((Tonya Collins continued from I'm So Fucking Grateful))
House felt wrong. Not that it was here, nah, this was it's spot, nothing else could stand here. The sterility didn't set her off; no mess, no color or a decoration past the pictures on the wall, shoulda gave her real suburban serial killer vibes but her eyes slid right off the walls with nothing to say. She wasn't gonna say for sure it was how big it was neither. Big didn't hit right. It was empty, the perspective was all kinda fucked and when she breathed it echoed all over angles she couldn't wrap her head around. Shoulda pissed her off. Something like it had, she couldn't pin down the memory but on reflex she was reaching to her side. She got a fistful of air.
She'd lost something, or someone? Someone, that flooded over everything else. Somebody was supposed to be with her and they were looking for nah, nah, that was wrong, she was alone. She was always alone here. Tonya'd been here before, course she had, it was...it didn't follow why that was so obvious. Hard to focus when the walls kept bubbling, almost like she shouldn't. Because it felt wrong. What sense she could drag together was begging her not to go closer. Without looking she knew there was a door behind, that the wall around it was stable and it would open if she reached for it. She didn't have to do this again, but that thought caught her. 'This.' Tonya couldn't pin what 'this' was other than a heavy feeling in her stomach telling her to run away.
She snarled through gritted teeth and took a step into the house. It snapped rigid around her. She was standing in a narrow entryway lined with the pictures she'd made out before though now she could see their subject. They were shots of this little girl growing up. School portraits, birthday parties, that kinda shit. Nobody else came into focus, but she knew who was behind the lens same as she knew who the girl was before she saw the first frame, just didn’t know she knew. Looking helped though. She was unmistakable. In the house everything muted down to grays and blacks, but a world with no color still couldn’t crush the brown of her baby’s eyes.
Course Tonya’d been here before. It was her house. So why'd it feel so off? This sinking in her gut kept telling her to turn back, get on that door handle before it melted away like wherever she'd been before, but that didn't make sense. The door would be there. She'd came through from...somewhere. If she wanted to go back it wasn't gonna step out on her. Fuck it, maybe it would, she didn't care. There was nothing for her out there.
Gooseflesh ran cross the back of her shoulders, like something behind her. Just as quick it was gone.
I Tried To Drink And So I Drowned
Day 8, pre-announcement, closed.
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Emprexx Plush
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Only a hint of light on the horizon. Not enough to filter through the brush, and illuminate the twisted ground below. Barely enough to make out the shape of the world, to pick up on anything necessary to actually have some sense of direction. Eyes adjusted after a time, managed to turn pitch-blackness into a kind of grayscale. Dark enough to see more visual noise than real colour.
The sun could have been high in the sky, and it wouldn’t have been enough to recognize this place. The constituent parts that did register seemed alien, unreal almost. It was too easy to read fractal patterns, like those in the roots and leaves. Lightning, veins, maybe spiderweb cracks in the darkness. Plants, likely. It took so much effort to try and recognize definitions.
She was sure she was real. It was easy to trust feelings of hunger, pain, exhaustion. The weight of the steel and wood and fabric she carried with her. Understanding began at feeling, with those things.
That was it.
Everything else seemed distant, her perception shot at a wide angle. If she relaxed enough, she could see behind the back of her head. Step through the woods as if they weren’t really there. Slip the collar over her head and set off to the north, across the surface of the ocean. A flat plane leading to all the things she knew, to a warm bed and the sound of rain pounding on the window. Droplets running down the pane in patterns she knew she recognized. Seeing her arm lying on the pillow next to her, and watching the tiny white hairs rise as she felt a chill.
Erika turned, and wrapped herself tighter in the blankets and in warmth.
No, I didn’t.
It was just a memory, wasn’t it? There didn’t seem to be a difference between that and all of this.
This place was a prison, the guards wrapped around their necks, their sentences measured in lives and days. It didn’t seem like that kind of place should even exist. Or if it even could. It felt like a waking dream, twisting and shaping itself as each day and night dragged on.
Stepping slowly through the darkness, Erika found herself unable to fathom what she was seeing.
There was supposed to be a good spot in the woods. She believed she had spent some time there during the first few days, hiding from everyone else. A nice flat rock, and a little clearing. The sun had set by the time she made it this far, to where that place was supposed to be. Travelling at night was something to avoid, yet she couldn’t find anywhere familiar to stay. Anywhere she understood, that might’ve been safe.
Safe?
Safety, a calm place. Freedom from harm. Even imaginary things could hurt her, she remembered. Her mind was really good at coming up with things that did the job. In a way, she’d never been safe.
That couldn’t have been what she meant, then.
Safety, a little switch on the side of her guns. Different parts on each, both easily reached by a thumb. Her leg still hurt more than she wanted, interrupted occasionally by the cut on her arm when it reminded her it existed, held together with makeshift stitches. Pieces she’d only ever get back if there was time to heal them.
If there’s time. If I can find my way back. If I wake up. If only I could sleep.
Nowhere seemed right. No one spot was free from suspicion, that the ground might give way and she would fall through an endless fog. It seemed possible that she was already dead, and lying down would give the ants and worms and fungi the opportunity they were waiting for.
It couldn’t have been far from the sea; she could hear wave sounds. Might have been waves, or the rain on her window. Someone needed to wake her up.
“I get sleep paralysis. If you hear me like, breathing really rapidly it’s because I’m trying to work my way out of it. All I can control is my breathing.”
“Oh. What, uhh, should I do?”
“Just like, shake me awake. Maybe give me a hug. It doesn’t always happen but it’s really scary when it does.”
“Well, I can do that.”
He held her closer, with a gentle squeeze, just to prove it.
“...thanks.”
Everything stopped. Froze in place, framed around the image of a person lying against a tree. Jacket wrapped over her chest, like a blanket Erika knew she had to just be remembering. Hand lying idly on a bag, one with numbers she knew she could read if it was still light out and if she could remember what they were even supposed to mean. Eyes closed.
What are you?
Erika crept closer.
The sun could have been high in the sky, and it wouldn’t have been enough to recognize this place. The constituent parts that did register seemed alien, unreal almost. It was too easy to read fractal patterns, like those in the roots and leaves. Lightning, veins, maybe spiderweb cracks in the darkness. Plants, likely. It took so much effort to try and recognize definitions.
She was sure she was real. It was easy to trust feelings of hunger, pain, exhaustion. The weight of the steel and wood and fabric she carried with her. Understanding began at feeling, with those things.
That was it.
Everything else seemed distant, her perception shot at a wide angle. If she relaxed enough, she could see behind the back of her head. Step through the woods as if they weren’t really there. Slip the collar over her head and set off to the north, across the surface of the ocean. A flat plane leading to all the things she knew, to a warm bed and the sound of rain pounding on the window. Droplets running down the pane in patterns she knew she recognized. Seeing her arm lying on the pillow next to her, and watching the tiny white hairs rise as she felt a chill.
Erika turned, and wrapped herself tighter in the blankets and in warmth.
