An Act of Finality-Sylaire-Part 3

[black_hat]

 

laire closed her eyes.  “I meant it. I wouldn’t have told anyone.”

 

“It’s an empty promise at best. If you could, you would sing like a canary. And you would sing the same old tune, over and over again, because there’s nothing more to you than quotations from Teen Vogue. But it looks like they won't be able to refresh your memory. There's nothing for you to tell anyone about.”

 

He traced a line across her forehead with his fingertip, and she shivered in fear. At the same time, she was pissed off. Considering he was about to hurt her further, he had taken a moment to basically call her an airhead.

 

“Except that small matter of the blood, you know, all over your car? Let me guess: taking transplant kidneys to the children’s hospital like a model citizen and oppps, we had a little spill?” Why could she just couldn’t stop talking...

 

“It’s not my car. It’s yours.”

 

 She had the sensation of a…of a presence in her head, of it being evaluated before the observer cut along the lay lines of what essentially made her, leaving her spread out before the world.

 

That was the last straw.

 

She jerked her hand upward, aiming straight for his eyes, his throat, anything that could bleed. He caught her hand easily in midair.

 

“What were you planning to do, key me to death?”

 

He squeezed her wrist, but she wasn’t about to let those keys go.

 

“That was the idea, yeah. But I would settle for blinding you. Just a little.”

 

There was a snap, or rather a series of small snaps, as he broke her hand. Through her outrage and pain, she thought it was interesting that it had only taken him one quick twist to do it. She screamed, loudly, and his response was to push her against the car. Her mouth was pressed against his shoulder, muffling her screams.

 

Claire looked around at the dark houses. Were they the only two people left on earth or something?

 

She heard him whispering harshly under his breath.  At first she thought he was praying but realized he was counting. He was holding her broken wrist gently, and counting. Probably how many bones he had broken. For the insanity of it all, it was spellbinding, his intensity, and the higher he went into his counting, the more enraged he seemed to become.

 

There was another snap, quiet and less horrible than the first sounds. He stepped back. Her hand was fine. Perfectly fine.

 

“How…what did you do?” she asked, wide-eyed. Of course, with how things were falling to pieces, she may have imagined that he had broken her hand. Yes, or else this man really wasn’t human.  

 

“You know, you really should have waited until that little cocktail was out of your system before you took that plunge. That took too long. Far too long. The previous delay has affected your memory since your neurons were still blocked. And there’s possibly more damage.” Suddenly, he was seething. “You nearly broke it. Just like that, nearly threw it all away. I wonder what would happen if I snapped your little neck, just for that.”

 

“Right, right,” she muttered, thinking of her hand. “Someone’s called the police by now. They heard me, and the police should be on their way.”

 

“Ah, yes, the police. The boys in blue have been looking for you.”

 

She caught his implication. “I would have remembered killing someone. I’m too short, anyway.”

 

He looked at her, very empty eyed after breaking out of his rage. “Short…”

 

“I’m too short to kill someone. Obviously. Case in point, you’re the jolly green giant, except not jolly or green.”

 

Claire thought she did a good job of keeping him off balance. In fact, he was looking at her as if she had lost her mind.

 

“My height has nothing to…that’s a logical fallacy. Think of the modern equalizers. Like running over someone with a car, for instance. I’m not that tall anyway. Besides, everything probably looks gargantuan from your point of view. I -”

 

“Easy, Goliath. The people in those houses--.”

 

“Haven’t called anyone. I’ve been listening.”

 

“But I was screaming,” she protested.

 

“They don’t care,” he informed her, as if this was common knowledge. Then that look of distraction, of a child finding a new game, came back into his gaze. His black rage was gone, for now. “Already, I’ve heard an older couple pretend your scream was just a cat yowling. Over there, in the house with the nicely kept lawn, a man is skulking around his window. He knows, or thinks he does. He’s get-he got off on it.”

 

His eyes sparked with delight when she paled visibly.

 

“That’s a lie,” she hissed, throwing her miraculous healing to the back of her mind. Oddly enough, Claire had no problem believing this shadow man was telling the truth about his also miraculous hearing. “You’re just trying to make yourself feel better about being a monster.”

 

He blinked. She squinted in the darkness, and yes, it did seem like he had the nerve to be surprised. As if this night could get any weirder.

 

“You do understand, right. That you’re a monster. You’re cruel. In that car, alone, I-.”

 

“Tell you what,” he said, switching gears again. This time, it was a half person in his place. “This night was made before you were born. No matter what delayed it, eventually, fate was bound to turn full circle and drop us here, together. You can’t help it, I can’t help it. But since we have time for me to kill and you to heal, let’s make this a little more interesting. Sound good?”

 

“Depends on your definition of interesting,” she answered, weary but determined.

 

“Let’s make a bet. You scream to your heart’s content. You can even run, if you’d like. If one lone soul in this suburbia paradise opens their door to you, then dinner is on me.”

 

“Dinner? Um, not that I’m complaining, but I’d kind of prefer that you’d let me go.”

 

“Afraid I can’t do that.”

 

“Why? Think you’ll lose?”

 

He smirked. He’s listening to them, she thought, and shuddered. “Not likely.”

 

“Oh, you’ll lose. And then you’ll realize this whole wheel thing or whatever isn’t written in stone. You’d better hope you lose,” she said, and felt like there was a chance. He shrugged, dismissive. Yeah, she was going to win this bet, no matter what, and rub his face in it.

 

It was surprisingly hard to start screaming from nothing, even though moments before, she had thought she was going to die. In fact, she felt like a complete idiot.

 

“Come on, Claire. Use your diaphragm,” he suggested, apparently having a ball. “Or do you need a little motivation?”

 

She ran down the street and screamed at the top of her lungs. She noticed that she had on one shoe; the other was god-knows-where. There was nothing behind her as she ran, and in front of her, there was dead quiet. She screamed and screamed and screamed, in varying states of amusement, of curiosity, and then of pure disillusionment. 

It was if she didn’t exist. She didn’t know when the play-pretend screams turned into real ones, or when she went out of herself. It seemed that like in nature, when you have nothing inside of you to hold, everything outside comes rushing in.

 
She saw him approach her out of the corner of her eye, smug and grinning.

 

“I’m not through yet!” she snarled, eyes flashing. He held up his hands, yielding but enthralled. Enthralled and not surprised. That sent her thundering towards the skulker’s house.

 

Before she knew it, she had leapt up onto the porch and was pounding on the front door with her fists.

 

“I know you can hear me, I know you can!” she shrieked, and sure enough, there was a flicker of motion from the window to her left. There he was, that man who had gotten off on it, who was getting off on it, and he was looking at her as if there was something wrong with her.

 

“Claire.”

 

She wasn’t wrong yet, though, not yet. So she seized the nicely potted plant by the door and hurled it toward the window. It broke into pieces, flinging dirt and tulips in every direction.  Someone was laughing while someone else was screaming. 

 

“Aw, I think you scared him.”

 

“No, no,” she muttered, coming back from her invisibility, looking at the smashed vase in disbelief and embarrassment. “I…I didn’t mean…”

 

“Well, the party’s over. Now they’ve called the police.”

 

The shadow man slipped his arm around her shoulders, guiding her away from the window and down the steps. It is quite possible she would not have been able to move without his help, and for some reason, she didn’t mind. It meant at least someone cared, at least she did exist, and…

 

Her head hurt.

 

“Way to help thy neighbor!” Claire shouted over her shoulder, bitterly.

 

He laughed all the way to the car.