to the small of her back across her shoulders. The logo, a stylized sun with a T emblazoned across it, glistened in the dim light of her room. As she began to leave, Djimon stopped her, reached into the hoodie, and held out a balled-up piece of cloth.
“Don't forget your mask this time.”
Frowning, she snatched it out of his hand. “Whatever.” She pulled it on, and looked over her shoulder at Djimon one last time.
“For Mom.”
A sad smile crossed his face, and he nodded. “For Theresa.”
+++
First Union Bank had been held up before. Being the largest bank in the city made it quite the visible target for high-level heists.
The man that stood in the middle of the bank's atrium, however, was not what First Union was used to in regards to the type of criminal that typically targeted them. This man, covered head to toe in riot gear, held a large control box in his gloved hands. The box was connected wirelessly to several bombs that had been placed in key locations in the bank, which he had proven by detonating one of them when a security guard attempted to fight him off.
Robbery hadn't been his first career choice, but with the walls closing in, he'd decided to put his skills to use in the only way he could see.
He'd done a number of heists like this one, getting away clean each time, but First Union had always been a prime target. The heist was going about as well as he'd expected. No hiccups. No surprises.
Up until a girl in a spandex suit smashed through the side window and shot a yellow beam through his wrist, causing him to drop the control box with an agony-filled scream.
+++
Molly ran over to the robber, smirking. Several of the hostages were screaming. Probably just scared. They'll calm down soon once I embarrass this asshole.
“Alright, scumbag, shut up,” she said, crouching next to the man as he tried to stop his wrist's profuse bleeding. “You're done, you hear me? You're fucking done.” She grabbed his head, forcing him to look at her. “Remember this face, you shitbag.”
He nodded, eyes wide, fear dominating his face. One of the hostages began crawling towards the abandoned control box.
A distant whizzing noise caught Molly's attention, and she turned to look at the windows she had smashed through. A second later, something barreled through the window at a speed too fast for her to process, and slammed into her, throwing her through the opposite window, smashing her into the solid brick wall of a building across the street.
Dazed, with ringing in both ears, Molly sat up, clutching her head. There were sounds of panic and confusion coming from every direction, vague shapes running around, clearing out the street. Her blurred vision refocused after a moment to reveal a young man standing in front of her. His skin was much darker than hers, with a shaved head and proportions that seemed stretched out. What caught her eye in particular, though, were his legs, bulging with unnatural muscles, accounting for his incredible speed. He also seemed to be wearing nothing but tight gym shorts, not even shoes.
“Is your outfit supposed to be ironic?” she croaked out. “You know, with the whole skimpy outfit deal. Profound statement, right? Am I right?”
The mystery man ignored her jab.
“Titan-Girl,” he said, in a whispery, low-pitched voice. “Your time is up.”
“Fine, whatever, ignore my astute observation,” Molly growled, pushing herself to her feet. “And don't call me that.”
The strange man before her looked her over with cold, uninterested eyes. “There's nothing else to call you, except, perhaps, Moll-”
His speech was interrupted when Molly flung a large section of the brick wall behind her at him, ignoring the people inside the building. He stepped to the side as it flew right past his ear, his expression never changing. Several screams came from the bank, and Molly ran forward, attempting to pass by the assailant to return to the bank and regain control of the situation. Her path, however, was cut off by the man, who kicked her in the stomach to stop her, and then threw her down the street with another swing of his leg, tearing up a section of the pavement.
“Get out of the way, you motherfucker!” she screamed, shooting several beams of energy at him. He dodged each one with little effort, weaving his upper body around them and hopping around, moving closer and closer to her each time. After five shots, he was right in front of her, and brought a boot to her face, sending her across the street and through the window of a jewelry store. She smashed through several display cabinets, coming to a halt at the back wall of the store.
It took her almost a full minute to sit up this time, and when she did, with blood coming from a gash on the back of her head and several glass shards embedded in her back, she was seething.
“Fuck the bank. I'm going to kill you first.” She stood up, shook her head, and ran forward, jumping off the roof of a car and shooting a flurry of energy at her assailant.
Like before, he dodged them all, but he also seemed to be having more close calls than before, and Molly thought she noticed a miniscule amount of slowdown in his motions. Miniscule is still slowing down, she thought. Let's see how far I can push him.
The man collided with her again, but this time, Molly managed to latch onto his leg, canceling out her momentum. She raised an elbow and smashed it into his arm, smiling with triumph as she heard it shatter. He let out a grunt, and somersaulted, driving Molly right into the ground. The shock of the impact forced her to let go, but she managed to get up quickly as he backed away, creating more distance between the two of them on the now-empty street.
“That's right, bitch, suck on that,” she said, pointing at him. “Now tell me your name, or I'll break your other arm next.”
The mystery assailant glared at her, his expression giving way to irritation. “You want a name, Titan-Girl? Fine.”
“That's not my fucking -”
“My creator calls me Lightning.”
Molly, ready to begin a tirade about her unwanted superhero name, paused, her mouth hanging open slightly. A laugh escaped her lungs, escalating in volume until she was doubled over, in hysterics. “Lightning? What the fuck? Like, Lightning McQueen? That's way worse than Titan-Girl! What dumbass named you that?”
Lightning's eyes narrowed. “That's not something you're allowed to know.”
She wiped her mouth, the laughter dying down. “Wow, I didn't expect that one.” Her smile faded, and she shifted into a more solid stance. “Alright, Lightning, fighting a pseudo-supervillain has been fun and all, but I've got a bank to save.” She posed, using her fingers as pretend guns to point at him. “Superhero out.”
She turned around and took two steps towards the bank, when a chain of explosions engulfed the building in flames.
“No!” Molly brought her hands to her head, pulling at the fabric of her mask. She whipped around to face Lightning, whose expression had settled back into its usual indifference.
“The deed is done,” he said, his voice as emotionless as his face. Before Molly could react, Lightning turned and disappeared down the street.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Molly said under her breath. She paced in a circle for a moment, torn between trying to chase after Lightning and running back to the bank. She decided after a few cycles of pacing that she needed to head to the bank instead, and ran down the street to the smoldering hunk of glass and metal where First Union Bank stood just a few minutes prior.
Skidding to a halt, Molly stared through the flames of the building, as sirens wailed on the other side. The fire department was close by; one truck had already begun hosing off the opposite side of the bank, while another truck came screaming down the street Molly stood on, flanked by two police cars. The firefighters ignored Molly and began setting up to contain the blaze, while officers threw their doors open and pointed their guns at the girl standing before them.
“Get down on the ground! Hands on your head!” one of them yelled at her. Molly found herself frozen in place, unable to so much as move a finger, let alone comply with the officers' demands.
“Get on the ground, now!” the officer repeated, shaking his gun at her. Molly held her hands out in front of her.
“I – I can't do that,” she sputtered, her eyes flicking between the fire and the officers. “I wanted to help -”
“That psycho blew up twenty five hostages! Nice job, superhero!” another officer shouted, venom pouring out of his voice.
Molly kept her hands held out, weighing her options. She could try to run without hurting any of them and risk getting shot multiple times for her trouble. She could also disarm them in an aggressive manner, perhaps to send a message. Mentally, she shook her head. That's the opposite of what a superhero would do.
Her lips tightened into a thin line. Am I even a superhero at this point?
The officers continued to shout at her, but their words blurred into each other. Molly's brow furrowed, and she sighed.
Fuck it.
Index and middle fingers uncurled, and Molly fired four thin energy shots at the officers, knocking their guns out of their hands. Before the weapons even hit the ground, she turned and ran, hopping over a car and flipping it for extra protection as she ran. Do cars actually stop bullets? Probably not.
She ran as fast as she could, weaving around people on the sidewalks, ignoring the multitude of calls for pictures, exclamations of love, and occasional vitriol thrown her way. She didn't care about any of it; she needed to put as much distance between herself and the bank as she could.
Passing by an alleyway, she skidded to a halt and almost fell over trying to backtrack into the alley. At the end of it, she ducked behind a dumpster and collapsed against the wall.
Molly's vision blurred. Her heart was beating loudly in her chest, much too fast. A ringing noise began to drown out everything else. She tore at her mask, fumbling with the hole cut out for her mouth and chin, trying to remove it. Once it was off, she threw it to the side, covered her face, and began sobbing.
“I fucked up, I fucked up, I fucked up,” she repeated, smacking herself in the head several times as she did so. After about a minute, the anxiety episode passed, and her breathing moved back into a regular pattern. Sobs gave way to soft hiccups. She wiped her face a few times, taking deep breaths.
No sirens. The police were probably busy with crowd control now.
She had to make her way back home. Djimon would know what to do. He always knew how to fix her mistakes. They could regroup. Perhaps this wasn't the end of her superhero career.
Maybe she could fix things. Maybe she could destroy even more lives. She estimated a fifty-fifty split between the two.
Sixty-forty.
Eighty-twenty. She was always exceptionally talented at fucking things up.
Molly leaned back against the brick wall, staring up at the clear sky above her. She frowned, and raised her middle finger to the heavens.
A visit to the bank opened every day for Giovanni. Most of those days, he used the bank visit as an excuse to talk to the attractive teller that always worked on the far left, hoping that one day, he would have the courage to ask her out on a date after six months of visits. He had the feeling that she was waiting, too.
He sat in his car one particular morning, looked in the rear-view mirror, and decided that today would be the day. He planned his approach as he drove; walk up, ask for a deposit slip, and then ask her on a date by writing the question on the slip. Ideally, she would blush, giggle, and respond with a 'yes.' Ideally.
“Yes, yes, I think this will work very well,” he said to himself, nodding.
Imagine his shock and horror when he discovered that First Union Bank had been burned to the ground before he got there. The silent scream Giovanni's face conveyed as he jumped out of his car, running towards the building. The sobs that escaped him when he was stopped by the police officers, fighting against them even as he learned there were no survivors.
Imagine Giovanni's rage when a police officer named Titan-Girl responsible for the deaths of twenty five people, including his beloved bank teller.
Giovanni did not go to work that day. Instead, he turned back and drove home, taking a box from the back of his closet and considering the handgun inside. The idea of suicide flashed across his mind. He had very little to live for, after all. A quaint businessman with an unrequited interest in a dead bank teller. Who would miss him?
Well, Giovanni would, of course.
He changed his mind about suicide, and his thoughts instead turned to Titan-Girl. The arrogant “superhero” with so much blood on her hands. Giovanni decided that day to add some more blood. But this time, it wouldn't be the blood of innocent hostages.
On what most people told her was the most important day of her life, Emily Greene woke up late.
Later than she'd wanted to, anyway. 6:00 a.m. instead of 5:30 a.m., because a power outage in the middle of the night had reset her alarm, and it was only her body's sense of something being wrong that woke her up.
“Oh, come on, really?” she murmured, rubbing her eyes and looking at the clock. “Ugh...”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and dug her toes into the soft carpet for a moment.
Senior year.
Gotta get ready.
Adjusting the nightcap on her head, Emily stood up and stretched, toned muscles contracting and flexing as she did so. Her outfit was draped over the chair at her desk: a plaid button-down over a Edgewater High School Falcons marching band t-shirt and jeans; the typical Emily Greene ensemble. The beanie inherited from her grandmother – a permanent fixture on Emily's head when she was out in public – laid on the desk. She eyed it for a moment, itching under her nightcap, and left her room, stumbling to the bathroom.
Emily stared at her reflection as she brushed her teeth, groggily going through the motions of preparation.
Is this the time that I should be relfecting back on things and deciding where I'm going with my life? she thought, her half-lidded reflection gazing back at her. Because I don't have the mental capacity to do that in the morning.
Sounds of dishes clanking and her little sister's motor-mouthed talking drifted in from the kitchen, along with the scent of bacon, mixed in with...garlic?
If she's testing out another weird recipe for her blog on us again...
Emily figured she couldn't really complain, however, considering that same blog kept them fed, clothed, and in a decent neighborhood. The Internet is weird.
Spitting out the toothpaste and wiping her mouth, Emily retreated back to her room in order to get dressed. She shed her pajamas, and looked over herself in the mirror. Her abs had receded a bit over the summer with no marching band, though they had been coming back with last week's band camp. She flexed for a moment, making silly faces as she did so, laughing to herself. Her eyes drifted up to the reflection of her bare forehead, however, and her smile faded.
The long, thick scar mocked her whenever she lingered on it. Almost none of her friends knew of the scar – her own mother hadn't seen it in years. The scar served as a reminder of a very, very bad time in her and her mother's lives. It also served as a reminder of her younger sister's gestation.
Emily shook her head quickly, and reached for her outfit, pulling on her signature beanie first. No dwelling today.
The rest of her ensemble followed, shirt first, jeans after, and then the button-down as a final touch. She rolled up the sleeves, buttoning them in place, and smiled. “There we go.”
Breakfast was a simple affair. Her mother, Alexia, was flitting around the kitchen, tablet set up on the counter, attached to an external webcam. Emily noted the extra materials next to it, enough to make another helping of the weird garlic bacon she was having trouble swallowing. One round for the kids, the next round for YouTube and the blog.
Abigail, for her part, was scarfing down the experimental meal much faster than Emily was.
“You're actually enjoying this, sis?” Emily asked. “She's using us as guinea pigs.”
Abigail merely nodded, her mouth full of food. Emily rolled her eyes.
“I heard that,” Alexia responded, her back turned.
“Of course you did, I wasn't whispering,” Emily said, her eyes narrowing.
“No, I heard the eyeroll.” She looked over her shoulder and winked at Emily. Emily responded with another, less serious, eyeroll. “Did you hear that one?”
“No need to be sarcastic on your first day of senior year, dear,” Alexia chided. Emily groaned, and pulled at her face. Her phone screen lit up, the notification showing a text from Heather.
“Heather and Tom are almost here,” Emily said, wiping her hands with a napkin. “Try less garlic for the actual recipe, by the way. I almost died.”
Alexia frowned, looking at the recipe she'd written on her tablet. “Abigail enjoyed it.”