No, I didn’t.
It was just a memory, wasn’t it? There didn’t seem to be a difference between that and all of this.
This place was a prison, the guards wrapped around their necks, their sentences measured in lives and days. It didn’t seem like that kind of place should even exist. Or if it even could. It felt like a waking dream, twisting and shaping itself as each day and night dragged on.
Stepping slowly through the darkness, Erika found herself unable to fathom what she was seeing.
((Erika Stieglitz continued from Searching for a Former Clarity))
There was supposed to be a good spot in the woods. She believed she had spent some time there during the first few days, hiding from everyone else. A nice flat rock, and a little clearing. The sun had set by the time she made it this far, to where that place was supposed to be. Travelling at night was something to avoid, yet she couldn’t find anywhere familiar to stay. Anywhere she understood, that might’ve been safe.
Safe?
Safety, a calm place. Freedom from harm. Even imaginary things could hurt her, she remembered. Her mind was really good at coming up with things that did the job. In a way, she’d never been safe.
That couldn’t have been what she meant, then.
Safety, a little switch on the side of her guns. Different parts on each, both easily reached by a thumb. Her leg still hurt more than she wanted, interrupted occasionally by the cut on her arm when it reminded her it existed, held together with makeshift stitches. Pieces she’d only ever get back if there was time to heal them.
If there’s time. If I can find my way back. If I wake up. If only I could sleep.
Nowhere seemed right. No one spot was free from suspicion, that the ground might give way and she would fall through an endless fog. It seemed possible that she was already dead, and lying down would give the ants and worms and fungi the opportunity they were waiting for.
It couldn’t have been far from the sea; she could hear wave sounds. Might have been waves, or the rain on her window. Someone needed to wake her up.
“I get sleep paralysis. If you hear me like, breathing really rapidly it’s because I’m trying to work my way out of it. All I can control is my breathing.”
“Oh. What, uhh, should I do?”
“Just like, shake me awake. Maybe give me a hug. It doesn’t always happen but it’s really scary when it does.”
“Well, I can do that.”
He held her closer, with a gentle squeeze, just to prove it.
“...thanks.”
Everything stopped. Froze in place, framed around the image of a person lying against a tree. Jacket wrapped over her chest, like a blanket Erika knew she had to just be remembering. Hand lying idly on a bag, one with numbers she knew she could read if it was still light out and if she could remember what they were even supposed to mean. Eyes closed.
What are you?
Erika crept closer.
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Emprexx Plush
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There was something wrong with the little girl. Patrice. Not something obvious, least not at first. In her baby pictures she looked just like Tonya remembered her, and that stayed as she grew. Tonya'd been there behind most of these cameras through the years. She could pick through these moments if she had need, there was nothing that'd ever been as important as watching her grow. What they'd been through, what they were still going through, for some reason she couldn't give it shape in her head but it was heavy and she'd shouldered it all for her. In her heart and head she was sure that weight had never so much as touched Patrice, and the pictures showed that for awhile. Weren't nothing compromised behind those big brown eyes in the terrible toddler years, they sparkled over her smile without a care in the world. That's the girl she deserved to be, Tonya'd put in the work for it. She was sure it'd worked.
Around kindergarten something started to change. The what you call 'em, the candid pictures with her up to something, those stayed the same. She was as full of life as ever. The ones where she was looking straight in though. Scratch that, not all those neither. Just the ones Tonya remembered taking. From then on something was changing in her eyes. Small, so small she coulda been imagining it until she doubled back to look again when it got more obvious. This feeling like confusion at the corner of her eyes, when she was little it could be curiosity but there was a darkness in it. Like she was thinking something she didn't wanna believe. It grew, age 7, age 8, 9, 10, 11, it kept getting bigger 'till she couldn't ignore it no more. Confusion turned to hesitation turned to concern turned to fear caught in split seconds staring at her mother. At her.
What was she here for?
Weird thing to be thinking in her own house. She was here because she lived here. As she got further from the door though that heaviness in her stomach turned from a weight to a cord. It insisted that she wasn't supposed to be here now, like she was being wound on a rig back towards the outside. Just thinking about it she was already turned around and headed that way, but she stopped and gritted her teeth. Didn't know where her head was at but something was wrong. Patrice was supposed to be waiting for her, that was it, she was all tired and fucked up and figured she'd left her out there somewhere. But she was here. Tonya could feel that she was right here, and she wasn't coming out for a reason. She just knew. Not another thing to think about it.
There wasn't a door back there anyway. Tonya shook her head, cuz that didn't seem right. Hadn't she just came back that way? Girl was lost in her own house. It was new. They moved a lot, every couple years or so since...since...
She wasn't in the hall anymore. A stair case loomed up in front of her out of nowhere but it'd always been there. She knew that. It was her staircase.
From somewhere up above she heard scratchy audio, but she couldn't make it out.
Around kindergarten something started to change. The what you call 'em, the candid pictures with her up to something, those stayed the same. She was as full of life as ever. The ones where she was looking straight in though. Scratch that, not all those neither. Just the ones Tonya remembered taking. From then on something was changing in her eyes. Small, so small she coulda been imagining it until she doubled back to look again when it got more obvious. This feeling like confusion at the corner of her eyes, when she was little it could be curiosity but there was a darkness in it. Like she was thinking something she didn't wanna believe. It grew, age 7, age 8, 9, 10, 11, it kept getting bigger 'till she couldn't ignore it no more. Confusion turned to hesitation turned to concern turned to fear caught in split seconds staring at her mother. At her.
What was she here for?
Weird thing to be thinking in her own house. She was here because she lived here. As she got further from the door though that heaviness in her stomach turned from a weight to a cord. It insisted that she wasn't supposed to be here now, like she was being wound on a rig back towards the outside. Just thinking about it she was already turned around and headed that way, but she stopped and gritted her teeth. Didn't know where her head was at but something was wrong. Patrice was supposed to be waiting for her, that was it, she was all tired and fucked up and figured she'd left her out there somewhere. But she was here. Tonya could feel that she was right here, and she wasn't coming out for a reason. She just knew. Not another thing to think about it.
There wasn't a door back there anyway. Tonya shook her head, cuz that didn't seem right. Hadn't she just came back that way? Girl was lost in her own house. It was new. They moved a lot, every couple years or so since...since...
She wasn't in the hall anymore. A stair case loomed up in front of her out of nowhere but it'd always been there. She knew that. It was her staircase.
From somewhere up above she heard scratchy audio, but she couldn't make it out.
What are you, Tonya Collins?
Weird question, but was the one to ask. Something looked strange about her. She was so out of place here, lying still in the woods, in the dark.
Are you dreaming, Tonya?
Hopefully.
Unless this was the dream.
It was hard to tell, it made so much sense that it should have been a dream. A nightmare. The woods were a frightening setting. Dense, dark, and yet teeming with life. Space where footprints faded easily, where anyone and anything could disappear given enough time. That must’ve been why people loved to write fantasies and horror stories set in the woods. It was so easy to imagine adventure and terror in a place like this. The way everything looked, Erika wouldn’t have been surprised to find she was only a figment of someone else’s imagination, winked out of existence in the moment Tonya awoke with a start.
