SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

It was never enough to put them down, lately. Nobody could be scared off anymore. They always stuck around and shrugged it off. The angel moved in a way that troubled the water greatly, because more of her was moving through it. Violet taking short, backwards, labored steps, across a still, shallow pond, troubled less of it.

Violet managed to take one more step back before her ankle gave out. She stumbled backwards and landed on the wound the crossbow bolt had left her. The nearest cage was a good few feet behind her. The angel was coming nearer.

Destiny was closing in. The karmic debt given form. No more running from it. No more illusions about someday managing to pay it off. It was here in the form of an angel, as she had once been. It was here in the form of a young, human girl, as she had never stopped being. It was here to rip her life from the naked threads of muscle that had been Violet's hands. Blood-lust curdled and bubbled in its rabid mouth-foam.

She held her knife out at full arm's reach. It cut through the dusking light like scissors through wrapping paper. Violet's debt, done up with a bow. Blood oozed from her forehead and ran down her face, thin red lines tracing the length from eyebrow to chin. The corners of her lips pulled back wide, exposing the yellowing in her teeth. On her tongue she bore the splintering pain of malediction.

"Next, you," Violet said without fear.

"You, next."

The blood on Teresa's face dripped, dripped, dripped as she caught up and

stopped. No expression on her face as she watched Violet in the water, the slowly redding robes dancing in a passing gust of wind.

Reuben was still there, a few feet away. Waterlogged. Decaying. Unrecognizable to anyone else other than Teresa, probably. It was strange... since he ran into the knife, she never really thought much about how felt in his last moments. Yuka, too, but like.... ya know, yeah, that wasn't on Teresa....... sorry, where was she going with this, again? Oh, right. Maybe whatever he felt was how Violet was feeling right now, too. All that regret, all that despair.

How quaint. Hmm. Teresa was even willing to get the job done and over with this time, unlike Reuben Reuben first. Then again, this probably would've been the point she'd drop him or Yuka or Michael or any other of these fuckers to begin with and leave them holding the bag. Hmm.

But no. Not anymore. Change of plans; she was gonna make the cunt suffer.

She shook her head and continued her assault, snatched Violet by the neck, and forced her under.

She didn't let go.

It was in those last moments that Violet finally recognized the bodily form the angel had assumed. Teresa. From Therizein. Greek for the harvester. A Reaper. Violet did not remember learning what that name meant. There was no research attached to her knowledge, no science project or pang of curiosity. And yet there it was, all the same. Call it divine inspiration.

Struggling, she took but one waterlogged step forward, pulling her knife hand back over her head. She needed all the momentum she could get for just this last swing. The Reaper closed the distance swiftly, quickly growing acclimated to the water with each stride. It was that adaptation that Violet could never quite get right, no matter how many times she tried. Less than human, caught in a feedback loop of her own twisted logic until the very end. A Ferris wheel on fire, burnt to a crisp as it spun itself to death.

Violet pulled forward the knife. She managed to bring it half of the way down before the Reaper brought her claw into Violet's neck. She expected this much, a direct hit to her windpipe. The knife dangled off the tips of her fingers. She brought her free hand up, ready to claw at the Reaper's fingers, to poke her eyes out with her jagged nails, to do something, anything—

—and suddenly she was being held underwater, her eyes open and stinging with primordial pond scum, her lips parted in a scream, reaching for the bottom, a surface to push herself back up with. Her knife held loosely in her fingers, Violet swung around in the water. No longer did she have a foothold on the bottom of the pond; she was on her knees now, her pointy, futile knees, scraping against the end. Bubbles ripped themselves loose from Violet's nose—for a few precious seconds she could do nothing but watch as the air left her lungs and was replaced with foul, vile fluid, stained with the skin of corpses and teeming with parasites. She closed her mouth, but something kicked the water back out in a hacking cough.

The pressure let up for a moment.

Violet strained and pulled her head out of the water. The Reaper wasn't in front of her anymore, but there was still a hand around her neck. Her mouth hung open as water spilled from Violet back into the pond. She didn't have time to take another breath before the Reaper's second hand joined the first and pushed Violet back under the water with twice the strength. Only enough to realize she was going back under, and to close her mouth.

