Author's note: The first part of the title (OS-DBT) refers to a piece of dialogue in John Allison's webcomic, "Scary-go-round." I had no part in formulating his story, nor do I even know the dude. I'm not telling you what the letters stand for in an unnecessary attempt to be mysterious. If you want to know, read my story (and read Scary-go-round. The dialogue piece can be found in the story about Dark Esther and The Boy going to South Wales in a caravan).
It was a hazy Tuesday afternoon in the middle of summer. A cool wind blew in off the water, carrying a tangy scent of salt and the dampened stench of burning rubble. The islands off the coast had been putting up plumes of black smoke for three days; only just then beginning to gutter as they sank beneath the waves.
Rick was talking to Anna. He wasn't happy, but at that moment she couldn't care less.
"Listen to me!" Rick shouted, "I wanted a future with you, but if all you're going to see me as is just the guy that does favors for you, I don't know if we're gonna last!"
"Rick-" Anna started to say, but Rick was too engulfed in his topic.
"Is that what you want, Anna? You don't ever seem that enthusiastic about this relationship. Do you want it to end like this?"
Anna was silent, staring past Rick into the house behind him. It was a small, cozy-looking home with faded pink stain on the wooden siding and bright green stain on the trim. It looked unbelievably gaudy and she was certain she would never have picked those colors, but there was something about it that stirred feelings of home within her.
Anna could imagine small children playing in the yard with the family dog. The windowsill was just the right size for cooling a hot, purple pie. Around at the back of the house she glimpsed the trampled remnants of a garden. In the tree at the front of the house was a small playhouse connected to a window in the upper story. The house had been a place full of life and love.
Now it bore the marks of violent death.
And Rick was still talking.
"I never know what you want from me, Anna. All you ever do is ask me to get your purse from your house or bring you a doughnut. We never talk about anything meaningful, Anna."
"Rick, this is not the time."
"When is the time, Anna? If you won't talk to me right now, it's over."
"Fine. It's over. If you can't have the common decency to wait for an appropriate time to talk to me, I don't think I want to be with you anymore."
Anna pushed past Rick and strode up to the door of the house. There was a crudely wrought sign nailed to the door proclaiming that the property was under investigation. Anna paused to read it:
"Keep out. We're conducting an investigation at this time and if you don't leave we'll set the rabid monks on you."
The law enforcement in town wasn't very official; they didn't have any money for regular animals and, since there were quite a few rabid monks skittering around among the crags, they took advantage of the free resources. Anna thought the sign was unprofessional, but people were scared of the monks and it worked.
The door murmured in protest as Anna carefully pushed it open and stepped over the threshold into the house. The mud mat was new, and the door scraped over the top of it with some difficulty. The room Anna stepped into was strewn with papers and pieces of foam stuffing from a couch. The couch itself was overturned in the center of the room, with an arm dangling from a hole in the back.
Anna tried to tell herself that it was just an arm, but the main problem with that was that it was just an arm; most of the rest of the body was strewn about the floor haphazardly. On the wall there was what looked like a child's painting of red mountains. The floor was smeared with blood, as a body had been dragged from the room.
Anna stepped through the living room, holding her nose at the stench of partly rotted flesh. She pushed open a swinging door to reveal a kitchen decked in much the same manner as the living room. The main difference was the island in the middle of the floor. There were three heads arranged upright on the table; each one had had a brazier mounted in the top of the skull and in each brazier was a different-colored flame.
Anna's stomach clenched as she stared at the heads. They'd been a family; a mother, a father and a child. Now they were arranged as a grotesque centerpiece on the bloody counter top.
Something was odd about the blood, though. Anna forced herself to look closer to the way the blood had dribbled on the table. As she did she noticed that some of the blood seemed to be glowing.
By the time Anna realized what was going on, it was too late. The heads' eyelids snapped open to reveal infinite blackness, their mouths opened to reveal burning coals and a piercing scream sounded from somewhere.
The flames in the braziers blazed high into the air, curved and intertwined until all three flames formed a roaring column. Then the column broadened into an oval with a pure black center. Anna did not want to look at what was in the center of the oval, but she did anyway.
She saw death, first and foremost. Blood running through the streets, fire burning homes, a world engulfed in flame. She was almost too absorbed in the horrific spectacle to notice that there were two spots of flame in the center of the oval. They were like eyes. They were eyes.
Anna came back to herself and threw herself to the floor just before something came through the oval.She could not, however, scrabble away from the oval fast enough and soon found herself pinned by an incredible strength. She was turned on her back and made to stare upwards.
She gasped.
She was being held down by...her. She looked exactly like Anna, with that same, scared, horrified look, but something was different. Anna's mirror image laughed, her face transitioning from a scared expression to one of malevolent amusement.
"What's wrong, dear? Scared of yourself?"
Anna couldn't speak. Her voice had been taken by whatever was holding her down. She could not move, either, and presently she felt the pressure on her lessen as the not-her stood and began walking around the kitchen.
Anna wanted desperately to move, but she couldn't. She found it difficult to even breathe, even as the not-her took a deep breath and let it out in satisfaction. Anna's heart rate began falling, her vision blurred and she felt the darkness closing in around her.
Suddenly, there was a shout and a scream. Something fell on Anna's midsection - hard. She gasped in pain and tried to slither away. To her surprise, her body actually responded, though feebly. She could not see, so she made her way to the door by feel.
When she made it to the door, she had regained enough control of her body to rise to a half-crouch as she fumbled on the door to find the knob. The door moved slightly at her touch and she remembered that it was a swinging door. She pushed through it and hobbled across the living room floor.
She made it a few feet before an intense pain drove her once more to the ground. She screamed. When it was over she found that she could see, though it was as though she was in an intense fog and she could only make out dim shapes.
She leapt for the door and tried desperately to find the knob, somehow managing to turn it with her numb, unresponsive fingers.
She burst out into the light and tumbled down the steps, landing on her knee. Pain swept up her leg and she cried out.
She could still not see much, but after what felt like forever her eyes adjusted enough to the light that she could make her way down the road, limping.
It was a long time before she found the diner. She was so far gone by then that she was essentially a burned-out husk.
The proprietor of the diner had her rushed to town in a cart. It bounced an awful lot and had Anna been conscious she would've undoubtedly have told the driver to slow down. However, the driver ran his horses as fast as possible over the uneven ground; comfort was a small price to pay in getting to town.
However, when they got to town, all was lost. Anna no longer had a pulse and was not breathing. The coroner could find no specific cause of death, though she was battered a good deal from more than just the cart ride. No one knew who she was, no one knew where she was from and no one was entirely certain about anything about her.
When things like that come up, people generally like to get answers but are too lazy or busy to find them by themselves.
That's where my team comes in.
Lucky us.
OK, so I totally started this with a completely different plan in mind. I was going to make it a short story with something about the girl fighting off a wolf and leave it off with the wolf saying something like, "It's not over." Well, that didn't happen, obviously. And I didn't put any explanation about the term OS-DBT. Oh well (sigh). Oh, and I'd like a review like this: "I hated this, this, this, this and this about your story and I liked the period at the end when it was finally done." I -->don't<-- want a review like this: "Oh, it was so awesome! I want more!" Tell me what you did and didn't like, in other words. In the unlikely event you can't think of anything I should change, there's a little button up there that says "like." click it and go find something that you can actually review. Thanks!
Gender:
Points: 3699
Reviews: 86