“Abigail would eat dirt if it had flavor.” Abigail responded to this by punching her sister in the arm, and then clutching her hand after it connected with pure muscle and bone.
Emily laughed, and ruffled her younger sister's hair. “For a ten-year-old, you're a bit of a moron.”
A knock came from the door, and Emily dodged Abigail's second swing to answer it. The blush that usually resided on her face deepened when she saw Michelle on the other side.
“Yo,” Michelle greeted, tossing her bag on the couch. “Heather and Tom are almost here. Did you know he spent the night at her house?”
More blushing. “Well, they're dating, aren't they?”
Michelle scoffed. “You could call it that, I guess. I'd call it 'holding hands and going to movies together and then yelling at each other immediately afterwards', but yeah, sure, they're dating.”
“Well, that's their problem, isn't it?” Emily said, shrugging.
The door opened again, and Tom and Heather walked in. Tom seemed fine, though Heather's expression implied that the ride over hadn't been pleasant.
“Thomas Patterson, how many times have I told you that you don't live here, and therefore you can't just open the door and walk in without knocking?” Alexia called out, waving her spatula at him.
“But I'm family!” he whined. Heather elbowed him.
Emily stood up, intending to stop any arguments or conflict before they started. “Okay, are we all ready to go?”
Michelle nodded, picking up her bag, as did Heather and Tom. Emily walked over to her mother, who was tweaking her recipe, and hugged her from behind. “Bye, Mom.”
“Oh! Hold on, let me just – “ She spun around and held Emily out at arm's length, looking her over.
“My little girl, finally a senior,” she said, eyes glistening a bit. Emily chuckled. “Mom, you're taking this way too seriously.”
Alexia pinched Emily's cheeks. “Let me have some fun once in a while. Have a good day at school, and don't take any detours coming back this time, okay?”
Emily nodded, accepting a kiss on the cheek from her mother. She hugged Abigail as well, pinching her nose afterwards and dodging yet another thrown punch. The other three were already in the car as Emily left the house, considering the horizon before her.
“Today's going to be good,” she said, stepping off the porch and into her last year of high school.
This is an exercise done for Fiction I - the objective was to write "someone giving something up - explaining it by letter, and then explaining the real reason by diary entry."
————————————————————————————
My dear Janey,
You have been the light of my life for three decades. We've survived it all – the war, the stigma, the Great Collapse – together, our hands firmly clasped, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. It was as if we were invincible, the sole immovable force in this world where everything can shift.
Alas, it appears to me that that is no longer true.
These past several months, I feel as though the fire that sparked between us has been fading away. It is a strong, resilient fire, but all fires burn up their resources eventually, and it seems to me that ours has finally done so.
It pains me to tell you this in a letter, of all the ways the world affords us, but this method feels the most intimate to me, considering I am already gone. I did not want to confront you face-to-face – there would be too much pain, too much sorrow, too much anger. At least this way, you can still focus on the good times.
I need this separation, Janey. I need some time to re-find myself – to find a way to light the fire again, perhaps. It may not be our mutual fire, but a human without a fire inside them is nothing but an empty shell. If you would prefer to have a more traditional separation from me, then I would be more than willing to sign the papers. Send them to Robert.
Janey, you are the perfect woman. Gorgeous, sweet, funny, genius – you shouldn't have to settle for being saddled with me any more. All I would do is pull you down, and tie your wings to your sides. Wings are for flying, not for being stuck on the ground.
You will make it through. You are still immovable. I am simply not.
My love to you forever,
Alice
---
The cancer is going to eat me up in one month.
You'd think that with the advances made in science today – clones! Actual honest to God clones! - that cancer would be a thing of the last millenium. “Mutations have made your strain inoperable.” What the fuck is that? Science is only useful when it doesn't involve you, but when you need it most, it just up and leaves.
Up and leaves, like what I did to Janey.
My dear, precious Janey...I couldn't let her watch me wither away. I wish I could say I was being selfless, but no human being is ever truly selfless. I couldn't bear the thought of her last memories of me being a withered, useless hunk of flesh.
Nobody deserves to watch the one they love waste away.
Part of me believes – no, part of me knows – that this isn't the way to do this. Janey would want to stay by my side to the end of it all. I know that. But that's why I can't let her do that – better for me to break her poor heart and give her the chance to recover than die in front of her and chain her to my memory for the rest of her life.
The world melded in around her yet again. It was frustrating, this time, because she'd been walking down the street. A bit of blood trickled down her cheek; that would probably hurt when she returned. Taking a deep breath, Ivory observed her surroundings.
Barren. "Lovely."
Red dirt everywhere, monotonous color as far as her eyes could see. She could be on Mars.
She spotted a settlement several hundred yards away on her third scan of the surrounding area. "That - that wasn't there before," she murmured to herself. She shrugged after a moment, and began heading in that direction.
Each step Ivory took drove her further into her own thoughts. She'd done this dozens, maybe even hundreds of times before - exploring fantastical new worlds, spending as little as several hours or as long as a decade in the worlds she visited, before returning to her own life, waking from her bout of perceived narcolepsy just minutes after falling prey to it initially.
The world this time was different from the others - while most that she visited were vibrant and bustling with activity from the get-go, this one was empty, a vast expanse of red land and high-rising mountains. Ivory suspected that there might be additional settlements past the mountains, but it was difficult to discern anything. She gazed up to the sky as she walked; it was pitch black, with no source of natural light anywhere, and yet her visibility wasn't hindered in the slightest.
Her footsteps kicked up small clouds of dirt as she made her way towards the settlement. Between the buildings, she saw figures walking around, apparently doing business like usual. Just ten yards away from the settlement, Ivory was spotted by one of the figures, who promptly pulled out what looked to be a handgun and fired three laser shots in her direction. The first two missed, but the third went clean through her left thigh, sending her tumbling to the ground.
Ivory let out a scream of pain, clutching the bloody hole in her leg, writhing. Her vision began to blur as three of the figures ran up to her, weapons drawn, revealing themselves to be human. The one with the laser weapon knelt down and hovered over Ivory.
"Shit, she's one of us!" He gestured to the other two, and the three of them picked her up and dragged her back to the settlement. Ivory struggled to stay conscious throughout the ordeal, but eventually passed out from the blood loss, the last thing she heard being something about a medic.
+++
Ivory's eyes opened, and she found herself in the same position that she'd collapsed in before entering the world she had been exploring. Rubbing her eyes, she briefly lamented the lost opportunity for exploration, and she rolled over, expecting to see the blue sky of New York City and several dozen New Yorkers stepping over her. Instead, she saw a bright white domed ceiling, reminiscent of a hospital building, and heard familiar voices on the other side of the door.
She blinked several times, rubbed her eyes again, pinched herself, even bit her arm, to make sure that she was actually awake. "Strange."
"Ah, Wonder Girl's awake." The man from before, the one who'd put a hole through her leg. Ivory's face contorted. The man, who had been walking towards her, stopped in his tracks.
"You don't have to be so hostile - this is about our first meeting, isn't it? I should've figured. That was over a week ago - "
"What?"
The man's mouth opened, and then he nodded in understanding. "You've been asleep for a week, Wonder Girl. Some of the others were convinced you weren't waking up - please put that down."
Ivory had grabbed the vase on the table next to her, and had attempted to move into position to throw it. However, the jostling hit her leg wound, eliciting a scream of pain as Ivory fell back, dropping the vase on the floor with an equally loud crash.
Her vision blurred, and she caught a glimpse of the man as he ran over to her, leaning over her again and calling for a medic. Ivory was struck with a sense of deja vu, as she passed out.
She awoke again, just as disoriented as last time. Her eyes rapidly took in her surroundings; the same building as before, with the same man as before, and the addition of a woman dressed in white, pushing something into her IV.
"There she is," the woman said, a small smile growing on her face. "You were only out for a few minutes, this time. We were afraid you'd go under again."
Ivory brought her hands up to her face, rubbing at her eyes. "This isn't right." She shook her head. "I shouldn't still be here."
The doctor frowned at her. "Well, I suppose that's the spirit, yes. It'll be a while before you're back up on your feet again, so I think we should leave you to rest." She motioned to the man, who was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, and he made to leave.
"Wait."
The two of them stopped, and looked back at Ivory.
"I want him to stay." She pointed a shaky hand at the man, who looked to the doctor, confused. After a moment of consideration, the doctor nodded, and left the room without another word.
Ivory's vision, still blurry, began to sharpen as the man walked towards her. For the first time, she was able to properly take in his facial features. He was dark-skinned, with short, spiky white hair. His ears extended far back beyond his head, ending in points. When he opened his mouth, she could see elongated canines.
"You're an elf," she whispered. He raised an eyebrow.
"That's a racial slur."
Ivory covered her face with a hand. "Sorry, sorry, I'm not - not from around here."
He let out a snort. "Clearly." Expression softening, he let out a sigh. "What's your name?"
She dragged her hand down her face, laying back against the pillow. "Ivory."
Another snort. "Classy."
"Fuck off."
He waved a hand. "Apologies, possibly some sort of cultural disconnect. My name is Aecarax."
"Eye-caracks? That sounds like a disease," Ivory retorted, giggling. Aecarax's eyes narrowed.
She pinched her brow. "Sorry, sorry. So, if 'elf' is derogatory, what do you guys call yourselves?"
"Aesir."
"So not elves, but gods."
"No, that's - How do you not know these things? You're clearly one as well - " He paused, and looked her over. "Well, some sort of lower half-breed, in any case."
Ivory let out a mocking gasp. "And you berated me for being a racist? Shame on you, Eye-caracks."
"Would you please stop butcher-"
Aecarax was cut off by the sounds of laser fire outside, and he immediately pushed Ivory down, laying over her, gun in hand. Ivory looked up at him. "What do you think you're - "
"Shhh, quiet." Aecarax stood back up, moving to the door. "Stay here, don't try to get up, and don't make a sound." He pointed to the bedside table. "There's a knife in the drawer. Someone tries to get you, gut them."
Ivory frowned. "How come I don't get to blow holes in people's legs, huh?" she replied, pouting.
"Are you seri - now is not the time for this." Aecarax stepped through the door. "I'm locking it. Don't let anyone besides me in. I'll be back soon." The door closed with a click, and Ivory was left alone, with nothing but a knife to keep her company.
Her breathing felt too loud. The movement of her sheets sent panicked chills down her spine. Sounds of battle leaked through the walls, surrounding her, heightening her anxiety.
The noises on the other side of the door began to grow louder. She reached over to the desk, and slid the drawer open, trying to make as little noise as possible. However, in leaning over, she rolled her leg in a way that sent a wave of pain up her body, causing her to lose her balance and fall against the bedside table, knocking over the replacement flower vase, shattering it. Whoever was outside the door shot several holes in it, and kicked it in.
"What've we got in h - " The invader, a large, brutish-looking man, had his musings cut off by a knife straight to his left eye, killing him instantly. A few moments later, Aecarax ran into the room, swinging his gun wildly.
"Are you hurt?" he asked Ivory frantically. She gestured to the ground, shaking. He looked down, and let out a swear as he saw the fallen assassin.
"Holy shi - did you do that?" he said, his voice a mixture of awe and fear. Ivory nodded in response. "I - I don't know how I did it," she whispered. "I just - I just threw it, and, well, you see."
Aecarax brought a hand to his forehead, closing his eyes. "That's the third time they've attacked us this month." He turned back to Ivory. "We thought you were one of them, when you first showed up. Roneirin mentioned that it was strange that you weren't coming from the mountains, which is where these brutes - " he kicked the body for effect - " - live. But, you're clearly not one of them."
She looked down at the body. "Who are they?"
Aecarax shook his head. "Don't worry about it." He pulled up a chair next to her, while three enforcers entered the room and carried the corpse away.
"So," he began, taking Ivory's hand. "You interested in honing those sharpshooting skills?"
+++
"Why are you called Aecarax?"
Aecarax turned to look at Ivory, putting down the gun he held. The two of them were at a shooting range, Aecarax having been intent on molding Ivory's natural talents as soon as possible.
"Because that's what my parents named me," he replied. "Do they do it differently where you're from?"
"Well, it's just strange, isn't it? Aecarax, and you're an Aesir. I'm a hu-" She stopped. "Uh, what I mean is, the alliteration is weird and seems kind of self-referential."
Aecarax rubbed his forehead. "You are just full of mystery, aren't you?" he mused, gesturing to the bench behind them. Ivory put her gun down and joined him. "What?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
He looked up at the sky. "It's customary in our settlement to name the reincarnation of the Great and Holy One with a title starting with 'Ae'."
Ivory's mouth dropped open a bit. "You're...royalty."
"Another horrendously crude way to put it, but yes. I am intended to be the spiritual leader of our community once my father passes."
"But nobody treats you like that," Ivory responded, confused. "They all just act like you're another one of the guys, y'know? Not like you're Jesus walking among them."
"Who?"
"Forget it."
Aecarax waved a hand in the general direction of the settlement, which they were currently on the edge of. "These people, they have to trust me, and be willing to confide in me for help and guidance when they need it. So they treat me as an equal, and I treat them all as equals, in order for us to instill in eachother that there are no boundaries, no barriers between us. It instills humility in me, and it instills confidence and comfort in them."
Ivory's face shifted into a wide smile. "That's, wow, that's really cool. I kinda wish things were like that where I'm from."
"Where are you from, anyway?" Aecarax asked, scooting closer. "Your lack of knowledge about our culture doesn't make any sense, your teeth are dull, your ears are shaped so oddly, and you're - "
A finger was placed across Aecarax's mouth. "Stop asking questions, Lord and Savior," Ivory replied, wiggling her eyebrows.
"Another bastardization of our culture," Aecarax muttered. Ivory giggled in response.
Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, Aecarax took Ivory's hand and pulled her back to the shooting range setup. "Come on, I've got more to teach you."
+++
Four laser blasts bore deep holes in the ground next to Ivory's foot. She ignored them, returning fire and crouching behind a large boulder.
