(no subject)
She sleeps and in her sleep she dreams of a place where there were doors that aren’t doors and stairs that lead up and underground cars and lakes that are oceans which are lakes, but most especially where a very long wooden bar was revered.
She isn’t sure why when she walks through the place, listening to disjointed voice from twisted up faces.
They are arguing at a far table but no matter how long she walks she never gets any closer. Their words slide around in her mind, impossible to hold on and harder to make out. The doors were problematic, something about how the spelling is wrong. Divide and devour. We can’t...
Piece of cake, she says.
Except it isn’t her.
Her shoulder is nudged and she comes to blinking, in a chair before embers, only to have a broken bowl of luke warm soup thrust into her hands. She’s confused, disoriented. Where had she just? Was she sleeping? Had she fallen asleep, or was she sleeping now? Was she sleeping still? When was the last time she slept longer than a few strung together minutes between listening?
The tall man from before, with a piercing blue gaze, across a banked coal pit and into the shadows beyond those in the circle, watched her sharply. As though she would strike him like a snake; like he’s contemplating how to eat her for dinner.
She ignores him and the confusion.
She doesn’t know the next time she’ll have soup.
She goes on the way she arrived, cold in the heat, fearless in her terror. The next three town aren’t. They are rubble and ruins, blood dried sticky on sidewalks, seeping into the cracks, dried in thick layers. Filmy, grey ash hangs in the air, but even death’s smell is covered in the scent of fire just waiting to catch.
There are no bodies.
There are no body pieces.
It’s not a sign of hope.
It’s proof of ruthlessness.
She can’t recall when now is. She doesn’t worry about it.
She’s Terry Lena Alison Patricia Elaine Cynthia Brooke Nalo Anne Lolita Kristy.
The ground shivers and she in with a group of people, fighting down and dirty with someone at her back and sides. Sometimes she finds a new straggler, drags them off to place where there were others, but never tells them they’re safe.
When she needs new boots and clothes that aren’t torn and socks, especially socks, she strips them off of corpses. She’s rarely lucky enough to be stealing them off a whole one.
She’s Sarah Marie Jennifer Helen Teresa Angela Dinah Sinoha Clancy Jan Elizabeth.
She can’t recall what now is. She doesn’t worry about it.
She never takes off the revolver.
She can’t remember the last time it had a bullet.
She chooses a direction each time she wakes up and keeps going that way until she can’t.
She’s chasing down something she can’t remember that she’s forgotten or that she’s forgotten she was supposed to remember.
She says it’s the demons and the monsters.
She breaks bones like girls break nails.
It drives her onward relentless and hungry.
Latin doesn’t work here, but she still blesses the brackish water before she drinks it and has a stolen slender golden cross hanging between her breasts.
Her hair begins to tickle her elbows and a chunk is pulled out in a fight, not for the first time she thinks when her fingers find the nearly matching pock scar hidden in her hair. Unsettled she hacks it off to chin length with a large, ugly, dull machete she finds on the ground.
She leaves the hair to the wind.
Keeping and sharpening the machete.
She dreams in the dream that might be this dream or this might the dream of that of a sweetness rare. There’s another there. She has watery unfocused eyes and long brown hair that defies staying brushed.
Fingers brush over a shoulder and then a forearm unsteady and uncertain, like the skin will vanish. Or turn into flowers or flood or famine.
She tries to catches those fingers in her. Struggles, until she falls out of knarled tree.
Her fingers knotted in a faded friendship bracelet.
They tell her it’s harder alone.
Amid stories of how more people are being taken over, more camps are being subjected to a root out from the inside, from people they trust, from people who’d seemed perfectly sane and had never given them a reason to doubt.
She’ll take their drinks and their food and their words.
She knows she’s better on her own.
She’d rather wake up alone tomorrow morning, from the smallest minutes or hours of sleep, terrified she’s been spotted, than wake a city up while hacking a fourteen year old to pieces, the way she saw someone do this morning.
