Fateful Echo
TW: Death, Gore
A girl sat in a dark house, the wooden boards around her stained with the remnants of death. At some point, the tears had stopped coming from her and her voice felt as if it had been scratched away.
It was painful. More painful than anything she’d ever experienced before.
She hadn’t known how much time had passed or cared honestly for it. All that her thoughts filled with were an echo of the past.
Mother’s face, twisted into pain. The dark red that had stained her beautiful dress that they’d worked on together. The door locked behind and the rushed words that made her heart pound in her chest.
She was scared. She was so scared.
Pounding at the door, their mouths covered as they hoped it would leave. That it would be gone. The strained breath of the older woman that held her close in her warmth.
She was lost.
The moment that her eyes settled on mother’s dead eyes. Felt her stomach drop as she shook frantically, begging and crying. Praying to the light and beyond for someone to bring them back. She didn’t want to be alone, she couldn’t be alone. Just come back.
She’d do anything, just please don’t leave her here alone.
The pleads fell on deaf ears, yet the motions brought to life another horror. A shudder to the body, a strained sigh that almost gave her hope. But those weren’t her mothers eyes, and those weren’t the loving hands of the woman she knew.
It was all so quick, the sudden jolt of the woman, chasing after her. The way she tried to plead for her mother to stop. Stop, stop, stop. Please, mother, please. The stumble over a fallen chair, the tearing of her flesh by her back as it was raked into time and time again. Her voice cracked as she screamed in pain, falling to the side. Some prayer was answered, and the girl could push away. She’d turned to see the familiar woman turned horror and scrambled back away, her fingers slipping on the red blood that now soaked her back.
Please, mother, please. Please stop.
Mother got up. Free of the chair, and crawling towards her with a snapping jaw.
Please…. Please….
The girl was shaking, her world feeling like a haze as she stared in horror. She prayed for someone to take her away from this. To make this stop. She’d give anything to make it stop.
The answer came soon to her pleas, and a coolness seemed to spill out around her. Like the first brush of the morning air in winter. Darkness like the night sky followed, reaching around her fingers and holding back the oncoming horror.
Eyes were focused in as spears of night stabbed into Mother’s crawling form. Again and again, violently ruining the woman’s body as it cried with some mockery of pain.
Blood seemed to fall everywhere, shooting out along old furniture and ruining their floor. It was a sort of primal savagery that she’d never seen before, and it scared her.
Please… please stop…
She didn’t want to see her mother’s face any more. Didn’t want to see her body jolt as spear after spear of that strange night ran into her. She didn’t want to be there.
But, instead of continuing, her saving grace drew back. A broken corpse left with a gorey scene surrounding it. Those tendrils of the deep dark sky fell away, back to her. Back into her.
Her body was shaking, her breath heaving, and the girl vomited out all she had.
She didn’t want to be here.
And yet, now, for however long it had been she sat there. Staring at her hands and praying to be saved from this. Praying to wake up. Praying and praying for her to find some other life to be in right now.
No one came for her now, though. No answer to those prayers but the numbness that came to her. Only the shadows and echo’s of her life there, ruined by her own hands. At a point, it seemed to dawn on the girl to move. To raise up on shaking legs and start to move.
One step after the other, again and again. Take down the wood that barred her from leaving this nightmare. Take the food with you that you could. It was as if another person just told the girl what to do, and all her poor mind could do was mindlessly follow.
One step to another to another.
Her feet were sore, her stomach was empty. She didn’t sleep.
One step to another.
Her back hurt, she felt a heat that she couldn’t bear. She almost wished she could feel that coolness from before. Almost.
One step…
The news of what happened, the truth of it all. All that she’d lost. The girl cried in another’s arms, held close and protected by a deal that she begged to make.
Slowly, she was pulled up to her feet again. She was urged to follow and wipe away the tears. She looked back, across a land that was unfamiliar yet hers all the same.
She didn’t want to be there.
Eventually, her violet eyes turned forward again. Red and raw from tears, but a meek hope building in their depths.
Prisa wouldn’t stay there.
