“Oh…” Calypso had to fight against her shaking vocal tone, against her body trembling and stuck within inaction. “Oh Alice, nooo…”

She used to have smooth black raven hair, that crested down to her neck with a strain that curled down, crested against her forehead. Faint freckles on the cheeks that complimented her ivory skin. Always wearing tees that had no sleeves, showed her midriff, tied together with various black or camo cargo pants and those thick military boots crusted with dry dirt.

The girl was destroyed. All of that, destroyed.

Her side was mauled, her arm just gone, her side taken a massive chunk, and the side of her face folded into itself, with her hair hanging and only shielding the mess that was her gored eye. Her clothes in tatters, her neck having lesions, and the side of her mouth cut to make a makeshift smile.

“Hey, hey…” Alice turned to smile, naturally. “I looked like this on the inside anyways, Cally—I mean hey--in fact I look waaaaay better here versus outside-outside… But hey. There’s no need to do all of that, trust me…”

Calypso collapsed into a fit of tears, onto her knees. Her eyes flooded but she could not look away, no matter how much she wanted to.

Alice desperately wanted to reach out, to coo her best friend… But once she saw her only arm in her crippled field of view, she retracted, grimacing sadly.

“As much as I want to keep you from freaking out, there’s really no time,” Alice reported, desponded. “So, look, you have to listen, you have to trust me—”

“I’ve killed you…” the silly, stupid girl sobbed out pathetically. “I’ve left you to die and I’ve killed you—”

“Look, and if you keep crying like you did back there—then you’ve learned nothing!”

Calypso froze, trembling. Alice, wincing despite her face being damaged and limited in expression.

“I’m sorry, even dead, I still flip my lid…” Alice waved her arm, flapped down in defeat. “Unlocked the secrets of the universe and shit, and yet I’m still fucking angry for no fucking reason… But Cally. If you truly want to make this up to me, then you fight. Here and now. But you have to listen to me.”

The girl was still tearing up, sniffling, wallowing in her physical misery. It wasn’t until she covered her sniveling mouth, was when she nodded in understanding.

Alice gripped the normal part of her head. “Okay… Right. Like, centuries of knowledge I gleamed in vague amount of time and condensing that in layman’s terms… So uh.”

She motioned her finger towards Calypso, “We’re in the screaming death throughs of your soul… Okay no, that’s totally gonna make things more confusing—”

“Wha--?”

“Christmas Carol!” Alice squeezed her eye shut. “That kinda shit, what they meant about your life flashing before your eyes… The soul, your soul, it’s everything from memories to dreams. Where we are now, it’s the greatest hits. This isn’t the afterlife, this is inside of you.”

“Even if I can buy—well, wrap my head around the fact that souls exists… Why are you here?”

A warm, tender smile spread across Alice’s lips.

“I’m here because… Despite everything, you grabbed a piece of me and held me close, Cally.”

“W…what…?” Calypso looked at, studying her friend, as much as it hurt to look.

“I got killed and my soul shattered… You held on to one of the shards that scattered out,” as Alice explained it, her tone got softer by the word. And even her maimed smile, it perfectly conveyed wistfulness. “That would’ve been it for me, no chance, game over. So yeah, once again… You saved my ass again, girl…”

It calmed Calypso, both that sight and the very idea. It was her time to smile, genuinely, as she felt her face somehow run more hot.

But Alice’s expression turned dark. “… Which is why it’s too late for me, those bastards more or less killed me twice in an instant. Physically and spiritually...”

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The maimed girl bit whatever was left of her lip, before continuing.

“But what you’re going through, it’s so much worse…”

Pointing up, hearing the roars and screeches of tires, Alice continued. “That thing up there… It’s inside of you now. Creeped inside of your soul and eating you from the inside out. The reason why your soul’s screaming out because it’s on the verge of bursting. And once it… Once it…”

The maimed girl hesitated, what’s left of her face trembling until it tightened, as she forced herself to bite her lip before screaming out.

“It’s gonna wear you like some fucked up suit! Once it finishes eating your soul, it’s gonna take all of this! Your memories, your personality, your lame word jokes…your stupid ‘I’m so smart’ smile…”

The specter of a girl never looked in pain until those words left those lips. “Everything. Just to use you like some cheap ski mask so that it can rob and eat more humans…”

There was no clear, definable expression that was etched onto Calypso’s face. Aspects of mock horror, tensity of fear, wide eyes of insanity, mouth agape with disbelief, brow furrowing with confusion. All blended together and traded spaces across her sweating, tired face. There was nothing to say, because there was nothing to understand in any of that statement Alice made.

