Inside of a crowded two room apartment, a young woman was hunched over in her bed, staring transfixed at a laptop screen almost as dusty as the rest of the room, silent and unmoving save for the occasional clacking of a keyboard.

Marie’s grip on her blade tightened as she crept up on the farmer, his neck seemed soft, and his stance seemed relaxed and thoroughly unprepared. This was a man whose body was hardened not by war or callous violence, but by a life of tilling the rocky but fertile soil near blackreach forest. Not a man you’d expect to see tear another limb from limb, but he was part of the mob nonetheless, who hacked off pieces of her love as trophies, reagents or talismans to carry back to their own homes.

A monster’s heart, vile and contemptible when it beated within its own chest, but a precious protective talisman or reagent outside of it, doubly so if it as the rumors say, still beat outside of it.

There was a moment of pause as the woman reviewed her own work, and found it wanting, pressing against the old laptop’s faded backspace as she simply concluded that it seemed too monologuey, monologey? Her girl was traumatized and was about to do something mildly concerning but she didn’t want her to sound like a supervillain, well, not yet anyway.

It was on a sunny day like any other that Marie entered that man’s farm with sword in hand, she didn’t know his name, or at least tried her best to forget it even whenever it came to mind. She still wasn’t sure if she could do it if she had his name, even after everything they said he’d done, she wasn’t there for it of course, not because she couldn’t bear to look, but because she had to make her escape (or else her sacrifice wouldn’t have mattered).

But she had heard the rumors, of the members of the mob, the men and women who ripped her body apart in the end, for talismans, reagents, the lot, because a monster’s body was only valued after its death.

Another pause, was this too impersonal? Too defeated? This was revenge she was writing for sure, but it was a shaky one still overly burdened with morality, not the righteous bout of cleansing but ultimately hollow and self defeating spurt of violence she should probably be writing about.

I mean, wasn’t Marie supposed to be enraged here? This was one of the men who tore her lover’s twice dead body apart! Maybe she should scrap it all again, and start over again, yes, maybe something in media res this time. With a bit of thought, a farm became an empty street, the day turned into night, and a page magically became blank again with a stroke of a few keys before her work continued.

‘There really wasn’t much thought put into it’ Marie realised after the fact. He was simply standing there, drunk off of his mind and waving her heart around in his hand as if it was a mere trophy, boasting to a mostly empty street of the great monster that had recently been slain (by his hand and no one else he might add) after getting tossed out of the bar. She had, without really thinking, simply drawn her blade and cut him down where he stood, and took the heart, hand and all.

‘This wasn’t working’, Jeanne thought, as her eyes darted between the fragmented pieces of the narrative she was still struggling to piece together and held it up to the poetry in motion already fading from her head, and it made her… fidget, delete another line, write out another sentence, look up whether a word meant what she thought it does, glance over the outline again and again, anything to avoid giving up.

Until a faint but insistent knocking on her door snapped her out of her fugue, her eyes immediately snapping into her new focus, as her hazy mind and tired body wondered why someone would dare to interrupt her at 1 AM in the morning. Was there a fire somewhere in the building? Or was a freak tornado coming to wipe the slate clean? Either way she didn’t know why they had to bother her about it.

She had half a mind to ignore it and get back to her work, but the knocking only grew louder, the sound stifling any stray thoughts and moments of almost genius her addled mind had tried to reach. Until with a loud groan, Jeanne turned over in bed, ungracefully scrambling onto her feet, sending plastic bottles and empty instant noodle cups clattering onto the dusty, sticky floor as she made her way over.

Along the way Jeanne realised that her body was more tired than she expected, and even with the righteous indignant rage doing its best to keep her propped up, by the time she arrived at the door she was already out of breath, and her body felt heavy as she pressed it against the door with a notable thump.

She took in a deep breath as she peered through the small pinhole, and saw the familiar form of her next door neighbour Vera with a worried expression on her face, now framed by short red dyed hair that made her miss the greens and blues of last month.

Muffled as it was by her door, she could still hear her say, “Jeanne, are you there?” or something along those lines, it was getting a bit hard to focus on anything really, but Jeanne could still feel herself letting out an affirmative grunt as she unlocked the door and swung it open, nearly falling flat on her ass in the process.

The first thing she noticed was that the lights in the hall weren’t broken as she originally thought, the sun was shining in the sky already, and it seared her eyes a little as it filtered into the hall through the nearby window. The second thing she noticed, as Vera moved forward to catch her, was Vera’s casual state of dress. She had nothing but a long daster covering her body, and there was still a slight oily sheen on her face, making it abundantly clear that Vera had decided to check up on her first thing in the morning.

“Whoa! Are you okay?” Vera asked, as she pulled back, letting Jeanne steady herself against the now opened door.

