Retrograde

[MethodicalSlacker]

She couldn't kill.

[She comes from the maze.]

The only good thing to say about her situation was that it had taught her that lesson. Killing hadn't been her intent to start with, but for a few moments, she was in a position where she could have, and didn't. That was the way it went, and there was no way to go back and change things. Stings, still, slinking out over here, sliding from hill to crested hill. She had dragged herself (this time not quite as literally) over to the quarry, a familiar cliff face overlooking the cratered landscape.

Her ear had been bandaged. Somewhere along the way, she managed to stop and wrap it with gauze, in hopes of keeping the bleeding down. So far, so good. It had slowed to a trickle before, but it felt raw now. Hurt like a bitch, still. She still longed for somewhere to lick her wounds. The craters in the canyon-like expanse before her looked like suitable hiding spaces, but she knew it would be impossible to sit in any of them for any length of time. Nursing a physical wound and trying to keep an old psychological one from flaring up, all at once? No, no thank you, not today.

Even so, sitting on the edge near where she and Seb had been was similarly uncomfortable. The wound was far fresher, threatening to peel open with each and every step. She thought that if she could see into her soul, she'd be sure to find a claw mark, just barely cauterized with the burning fire of time, tissue coming apart at the ends. That wound had reflected outward, onto her ear, and into the words that played around at the inside of her skull.

"You could have done better.

"You had her. Right there, you could have taken her."

She shook her head, and spoke aloud. "It wasn't that easy."

"You missed. You could have swung for her face. Her arms were next to broken, you know."

"What happened to you?" she asked the wind, stained red with running blood, "What happened to you pushing me to do good?"

For just a few moments, the voice went quiet.

"I gave in."

---

Announcement time came and went. Natalie had died, but that was about it. She couldn't pick out any names that mattered to her anymore. Not Wendy, not Sophie, not Irene, not James. If she didn't know better, she'd suspect that these were names made up to convince her that this whole killing game was going on in a bigger way than just the events that made up her day to day life. Everything she saw was just her own living hell, the stars aligned just right for her to descend further and further into depravity. She paid no mind to the danger zones, either. She'd know by the beeping of her neck whether she needed to turn around. she figured.

Fumbling around in her bag, she pulled out a bottle of water, examined it in her hands, and dropped it down the side of the cliff. Looking down after it, she saw it tumble down the rocks and land, crumpling under its own weight, staining the ground with life. It'd be easier to see the spot if it hadn't rained the previous day, but she figured that this was good enough.

Backing away from the cliff, she reclined on the ground, and took a nap.

---

"You gave up," she had said, watching what she thought were people moving around in the canyon below.

"Gave up on what? What was there to give up on? Morality? Values? Virtue? Admit it: those all died when Aaron did."

Her eyes turned upwards. The sky looked back down on her from behind closed and clouded eyes. A revelation had been building in her mind for the past few days, and now the epiphany was ready to precipitate.

"I know what your name is."

Quiet.

Then, not so.

"Oh?

"Do you finally remember who I am?"

Pop, hiss, flutter.

"Your name. I can remember your name.

I've know who you are for a long time. I just forgot your name."

Breathing that wasn't her own filled her ears. Caught in anticipation, the sphinx inside her mind waited for the answer to her riddle.

It wasn't one she had to speak aloud.

---

She hadn't napped for longer than thirty minutes before the pain in her ear and the soreness in her body drove her to sit back up again. Touching her wounds hurt, but it was tough to avoid that when her wounds were all over her body. Unfairly tough, like the callouses on her hands. Once, she could read maps in her hands, longitude lines criss crossing her palms—those maps were useless now. Atlantis sank beneath the waves.

What didn't sink with Atlantis would have to be thrown into the deep, or washed down with a great deluge of her own making. There could be no more pain, no more music; no more stars, no more maps,

and,

most importantly of all,

there could be no more Kitty.

She was only seventy paces away when she turned around and looked back at the quarry. The dirt she wrote her old name into had been swept under by the advancing ocean, covered by silt and sediment, but she couldn't help but see it off. She had found herself, by herself. There was no need for Kitty's destructive voice to remain, to lead her astray. Her brain had been picked, chewed, frayed, even split, but she had managed to herd the cat into a closet. She had swallowed the key years ago.

The only good thing about coming to the cliffs was the lesson it taught her. A lesson too late, but timely all the same. Turning away one last time, wincing from the pain of the wind running through her bandages, she repeated the lesson once more in her head.

She couldn't kill, but she couldn't die, either.

[Katie Gittschall continued in We're Runnin' Right Back, Here We Go Again.]