The snap of bones breaking drowned by the noises of someone’s screaming. The sound of pulling flesh apart. The dark satisfaction of stopping another of your kind’s beating heart before they stopped yours, and how quickly it’s ripped from you as you watch the life leave their eyes, and with it, the reason for the carnage in the first place. Are their desperate gaps for air the trumpets of your victory? The fanfare of your achievement? Why did winning feel so much like losing?
All valid thoughts for the man to have as he sat upon the carcasses of bleeding comrades -his comrades- but thoughts that he’d nevertheless ignore. Even as his ears were ringing with the word ‘betrayer’, even as her eyes looked at him with nothing more than repulsion, he couldn’t scrape enough of himself together to care. Soon he’ll be allowed to forget, and then he could pretend this damn nightmare never happened in the first place.
///
It was that same nightmare. Again.
Well, nightmare felt like a misnomer -it inspired no fear in Wyve- but his body didn’t seem to be on the same page as his mind. The beads of sweat were still running down his face as he prepared to head out for the day. Whatever message his subconscious was trying to communicate was no closer to being understood, and man was that irritating. Quickly checking, then double-checking his own reflection, he confirmed that, yep, this wasn’t about to be his most glamorous outing. His caramel tuffs still hung down to frame his face, but they were wilder than normal. His amber eyes which usually shone brightly wherever they roamed were murkier and weighed down by the eyebags under them. Boss will probably ask him to take the day off from just one look at his face, but whatevs, the old man was always telling him what to do anyway.
Dressing himself and cooking breakfast was filled with as much mundanity as every other morning in his life, but he welcomed it nonetheless. It was relaxing, and the only part of his day that remained the same after… well, after everything. The eggs he’d been cooking were giving him a lopsided pork smile, but what was meant to cheer him up ended up coming across as taunting instead.
What was it smiling for? It was gonna be eaten it in a sec, and then it’d be gone.
So, there he was, eating (poking at) his breakfast wearing the opposing expression to the egg’s admittedly tasty smirk. Well, that wasn’t all he was doing. The half-finished crossword he had started last night was still begging to be finished, and he still hadn’t practiced that Kata he was struggling with, oh and setting up the karaoke reservation for tonight had completely slipped his mind... Checking the clock motivated him to finish faster and throw out that entire to-do list, lest he wanted to be late and chewed out for the fourth time this month. Slipping on his green parka jacket was the last crucial part of the ritual before he could lock up the apartment. Well, that and the customary sigh mourning how much more he could have gotten done this morning. Then he was done.
///
The bustle and hustle, eh? There was no more vicious alarm clock than the honking of impatient drivers and the curtness of those that shoved their way past you. The concrete obelisks that hugged the sidewalk’s sides were quietly intimidating, and it was easy to feel that whoever sat at their peak was observing your every move. To a tourist, it’d be a hostile and alien environment. To a native, it was just New York City.
Wyve let out an indulgent sigh, and you wouldn’t be able to tell he was late to work by the nonchalant pace of his walk. Indeed, you wouldn’t be able to guess a lot about Wyve from just looking, and whatever you did surmise would most likely be wrong. His eyes passing over every detail of the city’s sights and sounds and the subtle hesitation of someone that doesn’t know where they’re going screams tourist to anyone with eyes. With a cocky smirk, Wyve would probably justify it as ‘having to keep people guessing’.
He had no idea where he was going.
After ten more minutes of totally not being lost, Wyve reluctantly pulled his phone out and opened the map app… Yep, he had somehow ended up, through means undoubtedly outside his control, in the opposite side of the city. He’s… actually not quite sure how he managed that. Eh, it was only thirty extra minutes, so nothing walking couldn’t rectify, and- now that he knew where he was- did he really even need his phone’s help? Nah, he thought to himself, stashing it away deep within his pockets.
An hour and a half later, Wyve stood parallel to the rickety neon sign yelling out “South Diner” to anyone who’d care to look, although the N lacked its fluorescent lighting. You know, that’s an improvement from when three of the letters were completely missing, so no looking a gift horse in the mouth this time.
“Late again, Novare.”, an annoyingly monotone voice called out, “One of these days the pink slip ‘ll catch up to you.”
Only two steps inside the seedy place, yet his co-worker was already berating him for being late, which yeah, fair¸ but Wyve couldn’t help but think of it as crying over spilled milk. At least he had arrived, right? It didn’t help that the dude did so only to feel superior; just a guy with a stick-up his ass having the most pathetic version of a power-trip. Eh, it didn’t get to Wyve one bit anyway.
“Yeah, bet you’re hoping that’s real soon.”, he mirthlessly replied.