“But there is a way, Cally… I promise you, there’s a way and as soon as we’re done talking, we have to do it and fast. There’s pieces of your soul that’s already been broken off—why these places are cracking away, since the bastard is set to burst, it flings off the debris as an effect. If we gather enough portions or even just a big piece of your soul? You’ll be able to fight back. Drive the bastard away, kill him. You can walk away from this and live…”

“…T…That wasn’t the plan, though…”

Alice just looked at the girl, now looking down while her hands were firmly planted onto the concrete ground as her shoulders acted out her sniveling.

“We came here because… You were sick of it and I… I wasn’t strong enough to handle things anymore… Why do you think I’m going to do any of this? Why can’t I give up…? And be with you and just let this be…”

Calypso looked up at the specter of her friend, talking to her as if she were an agent of a higher power, so she could answer what was gnawing at her as long as she could remember.

“Why did I survive…? Why am I still here, when I wasn’t strong enough to begin with…?”

The hand of Alice quickly cupped Calypso’s cheek, causing the girl to still. There and then.

“Speaking from the other side of the fence… I wish I could take it back. But I can’t. You can.”

Calypso wavered in her words, and couldn’t maintain her stare without mewling softly into whimpers. The fact that her only meaningful connection to the world has been forever severed. All of that sinking in.

“Cally…” Alice smiled, halfheartedly. “The fact you’re here now—the fact we’re doing this, is because you’re strong enough for this… This doesn’t just happen to everyone. People don’t even know what happened to them before they’re gone to these fucked up things. Like it or not, there’s a part of you that’s holding out. It’s your job to figure out why, because you’re living through this.”

The maimed girl couldn’t help but stroke her thumb against Calypso’s wet, flushed cheek. And Calypso couldn’t help but to take comfort in that, leaning into her dear friend’s hand as she closed her eyes.

The sounds of crushing cars were getting heavier, noticeable, causing the pair to look up shakingly, darting away from each other.

“awhfuckright--We have to find that piece, Cally—” Alice looked at her friend. “It’s like a scavenger hunt—one that you planned like six months ago and you’re trying to remember what the spots were—think, what’s the place you associate with the most right here, right now?”

“Uh—I—Um,” Calypso panickily spat out, before ruffling her own brown locks. “Are there any more details—any things I need to know before we do this--?”

“CALLY!” Alice waved her arm comical. “I KNOW YOU’RE ANAL ABOUT STUFF BUT LITERAL LIFE OR DEATH ON THE LINE--!”

“Alice,” Calypso bluntly began. “You’re here, as a specter, telling me that not only has a monster killed me, but has jumped inside of me to finish the job by eating my soul. I feel like I’m allowed.”

The maim girl stood—or rather floated there, twisting the little of her lips in a bout of being stumped.

“Y’know Cally, you always have a way of making me feel dumber than I thought I was—"

Calypso eyed the horizon, thinking, before seeing the place she figured this piece would rest.

The poor girl crawled on the concrete, towards the first massive pillar that held up the bridge, and was the sight of so many rants, conversations…

“But seriously, of course you’d chose here of all places,” Alice snarked behind her, Calypso briefly pondered how she could walk now, or rather float.

Instead, her mind was focused on what was before her. It was odd, Calypso simply saw the pillar—it’s thick concrete base, the white double cylinders that had their own series of “mini-bridges”. But the structure itself began to shift, glow, and become a mirage of sorts, the girl absentmindedly reached out towards this visage.

Ethereal echoes of those past conversations manifested, those moments of her and Alice finally having sanctuary to themselves. Gestures of excitement, mirth, mostly anger or depression.

Winton Bridge was between their neighborhoods. Calypso happily crossed it to visit, and Alice did the same. Of course this turned into their meeting place. Their home away from home.

It was at the point that these images overlapped, becoming this brilliant light.

“Good!” Alice cheered on. “Just like that, Cally! ...Whatever you just did, keep doing that--!”

Calypso shook her head, glancing about to see what her friend was talking about.

Only to feel something in her dainty hand, racing her eyes downward towards her open palm.

A small shard of a crystal, pale pink with milky white wave detail. Those waves to slowly move, animating within the structure.

And before she could comment on how beautiful it was, the monster finally got through boring down the bridge. The last thing Calypso could hear barring the crumbling of rock, was her named screamed out.