Which one of us is real?
Yet, even if she couldn’t recognize what she saw, Erika saw it all the same. Felt it. Smelled it. Heard it, the din of a forest at night that only seemed to register when one stopped and listened. Insects thrumming, the occasional rustling of something in the deadfall, and the ever-present sound of wind on leaves.
A face, no emotions expressed on it. A chest, rising up and down. Beads of sweat on her skin, soaking through her shirt. Anything Erika thought she knew before barely seemed to register, barely seemed to factor into what she saw lying on the ground in front of her.
I remember you.
A mother. It was always awkward, and Erika felt for her. An experience, an identity Tonya had that everyone seemed to know about, that they saw when they looked at her. No one would want to say anything, or ask questions about it. They’d treat her differently though, and she had to know. All the assumptions people would make. The stories they’d tell themselves. The pity.
Once, maybe Erika caught herself thinking things she didn’t like. About how she felt for her. How she saw how people acted and wondered what they’d think if they knew Erika's own story. And other thoughts, that made her dig her nails into her skin until they stopped. How in spite of it all, she felt envy at what Tonya was and what Erika found so hard to imagine herself ever being. Shame at avoiding Tonya, at the idea that anyone would talk down to her or say hurtful things to her, and how much Erika didn’t want to be one of those people.
I wanted to be better than that.
It looked so vulnerable, so isolated. Lying alone, leaving a person-shaped imprint in the foliage. A silhouette that the tropical plants would slowly close in on, consuming all the pieces that came together to make Tonya a person. The skin, the breathing, the motherhood, the name, the memories.
Which one of us is going to wake up, Tonya?
Safety was always relative, but people liked to think of it in absolute terms. Some places were safe, others weren’t. Some people were safe, and others weren’t. It was hard to accept a gradient. Parents had a hard time accepting that, with their kids. There was no rest until they knew, understood somehow that their children would be okay. Hundreds of them would never find a restful night again, knowing the truth.
So many threads had been cut, that day they were taken from the bus. Everything that tied them back to the world severed, replaced with collars and fear. None of those memories from back home made any sense here. They didn’t explain who all of these people were, what they’d become.
Wind blew through the forest. Erika closed her eyes. She was back in her room again, pulling blankets tight to her chest. Hoping she’d find the strength to get up and get moving, but she didn’t want to step out into the cold. Didn’t want to feel the air on her skin, to feel so aware of where her body ended and the rest of the world began. The rain kept pounding on the window; it seemed to get louder the more she focused on it. She wanted to sleep again, to slip easily into fantasy and dreams, even knowing some of them might be nightmares.
She opened her eyes. Still they saw shapes in the darkness. Life poking out of a nest of decay. The stories she told herself, about all of these things that made up this person, didn’t make sense here.
What are you?
A thread kept her tied to the world back home. A chance for her, more than any of the rest of them, to have a life outside of the island. Someone else to fight for. A future to bear witness to, something that might make it easier to mourn.
That was worth a different kind of envy. It would have been more noble, more defensible if Tonya had acted as Erika had. Maybe, if she’d had time to think about it, she would have.
Erika stepped closer. Grey-blue light was starting to bring more definition into the world. It still felt like a dream. She still felt the way she felt when she was asleep.
Weird question, but was the one to ask. Something looked strange about her. She was so out of place here, lying still in the woods, in the dark.
Are you dreaming, Tonya?
Hopefully.
Unless this was the dream.
It was hard to tell, it made so much sense that it should have been a dream. A nightmare. The woods were a frightening setting. Dense, dark, and yet teeming with life. Space where footprints faded easily, where anyone and anything could disappear given enough time. That must’ve been why people loved to write fantasies and horror stories set in the woods. It was so easy to imagine adventure and terror in a place like this. The way everything looked, Erika wouldn’t have been surprised to find she was only a figment of someone else’s imagination, winked out of existence in the moment Tonya awoke with a start.
Which one of us is real?
Yet, even if she couldn’t recognize what she saw, Erika saw it all the same. Felt it. Smelled it. Heard it, the din of a forest at night that only seemed to register when one stopped and listened. Insects thrumming, the occasional rustling of something in the deadfall, and the ever-present sound of wind on leaves.
A face, no emotions expressed on it. A chest, rising up and down. Beads of sweat on her skin, soaking through her shirt. Anything Erika thought she knew before barely seemed to register, barely seemed to factor into what she saw lying on the ground in front of her.
I remember you.
A mother. It was always awkward, and Erika felt for her. An experience, an identity Tonya had that everyone seemed to know about, that they saw when they looked at her. No one would want to say anything, or ask questions about it. They’d treat her differently though, and she had to know. All the assumptions people would make. The stories they’d tell themselves. The pity.
Once, maybe Erika caught herself thinking things she didn’t like. About how she felt for her. How she saw how people acted and wondered what they’d think if they knew Erika's own story. And other thoughts, that made her dig her nails into her skin until they stopped. How in spite of it all, she felt envy at what Tonya was and what Erika found so hard to imagine herself ever being. Shame at avoiding Tonya, at the idea that anyone would talk down to her or say hurtful things to her, and how much Erika didn’t want to be one of those people.
I wanted to be better than that.
It looked so vulnerable, so isolated. Lying alone, leaving a person-shaped imprint in the foliage. A silhouette that the tropical plants would slowly close in on, consuming all the pieces that came together to make Tonya a person. The skin, the breathing, the motherhood, the name, the memories.
Which one of us is going to wake up, Tonya?
Safety was always relative, but people liked to think of it in absolute terms. Some places were safe, others weren’t. Some people were safe, and others weren’t. It was hard to accept a gradient. Parents had a hard time accepting that, with their kids. There was no rest until they knew, understood somehow that their children would be okay. Hundreds of them would never find a restful night again, knowing the truth.
So many threads had been cut, that day they were taken from the bus. Everything that tied them back to the world severed, replaced with collars and fear. None of those memories from back home made any sense here. They didn’t explain who all of these people were, what they’d become.
Wind blew through the forest. Erika closed her eyes. She was back in her room again, pulling blankets tight to her chest. Hoping she’d find the strength to get up and get moving, but she didn’t want to step out into the cold. Didn’t want to feel the air on her skin, to feel so aware of where her body ended and the rest of the world began. The rain kept pounding on the window; it seemed to get louder the more she focused on it. She wanted to sleep again, to slip easily into fantasy and dreams, even knowing some of them might be nightmares.
She opened her eyes. Still they saw shapes in the darkness. Life poking out of a nest of decay. The stories she told herself, about all of these things that made up this person, didn’t make sense here.
What are you?
A thread kept her tied to the world back home. A chance for her, more than any of the rest of them, to have a life outside of the island. Someone else to fight for. A future to bear witness to, something that might make it easier to mourn.
