Forgotten

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Out of instinct. In the sense that she couldn’t think or do anything in that lonely moment. Out of energy. Out of belief. Out of time. Because even if she tried to move she was not able to. Mariah had no choice in that room as she had no choice in this building. She fell back. She fell down. Not because she wanted to. But because she was pushed backward by the only other woman in the room who grabbed her. And they fell together.

Only it was the younger girl who fell on top of the older woman. Deprived of instinct. Mindless thing like a blinded beast. It happened so fast. An instant. An increment in a passage of time that was otherwise timeless. Like a flash of light. Yes. That’s what Mariah Boucheron glimpsed as she fell behind the girl who had seized her with her hands as if she had erupted in a seizure.

Oh. Right. This girl was no longer alive. Every spasm was involuntary, granted, like the living, but it shouldn’t happen to a dead body, should it? Not like this. So if time was an ocean it was frozen. Mariah had a moment between standing and falling to witness it. To glimpse it. To feel this weightless, heavy thing climb on top of her and force her backward.

Eyes. Always the eyes first. You follow the feet of your dancing partner. Their hands guide you; hand in hand or hand on back. Whatever. However, what you really follow are the eyes. The eyes are your guide. You connect with them. You relate with them. You read them. Windows to the soul.

Only…this young lady had eyes, yes...but they were not alive. Empty. Soulless. No. Something in them that Mariah noticed. Violence. Some unsatisfied desire to…how did puppet put it? Oh. Yes.

Eat. Eat. Eat.

Her eyes bore into Mariah’s. Wide and crazed despite her daze. So close. So far away though. Mariah couldn’t look away even as the girl’s lips shifted beneath her eyes amid saliva strings between her teeth. Mouth opened wide. Chomping. Chanting wordlessly but, in that split second of Mariah’s descent, she could hear it.

Starvation. Aggression. The pleas of someone who hasn't eaten for weeks. Who sees her feast and seizes it. The wailing of a woman trapped between heaven and hell, who moans from the empty pit in her stomach, whose guttural, grisly screams echo from her throat, anguished and endless. Frozen. Alone.

Mariah falls. She is not so lonely though. Skin once hollow, drained of feeling, as smooth as Kayden had discovered when his fingers slid from calf to thigh, belly to breast, shoulder to neck—is the skin of this dead woman suddenly so hot and so cold. The dead girl gripped Mariah’s shoulders with a desire to never let go in just that one barren moment.

Her fingers dug into Mariah’s skin, gripped the flesh, burning, freezing, fingernails digging in as if to pierce and plunge straight through the bone. Yet there was no passion in this. There was only aggression. Violence. Unbridled. The kind that is elicited when a predator pounces on their prey.

This girl was naked. Mariah was clothed. Yet as they landed she could feel the warm chill from her attacker all over. Her dress, once clean and unblemished, was wet, soaked in someone else’s blood, blood that poured from the stomach. Endless. Unbeckoned.

On the floor now. A bead of sweat slides gently down Mariah’s head. Like that string of saliva between the other woman’s teeth as she slobbers onto that head. Mariah can’t think. Can only breathe. Can only scream as this thing moans with the echo of the loneliest ghost ever known.

Moments pass though they aren’t so frozen. They are fast as lightning. As loud as thunder. The girl suddenly thrust her head downward as if to headbutt the woman. No. Her mouth was open so as to bite Mariah’s neck. Quite unlike Kayden, wasn't it?

Her shoulders in its grip, her arms were free enough and she wasted no moment. Mariah seized the creature by her neck, squeezed with all her might, screamed out a thousand galaxies from her own throat, but she did not plead.

In her terror, in her fury, with her need to survive, to not die and become some zombie who haunts this box, this lifeless prison, Mariah roared in defiance. Hers wasn’t hunger. It was panic. It was survival instinct as it finally meets her adrenaline in a rush of blood that her enemy wanted to drink, but Mariah is more determined to live than the monster is determined to eat her.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

This thing could not have her. Would not take her. Will not break her. This girl is strong, maybe stronger, her dead weight bearing down on her, but Mariah has the strength of life, not death. So she explodes. Every muscle in her body pumps upward. As savage fangs slam down, loud, cracking, gnashing, mindlessly trying to bite her dinner despite her teeth not being able to reach her, Mariah manages to fend off her attacker. To keep her from eating her.

But Mariah’s hands are bloody. Not bleeding. This wasn’t her blood. Liquid glistening red. From the stomach. From the neck. Her key, still in her grip, jammed into flesh beneath the jaw in consequence from her hands at her predator’s neck. Just then, her other hand, drenched in red, slipped upward, up the chin…and the girl seized the moment.

Something raspy. Something hungry. A sound as quiet as a whisper, as loud as a scream, as if this entity had just then woken up from a deep sleep. No. She wasn’t awake. She wasn’t alive. She simply needed to eat. So her teeth became a blade as she began to wrap her mouth around those bloody fingers to bleed them dry.

And, whatever happened next, no one would be able to see Mariah bleed, nobody would hear Mariah scream into the light, to cry into the night—into those bloodthirsty eyes.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

No. No. No. The word screamed in her skull before it even reached her lips. Was it louder in her mind? Or louder outside? Here in the light. Here in the night. In darkness despite the bright environment. No. Not so bright. Dimly lit. It’s a pit. It’s a prison. It’s a shithole with ripped souls. Those of both women.

No. No. No. She said no. She meant it. No meant no. She told this younger creature, this creature, this former body of a lady, no. To not come near her. To stay away. To get off. To stop. But she didn’t listen. She kept on. She fought. She wanted to consume everything within her. So Mariah fought back with every ounce of energy in her.

“NO! NO! NO!” Her ‘No’ was an echo. Like the saliva in her hair. Stringy. Like heartbeats slamming together, as rapid as a tempest over an ocean. It was an instance of defiance as Mariah’s fingers slipped up the creature’s chin to enter her cavern between the lips the next instant.

But they didn’t!

“NOOOOOO!” The girl didn’t get a chance to eat. Flesh and bone didn’t get bit. Blood wasn’t drunk. Because, as fingers slid toward tongue and teeth, as the undead thing hissed hungrily, lustfully, wantonly, excitedly, Mariah ripped them away just as quickly.

-CHOMP!-

But the bitch missed!

Mariah’s shoulders were in its grip but her legs weren’t pinned. Jerking her fingers sideward, away from that ghastly face, she punched upward with her knee into the creature’s stomach and shoved her in the same direction. Off of her!

“NOOOOOO!” She screamed! With all her might, all her muscle, all her being, she threw her attacker off her. The girl didn’t scream. She just wheezed. It was as if she was irritated, or simply expressed the understanding that she was obstructed, had suffered a setback, but couldn’t quite comprehend what had just happened.

As if she couldn’t understand why those fingers weren’t already lurking in her stomach.

In a way, in that perfect moment, as Mariah’s eyes went as wide as her monster’s, it was kind of like her own realization of what was lurking within her all this time.

A power beyond her own limits.

“You’re gonna have to work for your meal!”

But Mariah wasn’t going to wait for that to happen.

On her feet. A little slippery yet her hands were what were truly soaking wet. She wasted no moment. It didn’t matter if this zombie, if this victim of a virus, whatever it was exactly, couldn’t feel pain. It didn’t matter if her own strength was enhanced by this strange serum. Nothing else mattered except that she herself had not gotten to her feet yet. And that was a moment that Mariah totally fucking capitalized on. Now it was time for some punishment.

She rushed toward the bitch just as she had done to her. She had already cut her neck. Had already exposed her throat. Had reopened and drawn a line across her stomach. Had poked a hole through her jaw. So, key between her fingers, slender and jagged but no tiny thing, she stuck it back up, shoved it back in.

“EAT THIS!”

It was a sickening twist that echoed in the room as it plunged into the roof of that tiny mouth. Through the jaw. Into the maw. But Mariah wasn’t finished. She didn’t gnash her teeth like her enemy did who now couldn’t. She gritted them. With a vengeance. And she took her revenge.

She seized the creature’s hair in her fist and squeezed. Twisted. And yanked. Dragged that bitch across the floor, blood trailing along, knowing what she’s looking for. It wasn’t far. It wasn’t dark. But oh how those broken shards of glass were sharp from that smashed television. And Mariah slammed that piece of shit’s face right into them. Slam! Smash! Bang! Bash!

“YOU. FUCKING. PIECE. OF. SHIT.”

Again! AGAIN! AGAIN! Again!

“YOU MOTHER FUCKER.”

Over and over and again.

Blood spattered upward.

Skin and flesh on glass.

Slam. Bang. -SMASH!-

Was the girl listening now? Was she screaming? No. Only moaning. Hungry as ever. Didn't matter anyhow. Deaf and blind and mute as ever. But Mariah didn’t care. She didn’t even see blood. She just saw red as she crashed that head into glass and watched as it scraped away its face.

Over and over again.

Whatever was left, Mariah didn’t care. There was only one thing she was after. Even as her hand bled with her own blood the next moment, as she grabbed a fragment of glass, plunged it into the girl’s eye, then another, the next eye, as glass cracked her hand and it wept red, she didn’t care. She wasn’t scared.

Now the bitch is blinded. Can’t see. Doesn’t matter if she’s hungry. Mariah flips her over onto her back, slams her foot on her neck. Now it’s her turn to pin her down. Now there’s no longer fear in her eyes but rage, unbridled, and a longer shard in her hand.

“DIE DIE DIE DIIIIIIIEEEEE”

Doesn’t matter if she’s already dead! She can die again!

The glass slashes further up the stomach, carves the scar apart, as a hand reaches within, slips up to the chest. There! THERE! And comes out with a keycard…drenched in red.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Red. Red like bloody eyes. Red like a puppet’s eyes. Like her abductor’s eyes. Her tormentor’s eyes. Shards of glass into the undead girl’s eyes. Felt like poking the eyes of the puppet all over again. Felt…well…it felt nice.

It was quite a sight to behold. Even though she had no soul, no life behind those eyes, the thing that was once something, once someone, moaned away as if nothing had ever happened.

