1.8

 

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The water was getting deeper the further I went in. It was up to my ankles now. In the back of my head I was grateful for the lack of gap between shoe and legging.

My sword was in my hand, hanging at my side and swaying while I walked. I’d had the flat part of the blade resting on my shoulder for a while, but my muscles started to get stiff and sore so I’d changed positions. It was just short enough that it wasn’t hitting the water. That’s the only reason I continued to let it hang.

I was scared. I’d never really been in a situation like this before and it hadn’t quite hit me until now. No fights as a kid. I’d gotten flushed whenever I had an actual, I-am-mad sort of argument with my parents. Unlike my brother, who relished in it almost. Or it seemed like it at least.

But I don’t think I was as scared as I should be. It’s almost like none of this felt real, but I don’t quite think that was it. This wasn’t me disassociating or whatever. I was still walking with a purpose. I’d thought of trying to find the entrance but I was fairly sure I’d just get lost, so I’d decided to get lost finding this fucking thing and killing it instead. I knew what I was doing and why. It was just the same feeling I got when I decided in the moment to leave school or ignore my homework or chores and curl up in my bed. I don’t really think I cared. That made it hard to be scared.

I wondered who would miss me if I didn’t get out of here for whatever reason. Shannon and Ellie. A given. I fucking hope. Nate. Who I hadn’t spoken to in an actual, real way in- a while. A while. I guess my dad. Because I was his kid and it came with the territory. I hated that I wasn’t sadder about those last two. That last one especially.

I don’t know if I stepped on a magic trap or if the thoughts of my family triggered something, but I wasn’t in the Ruins anymore. I was at home. How my home used to look like. It was a slight difference; the walls weren’t as bare of stuff like photos and decorations, the furniture wasn’t as sparse. And it had some colour. Because my mom had bought it and hadn’t taken it yet.

After that weird few moments of confusion about where I was and having to settle into the new location, I noticed I was in the kitchen. And that my head was not as far away from the countertop as it should be. Was I a fucking kid again?

And Nate was beside me. He looked around ten to twelve. Which made me eight or nine or ten. My parents weren’t in the kitchen which was strange, because things were cooking. Water was boiling. Didn’t like that. Clumsy kids with a pot of boiling water.

But Nate seemed to kind of know what he was doing as he used what looked like all of his tiny kid muscles to move the pot from the burner to the thing on the counter you used to not burn the surface of whatever you put the pot on. A pot coaster. Or something.

Then I noticed his rolled up sleeves and realized he was wearing a white dress shirt and looked down to see black slacks and okay shoes and some pieces fell into place. They finished that journey when I realized I was wearing a simple little black dress that I think my mom bought me for some wedding we went to. Shows how much it mattered to me, I don’t even remember who got married.

We were cooking dinner for my parents. I turned and craned my neck into the dining room and saw the lights were off. The curtains were drawn and I could see candlelight in the dark. We’d used what in hindsight were definitely the ugliest place mats, if I remembered correctly. Definitely set the cutlery wrong. Our mom had shown Nate how to boil pasta and had also helped a bit with the more complicated stuff, like the meatballs. There would be a Happy Aniversary sign I’d drawn on the dining room wall. Fuck this place.

Nate handed me a plaid dish towel and I took it. We didn’t have any black or white or even single-coloured ones. We hung them over our arms like we’d seen waiters do in TV shows and movies and headed into the dining room. Our mom and dad were sitting at the head of the table, both slightly to either side of the curved end. Their legs were touching and they were leaning in and talking lowly. I saw now that they weren’t necessarily smiling or looking ecstatic, but my brain then had been too distracted with the performance and the event.

Your dinner is almost ready, sir, madam.

Our mom smiled at that and our dad laughed just a bit. Nate did a little bow and I kind of followed suit but didn’t really go all the way because I hadn’t been expecting it. We retreated back into the kitchen and Nate hurriedly checked the pasta and the sauce. The meatballs were already ready and set aside by our mom.