That was worth a different kind of envy. It would have been more noble, more defensible if Tonya had acted as Erika had. Maybe, if she’d had time to think about it, she would have.
Erika stepped closer. Grey-blue light was starting to bring more definition into the world. It still felt like a dream. She still felt the way she felt when she was asleep.
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Emprexx Plush
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Tonya couldn't tell when the hallway ended and the staircase began. There was this pivot and the ground raising up to meet her steps but she was still closed in. Still surrounded by the pictures. Still feeling those eyes on her. The face of her daughter aging, then sinking in cycles. Babe to preteen lined the walls and each repeat brought her fear closer to the surface. It grew from a shadow hiding in the back of her eyes to anguish painted from ear to ear. The frame around her got emptier. She took on the same frozen pose surrounded by the dark but it didn't make her any less alive.
Those eyes were on Tonya non-stop. That look on her face couldn't be for anybody but her. The darkness crowding out anything else that might touch her, that was all Tonya too. Captured and curated every frame with her own two hands. Yeah. It felt right. Not like she wanted Patrice to be alone and terrified but like that's the only way things could be in the here and now and the every other time before, before, she'd seen it all before, whenever she closed her eyes since then. Then wasn't any kinda when she could put her finger on, just understood the thought as quick as it came and kept moving on.
Tonya knew without looking back she couldn't see the bottom of the stairs anymore, and she couldn't see the top neither. The sound was getting louder though. High pitched, cutting out all the damn time, nothing in it that sounded like much of anything but still so familiar. Like a scream. A lot of screaming. The kinda thing that should have sent her running up the stairs in a panic just by being close to her little girl. Her step stayed steady though. Coulda slowed down a little even. She knew Patrice wasn't in no danger, cuz she knew what she was hearing now. Screaming. A lot of screaming.
Her screaming, guttural and angry and labored.
Underneath that somebody else. Somebody in pain.
Underneath that the wet slap of metal in meat.
Over it all a filter of outdated recording fuzz, static and all that. Old shit. She hadn't ever sat down to listen to it on her own that she remembered so why did she know exactly what it sounded like? Maybe it was just the kinda thing that never got out of your head.
Tonya'd known this day was gonna come as soon as she woke up on that island. It didn't have to be today though. She could act like she didn't hear nothing. Walk back down them stairs, back through that door, send a couple text messages and wait. She had to go back. Now, right now, before it was too late and there was nothing to go back to, cuz she felt certain in the same way she knew this was her home that if she got up these steps she wasn't gonna come back down the same way. There was something behind her outside the door. Patrice would still be here when she walked back through. It was important.
Tonya gritted her teeth at the thought.
Nothing would ever be more important than her.
She kept climbing.
Those eyes were on Tonya non-stop. That look on her face couldn't be for anybody but her. The darkness crowding out anything else that might touch her, that was all Tonya too. Captured and curated every frame with her own two hands. Yeah. It felt right. Not like she wanted Patrice to be alone and terrified but like that's the only way things could be in the here and now and the every other time before, before, she'd seen it all before, whenever she closed her eyes since then. Then wasn't any kinda when she could put her finger on, just understood the thought as quick as it came and kept moving on.
Tonya knew without looking back she couldn't see the bottom of the stairs anymore, and she couldn't see the top neither. The sound was getting louder though. High pitched, cutting out all the damn time, nothing in it that sounded like much of anything but still so familiar. Like a scream. A lot of screaming. The kinda thing that should have sent her running up the stairs in a panic just by being close to her little girl. Her step stayed steady though. Coulda slowed down a little even. She knew Patrice wasn't in no danger, cuz she knew what she was hearing now. Screaming. A lot of screaming.
Her screaming, guttural and angry and labored.
Underneath that somebody else. Somebody in pain.
Underneath that the wet slap of metal in meat.
Over it all a filter of outdated recording fuzz, static and all that. Old shit. She hadn't ever sat down to listen to it on her own that she remembered so why did she know exactly what it sounded like? Maybe it was just the kinda thing that never got out of your head.
Tonya'd known this day was gonna come as soon as she woke up on that island. It didn't have to be today though. She could act like she didn't hear nothing. Walk back down them stairs, back through that door, send a couple text messages and wait. She had to go back. Now, right now, before it was too late and there was nothing to go back to, cuz she felt certain in the same way she knew this was her home that if she got up these steps she wasn't gonna come back down the same way. There was something behind her outside the door. Patrice would still be here when she walked back through. It was important.
Tonya gritted her teeth at the thought.
Nothing would ever be more important than her.
She kept climbing.
Kneeling down, one could make out the texture of tree bark. Tiny movements in Tonya's face. The corner of her mouth twitched. Her brow furrowed. So many little emotions trying to break through the surface, back through the trees and into this dark spot in the woods. Back to wherever this was.
They were so close. Close enough Erika could reach out and touch her. She didn’t know what to expect. Didn’t know whether her hand would simply pass through or not. Whether they’d touch and the outline of this person would break, curl away and vanish like a shape made in smoke.
Perhaps her touch would wake her, or wake something, and all of this would come to an end. They could find their bridge to fall from, a monster to pounce and bare its gaping maw.
The shock that would sit her upright, cast out of warm sheets and into the cold air of the morning. Startle the person sitting in front of her with an involuntary kick to the back of their seat, waking them from the nap that would make a long bus trip bearable. She believed she was a person. Didn’t know who that was anymore. Almost seemed like a lie. Erika was good at lying to herself.
It almost made sense to tear the stitches from her arm, to pull down the flesh and sinew and see if she could find an answer inside. As if the significance of skin and muscle, fat and bone would seem any more evident if they were isolated and exposed. She couldn’t deny ownership of them then, could she?
Maybe the pain would wake her, or remind her what real felt like.
Erika’s hand shot out. It stopped halfway.
This didn’t make sense, it wasn’t right. Things didn’t look right anymore. Tonya shouldn’t be here. None of them should’ve been here. Her hands didn’t look like her own, her eyes saw shapes and colours but failed to define anything, the disconnect making everything she saw seem displaced and insignificant.
The prepositions of was and will be were elusive, replaced by the twisted logic of dreams; things that only ever seemed to make sense in context.
What context?
Erika closed her eyes.
It was so quiet. The rain had stopped. She pulled the blanket down from her face, letting the morning sun wash over her skin. One eye closed, the other just barely able to make out droplets of water glistening in the light, rolling down the clear glass. She reached up to the ceiling, stretching her arms out. Rolling her ankles until her feet poked out from the sheets. The easiest thing to feel thankful for, the simplest kind of happiness and comfort. She recognized this place, every part of herself down to the freckles on her arms, well enough to know which ones were old and which ones she picked up from a few too many afternoons spent in the sun.
She tried to take a deep breath. It felt different. Wrong. She wasn’t as naked as she thought she was. In spite of the sun and the sheets, the metal band was cold. Wrapped around her neck, tightly enough that there was no way to ignore it.
Her eyes opened.
This was not a nice dream.
