#presudeos

          ❝ It’s always quite the shock, dying for the first time. ❞

          Her dour tone resonates against the stone sanctuary as she peers over at the newly-resurrected woman laying on the altar. Death, then a sudden reawakening; it was never easy, especially for those who did not yet understand the purpose their temporary martyrdom had served. Skarlet rises from her seat and approaches the altar, a hand reaching to steady Maria, a touch upon the skin of her shoulder to prove to the woman that she was still alive.

Vincent was just starting to wonder if he really was dead when he noticed the high-heeled footprints in the mud. In the days (or had they been weeks? Years? It was impossible to mark time here), since he’d woken on the cold chapel floor and found himself alone, he had seen a few signs of human life; disturbances in the dust here and there, objects moving from where he’d last seen them. But this was the first conclusive sign of a person, and where she might have gone.

She because of the heels. It couldn’t be Claudia; she’d never allowed herself even the slightest vanity, and he thought Heather had been wearing boots. But it was someone. As he followed the trail, he felt a familiar dull ache from the wounds in his chest and back. They ached periodically, but otherwise didn’t change. They didn’t bleed, and they didn’t heal, and...no. No, he was not dead. He couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t how the story ended. The story ended with Claudia dead and him triumphant, because he was right…

As best as he could tell, the footprints led to Heaven’s Night. He gave a small, ugly laugh. It felt ironic. He didn’t need Heaven. All Vincent was looking for was a way out of Hell. Swinging the door open, he walked cautiously into the dim main room of the club. He hadn’t seen many monsters since he’d woken, but there were still some lurking around. Inside, it looked as deserted as everything else, coated in dust and decay.

“Hello,” he called out into the empty air. “Anybody home?” Receiving no immediate response, he down at one of the tables with a sigh. He’d been there a few times before, although his role as a priest meant he had to be careful with such indiscretions. Besides, there were better places in Ashfield.

“Hey, can a guy get a lap dance around here?” he asked, louder this time, fully expecting no answer.

Mary is alone more often than she ever has been in her life, and the town is a lonely companion, ever present yet oppressively withdrawn. The fog doesn’t stifle how empty everything feels. The familiar landmarks imprinted in her memory from when she and James had come here before bring with them only the sharp pains of nostalgia. A time before, when things were better between them. Before she’d gotten sick.

When she was alive. Really alive, and not this...this...whatever sort of living she is now.

Her heart beats in her chest, she feels her pulse in her wrists, but it’s different. Sometimes, she thinks she feels her heartbeat thrum in time with soft vibrations in the ground. thinks the weather darkens when she screams her agony into the silence. Or maybe she is reacting to shifts in the town itself. An extension of the darkness that brought her back. The reason she couldn’t leave for very long without nearly dying again.

“Damn your selfishness, James,” she says bitterly, tears stinging her eyes, and she clenches her teeth to try and keep from crying, though there’s no one around to hide her tears from.

Just as she feels changes, so too does she feel subtle presences, as if she’s being watched though no one is around when she looks. But she feels them, swears they’re hidden just beyond the fog, beyond the sky, somewhere she can’t quite see. Sometimes she walks just to get away from them, perhaps to find them, maybe just to have something to do here. And it is a time like this when she sees another person. How many days has it been since she has seen anyone? Not since James left. She quickens her pace, calling out a, “Hello?” as she gets closer.

It’s a woman, and Mary’s heart beats faster as she draws close, a thousand questions filling her mind while simultaneously unsure of how to ask anyone any of them. What if the woman is simply a passerby? A visitor on her way out? What would she know of this town?

     ❛    by  leaving   ,    we   𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕  𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒑  𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒈                       you  know ?     ❜

          The accusations hit her like a fist to the teeth. A sharp ringing pulsates through her clenched jaw and drills into her bones. Suddenly she is a passenger again; a vessel rather than a being with agency.  ❝ You think I had a choice? ❞ There is panic in her voice, as if her questions were in response to a legitimate shock to her system.  ❝ You think that I've been controlling you? ❞

          No no no. Not her. She would never. Never! Whatever humanity is left in her proclaims this within her conscious mind and clings to it like it’s the only truth she knows. At that moment, she is separate from the beast within, absent of its direction and left rudderless in a stream of confusion.  ❝ I helped you, ❞  she questions, her voice growing quieter.  ❝...didn’t I? ❞

          Flashes from her other half come to her, an inaudible voice whispering a darker reality into her ear. Despite her consistent resurrection of the woman, Skarlet did not create Maria, no, the town did. The dark machine of purgatory; this was its doing. But she was not free of blame. She was part of the town, after all. A host for one of its darkest forces. A tool to enact its judgement, whether she wanted to admit it or not. Bile rises in her throat as bitterness floods her mind. She wanted to tell Maria that none of it was her doing, that she only ever intended to help her, but that was a lie. She was accountable for this nightmare, and she was foolish to see herself as innocent in what had been going on. A guide, she had told herself. ❛ I’m just helping her find her way. ❜ 

           No. She did not help Maria like she thought. She kept her in line.