As if she still had eyes to see with. As if her tongue wasn’t pierced. As if a key hadn’t been plunged up into her mouth. As if the brain in her head still had sense. As if her face hadn’t been disintegrated by glass. Hadn’t been flayed. Still, the woman, the girl, the creature, the husk of someone who once was, moaned away anyway. Because her hunger would never fade.

Key. Card.
Free. Heart.

Mariah still has a heart. Still has a brain. Still has eyes to see. Still has ears to hear. She hears…noises…voices…like whispers in a storm or maybe a song beyond the squall upon a sea. Something…close…far…can’t think…can only breathe…

Hello, Mariah.

What…what is…who is…

Alone, the monster moans, drones onward with her voice from her void. Yet, even though it is only the groaning of a ghost, Mariah knows there were words coming from her. Maybe that’s what she heard. Maybe she could hear the dead woman’s pleas behind her own mind.

I’m…I’m sorry…
"I'm sorry."

It was all she could do to apologize. Stricken with a pang of pity. Sympathy. Empathy. This zombie, this undead thing, this victim of AMS, if that’s really what had happened to her, was indeed a woman once. A living breathing being. Like me.

Now she was a writhing bleeding nothing. Mariah blinked herself out of it. Still had to get out of this prison. No, this room was a prison cell—the real prison was this entire building. What hell waited for her? Only one way to find out.

The creature beneath her wouldn’t stay down forever. AMS provided strength, yes? Despite the violence already inflicted upon her by her revenger? Whatever it was, maybe she would get back up any moment, maybe her power was delayed. Like mine…like…mine…like…what…who…is this…

Mariah snapped herself out of it. Okay then. She had a keycard in her grip. She had blood in her fist. Her own though. So, she grabbed glass again, carefully, more time to be cautious at the moment, and snagged a sash from her dress. The fabric was the only bandage at this time so it had to suffice. I’m on my way…Kayden…

“Rest in peace…”

She breathed a sigh of relief at the hag beneath her eyes. But it wasn’t sarcasm. It was genuine. And Mariah turned to leave.

Across the floor. Toward the door. She takes a breath. Lets it escape between quivering lips. Hopes for the best. No. She prays. She wasn’t religious. Yet there are stars above the surface of this hell. Surely there are. Surely they will hear her. Surely the universe is on Mariah’s side…right?

Lifts her arm. Swipes the keycard. Eyes open. Eyes close. Door opens. That’s her moment.

Mariah is excited. Dying to make her exit. To find him. To find Kayden. Because he was not already standing at the entrance. However, she has her senses. Wait. Wait! Check it. Check your surroundings. Check your doors and corners, kid. Do it.

She does it. She doesn’t run. Even as she hears something moving behind her. Moaning coming closer. Like a worm slithering, some disgusting creature crawling along despite its spilled innards, Mariah doesn’t look backward. She looks leftward. She peers around the corner down the corridor.

There was a door. Same corridor door as before. The one where she was resting against before Kayden came to save her from the other monster. The door was closed. Good. Behind it was chaos and mayhem. Slaughter and Puppet Mask. No thanks. Not going back.

She looked to her right. Darkness as before in a corridor dimly lit. It was totally dark at this other end. An eclipse where the ceiling light did not strike. Only shadows lingered in the in between. But, no, she first sees something! Someone! But it isn’t Kayden. It’s him.

It’s Hockey Mask. He isn’t moving. He’s just laying on the floor. Oh shit… That was his own machete buried in his head! Kayden… But where was Kayden!? Right! He was bleeding! Her eyes spy a trail of blood on the floor leading into the darkness at the other end of the corridor.

Well, no need to stand on ceremony. Mariah didn’t plan on becoming some dumb blind bitch’s lunch and dinner. Time to investigate Hockey Mask and follow the bread crumbs that her man had left her. So Mariah steps forward when—

—The corridor door opens!

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Sometimes Mariah finds it hard to think. Can anybody blame her given this fucked up environment she's in? At this time, however, she didn’t need to think. She already knew the hell and inferno behind that corridor door so, when it opened, she threw herself backward, back into her prison cell, welcomed it, caught her breath in her throat, and threw her hand over her lips. Her own bones crushed them. Had to. To keep from whimpering because of what she glimpsed.

Him.

Puppet Mask.

He was back.

He entered the corridor through its open door. Behind him was fire. Burning. Writhing. Twisting. Screaming tentacles of flames that licked and lapped at his back but he was safe. Granted, it was only a moment, only a glimpse, before Mariah drew herself away, pressed her back against the wall, and hugged it in silence, not daring to peer around the corner. So she just…listened…to him…to it…to Puppet…speaking to…nobody…nothing.

“I love the smell of burning flesh in the morning.”

Puppet spoke as casually as ever, as if in a conversation, however it could only be with himself. Itself. Or the dead body across the floor as his dull footsteps carried him forth.

“Yes, Timmy, I know the eggs are fresh, that’s why I don’t refrigerate them. Chicken eggs. No not goat.”

What the fuck is it saying!? Wait. Maybe it really was a droid. And it was just totally malfunctioning.

Mariah Boucheron begged that he would not see this open door because she dare not close it while he walked the corridor.

“Mmmm yeah I tried it. Definitely have plenty of meat laying around. Just wasn’t that tasty though. I prefer autocannibalism. On others, granted. Goat goat it rhymes with Hoat!”

Back to the wall, it was all Mariah could do to watch the other monster crawl toward her, slowly, moaning. No. Oh no. The husk could get up any moment. Or Puppet could hear her. Closer. He was coming closer!

“Need to find that doctor something-or-other. What’s his name again? Sergeant Sausage or somethin'? Seasaw? Sawin? Sommat.”

Fuck. Oh fuck. No no no fuck no. Please. Please don’t. Don’t see. Don’t see! Don’t see it! DON’T SEE ME.

She can’t see it. Can’t comprehend it. Doesn’t understand why she is suddenly so terrified…of him.

“Ahahahahahahahahahaha.”

Closer. CLOSER.

"Hm? You say something? Nope. Must have been the wind. Oh."

Closer. No. No! No. He walks past her. Past her door. Down the corridor. She dare not peek! She dare not speak! She dare not think! Can barely breathe! Simply listens to him. His rambling. His chanting. As his voice gradually fades away…into darkness…into the deep…leaving her with…the moans of a ghost. Alone. In a void.

A lonely, lonely voice.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Huffing. Puffing. Panting. Maddening. She breathes. Finally, she breathes. Freely. Removes her fingers from her lips. Licks her lips. Wishes her saliva was water. Glad that the undead girl’s saliva did not enter her mouth. Neither that her fingers entered its mouth. That she hadn’t been bitten. That Puppet hadn’t discovered her.

What are you doing?

She looks at the thing creeping closer toward her; sighing, whimpering, growling.

Move. Move, you dumb bitch.

He was gone, right? She couldn’t hear him speak. She couldn’t hear any footsteps.

Do it. Go. Move. Do it. DO IT.

She does it. Mariah peeked around the corner. She looked right. Dim lighting. Then darkness at the end. No Puppet. Just Hockey Mask. Motionless. She looked left. Doorway. Door wasn’t closed anymore at this end of the corridor. There was fire, however.

Dancing flames amid shadows. Of course, she was too terrified to process what she saw. Turned out that the corridor was more open. That the fire had not engulfed it totally. Yet she was too far away to see if there was space to move between the flames.

Not that she wanted to anyway. Fuck that place. No way. She turned back down the corridor. Carefully. As cautiously as a predator about to pounce. Or prey trying to hide from predator. No. Not now. Because, really, she didn’t give a shit about hockey or Hockey. He seemed dead enough and she wasn’t dumb enough to check for a pulse or a soul.

No, Mariah had another goal. Fuck the key. Keep the keycard. Fuck the glass shard. She needed a better weapon. And this bastard had it buried in his head. Thanks to Kayden. Or…so she guessed.

Move. Into the corridor. Hovered over Hockey Mask for only a moment before her hands wrapped around his weapon’s handle, and she tugged, she pulled, she jerked, and finally she ripped it free. Blood squirted. Didn’t matter. Her garments and her skin and her hair were covered in blood.

What mattered was that now she had a weapon. She could fight back. Stand her ground. Defend against hungry enemies. Hell with them. She was hungry too. Just not for flesh. Kayden. Find Kayden. Get out. Get the fuck out. She turned around, saw no Puppet, heard no Puppet, only dim light, only shadows, only darkness. Move. Down the corridor. Do it.

She did it. She took a step when—

“Oh hello there you are I thought I smelled something FISHY.”

A voice in the void. Alone. Then it emerges from the darkness. Crosses the threshold. Soulless. Steps into the light. Mariah cries inside. Yet her lips are silent. The woman in her head isn’t.

RUN.

-skkkrrrrrrrrnnnGGGGGG!-

She does!

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Mariah ran toward the flames. There was no way she was running toward him. Or it. No way she was going to attempt to get around him this time. No. Run away. Go. Flee from him. Flee from it. Don’t go near it. That fire in the distance roared and raged in a different way but at least it would take her out of this corridor. So she ran, as fast as she can, toward the doorway.

The door suddenly dropped downward right in front of her face, sealing her in the corridor yet again, just as before. All she glimpsed were swaying flames and then a sheet of steel slamming down to drown out that fire’s cries. NO.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO.”

“You owe me a scream.”

-skkkrrrrrrrrnnnGGGGGG!-

No. FUCK. No! NO!

Each skipped heartbeat made the next one painful. Full of agony. Mariah thought her insides might burst out of her throat. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she was always sick. Maybe she was going to be sick the next moment. She dare not turn around though. She did anyway. And she froze. Her back up against the door. Just like before. Frozen.

Didn’t matter if she had a weapon. A machete with blood on it that looked mean. Didn’t matter that she was a woman, a woman in a white dress, but a woman in a white dress drenched in red because of the blood, the same blood that caked her skin. Most of it wasn’t even hers. He didn't find her intimidating. What about her cut?

Did it...get...in..? Surely it didn’t. Not enough of it. A lot of the dead girl’s blood came off the hand as it gripped her hair and slammed her face on glass.
Where’s Kayden? Okay, he killed Hockey Mask, but did he then run away? Why didn’t he come back? Why didn’t he pound her door as if to bring it down?
Undead girl dead? A large part of Mariah wanted to go back into that room and finish what she started. Put the poor girl out of her misery with a machete.