Not a pleasant fantasy to indulge even in the early hours of waking, lingered upon in the hopes one might fall back asleep and back into it.
No fond memory, brought back up in the kind of vivid detail that was so hard to come by, mired in busy waking thoughts.
Not even a nonsensical story that still somehow seemed novel enough to try and relate to someone.
This wore on and on. There was no waking from it. The light of the morning would come, bringing stifling heat with it, and still she would feel cold inside. Confused, hollow, trying desperately to rationalize everything she saw and unable to just resign herself to it. Unable to accept the logic this context demanded.
It had to stop.
Whatever this was, it stood in for the world that had been taken from her.
I want it back. I don’t care what it takes.
Erika stood up, and stepped back from Tonya. So many little pieces that made up this human being, and she barely knew any of them well enough to see what it was she failed to recognize. It didn’t look like Tonya was supposed to. She couldn’t understand, but she knew it didn’t look like a person anymore.
It was hard to feel selfish with such a desiccated sense of self. The act of rationalizing who to spare and who to kill, whether she could ever be forgiven, it didn’t mean anything anymore. One more didn’t matter. Ten more didn’t matter. Sixty more wouldn’t matter. Didn’t matter if they were someone’s sibling, lover, mother, friend. They were all someone’s kid. They were all already dead.
Erika couldn’t even see the outline of what she’d done, couldn’t discern one shade of morality from another. Even the worst things she’d done didn’t make sense anymore. She didn’t understand this place, it didn’t feel like anything should.
All she knew was that it had to stop. It had to stop, it had to stop, it had to stop, it-
-has to fucking stop.
What am I?
The vines and roots wrapping around her legs, pulling her into the dirt.
The bottom of the pit, rapidly rising to meet her.
The crowd of people staring, laughing.
The car that struck out of nowhere, and the sound of shattered glass.
The bridge collapsing, and free-fall into an endless gray fog.
The useless body, unable to breathe, unable to call out a name that would save it.
The wound that never stopped bleeding, and all of the people who stared and watched as she bled to death.
The lover who turned their head, only to be missing a face.
The walls of the cave closing in, pressing so tightly she couldn’t move an inch.
The meteor streaking across the sky, coming to end it all.
The maw, and the flash of teeth.
The monster at the end of the nightmare.
The collar that ruined a fantasy, that killed the dream where she got to be a person.
The shadow standing at the end of the bed, who never looked away.
And Tonya, she was the dreamer.
They were so close. Close enough Erika could reach out and touch her. She didn’t know what to expect. Didn’t know whether her hand would simply pass through or not. Whether they’d touch and the outline of this person would break, curl away and vanish like a shape made in smoke.
Perhaps her touch would wake her, or wake something, and all of this would come to an end. They could find their bridge to fall from, a monster to pounce and bare its gaping maw.
The shock that would sit her upright, cast out of warm sheets and into the cold air of the morning. Startle the person sitting in front of her with an involuntary kick to the back of their seat, waking them from the nap that would make a long bus trip bearable. She believed she was a person. Didn’t know who that was anymore. Almost seemed like a lie. Erika was good at lying to herself.
It almost made sense to tear the stitches from her arm, to pull down the flesh and sinew and see if she could find an answer inside. As if the significance of skin and muscle, fat and bone would seem any more evident if they were isolated and exposed. She couldn’t deny ownership of them then, could she?
Maybe the pain would wake her, or remind her what real felt like.
Erika’s hand shot out. It stopped halfway.
This didn’t make sense, it wasn’t right. Things didn’t look right anymore. Tonya shouldn’t be here. None of them should’ve been here. Her hands didn’t look like her own, her eyes saw shapes and colours but failed to define anything, the disconnect making everything she saw seem displaced and insignificant.
The prepositions of was and will be were elusive, replaced by the twisted logic of dreams; things that only ever seemed to make sense in context.
What context?
Erika closed her eyes.
It was so quiet. The rain had stopped. She pulled the blanket down from her face, letting the morning sun wash over her skin. One eye closed, the other just barely able to make out droplets of water glistening in the light, rolling down the clear glass. She reached up to the ceiling, stretching her arms out. Rolling her ankles until her feet poked out from the sheets. The easiest thing to feel thankful for, the simplest kind of happiness and comfort. She recognized this place, every part of herself down to the freckles on her arms, well enough to know which ones were old and which ones she picked up from a few too many afternoons spent in the sun.
She tried to take a deep breath. It felt different. Wrong. She wasn’t as naked as she thought she was. In spite of the sun and the sheets, the metal band was cold. Wrapped around her neck, tightly enough that there was no way to ignore it.
Her eyes opened.
This was not a nice dream.
Not a pleasant fantasy to indulge even in the early hours of waking, lingered upon in the hopes one might fall back asleep and back into it.
No fond memory, brought back up in the kind of vivid detail that was so hard to come by, mired in busy waking thoughts.
Not even a nonsensical story that still somehow seemed novel enough to try and relate to someone.
This wore on and on. There was no waking from it. The light of the morning would come, bringing stifling heat with it, and still she would feel cold inside. Confused, hollow, trying desperately to rationalize everything she saw and unable to just resign herself to it. Unable to accept the logic this context demanded.
It had to stop.
Whatever this was, it stood in for the world that had been taken from her.
I want it back. I don’t care what it takes.
Erika stood up, and stepped back from Tonya. So many little pieces that made up this human being, and she barely knew any of them well enough to see what it was she failed to recognize. It didn’t look like Tonya was supposed to. She couldn’t understand, but she knew it didn’t look like a person anymore.
It was hard to feel selfish with such a desiccated sense of self. The act of rationalizing who to spare and who to kill, whether she could ever be forgiven, it didn’t mean anything anymore. One more didn’t matter. Ten more didn’t matter. Sixty more wouldn’t matter. Didn’t matter if they were someone’s sibling, lover, mother, friend. They were all someone’s kid. They were all already dead.
Erika couldn’t even see the outline of what she’d done, couldn’t discern one shade of morality from another. Even the worst things she’d done didn’t make sense anymore. She didn’t understand this place, it didn’t feel like anything should.
All she knew was that it had to stop. It had to stop, it had to stop, it had to stop, it-
-has to fucking stop.
What am I?
The vines and roots wrapping around her legs, pulling her into the dirt.
The bottom of the pit, rapidly rising to meet her.
The crowd of people staring, laughing.
The car that struck out of nowhere, and the sound of shattered glass.
The bridge collapsing, and free-fall into an endless gray fog.
The useless body, unable to breathe, unable to call out a name that would save it.
The wound that never stopped bleeding, and all of the people who stared and watched as she bled to death.
The lover who turned their head, only to be missing a face.
The walls of the cave closing in, pressing so tightly she couldn’t move an inch.
The meteor streaking across the sky, coming to end it all.
The maw, and the flash of teeth.
The monster at the end of the nightmare.
The collar that ruined a fantasy, that killed the dream where she got to be a person.
The shadow standing at the end of the bed, who never looked away.
