Evil

[Deamon]

((Continued))

The shelter was on fire once, before she arrived.

The ashen smell of the smoke mixed with the smell of something else, like half-cooked meat. She nudged the rubble pile with a foot and watched as pieces flaked and fell away. The bodies themselves stoically remained in place, flesh blistered and boiled where it hadn't been reduced to charcoal and bone. A hog roast with the hog swapped out or a funeral pyre like her ancestors had used many years before. The spirits released, their shells just stayed where they were, not where they had fallen for they had been moved. The smooth red river that snaked across the floor cutting the room in half said as much. Poking it once more she stepped back as a large piece crumbled then collapsed.

On the other side she pushed the rubble out, the ashes coating her shoe. The process repeated twice more and with the final one it tumbled down. The vessels ended up mostly covered, she kicked some of the charred rubble over the remainder. She knew all their names, but it didn't matter. Empty as they were they meant nothing. The value projected onto them didn't matter.

The rubble sat there silently.

The vessels remained hidden.

Her task was done.

The boy who had seen nothing had taken her offer, unlike her friend and the girl. He had traveled with her. The other two had made their own way. She felt she would see the castaway again she knew him. The fearful one she didn't know.

She was glad he had accepted her offer.

Turning away from the rubble she walked over to some crates and sat on one, tucking her legs in so that she was crossed legged. Looking over at the boy she analysed him before speaking.

"Are you ok?"

The shelter wouldn't remain theirs forever. The hyenas and vultures that lurked outside would arrive. There was no escape. There would be no rescue. There would be one left.

She knew this but she had time.

She could wait.

[Namira]

((from Myopia))

Kris was okay company. Better than no company anyhow. She did seem kind of sad and subdued and didn't necessarily say an awful lot, even when Keiji spoke about the things on his mind to try and fill the silence and maybe take her mind off of how things were going (and definitely take his mind off of how things were going). That was okay though, she didn't tell him to shut up or go away, so he figured she couldn't mind too much.

Honestly though, that just made him more sure that he was doing the right thing. If she was sad or struggling, then it was all the more important that she didn't get left on her own. That was just logic, right? When a person maybe was having a hard time then the worst thing you could do is just skip out on them. Sure, they were all having a hard time to lesser or greater degrees of hard (like double calculus hard, only with like, gunshots if you answered wrong), but Keiji didn't even know if Kris had anyone here.

Maybe it was better if she didn't. How many days now, and nobody had come to the rescue?

Rgh. Come on cavalry, come through for us.

He tried not to concentrate on Kris wandering around, tried not to really look at it was she was doing.

He maybe... forty percent succeeded.

This wasn't okay.

"I'm all right. Not like, all the way all right but you know, kind of managing," Keiji smiled, and to his surprise it didn't felt too forced. "You?"

[Cicadan]

A simple bathroom, almost slovenly, a setpiece from a horror film missing the scene's focal point. Blood prints painted a scene of struggles and tortures. All completely irrelevant. Whatever story had been told, had been told and then concluded. Nothing left for addendum.

Rachael had imagined many things, that she'd live to find love, love to find life.

That she'd live at all, that she'd love at all.

'I love you'. Simple words yet unsaid.

Perhaps lost forever more.

She struggled to care. So her mouth remained clamped, deathly in visage. Autological. The story stalled, like the flagging heartbeat of the bedridden, wasting away, rattling gasps with the click of their own flesh-stripped bones.

((continued))

A defeated groan, human-like, but rather the pathetic sag of a broken bathroom door's hinge as kinetic forces dragged on it while it's shattered remnants were timidly shunted aside. Deeper within the warehouse, something stirred, footsteps, mouse-like, pattering across the unseen horizon.

[Deamon]

She shrugged.

He smiled at her and she paused then turned away. The containers in her bag gently knocking together to produce a faint clinking sound. It was heavy now, the physical weight adding to the other weights she had been carrying since waking up. They pushed down upon her like god's fist, applying pressure, threatening to crush. Maybe he didn't feel it, there was a stir within her, a small twist, like a serpent waking making its displeasure known and then settling down again.

The building once had contained crates, the purpose was simple storage. In a way it still stored things. Memories of the battles that had been fought. As she looked around she could see the ghosts of the past acting them out. The show they had put on for the camera's replayed in her mind as she observed what they left behind. The forms were indistinct, faceless, nearly formless, smoky wisps that moved and fell apart.

The ground and walls their canvas, the camera's their audience. The greatest show that never was.

Her footsteps left an trail of ashes behind, the mixture a memento of both the fire and those had once resided within it. The path she left not one fit to follow, disjointed and missing steps.

"I..."

Her attempt to speak was cut off by a faint sound from deeper within their dwelling. The illusion of shelter shattered nearly as soon as it was found. The falling pieces alerting her to the presence of another.

She turned back towards the boy.

Trying to assess all the potential scenarios was an impossible task.

"I'm going to see what else there is."

Her footsteps carried her onward, deeper into the depths of the shelter.

[Namira]

A shrug was nearly as good as an okay, or at least close enough to being as good that Keiji could tell himself that she was pretty much saying she was okay.

Sometimes you had to compromise a little and this was one of those situations where maybe a little compromise was going to go a long way.

