Of course, he did not stay there. He could be quiet up close just as easily as he could from far away, so he figured there was no real harm in following her. He wanted to see her, see what she did, see what her face did in the actual moment of death. Riley’s, that is. Not the girl. The girl was just a human, and she would do the same thing all animals did when they died ( sob, whimper, wriggle, go limp, blah, blah, blah ).
Riley was different. She was like him. ( Or, she was about as close to like him as people ever got. ) But more than that, the things she did had purpose, and power behind them, and they meant something.He wanted to witness, to understand.
He trailed behind her, wraith-like, and stopped when she did, crouching down in the trees a few feet away. The first cry startled him, but then he smiled, watching her wail in the darkness like a wounded doe. Clever girl.
The blind prey staggered directly into her unlikely predator’s arms, and he thought he knew just what would happen next ( a blade drawn ear-to-ear, a fountain of warm and wet ), but he was taken back by Riley’s words. He had apologized to victims before, manically trying to shove their organs back into place in a flash of lucidity, but he had never forgiven one. What did it mean?
He emerged from his hiding place as the girl took her last gurgling, blood-drowned breaths and the cascade of plasma spewing from her slowed. Gently, he hooked his arms under hers and lifted her slumping body from Riley’s grasp. He placed her on the ground, face-up, and crouched down to pull the blindfold from her eyes. Dark, shallow nothingness is what he found there; a doll’s eyes, painted glass that only echoed the real thing. She was less than an animal now, she was an object. His object. He rested his elbows on his knees and examined her, plotting out his next move. His tongue darted over his lips in a subconscious gesture of hunger.
His mind was slipping from him, and he reeled it back. He still had a question for Riley, and he needed to ask it before he scared her away. He looked up at her, and then back down at the corpse, tilting his head like a child might. “Forgiven for what?”
Riley was staring at her boots, disgusted. They were coated in blood, all the way from the laces to the soles.
“Urgh,” she said, half to herself. “That’ll take forever to get out.”
She knelt next to the body, putting her knife away. Blue eyes examined JD’s face, nose scrunching up in disgust when he licked his lips. What was he planning to do with the corpse, eat it? Or something even...?
Ugh. Wait. No. No. She did not want the answer to that. Shut up, brain, shut up.
“I don’t know,” she admitted plainly. “But I believe -- very strongly -- that She would never set me on the path towards someone that didn’t need to die. For one reason or another. Everyone has their sins. Rape. Abuse. Greed. Stalking. Narcissism. Weakness. The way I see it, you either overcome your sin and become better, or you die in shame.”
She was looking at JD, now. Trying to gauge whether or not he’d laugh at her.
She decided to just say it.
“I think sometimes, She chooses who She needs to carry out her work. And She helps them overcome their sins -- like She helped me. And then, we help her back.”
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