Her knife was still in her hand, under the water. Twirling it in her fingers, Violet spun the point around to face herself. She had stopped struggling or thrashing at all.

It got as far as the skin above her heart.

Her eyes closed.

This was the point. Drown or stab yourself. Be harvested, or split the skin of your belly and let the water run through you freely. It rested on the knife. A knife's edge. A tight-rope she walked every time. As the water seeped into her lungs so too did this final understanding. This was not the first time she had been here. The water was a medium to the rest of everything. The feeling of fingers on the back of her neck was gone. It was just Violet, now.

Violet, and every other Violet, too. Violets. Violet S. VioletS.. G007. Lettered in her arithmetic. Every Violet to take any decision on this island, in this space, existed all at once. They all met their end in the water, and they started there, too. This was not something that she brought onto everyone. This was not something for which she was to be punished. The island was already the punishment. It spoke in the language of a prison. It sang the mouthy tune of a jailer. It walked the rigid waltz of a warden. The island was the bottom, the densest of planes.

But it wasn't Violet's fault that any of this happened. It wasn't happening to begin with.

If this was her hell, then nobody else was getting hurt. Nobody else died. This was her island. This was her pond. This was her water, her vast, vast waters, and this was her life. Waiting to begin again, confused and raggedy on a pier, to learn the same lesson for the nth time.

She was floating down again now. Fresh, having forgotten. Made to understand. Violet could almost see herself, drifting to rest on that pier, dangling gently. A being above water. Alone.

Nobody else could touch her.

...Moving on.

Teresa gave it a few hundred Mississippi’s (had to start over after losing count around 87) before she relented the death grip. The corpse formally known as Violet stayed vibing in the water.

Teresa’s hands tremored. Her legs were gonna give out any second. She could just about vomit, if she really wanted. It felt different compared to Reuben. It felt good.

...Can’t get distracted. Get in what you came for, get out, reset, wait for the next idiot to come around. At least Violet knew to stay quiet. Might not get so lucky next time.

She hummed and whisper-sang to herself as she groped over the freshly wet corpse for the knife and duffel and dug through it, just in case.

”~...-Say say 2000 zero zero party over, oops, outta time-
...-So tonight I’m gonna party… hmm… hmm… 1999~”

There was plenty of stuff still on Violet, including what looked like some sorta ring made out of a bone. Teresa tossed it at Violet before closing the duffel and heading back.

---

The sun only had a few more minutes to go before finally being put to rest for the day when Teresa returned to the shoreline of the pond, goodies in tow. Except for the original knife… uh. Shit. Where’d that little fucker run off to? Goddammit, that was just her luck. It had memories and sentimental value and stuff. Oh well. Maybe she could try looking for it in the morning. Same with the crossbow thing, wherever that went.

She gave one last scan across the pond. It was quiet again outside of her own footsteps and the ends of the blood-splattered robe grazing along the top, just like nothing had ever happened. Well, except for Violet chilling a little ways up. And Reuben, that rube. She hadn’t talked to him for a while, in hindsight. Maybe she should check in.

“What up?” She asked, her soaked feet parting the waters as she approached the corpse.

“...”

“...Got nothing to say?”

“...”

She playfully kicked him in his waterlogged, putrefying shoulder.

“Ya know, girls would be into ya more if ya weren’t so quiet.”

“...”

“Fine. Keep giving me the cold shoulder, then, bitch.”

“...”

“Hmm.”

This was what she got for being a good Samaritan, apparently. But whatever. Some people were always gonna be salty about someone else’s success. Couldn’t just be happy for her, now that she was actually winning.

She flashed him a few finger guns and pew-pew’d before trudging through to the shoreline. “TTYL, I guess.”

Lucas was waiting for her when she got back. She reset the stage with his bag and the mysterious hand before continuing away from the water’s edge.

So much to do, so much to plan… it sucked being a busy girl. Time was running out, too. The audience wasn’t gonna wait for more content anymore. So she kept walking. And walking. And keeled over, when she got shot square in the face.

There would have been applause, but their hands were full pulling the trigger.