Kris took her time saying anything, but then stepped deeper into the building as she spoke. He nodded along.

"'kay, ima get something to eat. Let me know if you want anything."

He went into his bag, busied himself picking out what he could eat from the very limited options.

He missed shakes.

[Cicadan]

Fragments, bits, bone and flesh coalesced into a mockery: five feet and one inch, green eyes haphazardly stenciled blood red, one shoulder sinking out of it's socket, shadowy Nazca lines of dried bile down it's shirt.

What else there is:

Nothing. Then,

noise.

"H-... hi." She forced out in a trembling gasp. She was a foreign image transplanted into the doorframe of the bathroom, foreign by body language, misplaced sculpture of humanity warped. The deer in the headlights looked back Kris' way, contemplating sans efforts of the mind.

Remember while you can. A human face. It's not Mom's, not Dad's, not-
Bridget's, Daniel's. She would never see them again anyways.

She thoughtlessly wondered why she still bothered with seeing. It took energy to keep her eyelids open.

[Deamon]

She had been right. There was another in the shelter with them. A girl in the bathroom staring at her like a deer stared at a wolf.

There was a moment after her greeting where neither of them moved, both taking stock of the situation.

Both of them sitting at different ends of the spectrum.

The girl was scared, the smell of her fear hung thick in the bathroom, mixing with the stench of death to create a dark and heavy cloud over the two of them.

Looking over the girl she eventually spoke.

"Are you hurt?"

[Cicadan]

A moment passed. Eternity, clouded over. A gradient between their two bodies. It darkened as it faded into the grout between bathroom tiles, Rachael's eyes bathed in darkness, only barely reflecting Kris' own gaze.

The silhouette of her lips hung open.

Shifted seismically a few times. No sound.

"Yes."

Finally admitting it.

"I'm hurt."

Do you even remember how you got here?

"I'm scared."

Yeah, yeah. Can we end this already?

Rachael took a step forward, defensively, recoiled even as she did, flinching as proximity alone was deadly.

[Deamon]

A wounded deer was what she had found.

They gazed at each other through the darkness, their stares making an invisible connection through the void that separated them.

The girl took a step toward her and she took one forward in return. Both steps the first in a dance.

"What happened?"

The words were unimportant. The question equally so, it was merely a dressing.

[Cicadan]

"..."

A dance clumsy,

"This."

A danse macabre.

"This happened.

All of it."

Rachael's eyes squeezed shut. She was seeing it again. Another dance, a dance of images, hallucinations that taunted her. Illusions of hope, dreams of another.

Fucking pathetic.

There was no difference to when she opened her eyes again. The light failed to catch on her pupils, the reflection was hollow, void of substance or color.

Rachael stepped forward until she was visible in all her inglorious mess and held a single hand up, the friar's call for alms, palm outstretched and trembling.

"What about you?" Sans substance, she asked for that of another.

[Deamon]

She stepped forward, the movement a mirror of the other girl's.

For a moment they were both face to face in the light and could see each other clearly, then she passed the girl by, entering the darkness.

There was nothing deeper inside, no shapes hidden in the gloom.

"Nothing."

A pause, the silence filling the space between them.

"Nothing has happened."

She turned and reached out with one arm wrapping across the girls shoulders, the other going over her head.

Then she pulled her into an embrace.

[Cicadan]

Brown and green melted together, unsightly. Then once more, Rachael couldn't see her own reflection.

No point in seeing that anyways. She's looking right through you, this strange girl. She sees nothing when she looks into your eyes.

Rachael could see into the darkness. Beyond it, rather. On the other side of the twilight of her own reality was the hypnagogic vision of her waking life. Dad asked her to do something and she did it. Daniel asked her to cherish him and she did.

Nothing.

Not a request, but she strictly followed the command from her unseen companion. She trusted without reason to trust, almost smiling for a moment.

The warmth of an embrace, of, as it was so eloquently put, 'nothing happening'. Rachael exhaled, once.

Her smile broadened, but the person she was smiling at wasn't present.

Inhale.

[Namira]

These saltines tasted absolutely terrible.

[Deamon]

The girl relaxed. They were at peace with one another's presence.

She held the girl tight, not wanting to lose her so soon after finding.

Not a soul so lost.

They were so close together she could smell her hair.

"It's ok now. It's over."

Her voice was quiet breaking the peaceful comforting silence that had surrounded them.

It was alright though; they were alone in the darkness.

[Cicadan]

Inhale.

Rachael's lungs seized, stitched, slightly. Just part of the patchwork of her quilted doll facade. Air was delicious as it dribbled over her lips.

The scent of her hair was sweat and blood and peach.

Kris was right. It would be over, at some point in the near or distant future, when the one in her embrace finally stopped breathing. Whenever, however that happened. It would be like a moment out of a dream. It would be soft like silk, the gentlest caress, and then Rachael would dream no more, fall into the deepest of slumbers.

She didn't know if that was what she wanted.

Rachael's hand creaked up to touch Kris' own. Squeezed.

Silence would do.






Daniel would hurt, all over, looking for her until he could look no more. He would never see her, and she'd never see him. Her family, they'd see everything. A tragedy among many others. A sorrowful piece of statistic...

Inhale.