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“Uh, yeah?” Jeanne lied unconvincingly in a weak voice, putting on a slight businesslike smile as she craned up to Vera's face.

“Are you sure?” she asked again, squinting a little into the unlit mess that was Jeanne’s room, “You’re looking pale as a ghost Jeanne, you sure you don’t need any help with any-”

“No, no I’m fine, I’m fine!,” Jeanne said, half yelling by the end of it, “Um, I mean, I’m okay, I’m just a little, tired, is all.”

“.... okay, it’s just that I haven’t seen you around for a little while, and if you’ve come down with something from your business trip you know you could always ask me t-”

“Hold on, what business trip?”

“The last few days, right? The lights were off so I assumed you were out of the house.”

“No I’ve been right here actually.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah I’ve just, been busy okay? And what’s all this about anyway?”

“Can’t I just check in on my favorite authorly neighbor every now and then?” Vera said, half teasing and half asking.

“I guess, but that can’t be all right?”

Vera looked away a little, “.... no, well don’t take this the wrong way okay? I would have checked up on you either way! You’ve been gone for long enough that I was thinking of calling the police on your house y’know? But actually there’s a party downstairs tonight and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me?”

“A… party?”

“Yeah! Did you know that someone moved in next to your unit recently?”

“N-no? When did that happen?”

“Last week apparently! But our new neighbor’s been pretty busy so she hasn’t been around much so she wanted to make up for it to all of us. She handed out these flyers all over the place yesterday, didn’t you get one?” She said, holding up a predominantly blue plastic flyer that made Jeanne suddenly very conscious of a familiar material scrunched up under her feet.

“No, but that’s a little weird isn’t it? Who does that these days?”

“Well I think it’s really sweet actually! Most people who live in apartments these days,” she coughs loudly as she mutters, “especially around your age,” before continuing with”Just act like their neighbors don’t exist really, so it’s nice to know that someone else your age’s got good manners.”

There’s a slight grimace on Jeanne’s face as she notes, “I guess… but I dunno if I want to go to a party, you know I’m actually still a busy wit-”

“And I think she’d be your type too.”

“What.”

“Your… friend, she broke up with you right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your friend, you know, the nice tall lady with the long black hair who used to stay over all the time, she broke up with you right?”

“Uh…”

“Oh, wa-was that supposed to be a secret?” Vera asked with genuine confusion in her voice, before she continued with, “Or did I… nevermind, I’m sorry just, give it some thought okay? You look rough Jeanne, I think you could really use a break to help you uh, get through whatever it is.”

“Secret? No we weren-I’m not going through anything okay? I’m fine! I’m perfectly fine!”

“Okay, okay, look you don’t have to come or anything, but just take the flyer at least, I’m serious, you could use a break,” she reaches out with the flyer, brushing it against Jeanne’s unresponsive arm a couple of times.

“No just… Thank you for checking up on me alright? But I’m not going.”

“Okay,” Vera said, pouting a little even as she pulls her arm back, “You know I’m only doing this because I care about you right?”

“Sure, good afternoon Vera.”

“Jeanne it’s 7 in the mor-” Vera said, right before Jeanne closed the door on her, and let out a long sigh, as her foot ground against the various flyers on the floor. Her neighbor was… overbearing sometimes, well, most of the time actually, she always means well at least, but really all she wants right now is to be left alone again.

She locked the door once more, her mind idly focusing on the sound of footsteps moving away as her body slumped down to pick up the trash from her floor, sorting through unpaid bills, ISP ads, and laundry and catering services until she spots one almost gleaming blue flyer among the new pile, and she found herself picking it up instinctively. Her eyes widened the moment she saw the woman on the page.

She was unmistakably her, but also not, the woman on the page had her hair, her face, and her frame, but her skin was paler, she carried herself differently, arrayed herself in a suit she never would have worn, and her eyes shone with a brilliant green that she never had. All of this under a different name too, ‘Helena Hart’ her best friend’s doppelganger in the flesh.

It was a trick, it must have been, a bit of photo manipulation or camera work, a cruel joke played on her by… who exactly? Who would even stand to gain from any of this?

It was a question with no real answer, and as her eyes glazed over the fuzzier details, all of the little words on the flyer that eluded her all of a sudden, Jeanne muttered a simple, hopeful, “But what if it was really her?” to no one in particular. Before she stumbled back, the exhaustion of a day without night pressing full force against her mind and body as the flyer slipped out of her hands, and her legs forgot what standing felt like.

Her throat was dry, her stomach was eating itself, and her head bounced ‘gently’ off a full plastic bag as she fell flat on the hard floor. She blinked once, twice, and forgot that her bed was a few steps away.