#nbnano

[Moments like this reminded her of the lightning sparking under the skin, the feeling pouring into her hollowed, shell body after she tore the girl, the human out of her. At least, that what the rumors told her.]

[Metropolis always felt to sticky to her, clingy and corroding and inviting indulgence and presenting all opportunity as within the grasp of your fingertips if you worked hard. She watched the billboarded television screens broadcast ideals of the entrepreneur, the self-made investor. Business booms and so can you! She could even taste the residual tackiness in her mouth of that deceptively sweet message; Red knew a reality so eager to consume would stretch your appetite to its engorged limits.]

[a girl destroyed the beast, not the inverse. it was a strange story to tell and thus a story worth telling,…]

[Her ears rang, pulsating in sync with every laborious step through the mob, no longer individual participants of a cult order but a hivemind, possessed by an insatiable need to burn, to throw away wood, old trinkets, entire slabs of mutilated furniture to the prye. Red could understand the desire to ignite nothing in particular, just to witness the timid flicker of a candlelight flame race over the surface of an object, crawling into its crevices until the thing caved in, blackened and turned white-hot in the mouth of the newly born inferno eating away at everything. Something about the hunger, the gluttony, the pride in conquering, in consuming, it resembled one of the few earthly sensations she succumbed to without hesitation.]