He put a piece of spaghetti in his mouth to test it, dropping it from above. I opened my mouth for one and he threw it at my face. It stuck on my nose. I scrambled to get it off and then jabbed him in the side with my knuckles while he laughed. I still ate it anyways.

I looked away from this part back into the dining room. It felt more difficult to do than anything else so far. Probably because it wasn’t what I had done then. I hadn’t thought to check in on the conversation between my parents because it was work stuff that was boring to me as a kid. I barely understood what my mom and dad did then. But I could see they were a bit farther apart now. Their legs weren’t touching and my moms hands were now folded on the table in front of her while my dad sat forward and talked at her. I knew that look really fucking well. I could hear the tone without actually hearing the words.

My mom wasn’t me, though. She was saying things back in between his sentences. Quietly, lowly, because she probably didn’t want to disturb us or have us hear it. I wanted to know what they were talking about. It had been background noise as a kid. But I knew how this ended and I had wondered what the lead up was exactly for years. But walking up to the door and listening was a good way to stop the conversation in its tracks.

Nate nudged me a bit. I turned to look at him and he was holding a bowl out to me. It was stacked high with noodles and meat and sauce. My dad’s serving.

Use the towel, it’s hot, remember.

I’d needed the reminder then because kids are dumb. I needed it now because I didn’t care about the dinner. I was hyperfocused on the dining room and what was happening in there. I took the bowl and tried to layer the towel under it so the heat wasn’t moving through the cloth too quickly.

Nate grabbed our moms serving and squeezed by me to go out first. I was lagging behind a bit because I didn’t want to go out there. Stupid fucking place. Hated this.

Your dinners.

Nate was putting on some odd French-ish accent we’d probably stolen from a Disney show. Our mom smiled as hers was set in front of her. It was bright because I knew she loved us and thought this was nice, but what I hadn’t seen before was the tension in it. It wasn’t as wide as I knew her easy smiles usually were. I wasn’t as good at reading faces then.

Our dad picked up his fork and knife and seemed to be sitting way too straight. Nate was clueing into whatever was happening. I remembered this was the point I started to feel something from him. I was young enough I still looked for life cues from my big brother. He’d gotten in trouble for shit I did a lot as a kid for the sole fact I’d learned it from him at some point.

Neither of us said anything though because you couldn’t at that age. Your parents weren’t people who had bad and good days then. The existed to give you reinforcement and it was incomprehensible that they could feel bad like you did sometimes. They were too big for that sort of stuff. Which is why we said nothing. Because it felt too big.

Could I get some cheese, honey?

I nodded at my mom and turned around to go into the kitchen. Nate was alone out there now and I could hear my dad beginning to speak lowly again. This was where I’d started catching bits and pieces. My mom was frustrated about her job or something involved in it. She wanted to move up but something was impeding her or something just wasn’t going her way. And my dad was trying to tell her what to do. But she didn’t like it because she wasn’t as aggressive as him. It wasn’t how she worked.

I grabbed the block of cheddar cheese and then rummaged around nearby drawers for the grater. When I had them I headed back out. They were talking now. Not loudly but the volume was high enough I caught everything they were saying. But it was mostly in one ear and out the other. I didn’t have the context so none of it made sense to me. Vague shit about coworkers and needing to put your foot down. Stuff my mom obviously didn’t like.

She pushed her bowl towards me as I came to stand beside her and I began to grate. My kid brain assumed she’d say when she wanted me to stop. She continued talking with my dad. I was staring at the bowl now and very slowly shredding cheese and trying to not pay attention. The same thing I’d done then. Nate looked like he was trying to be as far away from the table as possible without technically having moved from his spot.

And then my dad hit the table to accent a point and we all jumped but he continued without faltering. He was mad that my mom was refusing to do anything he was suggesting and seemed to not care about fixing the problem. She was asking why he was so mad and looking very taken aback. I’d stopped grating cheese. Nate had taken a step back and was holding the towel with both hands.

