The Ends Ch. 15
Date: 29.12.2008
Keywords: The, 15, Ends, Ch.,
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Charlotte shoved the child back, wincing a bit as he landed hard on his ass on the floor and then curled up into a ball to cry. She reached out to the stone with trembling fingers and looked at how it glowed now. Again she could feel the pull of it, she could feel the pull of the man being trapped inside of it, as she'd felt her own brother, Nemesio inside of it. Part of her felt heady and excited about it, as if she'd had too much sugar, full of vigor beyond a bump of cocaine.
Her hand felt over the stony nubs along the rock, dancing through the flames that did not burn and she breathed in the powers that it held. She looked down at the man but it didn't seem a good idea to bring him back. Slowly she moved up to her knees and took the stone to the woman. She wasn't sure what to do and she felt the stone cool and quail at being pushed to the woman. Setting it down, she put her hands over the woman and called to her, "Arise! ARISE!" she commanded the woman's cooled body, but nothing happened. She moved the stone up and down the woman's length and called to her with a shaky voice, but still the dead woman remained inanimate.
She thought for a moment. How had this worked with her brother? She'd called him, but the stone hadn't been present with his corpse. As she closed her eyes to call to the woman she found it hard to concentrate on her soul. It was as if her thought process was a sieve and all that she could think about was the dead man on the other side of the room. That man she'd inadvertently killed with a knife. It was accidental to be sure: he was coming for her. What could she have done? She had little choice in the matter and in the end it was almost more of a suicide on his part, she reasoned.
What she heard first was nothing: the silencing of the child's sobs and the dead stillness of a morgue. Then she heard movement, as if something very unnatural were happening in the room and her body felt light and as if the ground were shifting beneath her. The body's movement was muffled and bones were creaking as his flesh was stiff but made to move despite that. With much trepidation, Charlotte slowly opened her eyes and moved them in the direction of the noise. Sure enough, she saw the back of the man rising from the floor. Her eyes widened and then darted to the child who was sitting in a catatonic state, watching with horror as the man who killed his mother, who threatened him, literally rose from death.
The man stood and turned around and bowed low to Charlotte. "Yes, mistress, you called and I have returned," he said to her. She could feel heat rising to her cheeks as her breath heaved in her chest. She certainly hadn't intended at all to call him, but there he was. Her face turned pensive and she said out loud, "I suppose that in the end I have to have a hand in the death for me to call the person back." The statement was more for her own edification than for anyone present to hear it.
The father nodded, "You killed me, and now you have returned me. I am in your debt," he said to her and then his eyes darted to the child who had risen to his feet and was moving towards him.
"Dad?" he asked cautiously.
The man shook his head; his voice was rough and raspy from his lesion but still very audible. "No, not anymore. I serve a higher power now. You are nothing to me," he said as he looked through the boy for a moment more and then turned his head painfully back to Charlotte who simply looked horrified and shook her head. This wasn't what she'd wanted, not at all what she'd intended.
Rick's head turned and he looked at Charlotte and he stared at her with his eyes blazing with treachery. "You!" he cried and he ran towards her in anger, jumping upon her, throwing punches and brutal words at her.
In reaction, Charlotte's arms went out to hold him back. She tripped back over his mother's dead body and slammed into the wall, setting her head to pound and spin. It caused her to twist her ankle painfully, which she barely even noticed. With the force of her body's twisted balance, she shoved the boy back towards the kitchen. Rick gasped at the blow against his chest when her hands reached out more to balance herself against him, but instead ended up shoving him hard in the opposite direction.
Rick stumbled backwards; tripping over where the rug ended and the tile began and fell against the glass of the square table, slamming it hard with the back of his neck. Charlotte averted her eyes as she watched the corner of the table protrude from the boy's jugular. The glass broke and the jagged edge sent a spatter of blood down his shirt and pooled on the carpet.