           ❝ I didn’t want to do it! ❞ she confesses at last, her denial forced away by intense, inescapable feelings of despair and futility. Eyes grow wet and refuse to meet Maria’s, and her hands retreat to clasp around her own shoulders defensively.  ❝ I thought I was helping you. This town, it...it used me, too. I can explain, if you’ll only give me the chance. I never meant to hurt you! Please  --Maria--  believe me! ❞

          The other one, however, felt no change. To the contrary, the demon was quite satisfied with this result. It had done its job, and it cared not for its host’s opposition to being used in such a way. And that only made the bite of despair sting Skarlet more.

          𝚆 𝙴   𝙳 𝙸 𝙳   𝚆 𝙷 𝙰 𝚃   𝚆 𝙰 𝚂   𝙲 𝙾 𝙼 𝙼 𝙰 𝙽 𝙳 𝙴 𝙳   𝙾 𝙵   𝚄 𝚂.

        *:･ﾟ🦋┇ ❝ Are you blind?❞ Derisive — roll of eyes. The floor has become lacquered with red blotches like a Jackson Pollock painting, spread out and leading to a person — man or woman, hard to tell with their face and torso is raw hamburger meat — the smell is repugnant with metallic blood and feces and something else: akin to a rotting carcass left to bake beneath the dog day sun atop scorching asphalt. And the heat, oven like, forces dew drops to form above Maria’s brow and upper lip. With a hiss she gives the corpse a disgusted, disgruntled look, before she returns her attention to her companion.

           ❝They might have something on them that’s useful — ❞ , a pause, then, ❝ — what? I’m not touching that.❞

  Dolores looks to Maria in sheer, exasperated disbelief. Surely, this woman must be taking full advantage of some keen intuition that, in spite of everything, her companion refuses to abandon her in the fog — how else could she afford to be both so disparaging and so completely unhelpful? Between her insufferable attitude, the hot, putrid stench, and those shambling things lurking around, Dolores’ toes hang over the edge of either bursting into tears, throttling Maria, or both. Yet she does neither.

  “Well, it was your idea,” Dolores points out, her bitter voice pushing through grit teeth like bloody meat through a grinder, “but whatever. Since you’re so squeamish, I guess I just have to do it.” She lets her disdain hang in the air for a moment before approaching the corpse.

  As Dolores stoops in front of it, her eyes strain against the macabre urge to behold the fine details of the carcass’ mutilation, gluing themselves instead to the stained wall at its hind. The stench is so overwhelmingly vile that she’s forced to either hold her breath or vomit, and pride won’t let her submit to the latter in front of Maria now. She needs to be fast. Fumbling hands shove themselves into every pocket they can find, at times caressing something warm, wet and pulpous. Dolores pretends not to feel it.

  By the final pocket, hope is dwindling, but then her fingers brush against something. Fluid, yet not soft to the touch, like a metallic piece of string. A chain, maybe. She doesn’t ponder it for more than an instant, tearing her hand out to see what she’s found. 

  In her grip is an exquisite, platinum bracelet decorated with an array of charms, none of which have any recognizable shape. It is, somehow, immaculate. Every bit as pretty and utterly useless to her as the woman who made her rob this corpse to find it. Dolores' jaw clenches so tight her molars nearly fracture, and the tendons in her scrawny neck stick out like thin wire. 

  Then, she has a wonderful idea.

  Dolores plunges her hands into the carrion and stirs them about in its filth, only having the stomach to do so because of the giddy anticipation of what she’ll do next. She withdraws — finally breathes again — and turns to face Maria.

  “Here,” Dolores shakily presents the pristine charm bracelet with a spiteful smile, like that of a little brother chasing his sister with a fat grub. Before any protest can arise, she seizes Maria’s wrist and slaps the bracelet, along with the thick gore and foul muck coating her hand, into Maria’s palm. As an extra measure of malice, she gives her hand a brief, but crushing squeeze, which produces a squelch.