Then it was just an argument. My dad telling her he was right. My mom getting angry because he was angry out of proportion. My dad feeling he was right and saying she was being stupid because she didn’t seem to care and then it escalated and became more and more and more. I was holding the grater and the cheese and looking at the middle of the table. I could see the bottom halves of their torsos in the upper part of my peripheral vision.

My mom left by violently pushing her chair out and in the blink of an eye she was down the hall and going up the stairs. A door slammed. Their bedroom door. I’d pass by there later after getting away from this and I’d hear her crying. That had scared me a lot. You didn’t expect your mom to cry when you were young.

My dad would end up walking over to the living room and sitting and flicking through channels. He had an aura around him that me and Nate knew pretty well now. He’d termed them something that I’d forgotten now. Black moods or whatever. He might as well have had the whole house to himself when he got like this for how much we avoided him.

Me and Nate didn’t really know what to do. I still didn’t know what to do and I wasn’t really eight or nine or ten anymore. The cheese and the grater was still in my hand and none of the argument had really hit me yet because the loud bang had frozen me in some weird fight-or-flight state. I eventually just put the grater down and did my best to wrap the cheese in it’s own packaging before putting it back in the fridge. Then I went upstairs with Nate.

And I was back. Wasn’t around all that anymore. The Ruins were quiet and the silence was even less peaceful than it had been before. When we had entered it had made me feel some sort of odd anxiety, stomach tight, like the night before a big test or going through my day when I knew the school had called my dad to let him know I hadn’t gone to class. Distant tension. Now it felt closer. Like humidity in the air but it was emotion instead. Pollen coming off angry people that was making it just hard enough to breathe I didn’t feel comfortable.

I felt like I was at home now. Not even that in-the-past home I’d just seen but my home in the now. Where everyone but me was gone and everything was laser-focused on what I did so I walked like the floor was made of cracking glass and I closed doors and drawers and cupboards like I was in some monster’s cave. Skulking around. Every splash I made regardless of the size made me feel uneasy for different reasons. I wasn’t scared anymore. Not in a life-threatening sort of way. That was deeper in my head now, pushed back. I was worried about the eyes that would fall on me and inevitably find something wrong in the moment or be reminded of some dumb fucking mistakes in the recent past.

Jesus Christ, Pandora

Like it was just around the corner. I did an involuntary half-turn, because even though I’d find that stupid in a movie the voice coincided with the thought in my head about that moment and moments like it. I stopped myself before My other foot came around to meet the first one. The water I’d pushed with my left foot settled.

Guess I could never fucking hope to escape this. Even in things so distant I didn’t think they’d be related, things I chose because of the space between my home and what I’d be doing he managed to be there.

I walked on and tried not to think. At all. The airy noise of the place was almost pulling clips from my head related to almost anything I thought about. My dads voice, my moms voice, Nate as a kid and now, Shannon, Ellie. Teachers and old classmates and people I barely even knew. And it was all bad memories. Times when Shannon and I had been young and hadn’t known how to stop when we got mad at each other so our arguments just continued to build until we didn’t talk for days. When I had been just getting into high school and Ellie had just come out as gay and I’d said something stupid and thoughtless because I hadn’t known anything about anything at the time and I knew she’d been really hurt for a while. But she never actually said anything.

More recent times. Nate’s last visit, how there was this larger space between us. I thought maybe it was just the awkwardness of not having seen someone in a while and getting used to being around them again. But then I’d realized that I was mad or frustrated kind of whenever he was around. Or when I thought of how he’d left exactly. He knew what our dad was like and he left anyways knowing I had nowhere to go.

And then the very recent times, of giving up on caring and desperately trying to keep going on this weird, low baseline. Teachers giving me shit for skipping class or missing assignments or sleeping during lessons. My dad. Mostly my dad. I finished something but part of it wasn’t quite right. I did one thing but forgot another. No leeway. Ever.

This place wasn’t haunted or filled with ghosts. I knew those were real now. Didn’t know what they looked like exactly or whatever, but I don’t think this was that. This place was like the curve in a drain, catching fallen hair and other garbage and not letting it go. Doing that for memories. Letting the good pass through and clogging with the bad and the forgotten.