And Tonya, she was the dreamer.
-
Emprexx Plush
- Posts: 1678
- Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:37 pm
- Contact:
Tonya didn't know much about audio production. Something like eighty percent of her class wanted to be a streamer or a vlogger or an influencer or whatever you called somebody who did TikToks for a living other than broke, but it didn't catch her. She'd never seen a sound file stretched out over her screen, couldn't tell you the first thing about what editing one looked like. Girl had heard plenty of effects though, she might not understand how they worked but she knew what editing sounded like by ear. Climbing them stairs for what felt like hours she knew that what was blasting out them speakers upstairs was getting played with, and she didn't know it by intuition like she knew this was her house, or that this girl she never should have seen was hers no matter which way the greyed out world twisted her. She could hear the screams pitching up and down. That frenzied voice getting louder 'till it was shaking the walls. Could hardly call it human anymore with the static around it, more like a machine or an imitation. It sputtered with jerky interruption like one of them, what'd you call them, the robot singers the kids in anime club went crazy for? It felt off. The voice was supposed to be hers, that was another thing she just knew, but she was having trouble finding herself in it. When her brain tried to squeeze in it wouldn't fit.
The other screams kept changing too. As quiet as they were they shoulda been swallowed up by now but they kept reaching out to her. She couldn't get her hands on where from, 'cuz by the time those first screams stopped making sense to her ears the second stopped making sense to her brain. It stopped coming from above her. It echoed all over the stair case but it wasn't coming from there neither, not from around her, not from below her. Only place left was behind her but there wasn't a thing there, she'd already decided that. She'd heard it before though. Course she had. It was whoever she'd, she'd, which one had it been? it coulda been somebody who jumped her Myles? Kelly? Val? Justin? Quinn? Or was it somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time? Marcy? Lucas? Cam? She'd done it herself. Why she got to stand here in the first place. She couldn't remember though. All she could pick out was that whoever it was didn't sound like themself.
Thing that changed most though was the impacts. That heaving, slick thud that came with the screams on both sides in tempo kept speeding up. Nobody could swing like that, and whatever they were putting on it shifted it away from that butcher shop rhythm to something more explosive. A crack that split the air and near muted the sound of flesh getting split. Near. What still came out under it was this splash. If what it'd been sounded like a slab of beef getting carved, what it was now sounded like a melon exploding. Different kinds of wet, like slapping a soaked towel opposed to popping a water balloon. She was used to being able to count the swings but she lost track of this new sound fast.
Tonya's heart was pounding in her chest.
The first screams stopped.
The second screams stopped.
The cracking stopped.
Her heart stopped.
She knew by now, that way you always know right before the worst part of a nightmare that you're in one but you got no way out. Just gotta watch actions that you've lived more times than you can remember play out in front of you again. She hit the top of the stairs with the realization and then behind her there was only darkness. In front of her there was only darkness. The only thing she could think to try was closing her eyes, but not before the sweat pouring down her face got in them.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and hands like hers scarred, shaking.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and a doorway with a preteen girl trembling around its corner.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and big, round, brown eyes spilling over with confusion.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and trembling lips forming a single word.
Burning.
Darkness, and a girl on a grainy screen raising something-
Hold up.
This wasn't right.
The girl, the person, the thing, the shape on the screen, that wasn't her. She couldn't make out what it was but she knew on that first glance that it wasn't anything like her. Little taller than she was and way, way tinier, no mistaking it for her even in all this smothering dark. The details didn't change but she was watching them right in front of her, the heap on the ground was wrong, the thing towering over it was wrong, its stance was wrong, the long mass in its hands was wrong, the word that wasn't coming out of her daughter's mouth was wrong, her protests, her fear, they were wrong, all wrong in the way the house felt wrong when she first stepped in. What was twisting up her unreality was now right here just a couple yards away from her, so she did something wrong too.
Tonya shoved the girl that wasn't her daughter aside.
She marched into the room.
She squinted at the screen.
She
The other screams kept changing too. As quiet as they were they shoulda been swallowed up by now but they kept reaching out to her. She couldn't get her hands on where from, 'cuz by the time those first screams stopped making sense to her ears the second stopped making sense to her brain. It stopped coming from above her. It echoed all over the stair case but it wasn't coming from there neither, not from around her, not from below her. Only place left was behind her but there wasn't a thing there, she'd already decided that. She'd heard it before though. Course she had. It was whoever she'd, she'd, which one had it been? it coulda been somebody who jumped her Myles? Kelly? Val? Justin? Quinn? Or was it somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time? Marcy? Lucas? Cam? She'd done it herself. Why she got to stand here in the first place. She couldn't remember though. All she could pick out was that whoever it was didn't sound like themself.
Thing that changed most though was the impacts. That heaving, slick thud that came with the screams on both sides in tempo kept speeding up. Nobody could swing like that, and whatever they were putting on it shifted it away from that butcher shop rhythm to something more explosive. A crack that split the air and near muted the sound of flesh getting split. Near. What still came out under it was this splash. If what it'd been sounded like a slab of beef getting carved, what it was now sounded like a melon exploding. Different kinds of wet, like slapping a soaked towel opposed to popping a water balloon. She was used to being able to count the swings but she lost track of this new sound fast.
Tonya's heart was pounding in her chest.
The first screams stopped.
The second screams stopped.
The cracking stopped.
Her heart stopped.
She knew by now, that way you always know right before the worst part of a nightmare that you're in one but you got no way out. Just gotta watch actions that you've lived more times than you can remember play out in front of you again. She hit the top of the stairs with the realization and then behind her there was only darkness. In front of her there was only darkness. The only thing she could think to try was closing her eyes, but not before the sweat pouring down her face got in them.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and hands like hers scarred, shaking.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and a doorway with a preteen girl trembling around its corner.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and big, round, brown eyes spilling over with confusion.
Burning.
Burning.
Darkness, and trembling lips forming a single word.
Burning.
Darkness, and a girl on a grainy screen raising something-
Hold up.
This wasn't right.
The girl, the person, the thing, the shape on the screen, that wasn't her. She couldn't make out what it was but she knew on that first glance that it wasn't anything like her. Little taller than she was and way, way tinier, no mistaking it for her even in all this smothering dark. The details didn't change but she was watching them right in front of her, the heap on the ground was wrong, the thing towering over it was wrong, its stance was wrong, the long mass in its hands was wrong, the word that wasn't coming out of her daughter's mouth was wrong, her protests, her fear, they were wrong, all wrong in the way the house felt wrong when she first stepped in. What was twisting up her unreality was now right here just a couple yards away from her, so she did something wrong too.
Tonya shoved the girl that wasn't her daughter aside.
She marched into the room.
She squinted at the screen.
She
Flashes of light cast the briefest of shadows on the surrounding foliage. The blasts reverberated through the humid air, startling some creatures off of tree branches while others retreated into holes in the ground. Four blasts ripped through the din of the early morning, the echoes continuing to ring out through the woods for a moment after they ceased.
