5.2; Lay down and die

We’re run off our feet and I think Curtis is half-dead. No, not half dead. Just…exhausted.

So much happened in the past couple days. It was almost too much to wrap our heads around, but I’ve spent the last hour doing exactly that. We’re in one of those truck-stop coffee joints that’s open 24/7, and the wi-fi isn’t free, but it’s there.

And it’s better than the hostel.

We were put under lockdown. Greyskins were hanging around outside, sealing us in, and the Choir was eating away at our defenses. No one was getting even twenty minutes of rest before they’d be woken up by the shrieking.

My senses were going insane. Utterly insane. Because the worst of it was, they weren’t only proxies of the Choir.

Ruby had put a Mark in them, confirming what Curtis and I’ve been dancing around for ages. The Fears are making teams, and we’re not even on a side. We’re the ball.

None of us were sure what to do. All I knew for sure was, I wasn’t going to be stuck inside like a scared little girl. Curtis agreed.

The shocker was Sheryl. At the time, I thought it was her human strength coming through. Just that sheer determination to save her daughter, like I first saw when I found her online. So we went. We put ourselves on the front lines.

There was Ruby. Wicked smiles and lusty looks that had that mixed message of ‘You want me’ and ‘You should hate yourself if you want me, you sick fuck.’ She called me ‘one of Sheryl’s’, and that made her lash out.

She called me Darcey. Yelled that ‘Darcey isn’t like you’ and lunged at her.

I fought too. Didn’t turn out to matter.

The Red Cap in Ruby seeped out of her, and flowed into Sheryl, instead.

I don’t know if it was on purpose. I don’t know if there was still something left of the Red Cap in Sheryl, and that’s what drew it into her. Maybe she did it consciously. Maybe not.

Either way, I don’t care.

The Marked Greyskins all turned to her, at her command instead, now. Monster or not, she had the sense to tell them to lay down and die.

Curtis and I took off, then. Got on Windmill’s back and just went as fucking far away as we could get.

We’ll probably never see Sheryl again. Doubt we’ll see any of the people at the hostel, either. I just hope they can forgive us for the trouble we brought.

Not that I’d forgive us, in their shoes. But, fuck. I realized just now, as I was typing this, why it was taking us so long to leave to begin with.

Leaving that place was like abandoning Blair’s grave. I feel sick at the prospect of never going back…because that’s where Blair died.

S/he’s with us a little. Ashes in lockets and that bullshit about those we love never leaving our hearts.

But being at that hostel was the very last thing that made Blair feel still alive.

And now we can never go back.

Dispute Against Madness