I rounded a corner and I was home again. Slightly closer to the present. But not by much. Maybe a few months or a year ahead of the last memory. In the dining room, again, but now we were all seated. My parents at the two head and Nate across from me on the side. We were eating something that I could tell I didn’t like. It was a vague and blurry foodstuff on the plate because I didn’t actually remember what it was, but my nose and my mouth didn’t want it.

Nate didn’t look too pleased either but he was eating it. He was more active than I was. Or had been at least, that may not be the case now. So he probably just needed food, whether he loved it or not. My mom and dad were just eating quietly with not a lot of tension between them. But I could tell my dad was tired or frustrated and on the edge of some sort of mood. He didn’t have that blackness radiating off him that we wanted to avoid yet.

Something was there though. We made small conversation that I wasn’t good at now and had been really bad at as a kid. I didn’t have the brain for that sort of chat. My mom talked about her work and seemed to talk around certain points because she didn’t want to get into them right now. It would spawn a conversation with my dad that she probably didn’t have the energy for.

I hated this even more. Because this memory was about me. The last one I’d just been there for. Even though I knew what was going on and what was happening I still pushed my food around the plate with my fork. Didn’t even really eat the meat like I usually did. The potatoes were mostly gone but the protein and the vegetables were drifted around in little loops and figure eights by the end of my fork.

My dad noticed. He was home more than my mom because of his job situation back then so he cooked. He noticed when we didn’t eat more than other parents did. Shannon’s parents got frustrated with her and just withheld the dessert that they always had afterwards, and it usually just ended with her going to bed hungry and unsatisfied as a kid. Ellie’s mom was more lenient due to lack of time. She was one person that had to cook for two kids and a lot of the time they just did what they could by themselves. No meal cooked. When it was cooked, she either did it well, or just put the uneaten parts away for leftovers without much complaint. Then they went to bed hungry.

My dad almost felt offended. Or so it seemed to me at least. It didn’t matter that my ten year old palette wasn’t a fan of pork chops or broccoli. He made it which meant it was a slight against him or something.

Pandora, we go through this weekly now. Eat the food

I bit my lip and put something green in my mouth. It had the taste of most of the vegetables I didn’t like in it. Not all at the same time, but shifting. Broccoli and green beans and cauliflower. I chewed it way too much until it was mulch in my mouth and then chewed it even more to prepare to swallow it. The muscles in my mouth wouldn’t take the action I wanted them to, but I eventually managed it. I quietly drank a couple sips of milk to make it go down easier.

More minutes passed. More generic conversation about work and school and other shit that never involved many complaints because then they’d turn into fucking life lessons and advice that seemed compulsory.

Jesus Christ, Pandora, just eat

I looked down and remembered the feeling of almost not being able to swallow that last bite. Jesus fuck I didn’t want to do that again. Because then I had three or four or five dozen more of those little experiences to go through. I didn’t really know what my plan here was, though. Move my food around until dinner was just over and maybe I could just leave? Wasn’t how that worked. My food wasn’t going to turn invisible or something.

So I put my fork and knife down and sat back and crossed my arms. I don’t know if I looked angry or sullen or bratty but it was enough to push the mood over the edge into something worse. And I could see something unconsciously or sense it in the air because my ten year old stomach was droopy and knew something stupid was going to happen even before I’d set the cutlery down.

Because then it was reprimands about how he cooks for us and buys the food and it goes to waste and how people have it worse and it’s a giant list of topics, where A relates to B which relates to C, but C has almost nothing to do with A and by the end of it it’s completely out of the ballpark of where it started.

And when you think about it or describe it, it doesn’t sound like a lot but in the moment with someone this much bigger telling you these things you want to cry but know that it could just set them off even more. Because they know it’s their fault your crying but don’t really want to admit that so they push harder.

