Stumble upon a warm glow - rejection flinches from compassion -a fire crackles and a kind woman gives succour -

Two remembered one of her worst days. A mourning spent scoring flooded streets for scraps. She’d scrambled between what few stores remained open, praying her sticky fingers didn’t see her beaten by an irate merchant.. She’d slogged through the night’s cold rain. Fever had struck her and she hadn’t been able to keep her earnings down. The ache of her stomach and burning heat fought for her attention.

In moments of lucidity snatched from the fog, she’d wondered if she would die that night. After, she thought she’d understood pain. She was so very wrong.

She crashed through a sodded roof as a loose ball. She slammed into the floor like a wet rag soon after. Momentum rolled her onto her back. Rain joined blood in clouding her vision.

She didn’t cough, she wasn’t sure she had enough intact ribs for that. A whistle wheezed its way from her long, bubbling as it passed through the blood and rain collecting in her mouth.

It tasted like iron.

The thought announced the return of her senses. Then she felt the pain. It was like foul spirit poured static into her and turned it into agony. Hissing crackling sharp agony.

A distant wail pierced the storm and pricked her failing mind. With it came a rush of urgency. Her heart pounded and Two marshaled what parts of her worked to roll onto her back and lurch to her knees.

Rain washed the uneven wood floor. The streams of blood leaking from her was a match for its efforts. Two stared at the stubborn stain in shock and dawning realization. She was leaking like ruined bucket. Her mind scrambled four a solution but found screaming silence.

She crumpled as the damages enormity reared its head. Her left leg was a twig snapped in too many places. Her right arm was pulped so thoroughly that premature rigor mortis was th best explanation for how she held onto her knife.

Her other limbs function by technicality. The only result of her struggle was that she was now bleeding out on her stomach. Flickers of black stole her vision. In them, oblivion stole the pain. The rain beat its drum and promised that if she closed her eyes it would play her lullaby. In those spots of nothing a voice that didn’t exist promised her something. The grave would welcome her.

Despite her agony, a chuckle burbled out of her. She dug her nails into the the rough wood and began to drag herself.

What else was she supposed to do?

Die.

Two didn’t have it in her to stop.

Two stirred her failing body. She pulled, stirring a red wake in the water covering the floor. She kicked next. Each meter illuminated new aspects of pain. Educating Two the rawest way their was. They were but notes in the cruel symphony.

Two was deaf to it.

The feeling that drove her forward couldn’t be called hope. It was too ill-formed for that. A mangled desire without vision or structure that struggled all the same.

she spilled onto the streets. A raggedy thing battered by trash and half-drowned by the rushing current. No plan rattled the pounding silence of her mind. She wanted to live, the entirety of her bent to that desire.

Silent thunder crackled and something great laughed in the clouds above.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

She became a mindless travesty scraping and kicking forward. When a thread of warmth touched her senses she threw herself at it. Her life mixing with runoff in a red wake. A waft of flavour that had not been there before. Light reflected on the water yellow and warm but by then her eyes saw mostly fuzz. She followed the scent instead. Her tongue flickered and guided her march to wood fire and spice.

Half blind she dragged herself up the steps of a house that had not been there before. Tall stilts hoisted the building above the muck and floor.

But the door and the crackling fire inside were barred to her. Still, she thumped, wheezed cries and struggled to work the door’s locked handle.

Scrapes and clicks sounded behind her. Two rolled onto her back. She couldn’t force herself to sit against the door. She was a slumped pile on the stairs. A corpse soon to join the gutters that raised her.

She glared through blurred eyes.

It glared with a dozen eyes and one hateful hole. It hunched and lumbered; sharp appendages tore furrows into the flooded street. Stirring ripples in her bloody wake.

Two pried the knife from her dead right hand. It hurt to breathe, to blink, to be. She understood in that moment, and sheer numb exhaustion.

She raised the knife anyway.

She forced her eyes open. Commanded her finger not to tremble and took her breaths on at a time. She readied and waited.

The choice was death or action. Two had never known when to stop.

Rejection stilled. Recognition stirred in the wrathful absences she had in place of a mind. It was a vessel for impulse and sensation. Where pain and hate were left to ferment and distilled until potent and sour. Until more of her was made.

She recognized the look in the intruder’s eyes. A stark cold echo of what she was. They looked at her, their rightful death and rejected her.

The intruder rejected her! A twitch wracked her frame and brought it low half crouch. Her Absent eye throbbed in reminder.

There was no hate in their gaze. Nor fear in their limp shoulders bend. Rejection would change that. She’d tear the calm from them so they and all the others knew to stay away. Knew that there were things never to be touched.

She bounded up the stairs in a violent spasm. Lashing and tearing as she went. She landed before them hunched and furious. Her sharp fingers closed on supple flesh. They held her gaze with calm despite having an eye swelled shut with the other bloodied and bleary. She’d make it last. Make it hurt. Make them remember.

A wash of scalding yellow light stole her retribution. She recoiled, stumbling and rolling until she splashed at the staircase’s foot. A women stared down with sad pained eyes. They sighed and their gaze fell to the intruder by their feet. Filled with compassion, dripping pity.

They dragged her prey into the house and rejection screamed. She threw herself up the stairs and into the searing light. The door shut before her claws found purchase. Lingering warmth boiled her skin, but her next wail was born of jilted pride and fury.

Unconsciousness fell like a thick curtain. Flickering warm and stunning cold one moment, nothing the next. She thought she’d died but if that was the case there wouldn’t be a ‘her’ to experience anything. There were things to experience in the pit.

Sinew of grey pulsed like veins, but veins didn’t shudder and bud. It was a spreading stain one instant, a metastasizing tumour thudding to heartbeat the next. Its broke a shuddered between visions of milady and poison. Always spreading, alive.

It took the form of a woman. They were dedicated corpse that bloated into a rotting cadaver. A child child who’d forgotten to cry. Their shape shifted with every blink of their stagnant eyes. Only that feature remained the same.

After the next slow blink became a tangle of swelling lungs. Grey took the place of pink flesh and it almost seemed like a grotesque statue. Then they breathed and Two air fill her chest.

In.

Out.

A vague wet feeling from lungs weak and hers.

Quietly. She began to panic.

It became a forest of broken alabaster trees. One by one snapped trunks jittered into place. Fall branches crawled into ill fitting place. The forest crinkled and cracked into a sick paraody of natures. Trunks stood crooked, branches grew down, side ways and into the themselves.

Then it was a woman again. A beautiful rendition of Two dressed in dark silk. Her hair tied into a high bun, scales polished, smile bright, eyes empty. Two’s stomach churned as she, it, tried to wave. Their arm had too many joints.

Then they were a nest of pulped eyes. Grey gore leaked from countless apertures like maggots. Viscera ejected as an amber eye burped up from the recesses. Feeling returned to Two’s battered eye.

Then it was something else, another reflection. More aberrant renditions, no two were alike. But she saw a pattern. Bit by wretched bit, it grew, fattened and swelled.

The mass of knotted veins and conjoined hearts thundered. Spurting rivers grey and red as her heart raced. Each beat mirrored and distorted into something foul. But it wasn’t a just a reflection, it was inside her, a part of her.

It was her.