These thoughts race within Mariah's brain in the span of instants. Not as long as it takes this other creature to pace toward her. This…thing…in the mask of a puppet. With the masked voice of a man. One that was devoid of any semblance of humanity.

“Don’t worry. You’re sound asleep and can’t feel a thing.”

No reason she’s thinking these things. They just help keep her mind off what was about to happen to her. Because, despite her courage, Mariah knew she was no match for this opponent. Her machete was bigger than his knife. Yet his knife was bigger than her courage.

He just kept on walking and talking.
But then a door opened before him.
Puppet Mask stopped in his tracks.
A man in bloody clothes came out.
He looked only one way: at Mariah.
“I…I…I…won…I won…I’m...I'm…okay."

He looked half-dazed. Half-awake. Is that…his blood..? The blood on her body mostly wasn’t her own. She had a cut on her hand. Part of her dress served as its bandage. However, neither the rest of her dress nor his shirt and pants would serve to bandage his arm on further notice.

It was a bloody limb. And bleeding. As he lifted it, as if only half of him were conscious of it, and what must be excruciating pain despite the silent solace on his face, Mariah glimpsed it.

It was like the limb of a crab. A lobster. The arm was cut, split into two sections, somewhere down its center, somewhere between index and middle fingers. She could see right through this man’s forearm. Could hear his words as surely as her own heart. But her own words held no worth.

“I didn’t give up! I’m…I’m free!”

No. Sorry. You're not free.

Her words were quiet in her mind. For Mariah was still frozen. She wanted to open her mouth, to shout at him, to tell him who or what was behind him. Look out! Get down! But she couldn’t. She would if she could. But she couldn’t! She couldn’t say anything! Couldn’t open her lips! Even as the monster in a mask spoke to the man with a lobster limb.

“Indeed onion ring. Congratulations. I believe.”

And the man turned, slowly, to face the thing.

“N-No…it’s…y-you…but…no…oh no…p-please!”

“I’ll inform Lord Gratchius of this immediately.”

And the mask suddenly whipped his hand as steel flashed as fast as the man screamed. Mask’s knife sliced up the man’s chest, stomach to neck, as far as Mariah could glimpse with the man’s back turned to her. Blood spewed. It was like carving open the dead girl’s scar all over again.

“Now get back in your black hole!”

At that, Puppet Mask grabbed the screaming man and tossed him back into the room he had come out of like a bag of garbage, like some piece of trash. He pressed a button on the wall. The door slammed shut. Silenced the man’s screams. Quieted his agony.

“Hole hole it rhymes with lol!”
Mask turned back to Mariah.
Laughed at the man’s trauma.
“You know? Laugh out loud?”
Mariah is quiet. She is silent.
“No? Oh. Eh. Tough crowd..."

Then Mask took a breath. Well it sounded like he did to Mariah. It was deep. In. Out. Now was this just some effect of a droid? Of a machine? Of the mask’s masked voice? Of its modulator? Or was Mariah still asleep? Was she in a dream? Dream. Dream. Sleep.

“Or am I talking. To a fucking. VOLLEY BALL?”

Just then, just when Mariah Boucheron expected her whole world to end, to be given the same treatment as that man, just as Puppet Mask took another step, there was a moan. Not a scream though. No. The moan of someone who hadn’t eaten in weeks, months, years—because their hunger was beyond wonder.

The undead girl had found her feet again and ran right into Puppet Mask! She slammed her naked, mutilated body into his, and both were already bloody, but now his attention was on it, on her, not on Mariah. As the girl crashed, the key in her mouth fell out, landing near Mariah’s feet.

Run.

“Woah there crazy lady named Daisy!”

Mask began to fend the zombie off of him as if they were brother and sister just playing a game.

“We only just met and you have bad breath!”

Run!

Dead girl thrust her head toward Mask just as she had done to Mariah. To bite him. His neck. Any part of him. Even if she saw no flesh. Saw no flesh. Flesh. Flesh. Death. Why would a zombie try to bite a machine to begin with? Crazy. Crazy thing.

Mask grabbed her wrist, grabbed her neck with his other hand, kept her at a distance, and the pair of monsters just stared at each other. Eyes into eyes. His were red. Hers were red. His were open. Hers were closed by broken glass.

RUN.

"Jeepers Creepers," Mask sang. “Where’d ya get those peepers? Jeepers Creepers. Where’d ya get those eyyyeees?”

Dead girl didn’t. She just moaned. As if she didn’t want to listen to him. Just wanted him to shut up. Be still. Let her eat him. It. Him? It?

Mask began to whistle what was sung. Except he twirled the girl. She spun away but he didn’t let her get far. He waved at her. Well he wiggled his fingers. Spun her back to him. And they began to dance. It was a dance of death. A dance in darkness. A mad dance. A dance with corpses. Except only one of them wanted it as he indicated with his twisted voice. The other one didn’t. She had no choice.

RUN!

Mariah does!

Her muscles came back to life. Her heart pumped blood that tingled then sizzled. Her mind raced, not with thoughts, but with instinct, as if she was some undead thing with a need to feed. Only her feast was footsteps and she was suddenly determined to match her crazy heartbeats with each step.

She ran. Forward. Toward the darkness. No, toward the shadows by the light where dead things danced. Past them. They’re oblivious. Completely oblivious. They keep dancing but Mariah doesn’t look back as her feet greet darkness where light did not shine. And she ran. She kept running. Legs pumping. Machete in one hand. Keycard in the other. Only it had another key. The same key as earlier. She ran. And she didn’t look back.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC (Recurring)

And she ran. And she ran. And she ran.

It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see anything except for the light at the end of the tunnel. The dim light. The light from the ceiling that lit up another section of floor and corridor just like before. There was a pattern to this, she was beginning to notice. A kind of method to the madness.

Light. Dark. And shadows between those where the dark met the light.
Where life met death and the living and the dead began their dance.
Living. Dead. Undead. Not quite alive. Something else. In. Between.
Circle of life. Circle so round. Death’s black hole. Up. Side. Down.

Similarly, there is a method to Mariah’s terrorized flight. She doesn’t run mindlessly. She isn’t fleeing purposelessly. She may not know where she is going. Where the exits are. What are behind the frightening doors lining either side of this corridor as before. But she knows what she saw in this corridor before the door where an undead girl lied.

She had seen the corpse of Hockey Mask. His machete buried in his head. She had not seen Kayden. Yet she did see a trail of blood that spread from the light, to the shadows in between, to the darkness which covered it.

Go. Move. Run. Find it! Find him!

She might be stepping on Kayden’s red liquid but her own naked feet are already wet from blood and she might miss it and she can’t stop, she won’t stop, no not in shadows, not in darkness, because though she knows Kayden might be alive she knows who makes the noise in the void.

-skkkrrrrrrrrnnnGGGGGG!-

He’s coming! He’s back! Puppet Mask!

NO. DON’T STOP. DON’T STOP FOR KAYDEN.

RUN.

Oh she does. She passes wall lamp after wall lamp. A few flicker, as if trying to come to life, as if trying to die. She dashes between wall after wall. She doesn’t look at the doors though even though they’re closed. Can’t trust doors anymore. Only if they have an ‘EXIT’ sign in red letters as red as a puppet’s eyes.

-skkkrrrrrrrrnnnGGGGGG!-

And…from the void…his voice!

“YOU’RE A FUCKING UGLY BITCH!”

NO! GO! RUN! DON’T LOOK BACK! NOT AT HIM! NOT THIS! DON’T STOP FOR HIM! OR FOR KAYDEN!

"I want to stab you to death and play around in your blood!"

RUN.

She does, with all her strength, whatever is left, because Mariah Boucheron isn’t a monster. She’s a Human. She’s human. She has hunger. Thirst. Tired. Tormented. But she can’t stop. She must run. Even as the void’s voice gets louder. As the scrape of a blade gets closer. A piercing shriek of metal on metal or like a razor blade behind her eyes.

“I’M COMING FOR YOU, MARIAH!”

RUN.

“Ahahahahahahahahahaha.”

This was not her time to die.
Dark hall. Yet ahead is light.
He—It—was gaining on her.
But she has to run onward.

There is a door. On her right. There is a light. Not a ceiling light. A wall light. It flickers over the door. It is not a door like before. It has a sign. It isn’t an ‘EXIT’ sign. But it is a sign to her that maybe nothing lifeless, nothing living or dead, neither Kayden nor a monster, might be behind it given its sign. Why would anybody think to go in?

Mariah doesn’t think at that moment. The light goes out again but she glimpsed where that door is and its sign. Its word too. ‘Restroom’.

HIDE.

So Mariah goes inside...

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It sounded like…rain. Maybe static. More like a broken water pipe. Not enough to vomit water out of it, not much to pump, but just enough to cause a bit of a trickle. Like a finger grazing skin. Tickling its surface. It wasn’t a drizzle. But it sounded like…rain.

It wasn’t raining last night. The previous evening. Wait…those words keep turning over and over again in her brain…in her heart… She knows it was dark when she had lain her head on the pillow. Although…how many nights were one evening ago? How many mornings? Days? Weeks, even? How can this lone woman, so very alone, even know if she has been asleep for a day or a week?

Rain.
In a maze.
Rain…
I can make it rain…

She had already proven it. The galaxy could bleed her, make her bleed, bloody and bruise her, and had proven this. The universe cut her hand open on glass. No. You did that. Yet she was the one who actually made it rain—blood. From another woman. A dead woman. Undead. Same difference. In the end, that girl was swept away by the rain.

Yeah…not so defenseless…are you, woman?

A voice in her head. Again. Her own voice, of course. Everybody had one. Well, maybe not everybody. Maybe not psychopaths. Maybe not members of certain races. But, as she looks back in moments of O so frozen oceans and all that crap, Mariah Boucheron knows whose voice it is. It’s a woman’s voice. It’s her own voice. My voice. It’s Mariah Boucheron’s voice. From the void. To keep her from feeling so…very…empty. Me.