So I thought about it while I was slowly moving inward, something I’d started to learn to do around this age, and looked at Nate and remembered all his arguments that I’d witnessed and then it all started getting almost physical, like a heavy blanket. All the shouting that had happened and was happening and was going to happen. So I just moved my chair back and got up. Turned away from my dad and tried to leave the dining room and I heard his chair moving back before I was even really out of mine. Felt my mom try to stand a bit more gently but just as fast as I passed her.

And then a very large hand was encircling my arm and I was pulled back like a dog eating something off the ground that they shouldn’t and it jolted me. My dad. It was my dad and I started immediately squirming to get away because he was shouting now, wanting me to sit back down. My mom was trying to defend me, the uneaten meal completely forgotten by her. My pulling and his tugging was stretching my skin and muscle and it hurt, but not enough for me to stop. Eventually my arm slipped out of his grasp and he had a handful of shirt in his fist and something hit a crescendo. The tears were starting to leak out and then they were sobs. This was the most negative stimulation I’d felt at this age, shouting and tugging and pulling and like I said, the other party would just bury their feet in and keep going because they had to prove it wasn’t their fault or some shit. So my dad tugged even harder now and my shirt ripped with a sound that was way too loud and that felt more violent than anything that had happened previously. I screamed a little at that and that was when Nate was standing across the table now and my moms actual hands were tugging at my dad’s wrist. Then he was off and I was in the kitchen by myself.

Go with your sister

My mom’s voice, angry but not at Nate. Then he was in the kitchen with me and staring at the rip in my shirt that seemed massive. He gestured a bit and even though I was still heaving and crying I followed him upstairs. When we reached the landing I felt a small series of splashes below us and I was back in the Ruins.

I stopped and crouched on the balls of my feet. For a moment I put both my hands around the hilt of my sword and rested my forehead against the metal. My head was hurting. My jaw was clenched and I couldn’t tell if I had a headache because of that or if I was stressed and these were the two symptoms.

Then I stood very quickly and threw my weapon as hard as I could at the first wall I saw when I came up. The one to the left of me. It clattered loudly and hit the wall and spun down to bounce against the floor. I was screaming before it settled. I screamed for at least twenty seconds and then dropped down to a crouch again, wrapping my arms around my knees and burying my face between them.

Fuck this. I wasn’t going to fucking cry.

Jesus I didn’t sign up for this. I wanted to fight monsters. I knew what that meant. But I didn’t think I’d be getting this shit. Things pulled out of me like rotten teeth. Stuff that I had worked hard to keep below my day-to-day feelings of not giving a shit. This wasn’t new to me. Crying over bad things. But I set time aside for it at night, in the dark, under my blankets and pillows. Not in the open like this. My life was this steady stream of completely neutrality with little waves of complete rock-bottom that I thought I’d managed to ride.

I felt like I’d been in here for days now. Or not even that. Not a long amount of time or a short amount of time. It felt timeless. I was switching ages and going through events and ending up back in this place of infinite white light. I needed to leave.

So I hit the water as hard as I could. Partly out of anger and partly because I was done walking around aimlessly. Fuck this thing. It could come to me. Confront me outside of these stupid dreams or memories or whatever combination of the two they were.

I kept slapping and punching at the wet ground and eventually started screaming and shouting too. Making noise and plucking the spider’s web. I wanted to just fucking leave now. Make sure Shannon and Ellie were okay. Tell them I was okay. And go to sleep. This was taking too long.

Pandora!

“Fuck you!” I screamed before the whispered echo even finished. My throat was hurting now but I kept it up anyways.

Pandora

Pandora

Pandora

Pandora

All different tones and intonations in the same voice. Like they were clipped out of different statements and reprimands and taped together in one long loop. I could hear the end and beginning sounds of words bookending some of them, like the name hadn’t been cut out perfectly.

“Pandora.”

And when I turned I felt a hand on my arm, grabbing my sleeve with strength it shouldn’t have had. I should have been able to pull away with the abilities I possessed now but nothing was happening. I was stuck. Rooted. I felt my eyes get wet and I clenched my teeth and shook my head and closed my eyes.