"Where are these guys coming from?" she shouted at Aecarax, who was grappling with one of the intruders.
"They've got tunnels going through the mountains that we didn't know about," he yelled back. His foot met the stomach of the intruder fighting Ivory, sending the intruder flying several yards.
Ivory shot the intruder several times with her laser crossbow, and turned her attention to the rest of the force. It appeared that the first few waves of the invading force were over, and with such a high casualty count on their end, the commanders signaled the end of the attack. Aecarax fell back onto the ground, breathing heavily.
"That was more intense than usual," he said, as Ivory sat down next to him. She looked over to the mountains, frowning. "How come there's always so much conflict here?"
Aecarax rolled over, looking up at her. "This is just how it's always been. The Others have historically tried to wipe us out, sending wave after wave of fighting forces, in the hope that eventually we'll be caught off guard and be stomped into the ground." He shrugged. "It's caused us to always be prepared, always ready to fight them whenever they come."
Tracing a pattern in the dirt, Ivory bit her lip. "But why? Why is there this endless cycle of war going on? What started it?" She looked back to Aecarax. "Do you even know why? Do any of you?"
A sigh of irritation escaped Aecarax's lips. "You ask too many questions." He sat up.
"Thirty years ago, my grandfather thought the same things you did, asked the same questions. He knew the answers, but he wanted to change the system. Break the cycle, if you will. So he took a small group over the mountains, to their settlement on the other side. They bought weapons, just in case, but they were small, concealed ones, and they had every intention of brokering peace without threats, or intimidation, or anything of the sort." Aecarax stood up, holding a hand out to Ivory.
"You know what happened?" Ivory took his hand, and Aecarax pulled her up, to the point where their faces were inches from each other. He brushed his fingers against her neck.
"They tore my grandfather's throat out and sent it back to us with one of their sentries," he continued, his voice dropping into a breathy whisper against Ivory's cheek. "We never saw the rest of the team ever again."
Ivory's eyes widened, her brow twisting in fear and repulsion. "That's barbaric..."
Aecarax stepped back from her. "That's one way to put it. They sent us a note in that box as well, clarifying that they weren't just fighting a physical war." He reached into his jacket, and pulled out that very same note. "Psychological warfare. They're more intelligent than we thought, more violent, more bloodthirsty. And that viciousness, that unrelenting desire to destory, is made much, much worse when it's coupled with intellect and being underestimated by their opponents." He sighed. "They're brutish, they're savage, but they know what they're doing, and they know morale is lowering among our fighting force."
"Then why the hell are you on the front lines? You're their spiritual leader or whatever! What if you get killed out here?" Ivory poked Aecarax's chest aggressively with each sentence, while he simply stared down at her.
"What kind of leader sits back and watches his friends fight a menace that has been terrorizing us for decades, Ivory?" Aecarax responded, waving a hand out at the rest of the fighting force, who were tending to the wounded, and scouting out for any possible second waves. "You have to inspire people by doing the same thing you're trying to inspire them to do. Speech is powerful, but actions are infinitely more effective. That's what this position means, that's what my title means. It doesn't mean sitting on a throne a hundred miles above the rest of them, yelling down commands."
Ivory set her jaw, and crossed her arms. "I just don't think it's a good idea." She muttered something under her breath that Aecarax wasn't able to catch. "Hm?"
"What?"
"You said something else after that."
"No I didn't. I coughed. It was nothing."
"You're lying."
"That's rude."
"What - no it's n - stop trying to knock me off your trail!"
Ivory smirked, and walked away, leaving Aecarax frustrated and confused. A brief pain went through her thigh. "Probably nothing," she thought, pushing it to the back of her mind.
+++
"Go over it again."
Ivory let out a loud sigh, and threw herself onto the bed. "I've already told you about this."
"Yes, but it still doesn't actually make any sense, so I want you to go over it again, step by step, and see if I can make any sense out of it."
"You won't be able to."
"Well, that's a little rude."
Ivory glared at Aecarax, who simply laughed, and pulled her over to him. "Just once more."
She sighed again. "Okay, fine." Squirming out of his grasp, she sat on the edge of the bed.
"I'm from another world. I've got a life in that other world - sort of. It's not really all that fulfilling, or interesting. No family, only casual friends, a boring job. But sometimes I just fall asleep without warning, and it doesn't matter what I'm doing at the time, it just happens. When I fall asleep, I get...transported somewhere. It's different every time. The amount of time I spend in each world is different, too." She reached over to get a sip of water.
"Sometimes I'm only there for five minutes, sometimes it's five months. This is the longest I've ever been out of my 'home' world, I guess." She looked to Aecarax for a moment, taking in his skeptical appearance. "I'm not even sure that this is real. It could just be a dream; they could all just be dreams."
"The world could always be one big dream," Aecarax interrupted.
Ivory narrowed her eyes. "I'm not looking for your weird Aesir mythology right now, mister."
"So rude." He waved a hand at her. "Keep going."
She rolled her eyes. "Anyway. I honestly don't know what it is - if I'm actually being transported here, or if these places are just dynamically generated when I fall asleep...I don't know. It doesn't help that you people barely have any idea about the universe surrounding you."
Aecarax frowned. "We don't have time for that."
"You could be doing that right now."
"No, I can't, because you're regaling me with this fascinating story about how I might be a figment of your imagination that you dreamed up because you passed out, drooling, on a "street" in "New Pork City.""
"New York City."
"Neither of those words means anything, so they're interchangeable."
Ivory let out a bark of a laugh. "I hate you."
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "No you don't."
She pushed him away playfully, laughing. "Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted, I just wonder sometimes when I'm going to wake up, y'know? It's been so long already." She gazed out the window, into the starless sky, looking over the red mountains. She looked around to Aecarax.
"How did you get so dark if there's no sun ever?" she asked.
"Sun?"
"This is pointless."
Aecarax wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Do you feel this right now?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah."
He pinched her arm. "Did you feel that?"
She smacked him in the stomach. "Yes, you jackass."
"I've told you about my entire life before you showed up. How could that be fabricated? An entire lifetime - the entire lives of the hundreds of people that live here - and it's all in your head?" He let out a laugh. "No, Wonder Girl, I assure you, we are very real here."
"That's not the point!" she exclaimed in frustration. "You don't believe me when I say I'm from another world! I don't look like you because I'm not an Aesir, I'm a human!"
She pinched her brow. "That sounded completely ridiculous, didn't it?"
Aecarax pulled her to his side, squeezing her. "Only a little bit."
Ivory sighed again, shaking her head. "I just want you to believe me."
"Listen." Aecarax gently took a hold of Ivory's chin, and turned her head to face him. "This is just a lot to take in, okay? Your fiancee tells you that she's a magical alien girl from a planet you've never heard of, where there's apparently several million times more people than you've ever known to exist." He pressed a palm to her cheek. "All that matters is that you're here, we're both here, we both exist. And we love each other."
Ivory smiled. "Now you're making decisions for me? For shame, Eye-caracks."
He laughed. "Come on. Let's go to the shooting range. Your aim has gone astray in recent months."
"Fuck off."
+++
It was times like these that Ivory wished she could force herself to wake up.
"Miss? I know this is very bad news to deliver, but - "
"You're telling me that I have to have my fucking leg cut off because your shitty medicine didn't work fifteen years ago!"
Aecarax squeezed her hand reassuringly. "They did say that they did their best - "
Ivory whipped her head around, her face contorting in fury. "Then why am I losing almost my entire leg, dear?" she snarled, reaching for Aecarax's neck.
The doctor stepped between them, pushing Aecarax back a bit. "Ma'am, please, calm down. We did our best, we truly did, but your differing physiology made it impossible for our usual medicines to fully heal the wound, and we didn't think that your conditions would worsen so rapidly, when there've been no signs of problems for years." He rubbed his temples. Again, I'm very sorry for this."
He moved away, and walked towards the door. "We'll have to do the surgery this week to prevent the infection from spreading. I'll give you and your family some time to discuss it." He walked out, and the door swung closed behind him.
Aecarax sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing Ivory's good leg gently. "You'll be okay, hon. You're strong."
As Ivory opened her mouth to respond, the bathroom door opened, and the two of them turned to look at Aeon, who had been hiding in the bathroom for much of the argument between Ivory and the doctor.
"Is Mommy still mad?" she whispered, hiding behind the door still. Her dark hair fell across her deeply-tanned face, green eyes wide with apprehension.
Ivory frowned, and shook her head. "No, sweetie, it's okay now. C'mere."
Aeon climbed onto the bed, accidentally stepping on Ivory's bad leg as she did so. Ivory winced, and her eyes began to water, but she ignored it, instead pulling her daughter to her chest, stroking her hair. She looked to Aecarax, whose face had settled into a mask of uncertainty.
"We'll be okay, right?" she said. Aecarax did not reply, and simply took her hand, and began stroking it.
+++
"My friends, it is time for us to let go of our hate."
Aecarax stood behind a podium, addressing the entire population of the settlement. Ivory, in a wheelchair, with Aeon standing behind her, was at the front of the gathering, flanked by several high-ranking members of Aecarax's defense force.
"We have been locked in this mindless struggle against the mountain-dwellers for decades, with no end in sight," Aecarax continued. "This cycle of hatred will continue unabated for the rest of our mutual existences if we allow it to run amok, as we have done for so long. We must now extend the hand of peace, the hand of cooperation, and make another attempt to, if not unify our communities, then at least set up some sort of cease-fire, so that the endless deaths may stop, and we can finally proclaim that war is over."
He paused for a moment as a wave of murmurs went over the assembled crowd. "I know what some or you are thinking - that I'm about to make the same mistake that my grandfather made, several decades ago. He put his trust in the mountain-dwellers to grant him safe haven to negotiate, and he did indeed pay the ultimate price for that misplaced trust. But I have no misconceptions, no delusions as to how these beings operate. They are brutal, they are conniving, and they are vulgar. But their losses have been equivalent to ours during this endless bloodbath, and I am sure that, in the face of the defenses we've been building for the past several years, they are weary, and they are uncertain, and they will surely at least listen to what I have to say."
Aecarax cleared his throat, and took a drink of the water on the podium. "I have plans set up for this. We will meet at the neutral zone, at the base of Mt. Vanoi. I will offer my terms, and if they accept, then we can forge ahead into a new age. If they decline, then I will keep negotiations open, until we can work some sort of agreement out. The mountain-dwellers are not incapable of reason, and they are surely not incapable of acquiescing certain liberties and actions that they have taken, and nor are we incapable of the same things. If we are able to come to acceptable terms, then I must have your cooperation in this endeavor for it to succeed. As such, my question is this: Do I, indeed, have your cooperation?"
The response was modest. Many in the crowd were quite vocal about their support; others seemed hesitant at first, only speaking up after the more vocal members of the crowd had done so. Many of them seemed uncomfortable with the idea in general, and did not speak up one way or the other. Several others seemed outright against Aecarax's proposals, but did not speak out.
Aecarax's mouth tightened into a thin line. "I understand that this is a big change for us, and something that many of you likely thought - and still think - to be impossible. But I believe in peace. I believe that, as two rational, intelligent species, we can come to terms with the mountain-dwellers and end this war, that has hung like a shadow above us for so long. It is time, my friends, to step into the light!"
The crowd responded more enthusiastically to that proclamation, and Aecarax stepped off the stage to meet his wife and daughter. Gripping the handles of Ivory's wheelchair, the three of them broke free of the crowd, heading towards one of the diners.
"I need a very, very strong drink," Aecarax groaned, when prodded about it by Aeon.
+++
There was a knock at the door, and Ivory wheeled herself over to answer it. "No, Jonarah, it's fine, I can get it!"
She swung it open, and was greeted by Aeon, standing tall in her blood-soaked battle outfit, and sobbing profusely.
Ivory's heart sank. "No."
Aeon stepped through the door, and fell to her knees in front of Ivory. "I tried, Mom, I told him I could handle it, but he just wouldn't fucking listen!" Ivory briefly noted that Aecarax's attempts to prevent Aeon from picking up Ivory's vocabulary habits had completely failed, as she wrapped her arms around her daughter.
"We knew this would happen eventually, honey," she said into Aeon's ear. "It's okay, it'll be okay."
Jonarah finally peeked his head out from his room. "What's going on?"
When he noticed his mother and older sister crying in front of the door, his face fell. "Dad's not coming home, is he?"
Ivory shook her head, and held out a hand to him. Jonarah joined his mother and sister in mourning.
"Now would be a really, really good time to wake up."
+-+
Two weeks later, Ivory and Jonarah attended Aeon's coronation, as the elders of the settlement prepared her to take over as the settlement's spiritual leader.
"The Great and Holy One has left our fallen brother Aecarax, and has settled into the spirit of his successor, his Holy Daughter Aeon. Aeon will take over her father's duties, and will act as our spiritual guide until her own successor has been ushered into the world, and prepared for their role." The Grand Elder, an ancient Aesir who had presided over a remarkable amount of coronations, spoke with a voice weary with age, but dripping with wiseness and knowledge.
"Man, that dude is old," Jonarah muttered. Ivory elbowed him in the stomach.
The Elder gave Aeon's shoulders a gentle squeeze, and she rose up, standing before the entire settlement, to address them for the first time as their spiritual leader.
"My dear friends," she began. "These have been trying times for our community lately. The attacks from the Mountain dwellers have been increasing in shrewdness as well as cruelty, and though the loss of our leader - my father, Aecarax - has weighed on us significantly, let it not be forgotten that he is one of many who have fallen to this great threat." She paused to regain her composure, gulping and shaking her head. "These beings, these brutes, will suffer for the pain they have inflicted upon us. Many of you have been skeptical about whether this conflict will ever end. I stand before you today to proclaim that it will. I will end it. Personally." A roar of approval erupted from the crowd. Aeon allowed it to continue for about a minute, before indicating that she had more to say, winding the crowd back down into silence.
