Post by CraigTheCylon on Sept 9, 2016 0:00:05 GMT
So. The afterlife.
The way some people talk about it, you'd think it's an elevator built from clouds. Up to the light or down to the fire.
It isn't. Not for her, anyway. For her it's a river through the night - brutally cold and possessing a fierce current. She can thrash through the murk all she likes, maybe try to swim, but it'll just pull her all the harder in the direction it wants to go. Which, for all she can see, is nowhere at all.
She never drowns in it, though. The river won't allow it, always letting her float along even when her limbs feel too numb to move. Such is how she's spent the last however-long, with the cold piercing right down to the bone marrow as her half-closed eyes stare up into oblivion, only the lapping of the water - if indeed it is water - meeting her ears. Certainly not the sound of her breathing, oh no, for she is dead.
That part she still remembers. The confusion on the other woman's face giving way to the hurt and anger - which she'd earned, there was no doubt of that - before the sudden shock of impalement, made all the worse as she forced herself not to scream. A few last seconds stretched out to hours as the deceiver raged, refusing to let her go.
She reflects, for what else can a mind do without stimulus? She thinks of her order and the grand work left unfinished. Of her enemies - one in particular - and how they must be laughing over her grave. Of Enid, and her betrayal. And poor young Grendel, who could very well follow her down here out of grief, the poor darling. Perhaps she was wrong to show such affection to her.
And then, suddenly, the sound of the water is gone.
She doesn't know what to think. Did she reach some kind of final destination? She still feels the numbness in her bones, but the water -
FIRE. Suddenly all is fire, and lightning, and blood. Blood everywhere, her own, others', she cannot say. Lights sear at her eyes and she shuts them. But curiosity opens them again, and she peers around, taking quick breaths - she's breathing again, and even the working of her lungs feels alien and wrong, so she chokes, and props her head up.
There is a man with his hands inside a deep, ragged red hole where her chest once was. Within his fingers is cradled something dark and purple-veined, and as it pulses with increasing frequency she feels her blood rush in response. And she faints, in denial.
But the river does not reclaim her.
And though she dreads it, eventually her eyes flicker open again, to witness a cruel face haloed by light, a damned angel before her. Cerulean eyes glitter as painted lips part from too many teeth...
"Now...ready to do everything I say?"
The way some people talk about it, you'd think it's an elevator built from clouds. Up to the light or down to the fire.
It isn't. Not for her, anyway. For her it's a river through the night - brutally cold and possessing a fierce current. She can thrash through the murk all she likes, maybe try to swim, but it'll just pull her all the harder in the direction it wants to go. Which, for all she can see, is nowhere at all.
She never drowns in it, though. The river won't allow it, always letting her float along even when her limbs feel too numb to move. Such is how she's spent the last however-long, with the cold piercing right down to the bone marrow as her half-closed eyes stare up into oblivion, only the lapping of the water - if indeed it is water - meeting her ears. Certainly not the sound of her breathing, oh no, for she is dead.
That part she still remembers. The confusion on the other woman's face giving way to the hurt and anger - which she'd earned, there was no doubt of that - before the sudden shock of impalement, made all the worse as she forced herself not to scream. A few last seconds stretched out to hours as the deceiver raged, refusing to let her go.
She reflects, for what else can a mind do without stimulus? She thinks of her order and the grand work left unfinished. Of her enemies - one in particular - and how they must be laughing over her grave. Of Enid, and her betrayal. And poor young Grendel, who could very well follow her down here out of grief, the poor darling. Perhaps she was wrong to show such affection to her.
And then, suddenly, the sound of the water is gone.
She doesn't know what to think. Did she reach some kind of final destination? She still feels the numbness in her bones, but the water -
FIRE. Suddenly all is fire, and lightning, and blood. Blood everywhere, her own, others', she cannot say. Lights sear at her eyes and she shuts them. But curiosity opens them again, and she peers around, taking quick breaths - she's breathing again, and even the working of her lungs feels alien and wrong, so she chokes, and props her head up.
There is a man with his hands inside a deep, ragged red hole where her chest once was. Within his fingers is cradled something dark and purple-veined, and as it pulses with increasing frequency she feels her blood rush in response. And she faints, in denial.
But the river does not reclaim her.
And though she dreads it, eventually her eyes flicker open again, to witness a cruel face haloed by light, a damned angel before her. Cerulean eyes glitter as painted lips part from too many teeth...
"Now...ready to do everything I say?"