A lonely, lonely voice.

Alone in a void.

Not so alone though.

A mirror image she's been fearing.
Whose voice you've been hearing.

Rain. Wasn’t raining that night.
Wait… Maybe...it...was...raining…
Hard to recall. Memories. Hazy.
It was dark… There was no light.

Rain. It simply sounded like rain.

But it turned out to be just a broken pipe. Behind the door, inside this room, there was dim light as before. Yet it was enough to see her surroundings. Her corners. The door. Check your doors and corners, kid. Yeah. He should have included ‘corridors’. Yet ‘he’ was another story. Another memory. One that Mariah Boucheron can’t be focusing on at the moment.

Nerves on fire. Heart pounding. Adrenaline. Terror. Yet she had only a moment. Only an instant despite her thinking, her remembering—remembering that time was fluid—like her fluids. Like the blood inside her and outside her. Nervous. Frightened. But a moment later and she is on the move again. With her weapon.

She needed at least one hand free so she slipped key and keycard into the belt of her dress. Curling her fingers over the hilt of her machete, she licked her lips, wondered if she could later drink the sink water, but first moved forward. Into the darkness. Into the dimness.

She was as quick as cautious. Swift like a wind both silent and violent. She heard no footsteps inside or outside. Her own bare feet, though both bloody, had somehow managed to not be bleeding. Yet that could change any second depending on where her step ended. She needed footwear. No. She needed to get out of this nightmare.

The door led to an open interior. Closed stalls. Urinals. Sinks. Dimly lit environment. Some green grey gunk on the edges. Abandoned surfaces. Neglected. Like this factory. Like its inhabitants. Its victims. But it’s just a glance. Just another instant anyway. Mariah saw no threat, heard no threat, just gentle drip-drops of water. Just rain.

She found her quarry. Just across from her entrance really. It would give her a direct view of the bathroom’s door. So that, while she dared not waste time making noise trying to find a way to bar the door, at least she could see it open. At least she could peek at it as it swings and see who comes in. Kayden. Or him.

So, she opened one door, one more door. Fingers squeezing machete, hand on door, she gently pushes it open. It swings on hinges. Nothing. No one. Just a toilet. Just a seat. Door closes. Mariah places her bare feet on the toilet seat, kneels down into a crouch, rests machete across her lap, and peeks.

She can do this. Keep silent. Motionless. As quiet as the gentlest rain on the serenest ocean. Only…she just can’t keep her heart from beating like whatever bloody machine had severed a man’s arm in half… Machine..? Or man..?

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC (Recurring)

Time passed. As always. Seconds. Seconds ticked. Seconds tocked. She had no clock, no watch, no comlink, no phone, but she could count seconds in her head. Like her heartbeat. So easy to read. But maybe not so easy to know why. Why? Why did her heart beat for him? Why did Kayden make her feel like she did? What was it about him? What made him…tick?

She was an idiot for thinking it at that moment. Yet, back at that door as before, it kept her focus off of it. Diverted her attention. Only her focus wasn’t so broken. As thoughts drifted off of him she stayed…sane. Or maybe that theory was what was truly insane.

Anyway, seconds actually became minutes. Knees up, kneeling on a toilet, arms on knees, machete in between, just sitting silently, Mariah Boucherone just breathes. Her brain bleeds memories. Tries her best to contain them lest they keep her drained.

Hey. Listen.
Says a voice.
It isn’t Kayden.
If with no noise.

Focus. Kayden isn’t here. Nobody’s here. Only you. Not your parents. Not your friends that you don’t even have. Not even Puppet Mask. You’re alone. You’re okay though. You didn’t expect to survive seconds, never mind minutes. So I know you’re scared—

“Do you have a spare square?”

Says another voice.
It wasn’t in her head.
She’s already frozen.
Courage is destroyed.

What…who…the...fuck?

It was a woman’s voice. Coming from within the bathroom. Coming from behind the wall. Coming from the opposite stall. Direction pinpointed. Coming from behind the stall’s wall at Mariah’s right.
Slowly, like she had spent all night sleeping in the wrong position, she craned her neck, petrified by some sudden ability that she might actually be able to see through walls and glimpse this new monstrosity.

“A square to spare?”

She sounded like a woman. Maybe in her early thirties. Kind of like Mariah. Sounded like a receptionist. Like she had just come out of the office to do her duties in the bathroom. She, in some uncanny way, actually sounded…sweet.

Sounded like she wasn’t a thing.

“I’m all out of toilet paper, sweetie.”

No, Mariah wasn’t frozen. Not really. Her heartbeats were. Her heart became as ice in her chest, block solid, yet…somehow…she could move. She managed to. Check your doors and corners, kid. That voice was really her heartbeat.

Against her fears, Mariah slowly, carefully, lowered herself near the restroom’s surface, leaned, and took a peek past the gap beneath the stall’s wall. And she regretted it immediately. She had seen the feet of other species with different skin colors like blue or purple. But she knew what gangrene looked like too. This wasn’t gangrene. It was…something.

The woman, such as she was, whatever it was, had slender legs that ended with a pink high heel and nothing on the other foot. It was barren. And it was black. Green. Grey. All at once. Not like the skin above. Her skin was pale. A kind of white grey. Not quite. More like…the texture of that one masked man. Not Puppet. Pallid.

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I don’t have a spare to square. I can’t spare a square.”

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

They were only feet. They weren’t only feet though. They were…things. They didn’t even move. But all it took was one more blink of Mariah’s eyes, that single glimpse of pasty porcelain skin and dead flesh, rotten and gangrenous and diseased, for her to look away. For her to stand up straight with a barely concealed gasp. And back away. The woman, what is it, didn’t move, but her lips did.

“I don’t have a square to spare.”

Speaking as sweetly as ever, if with emphasis on ‘square’ and ‘spare’ between her sentences, an inflection that…was she irritated? Beneath the surface? Furious? Mariah wasn’t really interested in theorizing it. She just wanted to leave. But she couldn’t. There were monsters out there. There are monsters in here.

“I can’t square a spare.”

Square. Spare. Was it a deliberate mistake? The words were given in reverse. What do I do? Do I speak? Do I leave? Do I think? She wants the voice to speak, not the one on the other side of this suddenly flimsy wall, but the one inside her head. The other woman who always told Mariah when to eat, when to sleep, when to shit and in which toilet.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.”

Talking to me? Does she even know I’m here? Then it clicked. It had to. Not only did it reassure some speck in Mariah’s soul that she was dealing with a person and not a monster but, more importantly, she was in a position to help. It clicked that, maybe, just maybe, there was a real woman next to her, a wounded woman, physically and mentally. Who wouldn’t be?

You were. Remember? Didn’t take much, did it? Collapsed by that corridor door. Back against it. Rocking back and forth. Rhyming. Chiming. Mindlessly.

Only Mariah hadn’t been in as bad a condition as this…woman…was it a woman?

Do it. You know you have to. Even if you don’t want to. Do it.

Mariah steadied her heartbeats, breathed, swallowed back her apprehension, and quietly stood back on top of the toilet seat. She had to see. She had to know if she was dealing with a person or a ghost. So she slowly balanced herself with her hands placed on the stall’s wall and she lifted herself on her tiptoes—to peek.

To see over the top of the wall and inside the adjacent stall.

Although her heart was already in her throat, she was strong, had to be, as she saw…nothing. Nobody. Was…was I…imagining… No. She couldn’t have been. She knows she heard someone. Something. More importantly, all the stalls’ doors were closed. This one was open though. And that was a pink shoe beside the toilet. Only it was empty.

“Do you have a spare square?”

Mariah gasped, this time without trying to hide it, and snapped her attention to the side at the same time as her grip slipped in surprise. There’s that voice again. That woman’s voice. Sweet. Serene. But it wasn’t coming from the empty stall anymore. It was coming from behind the door. Mariah’s door.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck! She hadn’t crashed at least. She landed on her feet. Pressed her back against the furthest wall, grabbing her machete. Her door was locked. But for how long?

“A spare square?”

There was no knock. No, the thing didn’t bother. It just began banging on the door. Bang. Bang. Bang. Over and over, as violently as Puppet Mask had stabbed Pallid Mask, only she kept speaking sweetly.

“I don’t have a square to spare.”

“Go away!” Mariah hadn’t even realized she had replied. “GO AWAY!” Until she cried the command at the woman.

-BANG!-BANG!-BANG!-

“I’m sorry, sweetie.”

She wouldn’t leave. Just like the rest of them. She wanted to get in. She wanted to eat Mariah’s flesh. But I won’t FUCKING LET THEM!

Mariah didn’t need a voice. She simply had no choice.

She squeezed her machete, held it at the ready, and opened the door. And she roared.

Even as the woman kept quiet; a woman whose mutated face had taken the shape of, not a dead woman, but some perversion of what a woman’s face should look like. Hideous. Unwarranted. As if the universe had, not allowed for deformation, but personally twisted this person’s face for no purpose. Just because. Just like this fucking factory.

“Do you have a spare square?”

Maybe it was because she hated that face. Everything it stood for. Or just because she expected the next instant to end with this thing pushing past the door. Whatever it was, Mariah didn’t wait. She swung her machete downward. It hacked into the woman’s head.

Blood—was it red? black?—spurted upward but, again, Mariah didn’t wait. She kicked the thing in the chest, sent it flying backward at the same time as she retrieved her weapon. She wasn’t going to leave it like Kayden did.

Courage had returned to her like fire, but the flames were in her own doorway, her own mind, her own heart, and she would control them.

The woman had collapsed. Was she dead? Maybe. Then again, maybe she always was. But Mariah heard something just then. A moan. No, not like the undead girl’s from the other room, it was more like a growl. Not hungry. Angry. Not irritated. Furious. And she saw it.

From outside the end stall, emerging from its side, was a new monstrosity. A man. Crawling. Blindfolded. Half-naked. His ankles chained together and stretched over his head, but he was no ballerina. He was a deformity beyond comprehension. And his tongue that stuck out as if to, not eat but drink, was as black as that woman’s foot with her gangrene.