"I want you all to listen carefully, and listen closely. This will not stand. This decades-long reign of terror, this cycle of evil, must end. We will end it. We will tear down the homes of the Mountain dwellers and force them to beg for mercy, and we will deliver that mercy by the blades of our swords, the barrels of our guns. We will deliver them mercy in death!" Another enormous thundering of agreement from the assembled crowd.
Ivory's brow furrowed, and she turned her wheelchair around to leave. She would have to have a talk with Aeon after this. Jonarah did not follow, too enthralled in Aeon's speech to notice.
Aeon returned to Ivory's house several hours later, after spending time with much of the settlement in the wake of her proclamations. Ivory was in the living room, reading a book while she awaited Aeon's return, which she then tossed to the side.
"What the hell was that?" she snapped, wheeling up to her daughter.
Aeon raised an eyebrow. "That was me walking through the door."
Ivory reached up and grabbed her shirt. "Don't you fucking smart mouth me, young lady. What do you think you're doing, riling them up like that? You're going to get this entire settlement killed!"
Slapping her mother's hand away, Aeon glared down at her. "You think they can't handle these mindless beasts? Bullshit. We're going to annihilate every last one of them for the things they did."
"But they're not mindless, you god damn idiot! They know, they understand, this is why they're doing these things to us! Because they know it'll rile you up, and send you right into their waiting arms!" Ivory turned away.
"If you do this, it won't be with any support from me. Your father - "
"My father is dead because he adhered to the same mindset that you did, that everyone in this goddamn place did!" Aeon shouted. Ivory turned back and forced herself into a balancing position on her remaining leg, reared back, and slapped Aeon clean across the face.
"Don't you dare say anything like that about Aecarax again!" she screamed at Aeon. "Get out! Get the fuck out of my house! Go take your fucking deathwish vendetta and never come back to me with it again!"
Aeon, without another word, turned on her heel and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Ivory collapsed back into her wheelchair, loud, pained sobs escaping from her body.
"What have we done, Aecarax?" she lamented. "What have we done?"
+++
The pain returned, and shook Ivory out of her sleep.
She hadn't had a lower left leg in decades, and yet it still felt as though it had been run over by a monster truck.
Her groaning alerted Aeon and Jonarah, sitting at the other end of the hospital room, to her conscious state, and they hurried over to her side.
"How long was I out this time?" Ivory croaked out, her voice hoarse and weak from disuse.
"Two and a half weeks," Aeon replied. "The doctors said they'd detected increased brain processes, so we hurried over a few hours ago." She gave a small smile. "I'm glad you're awake, Mom."
Ivory reached up to stroke Aeon's cheek gently. "I'm glad to see you, too, honey." Her gaze drifted past Aeon. "Where's Alayna?"
"She didn't want to impose," Aeon replied. Ivory nodded slowly to herself. "You hold onto her, Aeon."
Aeon's face fell somewhat. "Mom, we got married, like, fifteen years ago."
"Ah."
Jonarah, who had been silent so far, bit his lip, and turned away. Aeon gripped his hand.
Ivory's gaze shifted upwards, staring into the light fixtures above her. She could hear, distantly, Aeon's urging not to look directly into lights. "I'm not a child," she thought, her mind scattered over hundreds of different thoughts.
She felt another presence in the room, and she looked past Aeon and Jonarah at a black-robed figure that had just walked through the door. The being held a large sickle, resting against its shoulder, faced obscured by the large hood it wore. Her brow furrowed. "Is it time?" she mouthed, her voice failing her.
She'd never died in one of the worlds she'd visited before; she'd never stayed for over seventy years, either. Ivory had let go of any desire to forcibly return to her home long ago, and had resigned herself to ride out the life she'd stumbled into when she first arrived on this planet. She had no idea what death would bring to her, nor was she excited to find out. However, whether she liked it or not, it was time to return home.
The entity stepped past Aeon and Jonarah, and everything around Ivory faded away, leaving just her and the entity. Her bed dropped away, and she found herself standing up - on two legs. She touched her face; the wrinkles were gone. She looked down at her hands - smooth, no liver spots. She stared Death right in the face, trying to see under its jet black hood.
"Is this it?" she questioned. The entity did not respond. Frustrated, she reached forward, and with one pull, removed the hood, revealing -
Nothing.
The hood fell back, the entire robe collapsed in a heap on the ground. There was no entity underneath it. Ivory's eyes widened, as she watched the sickle fall to the ground, no longer held up by whatever force had kept the entity together moments earlier.
"What the hell?" she whispered, whipping her head around. She saw a light coming towards her, gaping wide, like the jaws of a vicious beast, coming to consume her. Her left leg gave out; when she looked to it, it had disappeared again, leaving her with the stump she had grown accustomed to. Her skin sagged and folded in on itself as she rapidly aged back to where she had been several minutes ago. Lying on her back, the light filled the void around her, and she felt herself slipping away, falling into the pit of unconsciousness yet again.
+++
Ivory awoke with a gasp, a choke, and quite a bit of panic.
The first thing she noticed was the tube going down her throat, which she reached up to yank out. This was made incredibly difficult, however, by the fact that her arms had almost no mucscle lining them, and it took over a minute of trying before she could even reach up to grip the tube, and pull it out.
By the time she'd done that, an attendant had reached her, running up to her side. "Holy shi - doctor! Doctor! She's awake! Patient 471 is awake!"
The aforementioned doctor arrived moments later, as the nurse continued babbling to Ivory. "Alright, ma'am, please just try to stay calm, you've been out for a long time - "
Ivory struggled against the nurse's grip, making noises that could have been screams of panic, if her vocal cords were still usable in any sense. Her eyes fluttered around at a frantic pace, taking in her surroundings.
"No. No, this isn't possible - "
"Ma'am, please, I know this may be a lot to take in - "
"This isn't how it works, no, no, no - "
"Seventy years is an extraordinarily long time to be comatose - "
"No, it can't have been, had to be an hour at most - "
"You kept having spikes in brain activity, and the state turned you over for study - "
"Got to get out of here - can't do this - Aecarax - "
"Please, ma- shit, shit, she's flatlining, get the defibrillator - "
"Help me - "
"Please - "
"Let me -"
"Home."
+++
White.
The walls, the floor, the sky - everything surrounding her was the purest shade of white imaginable. No seams, no corners, nothing but white all around her.
Ivory remained standing in the white space for a moment, and then sat down.
"I'm sick of this stupid death shit."
A door materialized in front of her. She stood up and examined it.
"This can't be how it is," she murmured. "No way. This is super low-budget."
She looked around for a moment, behind her, above her, around the door, to see if anyone, or anything, reacted. Nothing changed. She frowned. "Worth a shot."
Returning to the front of the door, she gripped the doorknob, and took a deep breath. "Hopefully this'll be the real deal," she said, swinging it open and stepping through.
She appeared in a field on the other side. Brown wheat stalks all across the gentle rolling hills surrounding her, clear blue skies, large, varied shapes in the clouds. It was a relief to hear vague ambient noises here, instead of the pure silence of the white.
Across the way, several yards from her, a man stood with his back to her. She took a step forward, and he turned to face her. The widest smile she'd had in decades crossed her face.
You know the deal here. This is a revised version of Queen of the Kill intended for small workshopping. The original will remain on the blog due to the significant differences between the two, particularly in the second half of the story.
————————————————————————————
Twenty shadowy figures slowly filed into the conference room, some showing up individually, others showing up in groups. They circled the table in the center of the room, each taking seats in what appeared to be their usual places. At the head of the table sat a dark-skinned woman with long, flowing blonde hair and bright yellow eyes, the pupils slit vertically. She sat with poise and dignity, reminiscent of a monarch. Her eyes flitted to each individual arrival, wings fluttering when they sat down.
She was the one that had called the Council together. It wasn't a common gesture; she preferred that the Council members work individually on their assigned projects and duties, but the recent incidents above ground had compelled her to act.
“Grand Monarch Sharya, the Council in its entirety has arrived,” came a voice to her right. Sharya looked down to Maria, ranked 2nd Council, and one of her personal confidants. She nodded to Maria, and Maria faced the rest of the Council.
“The Grand Monarch has gathered us here today because of a looming threat above,” Maria began, but Sharya waved a hand in her face and stood up. The other Council members (with the exception of the 1st and 3rd) all followed her lead. Sharya shook her head slightly. “Sit down, all of you, please. There's no need for all of this formality.” The upper-level members complied immediately, while the lower ranked ones seemed unsure, before slowly taking their seats as well. Maria initially remained standing, but sat following a look and a wink from Sharya.
“My friends, we are dealing with a very serious threat. Some of you may be thinking, 'What threat? Nothing above can threaten the superior race.' That may be true in many cases, but not this one.” She began to circle the table at a leisurely pace, lingering behind certain Council members as she did so. “There is a human. A 'demon hunter', he calls himself. He has already claimed the lives of many of our bretheren. Several Council members here have lost good soldiers to this menace, and we must fight back, fight for their honor.” She stopped behind the seat of 8th Council Akichi. “What do you think about this, ah, problem, Akichi?”
The Council, which had previously been making a collective mumbling sound, went completely silent. Akichi was statue-esque in her chair, her shoulders tightening under Sharya's hands. She was to be made an example of; she could feel it. There would be no getting around it.
“I think we should kill him.” The statement was nothing more than a whisper. Sharya leaned in until her mouth was right next to Akichi's ear, her words a sinister hiss.
“Could you repeat that so the whole class can hear?”
Akichi gulped, barely able to breathe. “Kill hi-”
The words were left incomplete, as Sharya yanked Akichi's head upwards, brought a talon-tipped finger to her neck, and slashed across it, leaving a gaping hole in Akichi's windpipe, which spattered blood onto Sharya's face and onto the 10th Council sitting just to her right. Akichi let out a low gurgling sound, and slumped forward as Sharya let go of her, her head smacking roughly into the table. Licking a few spots of blood off of her lips, Sharya gazed around at the remainder of the shocked Council. “Any other bright ideas?”
The Council members shook their head simultaneously.
“Good.” She returned to her seat, resting her head on her blood-soaked hand. “Because this human, this worthless sack of meat, can, and will, do that same thing to any one of you. We all have to be prepared. He may not be able to reach us here, but his message is spreading.” She locked eyes with one of the lower Council members at the other end of the table, who immediately broke eye contact by looking down. “Soon, there will be an entire legion of hunters, determined to wipe us out. We will never be able to surface again.” Her voice dropped to a low growl. “And if we cannot surface, we cannot feed. We cannot convert. The race will not survive. Am I clear here?”
The Council members, in sync once again, nodded.
Sharya reclined in her seat. “Now then...I have a proposal for all of you.” She gestured to Maria, who procured a stack of papers, all of them with the human's picture on them. She walked around the table, passing them out to each of the Council members. She also, rather cheekily, slid one under Akichi's bloody, lifeless forehead.
Sharya held up the sheet that was set in front of her. “This is the human. Our intel states that his name is Travis Weston.” Maria returned to her seat, looking up at Sharya. Her eyes narrowed slightly. There was no way that she was thinking of...
“I want him brought into the fold. Whoever brings him in will receive an immediate promotion to 1st Council.”
The table went silent. The current 1st Council, Abrahan, however, stood up and faced Sharya, a furious look on his face.
“You cannot whore my position out to anyone who catches a lowly human!” he shouted, nearly bursting with rage. On Sharya's other side, Maria shook her head minutely, as a warning, but it was too late. Sharya's head tilted to the side slightly, and a sinister grin grew on her face. Her tongue flicked out and licked up more partially-dried blood.
She stepped down from the throne to stand at eye level with the 1st Council. “My dear Abrahan, I do believe I can do whatever the hell I want,” she replied, her voice holding a sultry tone. She then reached forward, grabbed Abrahan's right arm, and snapped it over her knee. Following that, she teleported directly behind him, grabbed both of his wings, set a foot on his back, and pulled them completely off, knocking Abrahan to the ground. Sharya stared down at the man lying before her, screaming and writhing in agony, and sneered, “Looks like your position just opened up.” She dropped his severed wings onto his crumpled form, and turned to the remaining Council members, all of whom were completely frozen with fear.
“Get searching, friends. We've got a human to hunt.”
+++
A figure surfaced in a small village in rural England, spying on one man in particular that took up residence in the village. This was 12th Council Maxwell, having held that position for nearly a thousand years. Earlier in the day, he had endured a particularly stressful meeting, where the Grand Monarch had proclaimed a single lowly human to be a top-level threat. Maxwell didn't see the fuss – the human, Travis Weston, looked like any other. He spied on Travis for several hours, finally preparing to attack as he went home, alone.
Maxwell watched Travis enter the house, and crept up to the door, peeking into the window. Travis went into the bedroom in the back, and Maxwell took the opportunity to sneak in. Making his way to the door, he prepared the stinger on his right hand, and began to contemplate what he would do with the promotion to 1st Council. He gripped the doorknob, turned it, swung the door open, and stepped through, promptly being met with a shotgun blast to the side, knocking him to the ground. Screaming in pain, Maxwell could barely see Travis walking up to him, rifle in hand. His eyes flitted to the shotgun rigged to go off whenever the door was opened, and cursed himself for being so reckless. Travis knelt next to Maxwell, pushing the rifle's barrel into Maxwell's mouth.
“Now what have we got here, hm?” he spoke, his voice low and gritty. “Some scum seems to have wandered into my house. I should make a note in my diary: 'May 23, 1987, an uninvited houseguest tries to off me yet again.'” He rested his knee on Maxwell's abdomen, eliciting another scream of pain. He nodded in satisfaction. “What do you want, you whimpering piece of shit? Speak quickly, or else my finger may slip.”
Maxwell's eyes widened, and, in a muffled, choked voice, replied, “What did you coat those bullets with?”
Travis smirked. “Privileged information, trash. Answer my question.”
Maxwell contorted as his wounds suddenly spiked with pain. “Th-there's a hit out on you. They're coming.”
“That's not very specific, scumbag,” Travis growled, cocking the gun back.