Now Boss’s reaction was less pleasant to shoulder, just a disappointed gruff and inaudible muttering. The stress couldn’t do much good for the gramps health, and Wyve felt guilt nagging at him. After all, Boss was the only one willing to hire him after…
Wyve shook his head free of the thought. There was no time for sentimentality in the morning rush of an establishment as respected as “The South Di_er”, and the apron he wore as his work uniform wasn’t there for show. Writing down and ringing up orders had become muscle memory by now, and although he appreciated the opportunity to make a living, it felt too much like mindless repetition for his liking. As if the universe itself was offended by his ungratefulness, he could hear Boss’s frail voice calling out in distress,
“I… could’ve sworn I restocked the eggs last night… I could’ve sworn…”, The old man was desperately raiding every kitchen cabinet as he spoke, getting more and more worried the longer he went without finding them. Boss’s confused expression didn’t sit right with Wyve, and so he hatched a (self-proclaimed) genius plan before long. Running to the nearby bodega and grabbing three or four dozen eggs, he had arrived eggs in hand only five minutes later, and boom! Problem solved. Ignoring the fact that the money came from his own pocket, and that he used his break to not give the impression he was ditching work, it was a win all around.
“Ay, Boss! Found your eggs. Turns out they were hiding behind the dusty boxes in the closet.”, and it would have been a perfectly executed white lie had Wyve not nervously chuckled at the end. Lying brought him no joy (and he was no good at it), but seeing Boss beat himself up over such a small mistake brought him even less. The old man couldn’t be going around thinking he was senile, could he? No, and Wyve would make sure he wasn’t worrying about something as silly as that.
The old man took the eggs off him with a dubious look, and the younger of the two gave him an even more nervous smile. With that, his shift ended on a sour note, and with less money than he started with… Well, Wyve would figure something out. Through his toughest, most penniless months, he always found a way to pay his rent, even if that meant busting his ass into overdrive…
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Ah shit. He was lost again.
Yet this time it was different. It’s not just that he couldn’t remember what his route home was, no, with a subconscious gulp, Wyve realized that none of these buildings looked familiar to him. All of them were… off, like he had just stumbled into a cardboard movie set. A pretty darn close imitation of the real thing, but still fabricated. Whenever Wyve was lost, he was reminded of one of the best perks of living in NYC, just one glace at a street sign and he’d immediately know where he was, and more importantly, where he needed to go.
There’s no way home.
That’s what it read. That’s what all of them read. Wyve’s heart missed a couple of beats when his mind failed to come up with a reasonable explanation, because yeah, there was none. Maybe someone around him could-
Everyone’s gone.
New York’s always had a rotten side that could be hard to see past, but the city also carried a pulse. It was an ugly thing, but it was still a living thing. This was different. No, this place was dead. And something gave Wyve the impression that it’s been dead for a long time.
He had to calm down. This was a dream, had to be. He clearly hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night and was hallucinating all of this. Which meant- maybe he was lucid dreaming! Now that was something that actually made a modicum of sense. He felt a little embarrassed at freaking out over what could only be a creation of his mind, but before he even had the chance to try out flying, he heard a ghastly voice behind him.
“…W-what?”
Wyve tried and failed to conceal his relief as his face whipped around to face another human being, and, while not the weirdest thing he’s seen, the other’s fashion sense was quite… peculiar. The black coat wrapped around them was the blackest shade of black, and if it wasn’t for the gold accents running along it Wyve would’ve assumed the stranger had ripped a piece of night sky and draped it around their shoulders. Their wraith silver hair shined as the moon does when you look towards it for comfort, welcomingly familiar yet still cold and alien. Their face, unblemished and perfectly androgynous, balanced between the lines of feminine and masculine.
“Ah, great timing.”, Wyve spoke up after the other refused to, choosing instead to stare at him like they’d just seen a walking corpse. “You see, I’m a tad bit lost. If you could just point me towards the 27th-”.
In a jarringly hostile tone, the stranger spoke again, “What is your name?”.
“Um… my name?”, Wyve retorted, and yes there was some indignation in his tone, but the tonal shift had completely thrown out his already lackluster manners.
“Your. Name.”, they said, their voice icy, their gaze paralyzing, their poise intimidating. It was as if a snake had just discovered that a rabbit had been sitting in front of them unnoticed.
Wyve was no stranger to pissing others off (God knows why), but he only knew a couple people who held such a burning hatred for him, and they certainly wouldn’t need to ask for his name.
“W-Wyve.”
The atmosphere pressed its weight down harder on the boy, and he didn’t need an expectant look on his first-savior-then-interrogator’s face to go on. He got one anyway.
“Wyve Novare.”, and if he wasn’t sure giving this obviously pissed off stranger his name was bad idea before, he certainly knew now.