Charlotte covered her eyes at the horror of it and sobbed, thinking of the boy, of all she'd meant to do and what had actually happened. To her horror, after a few seconds the boy started to move as a result of her concentration on him. However, his attempts to right himself seemed to further impale him on the table until his head slid off cleanly with a sickening and liquid sucking sound and then made a meaty thud on the floor.
Her eyes opened slowly and she peeked out through her fingers to see that the boy was dead, completely now. She could feel somewhere within her that there was no use in trying to call him back. The severed head was the end of it, the end of his corporeal story and the end of the zombie that could or would follow her. With shaking hands she reached down to the bloodied knife and looked up at the man who had been his stepfather. Her body was shuddering with what she had to do. And in her acceptance of having to do it, her eyes soon grew cold and malicious.
The man, sensing what she was about to do moved to his hands and knees. "I am your servant, you may do with my body as you wish," he said to her.
She winced at this; it did not necessarily make the act easier. The blade was dull, but she needed to do this, she needed to know if these things were to die finally when their heads were removed. Also she didn't really want this thing following her around. Her brother following her was creepy enough. She grabbed onto the man's hair and pulled his head back to expose his neck. With the serrated edge of the knife started to move the blade back and forth over the cooling flesh.
Though it only took about 10 minutes, it seemed like hours of her standing there sawing at the man's neck. First, she severed the flesh parts all around and then finally chiseled at the bone. But when it was finally done, his head lolled and then fell off of his neck and whatever had animated his corpse left. She sighed in an odd relief as she wiped her hands free of the black, thick, dead blood onto her dark green dress. The souls were still there in the stone, she could feel them, feel the rush of their essence within her, but their bodies were once and for all dead.
She looked down at her hands and dropped the knife. She felt ill so she rushed to the bathroom and finally retched all that she had into the porcelain bowl. After flushing she stood up and took a good measure of herself in the mirror. She looked like what she had become: a mass murderer.
Her hands reached out for her reflection and she traced her jaw line along the mirror. Splotches of blood both old and new were drying on her pale face making her appear even more ghoulish. She shook her head and wiped her face with the back of her sodden hand, shifting the gore more thickly over her features.
At last she decided to take a shower. She started the water running and tossed off her soiled shift and let the hot water hit her, cleansing her from all of this. It took her half an hour to finally get the grime and dried blood off of her body. She stepped out with the towel wrapped around her and picked out a bright red jogging suit from the woman's closet. The clothes and the shoes were too big for her, but having few other options, she put them on along with sunglasses and a baseball cap. She tucked her hair under the cap and then explored the house for agents to start a fire.
She shook her head at herself, but she couldn't really see another way out of this. The whole apartment building was a firetrap, she knew that, but what else could she do? After pouring out the flammable liquids around the apartment she opened the windows and moved to the door. She scooped up her bag and shoved the rock in it and struck the match. Dropping it on the rug she waited a beat for the flames to start in earnest and then turned to run down the stairs. No one could have known what her hurry was. No one even really looked at her at all. It was like the practice of the apartment building to not notice things that were suspicious. And she was rather suspicious from the start.
Along the way she yanked down on one of the alarm bells but it did not go off. She winced at this but still kept running. Perhaps it was best for her that it didn't work, that the slumlord hadn't put in a working alarm system. But it still seemed to claw at her conscience as she retraced her steps, fleeing back to her brother's apartment, barely stopping along the way. Her throat and lungs burned from inhaling all of the chemicals and from her long run. Her body hurt and her feet were covered in blisters from the shoes that were entirely too big for her.
She finally got up to the apartment, riding the elevator and let herself in. She slammed the door and then leaned against it. The weight of her body and her conscience made her slide down the white door as she covered her face in anguish and cried. She sobbed for her incompetence, for her arrogance and for the knowledge that no matter what she did, she was not good. She was not a good person and that she would not do good things. Something inside of her called to her, taunted her that she was bad, that her blood was bad and that it screamed to work its will with her, to do what needed to be done and what was needed was not to save people.
"No!" she screamed and threw the rock further into the formal living area.
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Keywords: The, 15, Ends, Ch.,