Maxwell whimpered. “All of them. The Council is coming for your head. And they'll get it, too.”
Travis nodded in consideration, and then moved the rifle to Maxwell's legs, firing several times, in both kneecaps, along the shins, and one in the groin area, relishing the scream that accompanied each shot. His smirk widened further as a sadistic look crossed his face. “How's that feel, eh? Will they get me now?”
Maxwell, barely able to stay conscious and feeling each wound rapidly get worse, shook his head. “Monster. That's all you a-”
He was cut off, rather rudely, by Travis pulling the trigger, apparently done with the conversation. “I'll clean that up later.”
Travis's eyes locked on the front door. There likely wasn't much time to prepare. If he could just gather some materials together...
Something outside exploded. Travis hopped over the corpse in the doorway and ran to the window, pulling back as little of the curtain as he could. Several buildings were on fire – the residents of the village were running around, screaming, several of them on fire as well. Travis inferred that he had significantly less time to prepare than he previously thought.
Running over to the closet, Travis threw the doors open, revealing a small armory. He grabbed several clips for his primary rifle, strapped on a harness for it, and also strapped a machete to his back, as a last resort. Making sure his rifle was loaded, he put another one in the harness on his other side. Dual-wielding would probably be a good idea for what was apparently the demonic apocalypse outside.
Travis stood in front of his door, gulping nervously. He'd been anticipating this to an extent, but what he hadn't expected was the scale of the invasion. All that provided, however, was a bigger challenge. More sport. More fun.
“Time to clean house,” he muttered to himself, kicking the door open and stepping into the war zone.
+++
Sharya sat in her private quarters with Maria, contemplating the situation above. The entire Council had left following the end of the meeting, no doubt to prepare to claim the “prize” that Sharya promised to them. Maria was the only one who had stayed behind, sitting with Sharya in a large, comfortable throne-like chair. She had initially intended to surface along with the rest of the Council, intending to provide backup and ensure that Travis was not killed, but Sharya refused to allow her to leave.
Sharya felt a presence just outside of her quarters, and sure enough, a knock came from the door moments later. Maria walked over and opened it, her expression unchanged as a blood-covered 11th Council soldier practically fell into the room, bleeding from what appeared to be several bullet wounds. The wounds seemed to have small black tendrils protruding from them, and the soldier's blood seemed to have turned black.
“Several Council members have...engaged Weston,” the soldier spoke, vomiting up some blood.
Sharya grimaced. “Please try not to dirty my quarters.”
The soldier looked up with a pained expression. “Grand Monarch, we are losing troops every second. It is unreal, his abilities. He has something, something coating his weapons. We need you out there.”
Sharya sighed, and shook her head. “Pathetic.”
She turned to Maria. “Go up there and assess the situation for me, please.” Maria nodded silently, but before she could leave, Sharya spoke up again. “And please be careful.”
Maria nodded again, smiling a little bit, and disappeared in a small plume of smoke. Sharya turned back to the figure lying on the ground in front of her. She kicked him over, and put a foot on his throat.
“Nobody will miss you,” she growled, crushing his windpipe under her foot.
Sharya remained in her quarters after summoning two servants to dispose of the corpse on the floor. She was idly reading when Maria returned, missing an arm and riddled with bullets, plagued by the same tendrils as the soldier before. Sharya, shocked, tossed the book to the side and ran over to Maria, sitting her down in a chair. “What the hell happened to you?” she questioned, voice wavering somewhat.
Maria shook her head, growling in pain. “You have to go up there,” she whispered. “He's wiped them all out...every last one.” She coughed, lurching forward. “None of us are a match...except you.” Maria's eyes rolled back, and she went limp, falling against Sharya's chest.
Sharya gently pushed Maria's body into a sitting position, staring at the person she'd considered the closest thing to a friend she had, unable to process what was going on. She stepped back, and let out a piercing scream of rage and anguish. She then disappeared in a huge column of flame, surfacing in the same village where much of her Council had met their end.
Stepping out of the column, she took in the situation around her. Much of the village was on fire; corpses littered the ground, most of them the human residents, several more being her fallen subordinates. Several hundred feet away from her, she spotted a single figure standing, holding a severed arm in one hand and a large machete in the other. Sharya's eyes narrowed, and she immediately teleported again, landing just in front of the man.
Travis looked up into the eyes of the new arrival in front of him, wearing an expression of boredom. “Are you the last one?” he drawled, his voice low and gravelly. He seemed rather worn out, soaked in blood, a dead look in his eyes. Sharya growled in response. Travis shrugged.
“Well, if you insist...” He dropped the arm and reached into his pocket, looking down briefly. When he looked back up, Sharya was gone, and the arm that Travis had just dropped was now wrapped around his neck, his chin resting just above the crook of the elbow. Sharya's voice whispered in his ear, “Perhaps I should pop your head off right this instant, boy.” She let out a small gasp, however, as she felt a blade stab into her stomach several times. She teleported several feet away, clutching her stomach. Travis twirled the small knife in his hand, smirking. “I can play the covert game, too, demon scum. But why all the cloak and dagger escapades?” He dropped the knife, and held up the machete. “Allow me to propose something rather stereotypical...I know that you demons have that strange stinger type thing that protrudes from your finger. Several demons have tried to kill me with it, or at least, that's what I presume they've been trying to do.”
“I'd appreciate it if you stopped referring to us as 'demons', as we're much better than your pathetic myths and legends have led you to believe,” Sharya replied, wiping her mouth. Travis shrugged.
“Like I care what you cretins call yourselves. I'll take that side-step of my question as a yes.” He nodded to himself. “Anyway. Let's do this Western-style. One shot. At the end of a countdown, we run at each other, respective killing weapons at the ready, and whoever survives wins. Does that sound good to you?”
Sharya lurched forward, clutching her stomach. Her eyes met Travis's. “No, I think I'd much rather do this my way.”
She stood up, and took two steps forward, thrusting her hand forward. Sharya looked around her, confusion building in her expression. “What...?”
Travis twirled the machete in his hand, chuckling. “Was that an attempt at teleporting? That pose might have been the stupidest thing I've ever seen.” He held up the blade, which, under the thick coating of blood, appeared to have a purple tinted edge.
“I discovered a poison, several months ago. The details aren't really necessary, particularly because it's a stupid thing to divulge to my enemies. But, here's the gist of it – for humans, ingesting it is akin to having a stomach virus for several days. We get sick, horribly sick, yes, but our immune systems flush it out.” He pointed the machete at Sharya. “Yours, apparently, do not. The poison, let's call it lightning-fast cancer for de- sorry, I forgot, you don't appreciate that label.” He let out a bark-like laugh. “Look at me, showing consideration for a lower life-form. Classic.
“As I was saying, consider it cancer. It won't kill you, necessarily, but it inhibits you quite a bit, from what I've seen. The effects also seem randomized, depending on who I've used it with. You're one of a few that seems to lose their teleportation ability once infected. I've had several opportunities to test it, and it seems that it causes your kind to stoop down to the level of us, how do you say, 'worthless bags of flesh.' Much easier to make a sport of all of this.” He waved the machete around to indicate the remainder of the Council's forces.
Sharya doubled over, falling to her knees. Black blood dripping from her mouth, she looked up at Travis. “Sport?”
Travis stroked his chin in a mocking fashion. “Ah, yes, I'd certainly call it sport. To be perfectly honest, I don't have any real reason I'm doing this beyond that.” He nodded to himself. “Maybe you thought I was doing this for vengeance? To right a wrong? To avenge a loved one, or maybe to be a hero to the superior human race? No.” He took a step forward.
“To be frank, I don't care about any of these villagers.” His face darkened as he began to walk towards Sharya. “Unintelligent apes, most of them. Really, I'm glad that your cute little army leveled this hellhole. I was just about to do it myself, almost.” He let out another bark of laughter, this one less controlled than the previous. “I can't legally kill humans, after all. And why would I want to, when I have the next best thing, huddled over in front of me? You can't make laws to protect a species that no one knows exists. And trust me, nobody knows but me.”
Sharya, barely able to move due to the poison's ravaging effects, began to push herself back, extending the stinger from her right hand. Travis quickened his pace. “Don't think you can escape, oh great and powerful Grand Monarch. You're nothing but trash, garbage, scum, every synonym under the sun to me.” He began to drag the machete along the ground, carving a line.
“I take back my earlier offer, about the Western-style shootout. I think I'll just stab you a few more times, how's that sound?”
Sharya pushed herself to her feet, adopting a weary fighting stance. The wounds on her stomach were inflicting so much pain that her vision had almost entirely clouded over, and she almost fell several times.
Travis's mouth twisted into a vicious smirk, and he rested the machete on his shoulder, stopping several feet from Sharya. “What's this, a last stand? Perfect.” He tilted his head to the side. “I'll have fun slicing your limbs off, one by one. Let's see how much pain you can suffer through, shall we?” Letting out a shout, he lunged forward, bringing the machete down.
The sound of metal carving through bone was sickening. The machete's blade embedded in the ground from the force of Travis's swing, coated in fresh blood. Travis let out a choked cough, reaching up to his chest, feeling a long barb going through it.
Sharya dropped to one knee, emitting a guttural, primal scream. The machete had cleaved right through her upper right arm and outstretched right wing, severing both. The wing dropped to the ground, while her arm remained attached to the stinger that now pierced Travis's chest.
“You were wrong about the stinger, human.” She pushed herself weakly to her feet, trying to block out the sharp bursts of pain from both her severed arm and wing. “It's not meant to kill. It's meant to convert. It's how we reproduce, technically speaking.”
Travis let out a strangled gasp, ripping the stinger out of his chest, collapsing onto his side. As Sharya walked up to him, he tried to swing the machete at her, but she simply kicked it out of his hand, grabbing him by the shirt.
“You call humans the superior race. You speak to me like I'm a dog, someone to be kicked around and abused. You have no fucking clue who I am.”
Travis muttered, through clenched teeth, “A bitch, that's all I need to know.”
“SILENCE!” Sharya tossed Travis up and grabbed him by the neck instead, choking him. “I am Grand Monarch Sharya, lord over the Deranon, the true superior race.” She held him closer, their faces mere inches apart.
“You've obliterated my Council,” Sharya said quietly. She looked into Travis's eyes once more, and smiled menacingly.
“I think you'll make a good replacement for them.”
Leo looked over to Smitty, disdain in his eyes. This was probably the fifth time they'd fallen into this particular line of conversation since his search began. The previous two times had ended in the same manner as this one was likely to end.
“I think you're actually obsessed with my search, Smitty. It's practically all you ever want to talk about lately,” was the snide reply that came from Leo. Smitty sighed; same old, same old.
“Look, man, I just think you should...I don't know...stop dedicating all of your free time to attempting to find this chick you saw once like, what, five years ago?”
“Six months, two weeks, four days.”
“You're keeping track. That's disgusting. I'm shocked you don't know the count right down to the seconds.”
“Thirty five, thirty six...”
Smitty stood up. “I'm leaving.”
Leo shrugged in response. “Suit yourself. The waitress has been checking you out the entire time you've been here. She'll probably sneak her number onto the back of your receipt. If you don't cover it, I think I might have to call her myself...”
Smitty glared down at Leo for a moment, and sat down in a huff, rolling his eyes at Leo's smug look. “Fuck you, buddy. Least I'm not chasing the ghost of a girl I don't even know.” He took a swig of the beer in front of him, wiping his mouth sloppily afterwards. “Seriously, man, six and a half months? That's totally whacked out, brother. What're you even going to do once you finally find her, huh? Go up to her and be like 'Finally, the day I've been looking forward to for eleven months, seventeen days, three hours, fourteen minutes, and forty, forty one, forty two seconds!', right? If you do, make sure to have someone film the whole thing, because god damn that'll be a great thing to watch when I'm bored.” He chugged the remainder of the bottle and tossed it into the ice bucket in the middle of their table. Leo raised an eyebrow. “How many of those have you had?”
“How many have you haven't?” Smitty replied. The two of them sat in silence for a moment, before Smitty continued, “That statement didn't make a huge amount of sense.”
Leo shook his head. “Nothing you say makes a whole lot of sense.” He looked down at the glass of water in his hand, frowning. “But listen, Smitty. This girl...I had a connection with her. I just know it. There's something nagging me, in the back of my mind...I have to find her. If only to figure out why I have to find her.”
“So, what you're saying is, you're trying to find her to find out why you're trying to find her.”
“I thought I made that clear.”
“Is that the waitress? Thank God, I'm out of here.” Smitty took the receipt from her, and looked at the back. “Oh, dude, you were right. Rad. Alright, here - “ he tossed a twenty onto the table - “that should cover it. And look, man.” His gaze turned to Leo, pity practically radiating from his pores. “You want my advice? I know you don't, but here it is anyway. Give up this search. It'll only drive you crazy. Or kill you.” He shrugged. “That'd suck. So don't let that happen.” Pocketing his receipt, he turned and left without another word, leaving Leo at the table, alone, with nothing but a glass of water, two unopened beer bottles, and a number of things to contemplate and consider.
“You're chasing a ghost.”
Leo leaned back in the chair in front of his desk, staring at the ceiling. On the desk sat a file of information – everything he remembered about her, sketches of her, information he'd culled from various sources throughout the past few months. Nothing pointed to a definitive identity. He didn't really expect any of it to – he really was chasing the ghost of someone he'd seen only in fleeting glimpses.
“Glimpses.” What Leo hadn't been telling Smitty was that he'd seen the girl more than once. Several times, in fact. Every time, it had been far away, and each time, he could've sworn that she was looking directly at him. The last three times, in his desperation to finally meet her, he ran across traffic, nearly getting run over. He supposed that was what Smitty meant when he said not to let himself be killed by the search – an ominous suggestion, considering Smitty didn't know about the subsequent sightings, or the lengths Leo had gone to try and finally meet the mystery girl. It was probably for the best that he didn't know, in any case – Smitty would probably think he was becoming completely delusional, though he probably already thought that to begin with.