At least if she’s alone, they’ll be suspicious of her when she joins them;
If she joins them once she’s stopped being herself.
She isn’t sure why when she walks through the place, listening to disjointed voice from twisted up faces.
They are arguing at a far table but no matter how long she walks she never gets any closer. Their words slide around in her mind, impossible to hold on and harder to make out. The doors were problematic, something about how the spelling is wrong. Divide and devour. We can’t...
Piece of cake, she says.
Except it isn’t her.
Her shoulder is nudged and she comes to blinking, in a chair before embers, only to have a broken bowl of luke warm soup thrust into her hands. She’s confused, disoriented. Where had she just? Was she sleeping? Had she fallen asleep, or was she sleeping now? Was she sleeping still? When was the last time she slept longer than a few strung together minutes between listening?
The tall man from before, with a piercing blue gaze, across a banked coal pit and into the shadows beyond those in the circle, watched her sharply. As though she would strike him like a snake; like he’s contemplating how to eat her for dinner.
She ignores him and the confusion.
She doesn’t know the next time she’ll have soup.
She goes on the way she arrived, cold in the heat, fearless in her terror. The next three town aren’t. They are rubble and ruins, blood dried sticky on sidewalks, seeping into the cracks, dried in thick layers. Filmy, grey ash hangs in the air, but even death’s smell is covered in the scent of fire just waiting to catch.
There are no bodies.
There are no body pieces.
It’s not a sign of hope.
It’s proof of ruthlessness.
She can’t recall when now is. She doesn’t worry about it.
She’s Terry Lena Alison Patricia Elaine Cynthia Brooke Nalo Anne Lolita Kristy.
The ground shivers and she in with a group of people, fighting down and dirty with someone at her back and sides. Sometimes she finds a new straggler, drags them off to place where there were others, but never tells them they’re safe.
When she needs new boots and clothes that aren’t torn and socks, especially socks, she strips them off of corpses. She’s rarely lucky enough to be stealing them off a whole one.
She’s Sarah Marie Jennifer Helen Teresa Angela Dinah Sinoha Clancy Jan Elizabeth.
She can’t recall what now is. She doesn’t worry about it.
She never takes off the revolver.
She can’t remember the last time it had a bullet.
She chooses a direction each time she wakes up and keeps going that way until she can’t.
She’s chasing down something she can’t remember that she’s forgotten or that she’s forgotten she was supposed to remember.
She says it’s the demons and the monsters.
She breaks bones like girls break nails.
It drives her onward relentless and hungry.
Latin doesn’t work here, but she still blesses the brackish water before she drinks it and has a stolen slender golden cross hanging between her breasts.
Her hair begins to tickle her elbows and a chunk is pulled out in a fight, not for the first time she thinks when her fingers find the nearly matching pock scar hidden in her hair. Unsettled she hacks it off to chin length with a large, ugly, dull machete she finds on the ground.
She leaves the hair to the wind.
Keeping and sharpening the machete.
She dreams in the dream that might be this dream or this might the dream of that of a sweetness rare. There’s another there. She has watery unfocused eyes and long brown hair that defies staying brushed.
Fingers brush over a shoulder and then a forearm unsteady and uncertain, like the skin will vanish. Or turn into flowers or flood or famine.
She tries to catches those fingers in her. Struggles, until she falls out of knarled tree.
Her fingers knotted in a faded friendship bracelet.
They tell her it’s harder alone.
Amid stories of how more people are being taken over, more camps are being subjected to a root out from the inside, from people they trust, from people who’d seemed perfectly sane and had never given them a reason to doubt.
She’ll take their drinks and their food and their words.
She knows she’s better on her own.
She’d rather wake up alone tomorrow morning, from the smallest minutes or hours of sleep, terrified she’s been spotted, than wake a city up while hacking a fourteen year old to pieces, the way she saw someone do this morning.
At least if she’s alone, they’ll be suspicious of her when she joins them;
If she joins them once she’s stopped being herself.