Mariah didn’t scream. As this thing came slowly crawling toward her, she didn’t wait to see what it wanted. She turned to leave, determined to never make this mistake again, instantly realizing no place is safe in this factory. No door. No corridor.

You can’t run. You can’t hide.

A voice tells her on the other side.

You only win. Or you lose. I see you.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music IC

Past the door. Back in that corridor. Don’t look back. Go forward. Don’t go left. That’s where darkness was. That’s where Puppet was. Go right. Find Kayden’s blood. Like cookie crumbs. A trail that would tell her where the hell he had ended up. Assuming it was his blood. There was already so much blood in this factory.

Mariah wasted no further moment as she took off in a jog down the corridor. Lights above doors continued to flicker on either side. Still no threat. No screaming, no scraping, no indication that the puppet and its blade were on their way. She saw no man. No mask. No blood. Until the next moment.

There! THERE.

It was red. Good. That could definitely mean Human. A line of red droplets on the floor led to a door. As light flashed, blood danced with it, until it didn’t. The trail appeared to end before a closed door and the lamp above it.

Suddenly music erupted in the corridor. From behind, permeating the hallway ceiling to floor. She heard no screaming, no scraping, no indication of Puppet or Kayden. Though, as she spun around, she saw no monster, only images. Only a viewscreen embedded into the wall that depicted…Puppet. The man-sized version. Riding on a unicycle.

The setting appeared to be a carnival. A fair. Something like that judging by the lights, the patterns, the ferris wheel and the carousel. The unicycle was riding with the camera as the man in a puppet mask paused at some kind of snack stand.

“Ahahahahahahahahahaha!”

There was a Shistavanen standing at the stand with a metallic spatula in his hand. He had a pink apron on with words written in red that read: ‘Don’t hate the player or the flayer’. Flanking one side of the stand were three animals in the form of man-sized droids; no, not droids—animatronics. A red fox. A purple rabbit. A brown bear. They weren’t moving.

On the other side of the stand, however, three dogs were. They stood at level with the Shistavanen’s hip, but looked more menacing in their silence, in their stillness, in their coats of sable and with black eyes unnatural. They looked...hungry.

“Welcome to Cookabonka Carnival!”
Puppet Mask greeted on his unicycle.
“Today we’re showcasing a new dish!”
He broke on his bike to break into a jig.

“DOGMEAT! If you want it we got it! This is my friend Dogmeat!” He slapped the Shistavanen on the back. “We’re best friends! Wellll we’re coworkers! Wellllll we’re competitors! Ahahahahahahahahahaha! Today Dogmeat’s gonna serve ya dogmeat! That’s right! YOU!” He pointed to the viewscreen. No. Through.

Mariah was watching all of this in the corridor. Conscious of it, of course. Terrified by it. Confused too. However, she only just then noticed she had been walking toward the screen, rather than away from it, as if drawn to it. No. As if drawn to him. No. As if drawn to it.

“ALL OF YOU!” He shook his hips at the camera. “How about some yummy-wummy chihuahua chimichangas!? Poodle noodles!? Bulldog hotdogs!? If we got it, YOU want it!” He pointed at the audience again. He pointed at Mariah Boucheron. She just didn’t want to believe it.

“No? Don’t want it?” He stepped forward just then. Closer.
“You don’t want to eat dogmeat?” Tilted his head. Closer.
“Aw why not? S’wrong with eating dogmeat?” CLOSER.
“What about bein’ it? Bein’ Dogmeat’s meat.” CLOSER.

They both were. Puppet’s face filled the screen. Red eyes so mean. So bloody. Mariah’s eyes were on the other side, inches away from that face. Eyes into eyes.

Then a few things happened at once. The viewscreen cut off, faded to black, as lamps began to zigzag in flashes of light. There were two metallic thuds on either side of Mariah, from opposite ends of the corridor. They sounded like doors.

Then the ceiling light illuminated those doors. Lit up in their glow, though holding no hope for tomorrow for anyone to gaze upon them that moment, were two different entities, but they were all beasts, and they were all of one thing: Eat.

Three dogs on one end. One Shistavanen on the other end. Mariah Boucheron breathing in between? Sounded like a jelly sandwich. In a manner of speaking. And, from the dark, three dogs and one Dogmeat roar and charge toward their dogmeat.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

RUN!

Oh fuck does she run!

Except where!? Where the hell does she go!? She has a machete. It won’t do much against the snapping jaws of three dogs though. There was no way she could take them on without walking out cut up and bitten if living to begin with. Couldn’t outrun them. Maybe she could run past one but not three.

The Shistavanen, on the other hand, was three dogs in one. Could she take him on? He had only hands. She had a weapon. She had a fucking machete. She had already proven her abilities with it. No. Idiot. Stupid!

She knew it. She couldn’t outrun those damn dogs and, wherever any of them had come from, their doors had closed behind the light. So even if she ran past the Shistavanen without getting attacked by him how far would she get before all four of them got her?

Where!? WHERE!?

No more doors and corners.

This corridor reeks of death.

But it can’t be Mariah’s end!

Doors. DOORS.

She could and would and should try to open as many that might open. Lock it. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t ever go out of it. No. Not doors. A door. The door with a trail of blood right before it!

So Mariah runs and she doesn’t run far. She spun around and slammed into the door, not to knock it down with newfound strength but to in turn slap her hand on the button.

“COME OOOOOOON! COME THE FUCK ON!”

She could hear the three beasts barreling toward her, snapping wildly, savage and angry, their nails pitter-pattering rapidly like bloody raindrops or a thousand daggers in this house of a thousand corpses.

Dogmeat bolting for her, shrieking like some rabid dog amid the deep growls of his three dogs. Yet he wasn’t just running like she might. No, he was running with his arms and his legs.

It won’t open! IT WON’T OPEN!

Mariah looked left, looked right, had to do it but regretted it. They’d be on her in seconds. Not minutes. They were no longer so far.

Key. KEYCARD.

Swiped it.
Got nothin’.
“FUCK! SHIT!”
Again. AGAIN.

Wasn’t working. Was Kayden even behind the door? Mariah hoped so as she pounded it, screamed his name, begged him open it and let her in. Because, after all, that was his blood before the door...wasn’t it?

Before. The. Door.

That’s when she noticed it. Another smaller button dimly lit by ceiling light right beside the door.

The blood trail didn’t end at the door. It ended before the door. As if the bleeder had never even reached the door to in turn open it to begin with.

As the four hounds of hell prepared to tear her to shreds, to rip her up in ways that not even a flayer’s blade could do, or a machine that cracks the limb into that of a crab, Mariah slammed her hand on the button. It responded at once.

A hatch opened from above. A ladder instantly lowered. And Mariah didn’t need a voice in her head at this moment. Nobody needed to tell this woman to get the fuck up. So she does. And she doesn’t look back.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Those moments in the ocean, back farther than even the restaurant, all on her lonesome, were so slow. Being out deep at sea, floating in between waves, sweet and serene, was calming and kind of like camping. To be honest, Mariah was never much for being in the forest. She liked her toilets. Being on a boat though? Different experience. If similar escapism.

Although there was always the notion, this facet within her imagination that, what if, just what if, something was floating beneath her? How would she know it? Unless the water was clear and that far out it wasn’t. No way of knowing what exactly was swimming beneath her feet or if, just maybe, maybe if it wanted to eat her. Starting with her feet.

Well, at present this was no ocean and it was only a moment. One second’s worth of not knowing whether a dog or Dogmeat was going to seize her by the feet on her way upward. She knew it would only take one hand, one set of teeth, to drag her downward the next instant. And then the beasts would eat.

It didn’t happen. She managed to start climbing just in time. She managed to fly up the rungs of that ladder just in time. Just in time to spy with her naked eye those gnashing teeth from three dogs in a kind of triumvirate beneath her feet. But they couldn’t reach her.

Just in time to see the Shistavanen, to hear his shriek, and witness his ascent as he climbed after her. Just in time to slam the hatch shut behind her, lock it, and listen as said Shistavanen pounded and pounded and pounded. But to no avail. He wasn’t escaping that level of hell. That hatch proved to be as sturdy as those corridor doors.

And her keycard had successfully been inserted into the panel beside it. She sealed it and she didn’t look behind as her new environment steals, takes her in as she takes it in, but it isn’t much different. Same building. Same darkness. Only not really. It was entirely pitch black.

It was one thing to see dimness. To see shadows. To see where they reside in between the light and the darkness. It was completely different to see nothing. To be suddenly blind. As surely as her keycard worked, that panel served to be her only source of light, and its button lit up in red did absolutely nothing.

It was also quiet. No turning keys or scraping blades or moaning dead things. Too quiet. Mariah can only hear her own breathing. Only her heartbeat. Only her veins and arteries pumping between her eardrums. They were like rivers. This darkness was like that ocean. She wonders what might be lurking, not beneath her feet, but all around her.

Then…she hears something…it sounded like a guillotine slamming down for some cutting…maybe a compactor’s door before the crushing…or…a door… Yes. The sound of doors opening and closing as if malfunctioning.

Then she sees, and seeing is believing. They were indeed doors. Lit up by the light above each one. Lights were blinking in and out too. Okay. Fine. Nothing terribly new. Except…there’s something else…no longer veiled.

Dark is black. This factory is darker than black. The light is yellow-white, and she’ll take that combination over black, grey and green. A Human’s blood, however, is red. And those were spots of red droplets on the floor, not before one of those doors, but at it.

So Mariah, slowly if quickly, approaches, like someone trying to run to home base but ever wary of being seen sneaking away from the plate.

Panel on the side. Keycard slips it. Red light turns green. Door opens. Darkness. No lights on. But…someone? Or something?

Walk.

She does.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It sounded like rain. At least…it had. Back in that bathroom. That tap. That broken pipe. That ruined faucet. That dirty, disgusting toilet. That dirty, disgusting woman. That dirty, disgusting man. In spite of them, despite the filth, that rain…that rain was soothing…and that memory was like that calm sea.

Rain. Rain in a maze. A labyrinth. A lattice. They thought her a mouse. Those rats. Yet they underestimated Mariah Boucheron. A lady in a maze. One who will break her chains. Somehow. Some way. She would figure out a way to get out of this shithole. She would be brave and dangerous. Deadly and bold.