Leo gazed absentmindedly at the calendar pinned on the wall. It had been over two weeks since the last sighting. That time, he'd seen her on the other side of train tracks, right as the bars were going down. He hopped over the two bars, was nearly obliterated by the train, and when he stood up after catching his breath on the other side, she was gone. Just like that. That was how it always was; one minute she's there, in plain sight, and the next, Leo had nearly gotten himself killed for exactly jack shit. Maybe Smitty was right; maybe his dedication to the search really was an obsession.
However, that would require Smitty to be right in regards to something, which Leo out and out refused to let happen. Their friendship was an odd one, to say the least. Smitty probably didn't deserve to put up with Leo's shit, but he did anyway – most of the time. Leo made a mental note to thank him sometime. Thank him in an offhand, somewhat rude way, but thank him nonetheless.
His eyes made their way to the ceiling fan, spinning endlessly, sending cold air in every direction. More than once, he'd felt like this quest was like that ceiling fan – going around in circles for months and months, tracing the same paths, thinking he'd found a new clue, only to discover that it didn't mean anything.
Leo wished he could explain just what it was that drove him to spend so much time trying to find that girl. He couldn't articulate the desire – it was just...there, nagging at the back of his mind, perpetually. He had trouble sleeping, he had trouble working, he had trouble just focusing on something, anything else. The search was nearly driving him crazy. He'd tried to let go a few times, tried to forget all about the encounter, tried to throw away the files and sketches, but whenever he tried, he would freeze up, throw the folder back on his desk, and let it slip his mind for a few days.
Then she would come back to the surface, dominating his thoughts once more. He was a slave to her. But not even to her; he was a slave to an idea, a spectre, a whisper in the wind. And try as he might, he couldn't break free of her grasp.
“I think I might be the most pathetic person ever.”
Leo rolled over in his desk chair to the window, resting his arms on the windowsill and staring down at the street, and the people walking along the sidewalk below. Looking idly at each one as they passed below the window, one face in particular stood out to him.
Her.
Leo whirled around in his chair and leaped towards his desk to grab his things. Shoving his phone and keys in his pocket, he ran out of his apartment in a frenzy, neglecting to even close the door behind him.
Remarkably, when he reached the street, she was still visible, several yards in front of him. He set off at a quick pace, determined to catch the girl that had been haunting his thoughts and dreams for nearly seven months. Today would be the last day. The count would end.
Forty seven, forty eight, forty nine.
The chase didn't feel so futile this time. He'd been in this situation several times before, chasing the image of the girl that always eluded him, but never had it gone on this long. She'd always be there one second and gone the next, leaving him looking like a complete fool. This time, however, the image of her was constant – he'd had to look away several times, and she was still there every time. She must have left the disappearing act at home this time.
Despite this, Leo never seemed to get any closer to her, no matter how fast he ran, walked, sprinted, jogged, shimmied...it was almost like running on a treadmill, with a video screen in front of him, the scenery changing around him, without him actually going anywhere. She was always out of reach, always too many steps ahead. The sensation was interfering with his depth perception.
Twenty three, twenty four, twenty five.
How long had it been? Now his perception of time was being screwed up by the pursuit. She'd definitely looked back at him at least twice. There might have been a third time – Leo's vision had blurred at one point, and he nearly ran right into a pole because of it, convinced that he heard her laugh at him afterward. Or it could have been the voice of literally any other woman near him at the time. Now he couldn't even think straight.
She had to know that he was pursuing her. She looked back again as they crossed a street – Leo definitely made eye contact with her that time, and he could've sworn that she had smirked at him. Almost like she was taunting him, daring him to catch up, to catch her. Leo increased his pace. There would be no escaping this time, no disappearing like the ghost that Smitty was so convinced she was.
She turned a corner, out of his sight, and Leo swore under his breath, increasing his pace despite his body's protests against it. Upon turning the corner, Leo saw...
A lot of things.
Cars.
Businesses.
People.
She wasn't one of them.
Fifty one, fifty two, fifty three.
Leo clutched his head, falling back against one of the walls to his right. She'd done it again. Disappeared into thin air. “This is fucking bullshit,” Leo thought out loud, ignoring the disapproving looks of the people passing by him. He slid down the wall, until he reached a crouching position, cradling his head in his hands. “Smitty was right. This search is completely...point...less...” Leo's voice sputtered out as he looked back up and across the street, meeting eyes with...her.
There she was, standing on the corner, a small smile on her face. Her expression was warm and inviting, beckoning out to him. Leo couldn't believe it. Where had she gone before...? Whatever. Didn't matter. He stood up, adjusting his shirt and jacket, keeping his eye on her the entire time. She wouldn't escape him this time. Certainly not.
Leo didn't even look before crossing the street, which was certainly not the first of his mistakes throughout this entire quest of his. He'd made it about halfway across the street before suddenly blacking out, and waking up on the other side of the street about a second later, standing in the same place that the girl was before. Staring at the body in the street, it took him a moment to realize that the body was his, laying prone in front of a taxi cab, whose driver was panicking on the phone, screaming about how it wasn't his fault, he didn't see the man step into the street, the usual. Leo was barely able to process the situation when his body suddenly groaned and rolled over, then sat up, holding his head.
Wide eyed and open mouthed, Leo watched his now-animated body stand up groggily, reassuring everyone around him that he was alright. “What in the fuck...?” his spirit on the sidewalk mouthed, unable to speak the words out of shock. None of this made sense. How was his body moving? Where was the girl?
Leo's body, after insisting that he was alright, pushed away from the people around him, and began walking towards the sidewalk, apparently not noticing the spirit that shared his image standing just feet from him. However, upon making it to the sidewalk, Leo's body turned his head to face his former occupant, a sinister grin twisting up on his face.
“Thanks for the second chance, buddy,” the body said, his voice strangely feminine now. Before Leo's spirit could respond, his body turned and walked away, leaving Leo stranded on the sidewalk, out of sight and out of mind.
The young girl looked up curiously at her mother, who was holding some sort of wrapped-up box.
"Yes, Virginia, it's a holiday we used to celebrate before the Revelation. Your father and I enjoyed it very much. There hasn't been much of a reason to celebrate since then, but I thought this year would be a good one to try again."
Virginia was an inquisitive either-year-old who had been too young to remember the events of the Revelation that had claimed her father's life and changed her own and her mother's forever. Her mother had refused to talk about it, nor would she ever elaborate on her apparent discontent for their almighty savior, Adam; the radio always said he was a wonderful man. maybe it was one of those "you'll understand when you're older" type deals.
In any case, Virginia and her mother Adele enjoyed a nice, comfortable life - aided in no small part by Virginia's ability to bring into reality anything she could imagine - well, most things. From Adele's subtle manipulations, Virginia seemed to be capable of atomic rearrangement to create objects on a small scale, with relatively limited complexity, and the limit on the frequency was inversely tied to the size and molecular complexity of the object. The largest thing Virginia had ever conjured was a small pony, which left her in a coma for three days. The pony had died later that day - Virginia had appparently forgotten to give it most of its internal organs. That had been an unpleasant cleanup.
"Did you and Daddy celebrate that together?" Virginia asked excitedly, making grabby hands toward the box that Adele held. She lifted the box out of Virginia's reach, however, sticking her tongue out. "Patience, honey, I'm not done with the story yet. Ahem.
"Your father and I usually spent the holidays with his family - your grandparents on my side were...less than nice, so we didn't much bother with them. We had some wonderful, amazing times during those holidays...but nothing lasts forever, Virginia. That's a lesson you'd best learn as soon as you can."
Satisfied with the level of frustration her daughter had reached, Adele placed the wrapped box down in front of Virginia, smiling. "Go on, open it up."
Virginia pounced on the gift with unbridled excitement. Upon tearing the box open, she discovered a small, hand-stitched plush pony, the same sort as the one she'd conjured up two years ago. The stitching was immaculate, almost professional; the material was bright white, unblemished by the dirt and dust that tended to permeate the Arizona air. Wrapped around its neck was a long, lavender ribbon, Virginia's favorite color.
This is the same deal as with Park Bench Evangelism - this is the revised version of the downward spiral, which (alongside Park Bench Evangelism) will comprise my final portfolio for Narration and Description. be warned, this manuscript is pretty long - it ran about 21 pages in my word processor.
Enjoy.
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Eve's eyes widened as she felt the needle pierce her neck. Fuck, I thought I got all of them... Muddled, disjointed thoughts ran through her mind as she felt the effects of the virus begin to tear through her bloodstream. She probably had about a minute left. The rifle slipped out of her hand, hitting the floor with a loud clattering noise. Shit.
Clutching her chest, Eve fell to her knees, feeling her heart giving out. As her strength began to fade, she thought back to several weeks prior, where the horror had begun.
+++
Sitting on the couch lazily, Eve flicked through the channels, her eyes glazed over, barely paying attention to what was on television. Boredom had set in, and she would do anything to get rid of it. Well, almost anything, anyway.
She could hear brief snippets from each channel as she flicked past it, and one in particular caught her ear – it was the local news, broadcasting a report about some sort of viral outbreak in a supposedly secure testing facility in Indiana. She frowned. That didn't sound very lovely at all. The report mentioned that the outbreak had been contained to the facility, but there had been some casualties as well...Better go check my supplies, just in case.
Flicking the light on in her basement, Eve took a look around. The basement, like most, was dark and damp – the walls were lined with shelves, holding racks and racks of canned food, batteries, flashlights, basic clothes – supplies that Eve would rely on in the event that she found herself unable to leave her home. Some people would chalk it up to paranoia, but this was the one thing that her father had taught her that she'd decided to retain. After all, when the world comes crashing down - “when the shit goes down”, as her father would say – the only one you can rely on is yourself.
I got my fist / I got my plan / I got survivalism. The Nine Inch Nails lyric came floating back into her mind. She didn't like the label, but she supposed it applied to her – anyone who saw her basement would think so, anyway. If they didn't think she was crazy right off the bat, of course.
Satisfied with her current stockpile, she returned to the living room, and flopped back on the couch, sighing. The news channel she'd been watching earlier had shifted their focus to a fairly different story – a pug that circumnavigated the world in an otherwise unmanned airplane controlled remotely by the pug's owner. Narrowing her eyes, she turned the infernal device off, and rolled over to take a nap instead, letting the thoughts about the outbreak settle at the back of her mind for the time being.
Two days later, Eve was browsing the Internet, surfing through a few websites she frequented. The outbreak from two days ago had been reported on fairly scarcely, the previous day holding only a passing mention of the events. However, upon reaching a newsblog that she followed, Eve noticed an immensely unsettling header for the most recent article:
“Indiana Viral Outbreak Spreads; Thousands Dead and Counting”
Eve stared at the screen in shock, and immediately began reading the full article. Apparently, the virus that had infected the testing facility earlier in the week had not been fully contained, with several of the infected individuals escaping the compound and spreading the disease to others. As for the disease, it worked quickly; hundreds were killed within seconds of transmitting it, with the method of transmission unable to be determined at the time of writing. All that was known at the moment was that the federal government had declared a state of emergency in Indiana, and completely locked down its borders.
Wasting only a few seconds, Eve shot up from her desk, grabbed her wallet, and ran out the door. Her first stop was the bank; she withdrew the entirety of her checking and savings accounts (an admittedly small amount of money; she didn't have much of an income, and rarely spent money anyway) and headed to the grocery store, stocking up on first-aid kits, additional amounts of canned food, and several packs of bottled water. Moving on, she filled up several storage containers with gasoline at the gas station. “Preparing for the apocalypse? That was twenty years ago, kid,” jested the attendant as he watched her fill the tanks. Eve didn't respond; she had no time for that.
Arriving back home, Eve pulled up CNN, which she found was reporting constantly about the Indiana situation. She scrolled through various newsblogs that were aggregating information from people stuck in Indiana – the virus seemed to be all over the place. There were dozens of conflicting theories about the methods of transmission and the source of the virus itself, but no one had any definitive idea, and the majority of the ideas looked to be just wild speculation with no basis.
Taking in all the information, her thoughts began to race quicker and quicker – what was causing all of this? If the government couldn't contain a single facility, how could they ever hope to contain an entire state? How quickly would it reach the Seattle area?
Eve's eyes flickered all around the room. Her windows were shut, and boards sat next to them in case they needed to be boarded up, which they likely would have to be soon. The thick, comfy chairs framing the couch could easily be moved to barricade the door, not that that would stop an airborne viral outbreak. Turning to the basement, she decided that closing off the entrance to it and keeping herself there for a while would be her best bet. There were plenty of power outlets, and if the power went out, she had a generator just outside with pass-through ports that led to the basement.
Nodding to herself, Eve picked up her laptop and brought it down to the basement, and began to prepare for the worst.
One week following the initial outbreak, Eve found herself, once again, sitting on the floor in her basement, the radio currently off next to her, perpetually tuned to NPR. Despite the relatively short span of time between the initial outbreak and the current time, the virus had wreaked havoc on the eastern half of the country. Much of the coastal areas were wastelands; those who had not been killed by the virus had instead fled to the west or up into Canada.
Eve switched the radio back on, catching part of NPR's current report.
"...twenty-one states have been quarantined at current count, and the country is slipping into anarchy as we speak. Our new President added five states to the quarantine list earlier today, his first action in office after being sworn in three days ago following the horrific terrorist attack on the White House that killed the President, Vice-President, and many others in the line of succession, leaving the Presidency to former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ralph Howeritz...I'm sure that man hasn't slept very much these past few days, considering the ridiculous nature of this virus."
Eve nodded to herself in some silent agreement with the report. According to preliminary research reported by NPR, the virus was mutating at an unheard of rate. Death was no longer immediate; symptoms started to show up instead, sometimes giving the infected up to a full day before taking their lives. There were conflicting reports regarding how it was spread; NPR seemed to be going with the idea of it being spread by touch, but in Eve's mind, that didn't seem to line up all the way.
