DEATH IS DEATH & MEMORY is memory; where the outside, perhaps, saw flashing screen, an 8-bit ‘ GAME OVER ’ signalling the fall of yet another, they stood, stared, wept in a field of blood & corpses ----- for them, betrayal; for them, despair. Among the living, now, stand victims, the dead to open weary eyes, stretch limbs stiff with rigor mortis; ‘ but they never died ‘ ------ tell that to the trampled boy, the bludgeoned girl; to the one woman army, and the poison that squeezed heart within its noose; be still, be still, be still ( the end was real ; their demise, tangible ). So then, how morbid, how surreal, for the murdered to meet those that ended them, for the mice to stare upon the foxes, remembering both friendship and fear in vivid detail ----- remembering, then, his role in it all. The eyes that burn, the eyes that judge, the eyes that burrow into side of head... deserved, of course; few love the sensation of a knife in the spine.
❛ ...Koizumi? ❜ Gaze drifts from the horizon, from waves & setting suns, averting to classmate instead; they both know, don’t they, that her demise was planned ----- he, a puppeteer, and her, tangled in his strings, guided to the end while he smiled, feigned innocence, waited for her corpse. Certainly, she is alive now, yes, but they remember, they remember, they remember. Pause ----- smile, small & knowing, near apologetic; he’s uncertain if he feels remorse, has had little time to mull it over; still, he does think that had memory remained intact, he may not have been so quick to offer her body as sacrifice. Is that worth anything? ‘ Unlikely. ‘ ❛ That look you’ve been giving me... Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Did you want to ask about it? Why I killed you, that is. ...Ah, though I suppose... Technically that would have been Pekoyama. She is the one who dealt the blow, but I don’t think either of us doubt that I lead you there, right? ❜