She had to be.
You have to be.

She is correct, especially now as she stands in a doorway with no way of seeing throughout the darkness. She can’t tell what’s in front of her. Who’s behind her. There is only darkness. Only silence. Pitch black given that the lights went out who knows how long ago. The malfunctioning doors stopped malfunctioning.

So she just stands in the doorway, not knowing whether to step forward or backward. To explore with her hands or with her machete, to swing it wildly, just in case someone or something is waiting to do the same to her. Forward. Backward. Forward…or…backward..?

No light. No noise. Right. There’s a voice.

“...Whoever you are…whatever you are…”

Coming from this void. In front. Not behind.

“Go ahead and do it. Just…get it over with.”

A man’s voice. He sounded tired. Defeated. Expired. Like somebody who had been bleeding.

“Kay…Kayden?”

Silence.

Forward. Forward!

“M-Mariah..?”

FORWARD.

But she doesn’t go forward. No, she remembers that moment. Backward. Behind her. At the hatch. Toward this door. In her hand. A keycard. A key to unlock the box. She stepped to the side, ran her hand across the wall, the opposite wall, found it, slid it, watched and listened as a panel came to life with a red light. The door slid shut to close off what was behind it. And the room suddenly came alight. Came alive.

Mariah spun around, though this was not because of what was coming at her. Not because of who was attacking her. Not like those earlier encounters. No, the only entity attacking her this moment was grief and relief at the same time. Wherever you are…you can’t escape your heart. And right now Mariah Boucheron, if she’s being honest with herself, just needed somebody to lean on.

“Kayden!”

She charged forward toward the man leaning against a wall. Sitting. One leg up and bent at the knee. Other leg outstretched. As if he considered trying to stand again but decided against it. He had that same white shirt with some buttons on it unlike the ones that Mariah had popped off. Same black pants. Same bare feet as hers. They weren’t red. They weren’t bleeding. It wasn’t that kind of trail. It was a trail of blood drops. Of breadcrumbs. From the wound on his arm. By the mad man that wanted to cause them harm.

But none of that even mattered at the moment. Not even the machete in her hand as Mariah dropped it, heard it clang, and arrived by Kayden’s side the next moment. She crouched beside him, placed her hands on his shoulders, a hand on his face where her thumb grazed, cradling it as she had cradled his head in her lap. They hadn’t spent every second having sex. Some moments were spent just laying in bed. Talking. Watching. Then do it all over again.

“Are you okay!?”

He didn’t answer her straight away. She could see he had given his arm the same treatment she had given her hand, only his was a a better bandage. Made sense that at least one of them managed to find one. So many corridors. So many floors. So many doors. Maybe not all of the rooms ended with someone’s doom.

“I’m all right.”

It didn’t sound like a lie. Then again, weren’t they both lying to each other? Neither person was all right. Nobody in this factory was fine.

“Bleeding stopped. Mostly.”

He didn’t meet her eyes. Not like he was trying to hide. More like he was tired and just wanted to lie.

“Just a bit of dripping.”

Finally, he allowed Mariah to lift his head so that she could inspect him, and their eyes met, only he squinted. No, not trying to hide. He just wasn’t used to the light in the room.

“What happened? Why…” A voice sighed in her mind. Nothing was right. Nothing is fine. “Why didn’t you come back for me, Kayden?”

“Hahaha.”

It was a quiet laugh if twisted. But it wasn’t wicked. It was the laugh that anyone might emit when they surrender themselves to the insanity of this twisted situation simply in order to stay sane. The kind of thing you do when you realize nothing is going right for you after a bad fucking day so you just laugh instead of groan, like all of this is just some bad joke.

“I did go back, you silly woman.”

It wasn’t an attack. His lips split and he managed a grin.

“I’m sorry…” His face became serious again. “Sorry I did that. Sorry I left you. I had to. I didn’t know…didn’t know what would happen. If that fucking asshole would get us both. But…he didn’t. A door opened only moments after yours closed. He was distracted. So I buried his…ha…I mean I buried your machete into his head.”

They both glanced at the weapon, bloody as blood, like her dress, and neither object had only one person’s blood on it.

“But it was some other mother fucker who came out of another room. Tried to kill me too. So I ran. I…I ran. But damn it, I planned on going back. That was before a corridor door slammed to the floor. Then…then more of those things, Mariah. More and more. More locked doors. Found a ladder. Went up it as I was being chased. Found this place. Door opening and shutting. No lights though. Went inside thinking it might…not hide me…but might lead me back around. Back to you. But…door slammed shut…and it wouldn’t open again. It wouldn’t…it wouldn’t open again.”

He explained everything. But he didn’t explain anything away. She could see it on his face. There was pain, not from his wound, no, from his shame. That was a face whose wearer blamed himself for every mistake that had been made. His eyes didn’t lie. They admitted that nothing was all right. He looked away as if she might spare him her rage. As if this situation was something that he had created and Mariah Boucheron was going to punish him for it.

“I’m sorry…Mariah…I’m…I’m so damn sorry…”

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It felt cold. This wasn’t winter’s kiss. It wasn’t that frigid, like when you step outside to witness the world covered in white, frozen over in snow. No, it was cold, but the chill was a welcome breeze considering the heat. The heating wasn’t even on, but everything was heated. Every ounce, every inch, every molecule, every atom. The particles of the whole, broken down into units, burned at their core, surfaced as sweat on the pores.

There was a fire inside Mariah. Maybe it was always there. However, that night it came to life. Like the brightest light in the skyline. Like sunlight in the sky. That woman was on fire. Sweating. Panting. Moaning. Because of what one man was doing to her, and what she was doing to him, at the beginning of night and again into the night, but the morning was a mystery like the depths of some sea.

They did it on the bed. Might have done it in the kitchen, on the counter, but she wanted the experience to be different. She wanted him where it was most appropriate. Most intimate. Lust. Love. Neither mattered. It wasn’t because the kitchen had erupted in the burst of glass, broken from whiskey and gin, fluids spilling like hers and his, but maybe it was just because Mariah was so fixated on Kayden being different. Whatever that meant.

It was cold. Soothingly. The breeze tickled her naked skin beneath a garment like a curtain as she stood on the balcony with him. The wind lapped at the curtains, seashell white against the backdrop of a bed of red and grey, and a horizon of high-rises. It was a prosperous city. It was an opulent apartment. She didn’t smoke. Neither did he. Yet they both enjoyed a cigarette and a glass of gin and whiskey each as they watched the ocean on the horizon between skyscraper and sky.

“You could take me right here, you know,” she had teased, the breeze kissing her skin, gently tugging her long auburn hair as his head of black hair remained defiant to it.

“On the railing? Like on the counter?” He teased back, stepping closer.

“I sit. You stand. And the whole world can watch too.”

“Silly woman. If you fall, slip from my grip, who will catch you?”

Who will catch you?

It’s cold. This factory wasn’t freezing, not really, but it wasn’t warm. From closed doors to open corridors, trap rooms to bathrooms, floor to ceiling, it was cold. Especially in her sleeveless dress, wet from blood, pressing against her stomach, her chest, her legs. Kayden’s shirt was more loose, his pants letting him breathe, but he was stained in blood too, and his skin was cool to the touch. It wasn’t hot. It wasn’t feverish. Yet there was a fever in his eyes, a sickness on his face, as he realized that he had failed to catch her after they had been captured.

But it’s okay.

“It’s okay. Hey.” She already had him in her hands as she pulled him closer, pressed his head to the crook of her neck, and whispered. “It’s okay. We’re gonna be okay. We’re alive.” Nothing is fine. “We’re all right.” You might die. “You’re not gonna die. I’m not gonna die. I won’t allow it, you hear me? Kayden, I won’t let that happen. We're gonna live.”

“Mariah…” Was all he managed to utter back to her. His breath was warm against her neck. Just like it had been back in bed. “Look…”

“No, you look. I don’t know who the fuck did this to us, when, how or why. I don’t know much about you. You don’t know much about me. But there’s a fire in both of us brighter than this factory, hotter, and sharper than that machete. So you hear me? We’re gonna make it, Kayden. We’re gonna make it. We're getting out of this mess. That's a promise.”

We’re gonna make it.

“No…” He spoke in that tone again, that gently teasing tone of ‘silly woman’. “Look.” He gestured over her shoulder.

Oh. Right. Kayden had been sitting in darkness all this time. With her keycard, Mariah had turned on the lights. Their environment was silent except for their presence. Safe, to an extent. Locked door. No scraping in the corridor. No immediate reason to be so scared. So what was their environment?

“Some kind of office.” Desk. Cabinet. Chairs. Chest.

“Kind of. Also a workshop?” Tools. Table. Sink. Bench.

“Is that…a…fridge?”

Kayden tilted his head one way.
Mariah tilted hers the other way.
“You…thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
“Yes.” She grinned. “Breakfast...”

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It was warm. Not hot. Didn’t burn her. Yet Kayden’s skin was suddenly alive again. Like hers. Warm against her fingers which still cradled his head, as if a hand had subconsciously slid down to his neck, the other at the back of his head, even as they both stared off into the distance.

But they weren’t so distant from each other anymore. Behind this door, closed and locked, blocked off from the hellish environment that surrounded it, was a room. Their room. Quiet. Yet it was their tune.

Desk. Cabinet. Chairs. Chest. Tools. Table. Sink. Bench. Yes. This room was some kind of workshop, office and storage all in one. For what purpose, well, that remained to be determined, but it didn’t take much imagination to figure it served whatever function fitting for a factory. A facility like this one, humongous after a fashion, must have had a variety of uses.

Only…it also didn’t take much imagining to determine that it was never, ever supposed to be used for what it was used for today. Torture. Murder. Mutilating. Maiming. For what purpose? Why? Why any of this? Was it a game? Like in that video on the viewscreen of the carnival? To satisfy some base, depraved, carnal desire of placing victims into this hellfire simply for pleasure? For the fucking fun of it?

No. Mariah wouldn’t think about it at this moment. Neither would Kayden. This was their moment. This was their private island in an ocean that no longer wanted them in it.