All of these details were taking their toll on Eve's mindset. The reports were scaring her more than she realized; her thoughts were becoming more and more jumbled, paranoia seeping into everything she did. The worst part was that she had no idea if her deteriorating mindset was just plain old paranoia, or if the virus had already reached their coast, despite NPR's reports otherwise.
She let out a long, loud sigh. Her Internet connection had cut out four days ago; the power had gone out earlier in the day today. She had a single battery-powered lantern sitting next to her, a book propped open at her feet. The generator was reachable from the basement because of the pass-through control systems she'd installed, but she wanted to conserve her gasoline as much as possible, and she needed to avoid leaving the basement at all costs. The smell was starting to get to her, however.
Eve looked down at her feet, sitting cross-legged on the dirty basement floor. Sleep had not been coming easily to her; paranoia was setting in at an unsettling pace, and not only was it keeping her up at night, it was making her see and hear things she wasn't entirely sure were actually there. Laying on the mattress in the basement at night, Eve would occasionally hear screams coming from the outside, screams of rage, screams of terror, all sorts of terrible things. And yet, she hadn't heard any reports of the virus reaching this far yet, despite her fears to the contrary.
Eve was knocked out of her musings, however, from noises coming from outside – specifically, near the small, above-ground windows that she'd sealed off earlier in the week. They sounded suspiciously like footsteps...That can't possibly be good. Her mind began racing at a breakneck pace – thoughts and considerations too fast for her to even comprehend, which began to pile up and send her into a feverish mood. She hastily shut off the radio to hear better, snuffed out the lantern in favor of a flashlight, and grabbed a handgun from the rack on the wall. Approaching the door carefully, she stood a few feet away from it, gun at the ready. Silence set in for a minute or so, and Eve began to relax, but there was a sudden shuffling noise, and then a crash, almost like a window breaking. Biting her lip to keep from screaming, she stepped back further from the door, pointing the gun at it, ready to shoot whoever might come through the door, friend or foe. The noises began to build up – crashing everywhere, like there were multiple people inside, wrecking her house, trying to find something. A banging noise started next, seeming to come from the basement door. Eventually, the noises became too loud to bear, and Eve, flying into a panic, kicked the door open and took three shots in different directions, only to be greeted with...absolutely nothing.
Eyes wide with fear, Eve crouched down, looking around at the dark, empty kitchen she'd found herself in. Her house was inherited; a passing gift from her father, who'd died several years ago and left her with enough inheritance to keep up the stockpiles of food and supplies in the basement, allowing her to turn the money she earned from freelancing and odd jobs towards bills and food to actually eat on a regular basis. She'd never needed anything else; social lives were overrated in her opinion. Still, as she found herself army-crawling across the floor, trying to find some indication, any indication, of the noises from before, she couldn't help but long for an acquaintance at the very least to stay by her side, perhaps as a sidekick. Too late for that now, in any case.
Following a thorough examination of her house, Eve retreated back into the basement, this time nailing the door closed with several thick boards. She would not be leaving anytime soon, not after that incident. If I'm gonna go crazy, I'm gonna do it on my own terms...
Retreating back into the depths of the basement, Eve curled up into a ball and laid on her side, gun set down in front of her face. A nightmare; that's what this was, that's what it had to be. She tried to convince herself of that, but the more she thought about it, the less it actually helped. Instead, she reached for her iBox and turned it on, the system broadcasting smooth, quiet ambient music. Her eyes began to close, and she drifted off to sleep, wishing that she'd wake up in her own bed, and that it all was just a dream.
Two weeks into the outbreak, it became clear to Eve that her world had become one continuous nightmare. Her basement had nearly flooded four days ago; she'd lost a lot of supplies to the water, and had nearly been electrocuted trying to save her radio and laptop. The floor was still wet from the abundance of water. Tracing a pattern with her finger, Eve shuddered at the memory. I really don't want to have to do that again...
Currently, she was huddled on one of the lower steps of the stairs leading to the still-boarded-up basement door, the radio on next to her. She wore a thick antique gas mask, a response to a recent report from NPR regarding the spread of the virus:
“...the death toll is in the millions, and the U.S. military is completely unable to do any sort of containment of the outbreak. Huge swaths of the country are neck-deep in anarchy and military rule by local militias consisting of survivors. Our President – the man of character that he obviously is – has holed himself up in a bunker somewhere on the west coast, completely abandoning his post, leaving our dear country at the mercy of whoever happens to have power. It's...it's a tense situation, but we here at NPR will do our best to keep you inf- YOU STAY BACK!
…apologies for that...the latest reports from the road speculate that the virus, or at least some mutation of it, has become an airborne threat. Stay inside your homes, do whatever you can...stay tuned to NPR for the latest updates and developments in what we're calling the Outbreak of 2036.”
The mask itself was so old that she had no idea if it even worked; she didn't know how to test it, and she didn't particularly want to. Instead, she was content sitting in the basement, waiting for everything to wash over. Her eyes were nearly frozen open; her sleep issues had escalated to the point where the most she could sleep was fifteen minutes at a time. The gas mask that she now wore nearly all the time certainly didn't help with that – it was tight against her face and extremely uncomfortable. Eating was a pain in the ass, not that she ate very much anymore; whenever she tried, her paranoia spiked, making her think that the food was poisoned, or that it would compromise her immune system somehow, resulting in her throwing it away. She only ate when she was completely starved, and even then it wasn't a huge amount. She would pull the mask out just far enough to shove a spoonful of food into her mouth, and then would snap it back closed as soon as she could. Granted, the very act of removing the mask from her face completely defeated the purpose of wearing it, but that never actually occurred to her in her sea of paranoia.
Eve picked up the radio and went back down to the floor of the basement, taking the radio with her and setting it next to her, propped up on several ruined books to avoid the thin layer of water. Laying down on the large, soggy mattress similarly propped up in the middle of the basement, she felt her eyes closing and began to welcome sleep, when a series of sudden noises from the radio jolted her out of her slumber.
“...no, no, no! NO! This can't- there were no reports- close the fucking doors, don't let them in! No, NO, FUCK-”
There were several bursts of static, and the channel went silent. Eve sat straight up, grabbing the radio and shaking it several times, switching it on and off, tuning to different bands, anything. Tears began welling up; the radio was her only source of information, because NPR had been operating out of a west coast branch for the duration of the outbreak following the intial spread, keeping them relatively safe. If they were out...
CRASH.
Eve growled, and tossed the radio across the room into a bin, retreating to a corner of the basement. The noises had started again. They'd been getting worse and worse; after the incident with the kitchen two weeks ago, she'd made a conscious effort to ignore them when they started up, but it was becoming more and more difficult. And now, with no other sound to help drown them out, the stress built up much quicker.
Curling in on herself, Eve sat motionless for several hours, ignoring the wetness of the ground, left alone with nothing but her thoughts. She'd contemplated suicide several times already; with the way the world was, what it was becoming, she wasn't even sure if she wanted to live in it once the outbreak had come to pass. At least, if NPR's reports so far were accurate, she wouldn't have to deal with zombies – no one had lived long enough to become “undead”, and no one had been seen reanimating. If I get thrown into some real-life b-rate zombie flick, I really am going to blow my head off, she mused, looking over the pistol in her hand. It would be so easy...just one shot, and she'd be gone, straight into the void, no more apocalypse to worry about.
However, before she could take that train of thought further, she heard several gunshots, more screams, so much screaming...
Standing up, Eve heard two shots particularly close to her house, and a small explosion sounded outside, leaving cracks on the inside of the basement wall. The single dim light in the basement flickered off; someone had shot her generator. Fuck, fuck, fuck...Eve adjusted the gas mask on her face, and searched around the basement for her flashlight. She switched it on, examining the cracks in the wall. Could the virus really have reached the coast...? It was certainly possible, yes, and judging by the sudden spike in panic on the outside, it seemed that something serious had occurred, and she was no longer safe here, holed up her basement.
Falling against the wall and sliding down, she resigned herself to the fact. Tomorrow she would have to leave, brave the outside world, and hope to whoever might be listening that she didn't die along the way.
But for now, she set the gun down next to her, shut off the flashlight, and closed her eyes, sleep coming to her quickly and peacefully for once. She would need it for the next day, after all; when journeying directly into hell, one should have a good night's rest first.
Eve awoke groggily some time later, stretching out and standing up. After giving herself a few minutes to wake up, she went up the steps of the basement door with a crowbar. Taking a deep breath through the mask, she shoved the crowbar into the gap between the door and the boards holding it closed and tore them off, the door swinging open after several minutes of effort. Putting the crowbar in her pocket and pulling her gun back out, she tentatively stepped back into the kitchen, taking a long look around. Mysteriously, the house seemed to have remained unlooted in the past two weeks, and remained undamaged, aside from the noticeably large hole where the generator had previously sat against the house. Examining the still-smoldering remains, it was shocking her house hadn't burned down. Perhaps it had been raining; she did live in Washington, after all. In any case, the generator wasn't salvageable, so she moved to the living room and prepared to take her first steps back out into the world since she'd received word of the outbreak.
Upon exiting the house, Eve wondered if she'd stepped into some sort of alternate reality completely devoid of life. The street she lived on was eerily quiet; not a single life form in sight. Where was everyone?
Walking down the street, Eve became increasingly unsettled by the silence in the town, even as more and more signs of destruction began to arise; though her house had been hit and damaged, she'd walked two full blocks before she saw any other sign of life, any indicator that something had happened. It was only when she'd reached town hall that she found most of the townsfolk, and what she saw was decidedly less than pleasant.
There were hundreds of bodies all over the streets, stacked upon each other, all of them sharing the same expression – eyes wide with horror, mouths slightly agape. It seemed as though the people had arrived at the hall in waves, only to die upon reaching their destination, falling upon the previous wave. Eve's town was small, maybe a couple thousand people, and it seemed that every single resident of the town that had stayed after the outbreak – with the exception of her – was gone.
As she took in the scene, terrified out of her mind, she heard a groan behind her, and whirled around, gun at the ready. Her eyes flickered left and right rapidly, trying to determine where it'd come from, and she caught another small groan, picking up just the tiniest hint of movement. Walking over to it, she identified the source – a man who appeared to be in his late 20s, pinned under three other people, all of whom were dead. She couldn't believe it – someone had survived? Nobody was supposed to be able to -
“Kill...me...”
Those two words snapped Eve out of her thoughts quite abruptly. Her face contorted. “But...but why? Don't you want to liv-”
“There's...something coming. The virus...more to it than that...don't want to be part of it...it really is...as bad as it seems...” his hand inched toward Eve's gun. “Do it...”
She knelt down to his level, looking him directly in the eye. “Tell me what you know, goddamnit.”
The man groaned, shaking his head with a miniscule amount of motion. “Horror...too much...”
Nearly at her breaking point, Eve grabbed the man by the neck. “WHAT'S COMING?”
There was a long stretch of silence, punctuated only by Eve's heavier-than-usual breathing. Finally, the man whispered, “The Revelation.”
Eve screamed in frustration, let go of the man, and turned to walk away. She hadn't taken more than a few steps, however, when the man let out a piercing scream of his own. “KILL ME!” The scream devolved into choked sobs afterward.
That was her breaking point. Eve turned to face the man, and walked back over to him. She cocked the gun, and held it an inch from the man's head. Closing her eyes, and without a word, she pulled the trigger.
It really is as bad as it seems.
Those words kept running through Eve's mind as she packed up food, water, batteries, flashlights, and other essentials into the back of her truck, preparing to leave. Where she was going was a detail she hadn't necessarily thought about; all she knew was that she had to get out of there, as soon as she could.
One thing she tried not to think about was what she'd done earlier in the day. She'd burned all of her clothes the moment she went home, and scrubbed the gas mask clean as much as possible (the mask was more of a symbolic element than anything else by now, as Eve was almost entirely sure that it didn't work.) She stopped at one point to look down at her unclothed body, gas mask in her hand. Already thin to begin with, she'd lost about twenty pounds in the weeks since the outbreak began, her jeans being held up with a thick leather belt covered up by the Coil hoodie inherited from her father (“It's vintage,” he'd told her; she wondered what he would think of her wearing it now). Her hands were clad in leather gloves, a copy of the pair she'd been wearing before. She'd swapped her tennis shoes for combat boots, which she figured would be better and safer for travel.
Frowning, she brushed a lock of pink-stained hair from her face, which had thinned out considerably, her cheekbones sticking out quite a bit more than usual. She wanted nothing more than for this whole ordeal to be over, so she could go to bed and not be afraid to wake up the next morning, or afraid that she'd never wake up.
Finally done packing up the truck, Eve stepped into the basement one last time. She took in the layout, remembered everything that had transpired, and scowled. She would never be returning here, that was for sure.
Eve left the basement and was on her way to the door when she froze in place. The noises that had been plaguing her for weeks were at their usual volume; however, this time, there was another voice layered on top of them, the voice of the man she'd encountered earlier.
“You killed me, bitch,” it hissed, buzzing in her ears. “And for what...? Because I told you to? What if I didn't what that, hm? The virus...it does things to people. Perhaps he didn't have control of his voice, did you ever think of that? He could've been a companion, could've helped you through everything, but instead, you put a bullet through his skull. Where's the remorse?”
Eve shook her head forcefully, trying to dispel the voice, but instead, it got louder. “Cold-hearted murderer, that's what you are. What makes you any better than the virus you're running scared from?”
“SHUT UP!” Eve ran out of the house back to her truck, grabbed one of her gasoline containers, and began dumping the gasoline along the perimeter of the house. “YOU DON'T CONTROL ME!” she screamed, throwing the empty container into the house and slamming the door. She pulled out a matchbook, struck several matches, and threw them onto the gasoline, screaming wordlessly as the house was engulfed in flames. Once it was burning, she jumped into the truck and drove away as fast as she could, only stopping at the outer limits of the town to throw up.
They'll never get to me. Never.
Eve sat behind the wheel of her truck, eyes barely open as she drove through miles and miles of empty, barren wastelands. She found it incredibly hard to believe that she hadn't run into anyone yet – there obviously had to be people that were still alive, that had survived the outbreak like her. Right?
