#blockmind

If Yomiel had the means to laugh, he likely would have—long, loud and wild. Ten long years of emptiness ending in nothing. Wasn't that fitting? If he knew of this at the beginning of the night he knew he would have been enraged. He upheld his part of the deal and got his revenge in the process. All he got in return was betrayal and more loss. All he got was another prison, different from the shell he inhabited that was now useless and emptier than ever. Different, pointless, and utterly useless.

As if from afar he watched himself lift the claw of the makeshift body he'd thrown together out of scrap parts littered around the remaining submarine floor. One claw and one stray glove served as his hands now for whatever use they might be.

He might have laughed again. He wondered if it would release the bitterness swelling in waves or make it worse. They got one thing right. He did get a new body. And now he would hold a new existence for the endless years to come. From a shell to garbage.

That too fit in this disaster. Everything was supposed to start in the junkyard; it went wrong right from the beginning. The claw slammed the floor with a muffled thump under the weight of so much water. He'd lost. Again. He'd borrowed Sissel's body and then... and then he discovered it was a body he'd borrowed indeed.

But there had still been hope in spite of that devastation. The plan remained nearly intact. He took them all down one by one, watched them each fall. Watched them suffer the pain he felt twice over now. He hadn't expected to see himself fall at the end too, so close to victory. Any satisfaction there had been was gone.

Metal creaked as he shifted and watched each piece of metal, pipe, and gear grind against one another as he manipulated them. There wasn't much else around that could be manipulated. There was only this pile of rubbish for what little good it would do. He made himself a body. It was only another trap.

He slipped into the ghost world and stared at the dark waters past the walls. If he could reach, maybe a passing fish would get close enough to possess. He could swim upward… perhaps find a shore. Then what? Take a bird? Fly to a city? Possess another person and then… Then. What? He could follow a chain of possessions to do what? To go where? There was nothing down here, but there was nothing in the world above for him either.

He lost her years ago and then lost his only friend left to him by his own doing in yet another cruel twist of fate. He could wait until an opportunity presented itself. Or…