Fridge. Breakfast. It was an amusing theory, really, but neither person could keep from imagining what might still be inside that contraption after all this time. They were hungry. Thirsty. So, what, maybe? Spoiled milk? Rotten eggs? Only one way to find out as Mariah released her fingers from Kayden’s head, determined to fill her stomach one way or the other.

“You gonna open it?” Kayden asked her as they both stood just staring at the refrigerator, suddenly hesitant.

“I dunno. What if there’s…like…a severed head inside it.” She wouldn’t put it past it.

“I didn’t think about that. But only one way to find out.” So Kayden opened it.

Inside the fridge was…no, not a severed head. Nothing so twisted. Nothing so ridiculous. No meat that had been off. No long gone beverages. No, there was liquid. A couple bottles of water that wouldn’t expire. Kayden snatched two, Mariah grabbed one, they both twisted the caps and chugged.

“Fuck.” Mariah sighed. “Suddenly I can spit.”

“I never thought water can be so delicious.”

Thirst quenched for the moment. What’s next?

“Peanut butter or chocolate?”

“What?”

He grabbed a pair of rectangular objects and held them up. “Which is it?”

“Gimme that!” She promptly snatched one, peeled the wrapper, and chowed down on peanut butter granola, munching on the crumbs. Fuck.

It wasn’t much. It wasn’t even enough. But it would keep them on their feet for the moments to come. Unfortunately, the fridge was now emptied. Oh well. If nothing else…we did it…we did this…

“Could always try the sink maybe.”

That made Mariah blink, remembering one time in a restroom one floor beneath, and how disgusting was its sink and everything in between.

“I wouldn’t recommend it. This factory’s water is most likely polluted.”

“Maybe…” But Kayden was clearly thinking of other things, scanning the room. Mariah did too as they browsed around like two persons in an antique shop. Most of the objects in it consisted of things like wire cutters and pliers, nonfunctioning computers and malfunctioning calibrators, work records that were more like spreadsheets and boring reports that offered nothing revealing about what had happened to this factory, why its inhabitants were crazy.

No, it was all so specific, all so generic, like walking into a factory still operating. That, in its own way, made everything even more unsettling for Mariah. It meant that this facility was dead, died, shut down like so many did with time, abandoned, only to be revived, but it wasn’t given life. It was given a different kind of death. Undead.

“That machete did the trick, I have to admit.” Kayden spoke while opening a closet, his back turned to Mariah, before he turned around with a devious grin. “So should this.” Maybe the best weapon they would find at the moment beside her own, he brandished a crowbar in his arms. “Better than nothing anyway.”

“Let’s just hope we can get out of here to live another day.”

Their amusement was short-lived as they gazed eyes into eyes. In that instant, in their escape, in this room they claimed as their safe haven, reality swarmed around them like the dark beyond this light, surrounded. They couldn’t stay here. They couldn’t live on swallowed bottled water and energy bars.

“We need to leave.”

“No,” Kayden shook his head. “Not yet. We need to rest. I’m hurt. You’re hurt. We should take what time we have left.”

Mariah sighed. He was right. There was no bed. Chairs to take the weight off her legs and shoulders. Not yet. First—

“We should at least use the sink to clean up.”

“Yeah…”

He turned on the faucet. Brown water made him visibly cringe. You should have seen what I’ve seen… Then again, what had Kayden seen? What monstrosities did he encounter in his own purgatories? What punishments? The water ran clear the next moment but neither dared drink it. It would serve a different purpose.

“Shit. Kayden!”

“What is it!?”

“Medkit.” She found it in a wall cabinet. “Take it.” She tossed it over.

He opened it. Nodded at its contents. “This’ll do the trick.”

At that, he began taking his shirt off, wincing at his injury, but he didn’t complain. As he moved, loose fabric with a few missing buttons, courtesy of the only woman in the room, Mariah watched him in silence. Studied his body, dirtied and bloodied, but toned and muscular. Kayden was ripped.

Focus. Silly woman. Adrenaline. Apprehension. So many mixed feelings. So much insanity. So much tension. She turned away as Kayden peeled off his bandage, cleaned the wound, glimpsing only that he hadn’t been bleeding. The blood had stopped. What about her hand? She’d have to wait her turn.

For now she opened a drawer on the desk, found meaningless notes, work reminders to service equipment, printed emails, and stupid trinkets, like candy wrappers and a photoless locket. Though she did pocket a small flip knife into her belt. Another drawer. About fucking time.

“Hey!” Catching Kayden’s attention, he would notice the grin on her face as she held up a pair of objects. “Maybe it’s fate. Flashlights.”

“Nice. Not too shabby, lady. Mind helping me?”

He had already redressed his injury, washed off his chest, when he gestured toward his back as if his partner should do the rest. “Sorry.” She didn’t know why the apology. It sounded…distant…like he had been only moments ago, like when he apologized for everything, as if this was somehow all his fault. “Can’t reach. But this blood and grime is too sticky for my liking. You mind?”

Mariah didn’t. Quietly, saying nothing, she stepped over to Kayden, closer, and gently took a sponge caked in dirt and worse and soaked it under the water. Silent as ever, steadily, she slid the sponge over his broad shoulders, across the ripples of his ripped muscles, defined like some kind of sculpture of strength. No wonder he was able to bury his machete into Hockey Mask.

Mariah thought about that as her hand slid downward, brushing the sponge in between his sides above his backside, down the spine, as another hand came up to stabilize her movements, or just to find an excuse to rest it on his hip, to get some semblance of being human with another human again in this pit of death. Even though it would only last a moment for both of them.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It felt like before. She had traced the contours of his face, the outline of his hips, the grooves between his muscled chest and back, the curves of his biceps, just like before. Now as then. Then as now. Behind closed doors. Alone. Together. Only them. Nobody and nothing else mattered. It was their moment in that quiet apartment despite its music. It was their moment beside that ocean.

By the time Mariah was finished with Kayden’s back, drenched not in blood and sweat but in water, cool if not frigid, dripping off his skin, slipping past his hips and onto the fabric of his pants, only then was she suddenly aware of her own breath. Each heartbeat pumping in her chest. The feeling in her stomach, both empty and yet given some satiation, some momentary satisfaction from what she had eaten.

Her thirst was quenched more than her hunger but, even then, one bottle of water swallowed was not enough. Her body was still so hollow. Vacant. Empty. Like this pit. Neither of them were naked but they were barren. Bereft of real feeling. It had been robbed from them the moment they were abducted. Because that’s what had happened. Wasn’t it?

Feeling. Feel. She needed to feel. To feel alive again. She had the time, yes? She had those moments. With herself. If with him. With Kayden. So not so alone. Not so gone. This wasn’t so long a song. Yet it felt like they belonged in this room, that fate had ensured it more than those flashlights for the darkness.

Yes. The door on their room had chains, as Mariah and Kayden were chained to this building, but this time those chains were on their side. And she had no intention of opening them at this moment.

There was no longer a sponge in her hand the next second. His skin was wet. Smooth. Her fingers traced up his spine, slowly, not teasingly. She just wanted to be gentle with him. To show him that he was human. So was she. Two humans. A man and a woman alone yet again. They had no bed. But they didn’t need one.

Kayden. But she didn’t speak it aloud. She didn’t open her lips as if miming silently what she’s thinking. She didn’t look him in the eye with his back turned to her. She looked at his skin. At his back. At his neck. At the back of his head. Slipped her other fingers from his hip to his lower back, dipped her thumb into his pants, because they were hers, he was hers, and like their being surrounded by monsters in the darkness, there just wasn’t a damn thing that he could do about it.

Finally, he turned, slowly. Like her, he said nothing. His movements inevitably made her fingers slide from his back to his side to his chest and stomach. There were scars on his flesh. She had noticed them before when he had taken her to bed and taken her on the bed. Straight lines. Clean cuts. Jagged edges. She never asked him about it. He never mentioned it. He was mysterious. He was a mystery. Maybe…maybe that’s what she liked about him.

Finally, she looked up at him as he looked down at her, but never down at her. Whatever they were, whoever they were, now and then, rich or poor, man or woman, they were equal. They didn’t know each other. She didn’t know him and he didn’t know her. But they knew each other. They explored one another.

And, as empty as she felt, he filled her up with him. Kayden had driven himself into Mariah, had given her something she was missing, and the pleasure from that, the bliss, the satisfaction of being whole again, was beyond description. And it’s all she wanted at that moment. All over again.

“You’re hurt,” Kayden stated the obvious. He had cleaned his wound, rebandaged it with the medkit, but she didn’t. Not yet.

She didn’t respond. Just watched him as he took her wounded hand in his and began to unwrap its makeshift bandage. Blood began to seep, slowly, from a scrape made by cracked glass. Puppet had made her break it. Yet it wasn’t so deep. The blood wasn’t black or green or grey like that thing in that restroom. If it was infected, that might explain her sickness, but the nightmare that is this abyss would too.

“Let me clean it.” He did. Washed it under the sink. Disinfected it. So gentle were his movements. So clean. The precision of a surgeon. Yes. No. Of someone who cared about this woman. Who actually cared about her.

She said nothing. Did nothing. Just watched. Just listened. The running water, was it like rain? Like the ocean? No. It was different. The ocean had waves, echoes on the horizon. The rain pitter-pattered off objects, off surfaces. That water from this sink was…like a river. Like a stream. No less soothing. No less serene. Rushing. Like blood. Pumping. But private. Like an escape in a forest where two souls had gotten lost in. Maybe the river would take these lost souls home again.

And, if it didn’t, then damn it, to hell with it and this hellhole.

“There,” Kayden sighed. Lifted that bandaged hand to his lips and kissed its fingers. “All better, my lady.” But he wasn’t finished. His free hand slid to the belly of her wet bloody dress, fingers pressing in as if to feel the pit beneath it, empty, needing fulfillment. Fingers shifted to her hip, to her back, just above her backside, and gripped the flesh and bone beneath the dress.

