#killjay

[nyaskitten]

Wyldfyre should be the main character fuck everyone else.

[awake-alone-unafraid-blog]

Killjay

I’m tired, dreamers. More tired than I’ve been in a long,

long time. 

Phaethon is quiet. I can feel him, not quite removed from my mind. He’s gloating. Typhos is silent. I can’t feel him at all. 

In the busy terminal of the airport where I wait for my connecting flight, I feel very, very alone. 

I’m not going home – or, well, what has become a figment of home, that place where Elle disappeared and Lisse waits. No, there are three more stops on this trip. I can only pray to God, whatever there is left of Him in this world, that the next three are easier than the first. 

During the hottest part of the day, I slept curled up against the stone wall of an abandoned house that adjoined the plaza. The house itself – stone, wood, and dark, hardened mud in some places – had the looks of having been abandoned by its inhabitants mid-stride: the naked bulb left flickering in the living room, soup in a cracked bowl sitting cold on the table, the television on and playing a loop of the same commercial in Arabic, over and over and over

I wanted to sleep in the cot set up in a room to the side of the kitchen, but as I lay down I felt warmth, as if someone had just risen from it. The sensation never faded. He stood outside in the center of the plaza, head cocked toward the window that sat open in the building directly across from mine. He waited, almost patiently, knowing that eventually I would move from the small home. Shuddering, I did not think of what had happened to its prior occupants. 

The entire town was empty but for me, Him, and her. 

At dusk I crossed the plaza. The Slender Man had not moved from His place in the center of the town; I skirted around Him silently, an angry planet forced to revolve around a black sun. He turned, and for a moment I thought He might step toward me despite my wards. Frigid air washed over my skin as He instead disappeared. There was a sharp crack and the smell of ozone and I was alone. Continuing across the plaza, I made my way to a set of stairs wedged between two crooked-looking buildings. Up the stairs, behind the door, and in a room not so far away, was the girl I needed to kill.

Killjay – for I knew no other name but that – was waiting for me, but did not expect me. She was small and toned with a shock of red hair that slid straight down her shoulders; everything about her screamed Don’t fuck with me.  I found her sitting on a small sofa facing the door, arm already in motion to raise the gun that had sat on the table in front of her. A flash of surprise crossed her face as I entered and she hesitated, giving me enough time to charge across the small room. A grunt and a flash of dull silver – the gun dropped from her hand and skittered along the dusty floor. I had her momentarily pinned there on the sofa, using one knee in her gut to keep her stationary while I pulled my knife from my back pocket.

“Motherfucker,” she spat, struggling against me. “You’re not what I was expecting.”

“Neither were you,” I hissed. My knife found its way to her throat. “What kind of name is Killyjay, anyway?”

“Fuck you.” With a spasm of speed and strength, Killjay knocked me back with her free elbow, causing me to lose my balance. She slipped out from underneath me and rolled off of the couch, scrambling for something. As I regained my footing, she pulled a knife from under the couch.

“What happened to Jeremy?” she demanded, “What happened to the others?”

I felt Him a split second before I saw Him. He began moving toward me as soon as He appeared, angry as ever. 

“Can you see Him?” I asked, ignoring Killjay’s question. The woman spun around and stumbled back when she found herself staring up into His nearly featureless face. I lurched forward and reached around, but my knife missed its target, instead digging into the Killjay’s chest and hitting at her sternum. 

Killjay’s knees buckled with the pain, but as she fell she twisted her body, refocusing on me. I had momentarily forgotten the blade in her hand until I felt it slice into my cheek and drag its way up into my hairline. She pulled at me, taking me down with her, and I only just caught myself from fully collapsing on top of her. My knife landed near my hands, but Killjay caught my wrist as I lunged for it.

“Why would He do this?” she hissed. Behind the resolute set of her face, I saw a spark of fear. She propped herself up slightly, turned to Him.  

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?” The scream echoed and cracked and suddenly He was flowing toward me and Killjay surrounded by swirling masses of arm-like energy that reached out toward me.

“After everything I did!” she continued screaming. She started fighting again, pushing against my weight, punching, scratching, kicking and then-

I felt something pressing against me, against my entire body, saw her staring at me intently. As she did so, everything became sharp and my head erupted in pain; It seemed almost as if something was trying to tear my mind from my body and wedge itself in my place. The Slender Man stilled but His tentacles remained curled above me, waiting. Gasping, I groped for the knife – I grabbed it by the blade, slicing open my hand. 