Smoke curled out from the end of the barrel, and from the four red shells scattered across the ground. A thin haze lingered near the ground, a mixture of smoke and condensed air rising from the open carcass.
There was nothing left to recognize, nothing left to try and understand.
This made sense, though. The blood, the carnage.
A series of conceits made it real, acceptable somehow. Like the way things worked in a dream; warped, but strangely easy to accept. It was all just a part of the story your mind told itself. No reason for it, no deeper meaning, just fragments of memories and images that only barely resembled the real world. Something the mind did to help itself cope. A context to exist in, that only seemed acceptable in contrast to the alternative, a calm, dark, blackened sea of nothingness.
I could just wake up.
For a moment, she saw what it really was. What doing this really meant, what it might cost. Heard the story she was living as it might be described aloud, heard the dream retold, and realized how little sense it made.
On instinct, she dropped the shotgun and drew her pistol, clinging to it as if it was the key to finding herself again.
It took a few minutes to decide what to do.
The smoke cleared, her ears stopped ringing, and her ability to intuit the nature of her surroundings began to fail her again. The world began to seem even more surreal in the light, as the sun slowly started to ascend over the horizon. The frame rate of her vision seemed off, her focus lingering on odd places. The canopy, the humid air of the morning condensing on the shotgun barrel, the ragged mess of bone and gore lying in front of her. What was left of an eye stared off into the distance, up through the trees.
All just fragments of a story she accepted, even if she knew it couldn’t be real. It shouldn’t have been. She had to accept it, because there was a way out. This path led to an end. Somehow, it would stop. The alternative seemed so much worse, so far beyond anything she could justify or explain. Whatever made her feel what she had to, or feel nothing at all, she would use it. There was no choice.
There is no choice.
Erika let the barrel of her pistol fall away from the side of her head, and flipped the safety back on, tucking it back into her waistband. A tiny circular imprint was left where she had pressed it to her temple.
She picked her shotgun off of the ground, loaded four shells into the magazine, and tucked it under the crook of her arm. Tugging at Tonya’s bag, she managed to pull it from underneath the body, letting its contents spill out onto the dirt. After quickly collecting anything useful, she took off deeper into the forest.
Smoke curled out from the end of the barrel, and from the four red shells scattered across the ground. A thin haze lingered near the ground, a mixture of smoke and condensed air rising from the open carcass.
There was nothing left to recognize, nothing left to try and understand.
This made sense, though. The blood, the carnage.
A series of conceits made it real, acceptable somehow. Like the way things worked in a dream; warped, but strangely easy to accept. It was all just a part of the story your mind told itself. No reason for it, no deeper meaning, just fragments of memories and images that only barely resembled the real world. Something the mind did to help itself cope. A context to exist in, that only seemed acceptable in contrast to the alternative, a calm, dark, blackened sea of nothingness.
I could just wake up.
For a moment, she saw what it really was. What doing this really meant, what it might cost. Heard the story she was living as it might be described aloud, heard the dream retold, and realized how little sense it made.
On instinct, she dropped the shotgun and drew her pistol, clinging to it as if it was the key to finding herself again.
It took a few minutes to decide what to do.
The smoke cleared, her ears stopped ringing, and her ability to intuit the nature of her surroundings began to fail her again. The world began to seem even more surreal in the light, as the sun slowly started to ascend over the horizon. The frame rate of her vision seemed off, her focus lingering on odd places. The canopy, the humid air of the morning condensing on the shotgun barrel, the ragged mess of bone and gore lying in front of her. What was left of an eye stared off into the distance, up through the trees.
All just fragments of a story she accepted, even if she knew it couldn’t be real. It shouldn’t have been. She had to accept it, because there was a way out. This path led to an end. Somehow, it would stop. The alternative seemed so much worse, so far beyond anything she could justify or explain. Whatever made her feel what she had to, or feel nothing at all, she would use it. There was no choice.
There is no choice.
Erika let the barrel of her pistol fall away from the side of her head, and flipped the safety back on, tucking it back into her waistband. A tiny circular imprint was left where she had pressed it to her temple.
She picked her shotgun off of the ground, loaded four shells into the magazine, and tucked it under the crook of her arm. Tugging at Tonya’s bag, she managed to pull it from underneath the body, letting its contents spill out onto the dirt. After quickly collecting anything useful, she took off deeper into the forest.
((Erika Stieglitz continued in King's Crossing))
-
Emprexx Plush
- Posts: 1678
- Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:37 pm
- Contact:
How would you explain Survival of the Fittest to someone so young? A girl too little by years to remember when it happened but would feel the absence it created much, much sooner than any child should? When she asks where her mother went, how do you tell her the truth in a way she can understand? How can you be honest without burdening her with weight that might stunt her growth before it even began?
One set of answers could be that they didn’t. The people in her life wouldn’t lie, not in so many words, but they would not tell her the truth. They might tell her that her mother had to go away. Pressed harder they might say that there had been an accident, which while not the truth was not exactly a lie either. It could be said that it was tragic. Her passing could be too painful to talk about, that she would understand when she was older. She could accept that for years, and if she didn’t what other options did she have?
Someone could break. It was easy enough imagine, a whole family carrying that kind of grief and trying to raise the child left behind by it? If one of them gave in to the guilt and felt she deserved the truth no one could blame them. The loose lips could also come from outside the family. A teacher with a wayward comment. A friend asking a question they know they shouldn’t. A classmate teasing with ignorant cruelty known best to children. A stranger unable to hide their recognition. There were so many avenues for exposure that required nothing from her but her potential couldn’t be ignored either. One day she would see a broadcast on TV, or overhear a conversation that wasn’t meant for her, or just Google her mother’s name. It was futile to pretend she’d avoid the truth, so the question became: how long?
Not how long before she was first exposed.
How long before she decided to watch?
Which became.
How long could you avoid it if you were behind her big, round, brown eyes?
Which became.
What would hurt her most?
Could it be her mother screaming at her father with all the venom she could muster? Would it matter how much of a presence or lack of he’d had in her life until now to see her opinion of him summarized in two curse-laced sentences and then never thought of again? Would those first words as an impression sour the longing she felt to know a woman she’d been promised would do anything for her?
How about when she came up on a man minding his business on an old pier and told him to persuade her not to kill him? She wasn’t any good at what came next. All that effort to stab him, then to pin him, then to drown him, then to tread water, and she got nothing from it. She didn’t hesitate though. If the girl saw that she would have to know that her mother tried to take a life with no explanation.
Maybe it would be as small as four words whispered over a grave.
‘I’m gonna fail her.’
Yeah.
