I momentarily recovered from the shock of the unprocessable scene before me, and though I was exhausted wholly of my capacity for horror: I was still gripped with a tangible unease, and so I rolled away from that grisly affair! I’d plopped with all of my weight onto my back, and from the discomfort that stabbed into me: it would seem that I had not quite escaped the mess of splintered bone.

  Immediately, I forced myself back up to my knees, and I grimaced as a small chip of bone was held to pressure against my patella, but I nonetheless found a small patch of the floor near me that wasn’t covered with an assortment of scattered human remains, and I collapsed onto it with the fleeting strength I’d left to me. I was so tired then, that I could almost have slept right there where I lay, as I was quite at the end of my ability to endure my continued awareness.

  Not that I was comfortable even then, for the varnished hardwood of the floorboards wasn’t a joy to lay on at the best of times, let alone when a person is covered in someone else’s congealed blood, with bits of drying organs stuck to their face, and scraps of skin tangled in their hair!

  But my eyes were not to be deterred from their closing, for I was exhausted, and although I dared not to sleep, even as weary as I then felt: I did achieve some manner of restfulness for a while. However, the feeling of uncleanliness got to be too much for me before too long, for how could I easily rest while so smothered in another person’s blood and guts?

  “Rianna?” I started with a croak, “Could you eat-” and I heard an absolutely bristling squawk from inside me at my word choice so ‘soon’ after that sickening performance, so I hurriedly tried to mask what I’d said, “-Clean! Could you clean all this up?”

  It was clear that she’d been insulted by the equivalence I’d made in haste, if not strictly in error, and she wasn’t about to let me sweep it aside and bury what I’d just done! While we were both fixating on my lamentable usage of the word ‘eat’, she gave me a disdainful retort, “The last time I did something for you, you ate it!”

  If she’d meant to shame me: she’d succeeded, for I shuddered still to think of what I’d done, and her emphasis scored right into the guilt and self-contempt that had formed around my heart! We were each quiet again a moment, as we were both regretful for the things we’d said, and we knew well how hurtful we’d been to each other in that exchange.

  My tongue nervously licked my lips, and it unfortunately came back with that dreadfully sweet taste I wished I could forget, and my chest heaved with the revulsion that I should still find it so appetizing! I was upset that I’d hurt her with what I’d said, and as the awkward silence between us stretched on, I found that I was too weary to bear with the temptation that had settled upon my own lips for even a second longer, and so I begged her apology,

  “Sorry Rianna… I didn’t mean to say that,” I’d begun, and I took a pause to wet my dry lips, only to come back with still more of that savory foulness, “But please, I can’t stand having this filth on me any longer!”

  I felt the blackness stir inside her, the sensation was something between an ooze and a slight wind, and while she apologized to me as well: I was rather focusing on the increasing sensitivity I seemed to be having towards the subtle things happening inside her entirely inhuman body.

  Feeling her voice tremor as she apologized was beginning to rather nag at me; I felt so much that I could feel her talking as if with my very own throat! Before I could wonder for long about the phenomenon however: my attention was once again consumed with the expanding blackness that came out, and my jaw clenched tight at the sight!

  Though I was fast becoming more familiar with her newest 'talent' for removing filth: it was still the eeriest thing I’d ever seen her do. A terribly useful technique, as I shuddered to think of how I might've otherwise been covered in gore and unable to clean myself for a long while, but that isn’t to say it was at all a joyful experience.

  I shivered as my clothes were stolen away from me again, and a chill swept across my exposed skin — it would seem that the shutters weren't quite so well sealed as they might have been, and autumn’s cold drew my arms to wrap around myself — and I could feel the dried blood peeling off of me, leaving my skin pink and raw in those places where the gore had caked on.

  I glanced at the blackness as it receded from my body, which drew my attention to a still stranger phenomenon, and I was greatly startled! The scars which had littered my hands, the small blemishes that once scored my skin by the dozen… the acid burns from when the lab exploded, and even the wounds I vaguely remembered recently inflicting upon myself: all of them were missing, as if eaten up by the darkness!

  Paranoia took hold of me for a moment, and though I was able to reason away that this was far from the strangest happening I’d experienced in recent times: a small seed of it remained buried within my heart, for those scars had marked my life, and I felt strangely defiled by their sudden and unasked removal!