“Let me in!” Killjay shouted, fighting against me on more than one plane. My entire body went numb. I was drifting-

“NO!” Phaethon, so silent, suddenly erupting in my brain, out through my mouth. I shook, righted the knife and lifted it above Killjay’s chest. Slender Man’s dark arms lashed against my defenses, Killjay’s words became a deep scream of anger and agony, she was channeling Him, He was speaking through her and the room started to shake and everything began to crash down around us and I thrust the knife down, 

deep into her chest, pulled it out and plunged it into her throat, ignoring the blood, ignoring the pressure of the air around me, ignoring Him as I killed her 

again and again.

He stilled once more. The whipping arms disintegrated around me as He was pushed back to the other end of the room. I heaved myself up. Killjay's laptop had been left on and open, I noticed. It had fallen off of the couch as we struggled, but was unharmed. I left a message, blood spilling out on the keys as I frantically typed. And then I ran. I ran and ran and ran until I was out of the town. When I finally stopped and turned around it was gone.

An over-bright flight attendant is announcing the boarding for my flight. So for now, I must go. Only a few hours now, and I’ll be in a place very different from that damned desert town. 

There is a fiddler who waits for me in a quiet place. He welcomes death. I hope to bring it. 

[awake-alone-unafraid-blog]

You are not alone

And for you, there will be no peace.

There is the chirp and clack of small birds who pick aimlessly at the dusty ground of the plaza down below. I couldn't tell you exactly how I got here; when you are not quite asleep, little dreamers, you can never quite wake up. 

I regained my consciousness the same way I lost it: to the sound of Typhos shrieking and groaning in my ears. An angry freight train barreling over my mind. The next sensations followed in a jumble of bright sun warm day smooth bone, and when I finally pried my eyes open I found my hand wrapped around Tai's abandoned humerus.  My stomach didn't seem to get the joke and instead went sight-seeing along the gravel next to my car. Emptied, I fought to piece everything that had happened back together. Tai. The bar. Him. The time-

An anxious hand clutched around the pocket watch and pulled it out. Not enough time, never enough time. At least two days had passed. Everything was hazy. For the first time in months I was shaking. The dial on the watch shivered. 

Shoving the watch back into my pocket, I stood up and looked around. I was alone, all but for Tai's bones. I left them, even though I shouldn't have. There was just too much happening, too much pressure on my head. Phaethon's voice was beginning to trickle in over Typhos' screech. He thrummed somewhere around my nasal cavity, and when I closed my eyes I could see the faintest outline of his grin.

Let me, little one. Fainter than Typhos, whose words I could hear unhindered. Phaethon was pressing, trying hard to move to me. The inexplicable sensation of ghosts. For a moment I glimpsed Eridanos in his words and nearly pushed him away. Phaethon pushed harder. I know- I know where to go. Let me, little one. Dream.

I relaxed. I could feel Phaethon slip further - down the larynx, squeezed across the lungs, pumped straight through the heart - until it felt almost as though he had settled himself down into my brain. Typhos kept screaming my name, over and over again.

Esse, Esse, Esse, he will destroy you you will destroy you you he will Esse destroy you-

And then everything became muted. I felt a tight grin settled over my face. Phaethon. I walked to my car, sat down, clenched and unclenched my fists. And then that was that.

I never really fell asleep. But everything after that settled back into a dream-haze. I watched Esse's body start the car, drive to the airport. From above, I commented on the legality of Esse's documentation, to practicality of booking an international flight on a limited bank account. And the entire time, Phaethon murmured back to me, omniscient dream narrator: Hush. You are running out of time and there is nothing more important than this.

Phaethon had, as I came to understand, found something the night I killed Tai. When that crack opened up along the Slender Man's skull (something I thought I had imagined; something I did imagine but Phaethon drew from anyway), Phaethon was able to see a handful of people who were lost. People like Elle, who had been tainted by Him. People like myself, who had killed because of the Slender Man. People He wanted to find. People we were going to take.

And that is how I found myself here. Across an ocean, near a desert, in a town that has slipped under the normal flow of time like one of the Earth's rocky, buckling plates. The town is melting to the core, and empty but for me and her. My little lost one, the one Phaethon saw. She is waiting in a room, not so far away. I can see a bundle of red hair now, and am aware of a flash of metal that says "gun".

I don't know what her connection to Him ever was, but even from a distance I can feel His touch around her. It feels dark and tight, a sick black cloud that writhes like a hungry snake. The Slender Man Himself has been waiting, just on the edge of the empty town, face pointed towards me like an open eye. Phaethon was right. She will be powerful.

Phaethon has relinquished his strange control over me, and Typhos is deathly silent. All there is is the birds, singing their flat songs.