Or all of that could be too detached from the central horror of it all. For a girl of eleven, fifteen, twenty-three, forty-seven, sixty-eight, and everything before, after, and between, the moment that hurt most could be when a shambling husk of a girl appraised her mother’s sleeping body for...she’d have the timestamps. She could recount down to the microsecond until the numbers were branded into her eyelids but they would never feel real. The way she hovered over her like, she could say like a ghost but what terrified people about ghosts was that they were once alive and surely, surely she couldn’t imagine the person over her mother’s body had ever lived a life like hers.Rise and fall of breath that looked more like act than effort, forlorn eyes that swum in her head, twitching digits that reached out but never touched as if a barrier raised between the worlds they occupied, now that would be the worst part. It would give her hope that nothing would happen, that wherever the girl came from she would slink back when she was unable to grab on. That she was never really there at all, that she would have fallen asleep at the monitor and imagined a nightmare from all the fitful slumber she absorbed secondhand through the screen. They would both wake up and together they would find some new way to hurt her. She would block the girl out and focus on her mother’s face.
Then it would explode.
The first shot would be brutal. At such a close range the flesh of half her face would practically melt into a shower of blood sprayed outward, exposing bone only for it to shatter under the impact. Shards of white would stand out in red when she paused the feed, and she would pause. Whether she thought to the first time would depend on if she caught the girl lining up a second shot in time or not, but when she watched it again she would freeze here. It could be an accident the first time. Her reflexes might be too numbed by shock to hit the button before the trigger was pulled, and when she tried to stop the inevitable she would see every detail preserved for her. The way the shot had caved in her skull to one side and exposed pulverized brain matter. The gaping hole leading to the still intact portion of her jaw. Holes once meant for an eye and a nostril now barely recognizable as natural features. She would have wanted to see her face whole, who wouldn’t, but her error would leave her paralyzed. She would not know if it was worth the risk to play it back again. Being caught here would be better than what came next.
She would watch the next moments anyway.
There would be more shots. Sometimes she would count to three. Others five. Others ten.
How many viewings would it take of the bloody stump surrounded by shredded skin and viscera before she could form an objective count?
How many times would she be able to stare at the gouges in her chest and wonder if she had really seen what she had seen because they were too violent to have been done by anything possessing reason?
How many monsters would she dream up in overlay on sleepless nights because the thought that a person, just a person like any other you saw every day, could butcher a sleeping woman who’d never done her no harm because
Because nothing.
Because there was no reason stated.
Because there were no answers to be found in thousands of tear streaked replays.
How long would she struggle to give and gain meaning from an act that defined the course of her life while refusing any rational definition?
We will not know. We do not deserve to know.
Tonya spent her last days moving between nightmares. Not knowing would be her last, and she would never wake from it.
So why should we?
One set of answers could be that they didn’t. The people in her life wouldn’t lie, not in so many words, but they would not tell her the truth. They might tell her that her mother had to go away. Pressed harder they might say that there had been an accident, which while not the truth was not exactly a lie either. It could be said that it was tragic. Her passing could be too painful to talk about, that she would understand when she was older. She could accept that for years, and if she didn’t what other options did she have?
Someone could break. It was easy enough imagine, a whole family carrying that kind of grief and trying to raise the child left behind by it? If one of them gave in to the guilt and felt she deserved the truth no one could blame them. The loose lips could also come from outside the family. A teacher with a wayward comment. A friend asking a question they know they shouldn’t. A classmate teasing with ignorant cruelty known best to children. A stranger unable to hide their recognition. There were so many avenues for exposure that required nothing from her but her potential couldn’t be ignored either. One day she would see a broadcast on TV, or overhear a conversation that wasn’t meant for her, or just Google her mother’s name. It was futile to pretend she’d avoid the truth, so the question became: how long?
Not how long before she was first exposed.
How long before she decided to watch?
Which became.
How long could you avoid it if you were behind her big, round, brown eyes?
Which became.
What would hurt her most?
Could it be her mother screaming at her father with all the venom she could muster? Would it matter how much of a presence or lack of he’d had in her life until now to see her opinion of him summarized in two curse-laced sentences and then never thought of again? Would those first words as an impression sour the longing she felt to know a woman she’d been promised would do anything for her?
How about when she came up on a man minding his business on an old pier and told him to persuade her not to kill him? She wasn’t any good at what came next. All that effort to stab him, then to pin him, then to drown him, then to tread water, and she got nothing from it. She didn’t hesitate though. If the girl saw that she would have to know that her mother tried to take a life with no explanation.
Maybe it would be as small as four words whispered over a grave.
‘I’m gonna fail her.’
Yeah.
Or all of that could be too detached from the central horror of it all. For a girl of eleven, fifteen, twenty-three, forty-seven, sixty-eight, and everything before, after, and between, the moment that hurt most could be when a shambling husk of a girl appraised her mother’s sleeping body for...she’d have the timestamps. She could recount down to the microsecond until the numbers were branded into her eyelids but they would never feel real. The way she hovered over her like, she could say like a ghost but what terrified people about ghosts was that they were once alive and surely, surely she couldn’t imagine the person over her mother’s body had ever lived a life like hers.Rise and fall of breath that looked more like act than effort, forlorn eyes that swum in her head, twitching digits that reached out but never touched as if a barrier raised between the worlds they occupied, now that would be the worst part. It would give her hope that nothing would happen, that wherever the girl came from she would slink back when she was unable to grab on. That she was never really there at all, that she would have fallen asleep at the monitor and imagined a nightmare from all the fitful slumber she absorbed secondhand through the screen. They would both wake up and together they would find some new way to hurt her. She would block the girl out and focus on her mother’s face.
Then it would explode.
The first shot would be brutal. At such a close range the flesh of half her face would practically melt into a shower of blood sprayed outward, exposing bone only for it to shatter under the impact. Shards of white would stand out in red when she paused the feed, and she would pause. Whether she thought to the first time would depend on if she caught the girl lining up a second shot in time or not, but when she watched it again she would freeze here. It could be an accident the first time. Her reflexes might be too numbed by shock to hit the button before the trigger was pulled, and when she tried to stop the inevitable she would see every detail preserved for her. The way the shot had caved in her skull to one side and exposed pulverized brain matter. The gaping hole leading to the still intact portion of her jaw. Holes once meant for an eye and a nostril now barely recognizable as natural features. She would have wanted to see her face whole, who wouldn’t, but her error would leave her paralyzed. She would not know if it was worth the risk to play it back again. Being caught here would be better than what came next.
She would watch the next moments anyway.
There would be more shots. Sometimes she would count to three. Others five. Others ten.
How many viewings would it take of the bloody stump surrounded by shredded skin and viscera before she could form an objective count?
How many times would she be able to stare at the gouges in her chest and wonder if she had really seen what she had seen because they were too violent to have been done by anything possessing reason?
How many monsters would she dream up in overlay on sleepless nights because the thought that a person, just a person like any other you saw every day, could butcher a sleeping woman who’d never done her no harm because
Because nothing.
Because there was no reason stated.
Because there were no answers to be found in thousands of tear streaked replays.
How long would she struggle to give and gain meaning from an act that defined the course of her life while refusing any rational definition?
We will not know. We do not deserve to know.
Tonya spent her last days moving between nightmares. Not knowing would be her last, and she would never wake from it.
So why should we?
G062: TONYA COLLINS, DECEASED