  Altogether, this process made me feel so vulnerable and small before her, and the mighty new power she possessed was making me increasingly uncomfortable. That kernel of paranoia ate away at me, bringing unbidden torments to mind that wondered at which new and more terrible manners she might discover by which to further molest my person!

  I tried to calm myself from these irrational thoughts, and I reminded myself that it was far better than being covered in gore, as I greatly appreciated her new dark powers in this specific circumstance… but my mind’s fears struck back, and I found that I could only be relieved that she hadn’t yet invented a method by which to touch me directly, though given her interest:sthere was probably only so long until she would have me completely under her diabolical thumb!

  The blackness danced around the room for a while after, turning teeth into dust, and swallowing up the splintered bones I’d managed to leave behind, which brought me to wonder: how did I manage to eat so much of that man? He was twice my size and then some, and yet I am to believe I swallowed so much matter inside me? Where would it even fit?! The snapping sound came back to my memory, and it was a horrible-enough recollection to make me shudder, so I’d surely broken those bones, though I didn’t know how I’d managed such: they were as big as my arm!

  While I had been delving into these mysteries, she’d finished cleaning up the room such that it was perhaps more sterile than when Bart and Lisset had first built it, despite having just had a man devoured within it. Again, that thought brought to my mind, ‘how?’, for it seemed to defy all the laws of nature I’d ever known, and then a few of Heaven’s besides.

  A feeling of excitement bubbled inside me, though a dark shadowy undercurrent could be felt as though just under the surface, and a few more interesting feelings came with them; another frightfully strange effect that was occurring inside me with increasing regularity… or was it that I had only become more aware of them, as these feelings mirrored my own almost in exact, and yet they felt so supremely alien as if they came from her instead!

  Patently absurd, all of these things, but as I pondered of these impossible truths, and had nearly come to a conclusion that these strange mysteries might be as unsolvable as they were bizarre, she’d excitedly threatened me as was surely inevitable, as if I’d been expecting it from her all the while before she spoke,

  “Mmmm, no, you should definitely stay just like this, and… oh! There’s a bed and everything!~”

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  Sweet Mercy, even though I’d somehow seen it coming: there’s a damned time and a place, Arianna, and this was neither, so I told her, “Rianna, I’ve eaten a man today. I’m not in the mood.”

  “But that’s all the more reason!” She’d immediately argued back to me with enough intensity to be called desperate, and I found myself oddly drawn by an intense loneliness and fear twisted by that alien feeling, “Don’t you see?! I can’t just… I need to forget, I…“

  Forget? I wondered what she might need so terribly to forget that I felt such a heaviness upon my own heart? Her voice had trailed off and became weak, and she seemed closer to tears with every faltering word she whispered to me, “I couldn’t… I couldn’t close my eyes, at all, during that, I saw it all, and… and Mira: I need you; I need to touch you, and I just… I just can’t!”

  Sympathy swept up inside me as she wept with heaving sobs, and a dreadful sadness erupted from within me, and so my tears flowed once again. I nestled her red gem against my chest, for I didn’t know how I could possibly console her when almost all our usual methods, whether they be holding each other close, or comforting each other with chaste kisses: they were impossible without a body by which to touch.

  Still, I couldn’t leave her to cry out of the same frustrations I’d been feeling since I’d first found her missing, so I hummed our lullabies to her, and since I wanted some comfort myself: made my way over to the bed with my eyes laden with sadness and tiredness.

  As I sat down, I told her I loved her, and I gently stroked the red crystal she’d become, all the while singing our love songs, and in time her quaking sobs subsided to hiccups, and her aggrieved wailing faded into sniffles.

  I did feel immensely strange to be sitting upon Bart and Lisset’s bed, especially while naked, but I overcame my odd feelings for her sake, and I’d propped myself up against a few pillows. I prayed that I wouldn’t set her off again with this, Mercy knows but my tongue had done enough damage today, but I knew well of the power distraction held over sorrow, and so I had to try; I’d do anything if only to see her happy again, and so I’d started,

  “Rianna~, can you see me right now?”

  A few sniffs came out of her, but she’d responded nonetheless with a mumble, “Yeah?”