Can't keep thinking like that. I'll find people. I have to. This had been her mantra for the past three days of driving aimlessly to the east, with no real destination. She was also running out of gas for her truck – the containers she used were large, but driving across the country is no easy task, and her truck demanded a fairly large amount of gas. After three days, she was down to two and a half containers, which would leave her stranded somewhere in, ironically, Indiana.
Turning on her radio, she tried tuning it to see if there were any broadcasts. After about a minute of doodling with it, she was about ready to give up, when she suddenly stumbled on a frequency that seemed active. Settling the tuner on it for a moment, the noise seemed like just static, but as she drove it began to clear up enough for a discernible message to be heard:
“...stronghold...answer...D.C....sa l v a t i o n”
Staring at the radio, she reached over to the glovebox, pulled out several maps, and turned the truck off to begin planning a new route. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt suspicious about the broadcasted message, especially the way 'salvation' and been stretched out and distorted, but she didn't care. If someone was preaching salvation, then that was where she'd go. And if it ended up being a false message...well, she'd deal with it.
Before starting the truck up again, Eve's eyes drifted over to the gun that laid in the passenger's seat. The voices and noises had been getting louder and louder, and there were two instances during the road trip where she stopped driving and nearly ended things. At one point, she'd resolved to do it, but then her hand was shaking so badly that she missed completely, blowing out her passenger-side window instead. Following that, she'd lost her resolve, and instead kept driving.
She shook her head and adjusted the gas mask. Why did she even still wear this thing? It seemed pretty obvious at this point that the mask had no practical use, even if the virus was airborne. After spending a brief time attempting to deduce a reason, she concluded that it was a security blanket of sorts, perhaps a placebo. This sort of meta-thought did nothing to improve her mood, of course, but it kept her from thinking about much darker things. Shaking her head, she turned the truck on and started on her route, hoping against hope that it would take her to safety.
A week into the road trip to “salvation”, Eve was getting extremely restless. Perhaps restless wasn't the right word – terrified and paranoid were more accurate. As she'd gotten closer and closer to D.C., several disturbing signs of life had popped up. First, the radio messages were coming in at a more frequent rate, indicating that she was at least on the right path to the source of the initial message. The subsequent messages, however, were equally cryptic and possibly more worrisome than the first:
“we are...the end...of everything”
“rebuild...new world...s t r o n g e r”
“just zə roes and ones”
To be blunt, Eve had no idea what any of these meant, and none of them deterred her from her intended destination. They did sit in the back of her mind, however, alongside the ever-present voices and noises that had steadily been growing louder and louder.
Those voices and sounds had been the real problem for the past four days. The closer she got to D.C., the worse they seemed to get, the stronger they seemed to get. She could feel her mind beginning to slip at an accelerated rate; if she didn't reach D.C. soon, she was fairly sure that she would completely snap, and there was no telling what would happen then.
The other sign of life she'd encountered – or, more accurately, a sign of death – was the increasing amount of dead bodies lining the roads. In cars, on bikes, on foot, it didn't matter; the only things these corpses had in common were their state of death, and several horrendous mutations they seemed to have developed. The mutations ranged from extra fingers and toes to extra arms growing out where they had no business being to one unfortunate man who seemed to have been rapidly growing a second face on the back of his head before his untimely (or timely, Eve contemplated darkly) demise. In any case, these individuals proved to be much more disturbing than the messages being broadcast over the radio, and didn't help her psyche whatsoever. Conversely, they offered some sort of twisted reassurance – if, after a month of the viral outbreak, she wasn't dead, or horribly mutated, then that must mean she wasn't infected at all.
This naïve thought would soon turn on her, in a similar manner to everything else that had happened to Eve so far.
Several hours into her musings, on her final container of gasoline, Eve perked up as she passed a particular sign -
“Washington, D.C. City Limit – Welcome to the World Center of Freedom”
Ha, freedom, they preach. Where the fuck is our 'leader of the free world', then, eh? Eve's thoughts were in contrast to her expression, which held the shadows of a smile for the first time in weeks. All that time traveling, and she was finally going to get the answers for those transmissions. There was, hopefully, no way this could backfire on her.
The cruel irony of that wishful thinking was lost on her.
Driving through the desolate streets, she was reminded of her home, the place she'd left a week ago for greener pastures, so to speak. Similarly, as she progressed through the U.S. capital, heading in the direction of the White House, she began passing by dozens, possibly hundreds of corpses. The mutations seemed to fade away as she drew nearer to the building, another aspect that worried her. Her previous convictions regarding the virus faded away as quickly as they came. The voices were in full swing. Her hand itched for the gun, but she resisted the temptation. She hadn't driven across the entire fucking country to blow her face off right at the end of her quest.
Eve pulled up to the front gate of the White House, a gate that had been torn off its hinges and thrown aside. Turning the safety on and shoving her gun in her pocket, Eve hopped out of her truck, locked it, and began to walk up the walkway. After walking just a few dozen feet, however, the truck exploded behind her, flinging Eve forward several more feet and throwing her to the ground. Rolling over, Eve stared in horror as she watched every last supply she'd had with her go up in flames, accelerated by the spare gasoline in the back of the truck. She began to tear up, but shook it off, pulling the gas mask off briefly to wipe her face. There was no time for mourning; it was now or never.
Two hundred feet from the truck, a shadowy figure packed up his sniper rifle and began making his way back to the White House.
Eve stood back up and entered the iconic building, finding no security measures active whatsoever. There were, naturally, several decomposing corpses in the White House; they appeared to be Secret Service agents and various other staff members killed in the terrorist attack. She found it suspicious that no one else had occupied the building; it seemed like a good, solid base of operations for any sort of group that might be interested in working out of it. She took in the setting carefully; the once-pristine building was dusty and unkempt, with papers and furniture strewn about every room and corridor. It seemed that there had been quite the commotion some time prior to her arrival, likely during the terrorist attack.
As she made her way towards the famed Oval Office, the voices and noises became louder and louder in her head. Her hands began shaking, just walking became quite the arduous task, and her focus slipped continually. By the time she'd finally made it to the entrance to the Oval Office, she couldn't even hear her own thoughts over the noises and screaming going on in her head. Finally, the sounds reached a deafening pitch as she turned the doorknob, but suddenly ceased completely as the door swung open.
Entering the room, Eve stared at the chair behind the desk, with its back turned to her. As she stepped further into the room, the chair began to turn, and she whipped out her pistol, pointing it directly at the occupant, her mind clear for the first time in nearly a month.
The man in the chair felt familiar somehow, as if she'd met him before; but that was impossible, as his face didn't register in her mind at all. He was pale, with sharp facial features and jet black hair. Notably, his eyes were a bright, fiery red – unnaturally so. Her hands began to tremble.
“Ah.” The man stood up and walked around the desk, a small smile on his face. He wore a sharp suit, black with a red tie. He looked remarkably well-nourished and well-rested; if Eve didn't know better, she could've mistaken him for the President that had so courteously abandoned his country weeks ago.
“I was wondering when someone would finally make it to me. Hundreds have tried, obviously, but as you probably saw on your way here, that didn't work out so well for them. You are, in fact, the first person to arrive that I had not brought with me upon my own arrival to this beloved capital of our country. My name – well, the name I've given myself since the Revelation – is Adam. And what might your name be, ma'am?”
Eve stared down at the hand that Adam held out to her, gun still pointed directly at his face. Adam took notice of this, of course. “You know, you can put down the weapon whenever you'd like.”
Eve shook her head, her expression of fear masked by the gas mask she still wore. Her thumb switched the safety off. Adam's hand dropped back to his side. “You really don't understand what this is all about, do you, ma'am-whose-name-I-still-don't-know?”
“Eve.”
Adam paused, his face contemplative. “How poetic. Adam and Eve. It's almost as if the two of us are referencing something.” He shrugged. “In any case, perhaps you'd like to hear about the true purpose of this...Revelation.”
Walking back around the desk and sitting in the Presidential chair, he made a gesture for Eve to sit down across from him. Wearily, she did so, keeping one hand on her gun, so that if something went wrong, she could easily grab it and make her way out of there. Not that she had anywhere to go with no truck and no supplies, of course, but that wasn't on her mind at the moment.
Satisfied, Adam's eyes gazed past Eve, perhaps recalling some event in the recent past. “The language that the media used when this outbreak started was problematic, Eve. Yes, one could say that this 'virus' resulted in the mass death of most of the population upon infection. That information is all true, all accurate. But it wasn't death without purpose. This is a story that has played out in our culture, and our history, many times before – a cleansing of the world, in preparation for an evolution of humanity. The release of the virus was no accident – those idiotic engineers in Indiana may have enabled it because of their bumbling, ham-fisted foolishness, but rest assured that this, all of this, was meant to happen.
“You see, the waves of death that characterized the first stages of the Revelation were a way of culturing and enhancing the virus – the more lives it claimed, the more it mutated, the faster it began to reach its true purpose – evolution. Going beyond homo sapiens sapiens – what an ill-conceived species name, as a brief digression – and becoming something more. Something incredible, Eve.”
Adam paused in his speech to raise a hand. Snapping his left thumb and index fingers, a flame suddenly materialized on the tip of his thumb, dancing with a healthy glow. The flame matched his eyes, which glowed in time with the flame. And, with a single breath, the flame was extinguished, and the glow in Adam's eyes ceased.
Eve was particularly glad she kept the gas mask covering her face, because her expression was one that she, under normal circumstances, would be very embarrassed to have – complete disbelief and shock. This man, this man preaching ridiculous things, insane ideals, generated fire from nothing – there were no tricks, no smoke and mirrors, nothing but pure, unadulterated magic. At least, that was the conclusion that Eve's already-extremely-fragile mind had come to.
Adam waved a hand, and five more people entered – three male, two female. Eve did not turn to look at them, still completely transfixed with Adam's demonstration. He smirked. “The mask conceals your face, but undoubtedly you're in shock. This, Eve, is the future. We are the future. Because, as I'm sure you've gathered, you will factor into my plans quite nicely. Every king needs a queen, after all, and it would do well to fulfill the reference that we've already started, don't you think?”
Eve's face, following this declaration, settled into a mask of its own under the gas mask, and she stood up. Turning briefly to look at the other entities in the room, she began a mental countdown in her head.
Five. There were six people, and she had about four bullets left. One of them, however, had a gun of their own – that could prove quite useful, so long as she took them all by surprise.
Four. This wasn't what she'd wanted. She'd wanted salvation, but not from these beings – they were not humans, not a single one of them.
Three. It was clear to her that this was the end of the road. Everything she'd done to prepare – none of it had meant shit, quite frankly, and she was fairly sure none of it ever would.
Two. It was time to bring her journey to an end.
One.
With one swift motion, Eve slammed her hand down on the gun and pulled the trigger, lodging a bullet in Adam's chest. Whirling around again, she shot off the last three bullets, taking down the man with the rifle, one of the women, and blowing through the eye of another one of the men. She threw the useless gun at the other woman as a distraction, breaking the woman's nose in the process. Diving for the rifle, she managed to get off several shots, taking out the rest of the group. She stood up and pulled her gas mask off, covered in sweat. That's the end of that.
“You fucking bitch.”
Eve's eyes widened as she felt the needle pierce her neck. Fuck, I thought I got all of them... Muddled, disjointed thoughts ran through her mind as she felt the effects of the virus begin to tear through her bloodstream. She probably had about a minute left. The rifle slipped out of her hand, hitting the floor with a loud clattering noise. Shit.
“You should've just listened to me, Eve. Now I'm got to patch up this stupid hole in my chest – and worse, there's a hole in my suit, too. How...unsavory.” She heard Adam's voice behind her. How did he...?
Clutching her chest, Eve fell to her knees, feeling her heart giving out. She felt incredibly weak – but there was something else going on, something building up at the back of her mind. The virus continued to tear its way through her body, but as it did so, she suddenly began to feel rejuvenated. Her heartbeat, previously weak and erratic, stabilized, and she felt the strength begin to return to her. More importantly, perhaps, she was gripped with a sudden clarity, a feeling of determination, a feeling of power. Her mind felt incredibly sharp, sharper than it had ever been – and she felt an additional sense there, perhaps the result of the virus now pumping powerfully through her veins.
Eve stood up, gas mask left behind, to face Adam. The man, taken by immense surprise, threw a burst of flame at her, which dissipated before it reached her. “What the he- oh no. No, no, no, this isn't – you can't be -”
The rifle suddenly flew up in front of Eve and shot off three rounds, embedding themselves in Adam's chest, silencing him and throwing him to the ground with a dull thud. Eve's eyes glazed over as she stared at the man bleeding out before her. A bluff and a bad hand, perhaps, is what you had.
She considered the rifle with those same dull, dead eyes. Telekinesis. She hadn't expected that. The virus remained strong in her body, completely reversing the damage done to it in the previous month. Hundreds of thoughts, each one of them clear and precise, ran through her mind. After a minute or so, she came to a single conclusion. The rifle flipped around to face her. Staring down its barrel, she considered the weapon for a moment. Finally, it flipped back into her hand. She turned to look at the five corpses behind her, and grabbed a harness from the one who'd originally owned the rifle. She let the rifle float in mid-air for a moment while she adjusted the bloodstained harness to her smaller body, and then strapped it to her back.
Eve pushed open the doors to the Oval Office, making her way back out of the White House. Once she was in the front lawn, she took in her surroundings, and closed her eyes.
“I've got a lot of work to do.”
+++
From a front window of the White House, a man observed Eve with contempt. She was an unexpected speed bump in his campaign, and he was certain that she would impede his plans more than this one time. He growled, running a hand along his chest.
“I'm really getting tired of all these holes in my suit.” Tailors were hard to come by these days, after all.
Adam adjusted his necktie, his eyes glowing a bright red. “Best watch your back, my dear Eve.” He let out a sigh, fire laced in with the air. “Our story won't have a happy ending.”
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