He felt a chilling sting in his lungs as his throat seized up in terror. From his peripheral vision to right in front of him, everything turned pitch-sable. Everything except them. He collapsed onto his knees, and despite being busy wheezing and greedily gasping for air, he still caught sight of that pure and dark hateful gaze.
“I should kill you.”, they muttered, eerily calm despite what they were declaring, “I really ought to.”
And as the life was squeezed out of him as ceremoniously as one steps on a bug. As his vision blurred, then dimmed, and then failed altogether.
The weight of death had been lifted from him as quickly as it had been set.
“… What shame.”, the sound of their voice, no less cold than before, faintly reached Wyve, “Selection has been locked in.”
“Good luck, Guided, and may you have an equally gruesome end as your-”, Wyve’s senses cut-off before another word was said.
///
Waking up for the second time in a day is certainly an odd feeling, and much odder when you were sent to sleep by… whatever the hell that was. Lying face down on cold hard wood wasn’t exactly where Wyve remembered losing consciousness, but it’s where he regained it. As he lifted his head from the sleeping-in-class position, he took in his surroundings- and whether or not they were safe. The smell of grinded coffee beans, the tasteful but subdued decorations, and the plethora of potted plants gave away that he had woken up in your run-of-the mill café.
… Strange, but passing out in a coffee shop and dreaming that would be acres more believable than a deserted copy of NYC being a real place. Stretching his limbs and blinking his drowsiness away, he began getting up from-
Everyone’s gone, again.
It was hard keeping his heart from sinking, so he didn’t. He let that fucker drown. Both his hands grasped at the upper half of his shirt, he could feel something pulling at his insides, and his breath shortened and shortened until there was only a second between inhaling and exhaling. His mind conjured up images of those cold black eyes, of the smoldering hatred directed at him, the feeling of his lungs squeezed between rocks.
He felt infinite relief when he saw others standing outside the café’s door. It lasted up until he saw the terror in their faces. They were all looking up, all looking at the same, dark crimson blanket above them. A humorless chuckle escaped him.
His heart was getting a free one-way ticket to hell's most dangerous rollercoaster.
///
A baseball bat made the head of its target mush beneath its chromium. The crunch would be sickening to someone who hadn’t heard it so many times. It was boring by now, just part of the job.
Dropping to a squat, she couldn’t help but grin at the sight of the idiot’s face flush with fear, silently pleading. Poor sod was terrified, but that’s exactly the mistake he made. Next time, he oughtta feel that fear before he messes with her and her crew again.
As entertaining as this was, the alley’s grime had admittedly gotten to her, and she wanted nothing more to grab the money and split. As she did just that, she noticed a blur, a movement in her peripheral. She looked around, and at once alarms started ringing. Detail by the detail, she felt something was wrong before she realized what it was. The moment it sunk in, she turned around, and the body that had been lying there, already rotting… it… it was gone.
Rushing out the alley, she was welcomed by violent crimson skies, and a crowd of equally confused others all gaping up at it.
“What the…”, she breathlessly muttered. “…hell?”, she finished.
She had seen death in the eyes of dope addicts on their last injection. She had stared into the desperation of snarling dogs, who above all, want to survive. She had been pitched life’s toughest struggles and came out alive. No matter the difficulty, she faced it all with a steady sense of confidence.
As she stared at those cruel black clouds, she couldn’t stop shaking.
///
The limousine was empty.
He sat there, looking at nothing in particular but thinking about too much at once. How had this happened? How had he ended here? He didn’t belong here. Part of him wanted to open the door to the still-moving car and leap out just to escape its suffocating hold over him. But… no, he was being ungrateful, childishly so. Childish, always so damn childish…
As his mind began to wander, it would eventually arrive at the same image it always did. Of that man, writhing on the chair, hands tied, and everything about him begged him to stop, to not squeeze that trigger, and the hand on his shoulder that reminded him he didn’t have a choice.
It took him a moment to realize the loud sound he had heard wasn’t the noise of a shot fired, but of tires screeching. As the prince’s surroundings became more vivid, he felt his breath return to him before he realized it had left, and he took some time to recuperate, gather his courage and open the car’s door.
The last thing he was expecting was a blood red moon ushering him out.
///
Water hit the floor, and the floor gasped in the pain each time.
Drip, it gasped. Drip, it gasped.
The rope was choking his wrists, and the excoriating hold would be more noticeable had he not forgotten it was there a long time ago.
Drip, it screamed. Drip, it screamed.
The floor wouldn’t stop yelling because the water kept hurting it. The water must have found the floor’s yelling amusing, ‘cuz it wouldn’t stop either.
Steps getting closer, getting closer. Stopping.
The water stopped dripping.
The floor stopped screaming.