  “Then,” I began, deliberately pausing to change my posture — this really would’ve been easier to do if I only knew more about how she saw the world now — so that she’d instinctively pay closer attention, “how do I look?~”

  I was able to hear her audibly gulp, quite a trick considering she was made of precious stone now, and I had the strangest sensation that she was trying to avoid my eyes when she’d murmured as if embarrassed, “… Pretty.”

  ‘Unable to close her eyes’, unspokenly, she’d meant that she’d seen ‘everything’ while I’d shredded that man to pieces, and to what degree that meant I didn’t yet know, but it was a terrible fate nonetheless, and I was ever so remorseful to have inflicted it upon her, but it could also be the implement by which I could heal the wound, perhaps to clean it out before it festered into a trauma!

  Functionally, she was a captive audience, and I’d caught her simply by existing, so I took a deep breath, and I pondered for a while if I should consider another method for this, but before I could help it, I’d caught myself speaking,

  “Oh? Do you like what you’re looking at there, Rianna?”

  A strangled cry escaped her, whether of offense or shame didn’t matter as I’d begun a treatment method I couldn’t afford to stop for her sake, and I wasn’t even close to finished,

  “Since when have you been such a… voyeur?”

  Panic and a thousand related feelings suddenly shot into me through that strange connection I seemed to have with her, and she cried out in protest,

  “What?! A voye-NO! No, I’m not listening to this!”

  Abashed as ever when pressed, I felt a relieved smile forming on my lips, and I let my eyes close; I imagined we were home, having as normal a day as any, and I found that teasing her in this manner was bringing back a peace in me that had been lost that night. It seemed that this treatment would be healing for the both of us, and though I couldn't see her face so as to tailor my taunting, it would seem that I didn’t need to anymore,

  “Oh, but you just can’t stop looking, can you Rianna?”

  “Miiiraa!”

  Shock and horror and excitement poured in at once from the strange contact I seemed to feel from her, and I couldn’t resist any longer her longing for me,

  “Are you not the one holding my clothes hostage?”

  She spluttered, and that blackness flowed out in objection from the gem around my neck, and it fell to the bed where it pooled into a flowery blue sundress, one of my favorites for summer wear, and I was immensely amused to see she’d been thoughtful enough to include undergarments this time.

  “You… a voyeur…” I’d certainly aroused anger in her voice, and it came to a swell as she haughtily explained to me, “Mira, you can’t just call people voyeurs!”

  That wasn’t how I saw it, though, so I told her, “But I wasn’t calling just anyone a voyeur, I was addressing someone who’d been actively engaging in voyeurism, and besides, I do wonder what other titles apply to persons who steal a lady’s clothes?”

  “This was all for the clothes, wasn’t it?” She complained to me, with a heightening agitation, “You’re horrible! You don’t even care about my feelings!”

  I tapped my ankles patiently, and kept my silence for a number of seconds, wondering when she’d notice. Today had been rather extraordinarily hard on us both, and she was right to have suggested that method for burning away all the stresses we’d gone through to get here. We were alive, in the sense that we were both dead but still going through the motions, and there were certainly some motions which were better than others.

  Even though I wasn’t keen on it at first — though more for the moral implications than any actual distaste; it was strange indeed how relatively unaffected I seemed to be from having literally eaten a man, which was something I’d never anticipated happening in any manner before, let alone… every, Mercy! The thought alone is enough to bring a shudder of disgust to me! — but I really did need her, even if we couldn't touch in quite the same manner we once did.

  “You’re…” she finally spoke, though I heard her swallowing again — I really did have to wonder about these subtle things that I was somehow able to feel from her; we were in dire need of a conversation, and soon, but not while I was experiencing such a yearning from her — and her voice was almost raspy with desire as she continued, “You’re not… You actually aren’t wearing them.”

  A warm smile slipped onto my face, as I couldn’t contain the bubbly feelings that warmed my cheeks. I didn’t know how this would work at all, but I longed for her, and whatever happened: we’d work through it together, as always.

  That eerie blackness spread throughout the room and into every corner, and before my vision had quite darkened behind a curtain of cloth: I’d caught glimpses of so many unspeakable implements, and I knew this evening would be equal parts magical and wearying. I loved her so, and in case she couldn’t feel my love for her as well as I could her lust for me, I had to let her know,

  “I love you, Rianna.”