“Pandora, you can’t just run away, for god’s sakes. Have to look at me.”

“Fuck you.” I said between barely-opened lips. For a moment there was no sound but the continued silence of the Ruins.

“Okay.” He said. And then the sentences and the statements started again all around me. Reprimands when I didn’t clean all the dishes properly or didn’t dry them all the way or left a burner on. When I didn’t eat the leftovers I said I would and forgot about, when I screamed and told him how he was always on me about everything and how I never had any room. When he told me I was just being dramatic and that I had a pretty good life all things considered.

On and on and on. Like a terrible, grating song on repeat. With the headphones cemented to my ears. It was enough that I had my free hand hanging by my side and I was leaning away from him and not escaping. It was too much. Way too fucking much.

Before I could start weeping and collapse to my knees it stopped. Something flung past me and then I was dragged backwards before the grip on my sleeve released. The back of my costume was soaked and the edges of the skirt dripped as I rose to my feet and looked to see something lying in a heap in the water. It was breathing shallow and fast.

Then I looked behind me and saw my friends. And Lady. Ellie was coming up from a pose that was way more dramatic than I assumed for something she’d do.

“Sword.” Shannon said and motioned with her chin to my right. I picked the weapon up from where it had fallen when thrown and shook the excess water off it. Came to stand beside the group, backing up slowly to keep my eyes on the creature.

“The Waterlogged Beast.” Lady said while staring directly at the thing. It looked like it was clad in moist burlap, torn and frayed at the edges. I could see bumpy, crude flesh that was mottled gray and green.

“It’s doing something with memories. Bad memories.” I said. I was out of breath. In the silence after I spoke I sucked in a big gulp of air.

“Ah. I was getting tiny flashes of random shitty life moments when we were walking through here, so that tracks.” Shannon said. Ellie nodded.

“Me too.” She said. I opened my mouth to ask something and then the Beast got up in some strange, bent and twisted way. I couldn’t see it’s face. Just coarse cloth and skin like old stone and wood and garbage.

Ellie dove back and I dove forward to roll under it’s leap and Shannon simply Set her jaw and planted her feet and lifted her shield. The thing hit it with enough force to stagger her a bit. When the dazed look continued on Shannon’s face and the thing didn’t move I scrambled to move back while Ellie did the same in the other direction. Ellie skidded to a stop while spinning the spear a bit awkwardly above her head and then bringing it down to hit the ground. An arc of wind separated water as it moved and blew both Shannon and the Beast back a few feet. Shannon skidded to a stop and lightly hit a wall. Two out of three magi soaked to the bone.

“Up!” I yelled at her, grabbing her hand. She groaned as she was half-pulled to her feet.

“That fucking sucked.” She said.

“Was it worse than when you three were coming to get me?” I asked as quickly as possible. She nodded.

‘Yeah, that was a lot fucking worse.” I nodded back at her and then turned to include Ellie in the conversation. She was across the room, spear held out.

“It can only show you the really bad stuff if it focuses on you. Don’t give it anyone to focus on.” Ellie gave me a quick up-and-down with her head and immediately ran at the Beast, who was very rapidly getting up again.

Ellie jumped slightly and jabbed downward with her spear. The thing dodged back awkwardly and crookedly. It gave an almost immediate follow up attack that Ellie barely ducked under.

“Hey!” Shannon yelled while she also immediately ran towards the thing. She hefted the shield up to be parallel with her shoulder as she got close and the thing must have caught on, because it tore away right as Shannon passed through where it was a moment ago. Her shield left a crumbling dent in the stone wall that stopped her progress.

Couldn’t let it focus on any one of us. Job one. Kill it. Job two. Two-point to-do list. Easy enough.

 My power wanted out. If my friends weren’t here and I wasn’t pulled into whatever gaze it bestowed on you, I could fry it easily. Lightning let loose in the buckets of water around us, with me as the only immune one.

I held it back, though. For obvious reasons. I couldn’t ask them to jump or vocalize anything because I didn’t know how much English it really understood or how well it could understand our tactics. So for now, I would see what I could do with a sword.