“Kay…” Mariah finally began to mumble. Barely containing her moan. To mutter under heated breath. They were alone. Maybe they were ghosts. But that only meant that they were already dead. “Kayden…”

“Shhhh,” he commanded. Beckoned. It was bidden. She’s compliant. She wanted it. He wanted this. They both did. Like that night. Like their dance at the restaurant. Just silent agreement. Mutual understanding. To be fulfilled. To be filled. To feel alive. Not like this building. Here they had no choice. No. Here, in this room of angels, surrounded by demons, they had a choice. They had a voice.

And hers was no longer limited to her head.

Kayden.

Unfortunately, her garment wasn’t as complicated as his. Fortunately, it made it easier to lift so that he could wash her skin. He did. He wasn’t rough. He was soft. But he was quick with his actions in the sense that he didn’t hesitate. He lifted her dress at the hem. She feels it slide up her thighs, up her hips, and she sighs.

She gasps, breath caught in her throat, heat trapped at her neck, heart beating in her chest. Then, before a voice in her could protest, before the other Mariah can tell him no, they shouldn’t do this, they should rest, they should prepare for the arduous journey ahead, he lifted her dress up her hips, up her stomach, past her belly button, and that was it.

She shivered beneath his fingers, shifted in his grip, squeezed the muscles on his abdomen, slid her hands up to his neck, grabbed it, and pressed her lips onto his. They bit. They kissed. They stole each other’s breath all over again. There's no music. Not like at their apartment. But Mariah listens to lyrics. Here in the light where darkness doesn't exist. A woman singing in her memories...

Here's a lullaby to close your eyes, goodbye
It was always you that I despised
I don't feel enough for you to cry, oh well
Here's a lullaby to close your eyes

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It sounded like rain. It felt like the river. It smelled like the ocean. It tasted like water. It looked like the lake. Those seas in his eyes, dark as chocolate, where her own were green. His eyes slipped into hers, like his fingers had that night, like his member had. But what rushes within her is different.

Not just blood. But just as hot. A stirring of emotions, yes, a whirlwind of feelings, but the rush of other fluids threatening to spill already, to seep into the surface of her skin, but not as sweat. If she wasn’t careful, she would explode that moment, open up like the ocean. And they hadn’t even really done anything yet.

Thoughts were thoughtless. She can’t keep thinking. She loathes it. Like a potion that’s supposed to keep her healthy, to get rid of her sickness, but the voice in her head didn’t do this. So, if it says anything to her this instant, if it tells her to quit, to not give in, then fuck it, Mariah Boucheron doesn’t listen. She won't give in to it.

Not to logic. Not to reason. Only to feeling. Only to the moment.

As Kayden penetrates her, his fingers offering a million reminders of why they existed, why they were living, what life’s pleasures meant beyond the sickness, beyond the reason; like a dream that defies and scares the nightmare.

Just thinking about what might happen was enough to make her squirm, to make her hips shift, a kind of casual sway like they had that day in the open air beside the ocean, by the chairs. When they had danced to the dying sun, to the awakening of evening, to the music of mandolin, drums, whatever instruments, and a woman singing.

But these lyrics were different. This was the music of remembrance.

She moves, she dances in his grip, she’s smooth beneath the lips, beneath the skin, just like his fingers, callused but tender. They kiss. Their lips above her lips are pressed in a silent whisper but as violent as a typhoon too. They won’t quit. They won’t part. Heart beats. Eyes closed in this room of light. Her room is dark.

Can’t think. Can see. Yet she sees only phosphenes behind her eyelids. Static. Noise. Then she sees memories. Dreams. Hears music. A singer’s voice. Not coming from this room. The dull thud of a drum of doom. The slow somber stroke of the piano. Melancholic music. Yet ecstatic. Rhapsodic. Bittersweet like dark morning coffee. This music bleeds treachery yet loyalty. Like whiskey. Like gin and tonic. For it is the song of an alcoholic.

A song so lost, so gone, whose solace was…forgotten.

She needs no drink at this moment though. She doesn’t need to think. Yet she needs to breathe.

“Kay…” Can’t even finish his name as their lips break away. Eyes inches away. Eyes open. His breath on her face. She can see he wants to seize her lips again, to swirl his tongue around hers, to taste her red flesh, to trade his fingers for something that would be just as sweet for him.

And she didn’t even give a shit that she hadn’t yet washed up like he did because, in the end, that dress was not going anywhere but off her body.

“Take me…” On the sink? Maybe. Like the kitchen counter they had abandoned. Like the shower that never happened. But she would leave it up to him. She was his. She would let Kayden have his way with her. She would surrender because, in the end, he wasn’t a monster. Kayden was Mariah’s protector. He was hers. And she was his.

So insignificant
Sleeping dormant deep inside of me
Are you hiding away, lost under the sewers?
Maybe flying high in the clouds?
Perhaps you're happy without me

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t enough. Not for her. Not for him. Not for Mariah. Not for Kayden. She was getting as much as he was giving. That itself was delightful, even for him. As his fingers curved, as they searched, so determined to find her treasure, its precise location, but not with his eyes. He was blind to seeing what was really inside. So he felt, he touched, he pushed and pulled, exploring that soft, hot, heart-shaped box.

But it wasn’t enough. Not for him. Not for her. They needed more. He needed more of her. She hadn’t even yet gotten to explore him. It wasn’t that any of this was forbidden. It wasn’t. It wasn’t as if they were forgotten. They weren’t. There were people who cared about them beyond these walls, outside of this prison, but…what was it?

In that moment, no, not in it, but it, the moment itself, they owned it. It was ridiculous. Twisted. Insulted every fucking person who had ever been abducted, imprisoned, tortured, mutilated, murdered. However, right then and there, nothing mattered to her but the moment.

She didn’t want to leave. To be freed. She just wanted to be free. To be left alone in this room, this chamber, this safe haven, this…save room…with him. With Kayden. So screw her parents. Damn her connections. Send the messengers away and hold their messages. Let the world burn. Her heart already did. As did her blood. As did her thighs because of what was glistening on her skin, those fluids from another fire, from his fingers.

Take me, she said, and he didn’t resist, but he didn't give in. Kayden hesitated. In that moment, Mariah could see it. As her fingers wrapped around his neck, she could sense it, eyes shifting left and right to look into each of his eyes, and she saw it.

Uncertainty. Doubt. Guilt. Everything she wasn’t feeling. It’s okay, she might have told him. We’re okay, she might have said. I’m afraid, he might have said. I’m sorry, he might have told her. Yet they said nothing with their lips. Their eyes said everything.

Kayden delayed. Mariah didn’t. She shoved her lips into his, fingers curling around his throat, squeezing it, not choking him, but showing him that, if he wouldn’t take her and claim this situation, she would do to him what she wanted, needed, him to do to her.

She didn’t look away. She bit her lip, the faintest trace of saliva trickling out the corner, as if unable to contain any part of her body any longer. She didn’t bother taking off the dress. He didn’t. She didn’t bother making a makeshift bed, pulling those dusty chairs together, tipping over a cabinet, clearing the desk the next instant.

She pushed. He pulled. And the next moment she was on him, on top of him, heart beating as wild as a fire, her eyes burning, breath like a geyser. She shoved him forward so that he was shoved backward, only he had nowhere to go, no way to escape, nothing to do but to take it.

Mariah pounced. Popped his button. Jerked his zipper. Ripped his pants from his hips. Just like that night. On her bed. No, it became their bed. Yes. Now as then, she mounted her mountain, and the seconds, the minutes, time’s undying island, went on and on and on.

She didn’t want it to stop, even as the water threatened to burst for both of them. All she wanted was for her chorus of moans, his chorus of grunts, to drown out this factory’s chorus of screams, to end the insanity, to put the voice in her into the void, and to flay the crazed laughs of that mad, mad puppet in a mask.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It could have been the shower. Maybe it was. Maybe that was yet another apartment encounter she had forgotten upon waking up from her deep slumber, only to find herself in a room that was no bedroom. It was colder, lonelier, quieter. Yet there was a scream inside her, quiet at first, like the fire that burned. Moments later, Mariah no longer screamed in her silent hell. Her fire swelled, became a roar.

Kayden had his back to the wall. Literally. The sink served as his seat. He served as hers. She mounted him, like a woman climbing a mountain, only this one she had climbed before. As before, there was new adventure. What would she discover? What other nooks and crannies? What treasure? What would they learn of one another as they took each other over and over again?

She had done this before. On the fathiers of Cantonica. On the dewbacks of Tatooine. On the banthas of the same planet for a more leisurely experience. On beasts and steeds of wide variety, even a few with wings for the rich chick's hidden adrenaline, but all of them as graceful as powerful, if some as mighty as the most violent bull.

Horses. Stallions. She was moving now as she had moved then. Calmly. Slowly. Gently. At first. Picking up speed, riding that stallion, she got more confident, more bold like the soul of the animal as it finds its wind, discovers that violence need not be so evil.

It served another purpose. Its anger. Its fire. It lashed like the tongue of a dragon. Harder. Faster. Stronger. Braver. Her walk, her trot, became a canter. Kayden had no choice in the matter. Just sat there. Had to take it as Mariah gripped his shoulders like reins and had her way with him.

Stallion. Dragon. Whatever this man was, both their souls were flayed, were naked, entangled all the same so that two became one. As the universe burned, as its ash became dust, only two stars remained. Only their light shined. Only their fire burned. Higher and higher.

In between. Rising. The faster and harder that Mariah Boucheron rode her stallion, charging her steed onward toward the tunnel at the end of this hell, light illuminated the shadows between it and its darkness, like fire rising from the throat of the dragon, or a volcano.

Soon, she knew, they both knew, there would be an explosion. The beasts within would break free from their cages, would rage and quake, burn with anger, breathe in fury, and erupt like those volcanoes. Only she would not let him look away. When they both broke from the pain of pleasure’s peak, they would see it in each other’s face, eyes into eyes.

My sun and stars.
Moon of my life.

She heard the words in her mind but she knows her old life, the old Mariah, has died inside like sunlight, and what rises from the night is the fire inside. Dragon. Phoenix.

Together, they arrive, and there is an explosion inside as much as outside. Time paused. The galaxy stopped spinning. Mariah took Kayden’s head into her hands, embracing his hips with her legs and, as she shivered like lightning to the boom of thunder, she made sure that he did not look away from the love in her eyes.