I stepped in with a heavy thrust and caught it through the odd clothing it wore. I didn’t feel it pierce anything else, but I pulled to the side anyways. My blade pulled free but the thing stumbled backwards and Shannon followed up with a powerful hit from the flat of her shield. The impact spun the thing a bit. What I didn’t expect was it to fall immediately into a roll and leap up from that towards Ellie. It grabbed the shaft of her spear she put up across her body to block it and planted it’s feet on her stomach. Stared down at her with a featureless head covered in burlap and stitches.

“Oi!” I screamed. Nothing. I glimpsed Shannon looking down at her shield as if to do something with it and then thinking better of whatever it was. We both moved forward in a run. Don’t know if either of us had a plan.

Shannon just ended up grabbing the end of her shield with both hands and bringing it down on the Beast’s neck as many times as she could before it eventually let go and launched off Ellie and over us. Shannon turned and slipped her weapon back on to her forearm and watched the entity land and I held Ellie up as she stumbled back a bit.

“You’re good.” I said. She nodded even though it wasn’t a question.

“It’s coming.” Shannon said loudly. It slammed against her shield again, except it grabbed the edges with all for limbs this time and wrenched it away and to the side. Shannon went with it because she would have torn her arm off otherwise and ended up hitting the wall hard enough to audibly take her breath away.

I swung and it ducked and grabbed my wrist with one hand while it weaved around a stab from Ellie’s spear and grabbed her collar with the other. She was thrown very far down the hall and slid even further. He spear left her hand at the top of the arc.

Then the thing grabbed my cheeks with both hands and looked at me and suddenly it was my dad and the whispers and echoes were back. It’s not real. Not real. Not real. Even though I was telling myself it wasn’t real it was like watching a sad movie. The things I was seeing were still making me feel something. The things I was seeing had been real. Fuck.

It was way too fast. And strong. And agile. And everything. And it could do this shit. I was already having trouble forming a plan in my head because I could feel the important logical parts of my brain slipping away and just feel the panic and the shame and the absolute cold uncaring-ness bubbling up.

Pandora

Jesus Christ

Fuck, Pandora!

What the fuck!

Why

What are you doing

My friends felt far away in this huddle of voices and images now. Neither of them had even gotten up yet I don’t think. Fuck.

And then it’s hands moved from my cheeks to my arms and grabbed as much cloth as it could in it’s hands and my dad’s face really came into focus. I heard the slam on the table and the slams of his computer chair being tipped over in anger and him stomping his feet in anger. Heard the sound of the front door opening which I dreaded after school and avoided now by just not being home. Heard everything all stacking into one single droning noise of every negative emotion I think I could feel.

“Fuck you.” I said. My friends were physically, actually far away. I had seen that. So I grabbed it’s head with my hands and hoped to whatever sky thing was out there maybe that I wasn’t murdering Shannon and Ellie and I let my power out finally.

Arcs of gold travelled over it’s head and my hands and then down my arms and then into the water. Down it’s neck and they stopped there. The thing began to writhe and the images and sounds didn’t fade but they amped up. I bucked against my dad anyways and flipped us around because I knew I was stronger now. He was in the water now and although my hands were still on his head they were also immersed in the cool liquid and the lightning spread to the rest of his body and a ways beyond us. I looked up quick and saw it spark and reach to Shannon for just a moment and she startled up at the popping noise and quickly scrambled back as she saw me.

Another minute and the thing was dust. Or mud, when mixed with the water. I knew in my logical mind that wasn’t what happened to a body, that it should be a scorched corpse and it should smell like shit, but I let that go very easily. I wasn’t complaining.

“Think we’re done.” I said after a few moments of silence. My mouth was dry and I wanted to lie down. I looked behind me and saw that Ellie was slowly getting up and seemed fine and then I did. I flopped down on the floor and let my back get wet again. Stared up into that bright light and laid beside the thing that had been wearing my dad’s face when Id’ killed it.