"You're always scared of the shadows
and still you look like you've seen a ghost.
Come back, this heart attack won't spare my lungs, take it all."
- Drop Dead Gorgeous -
A place for us
"Playing rough, uh?"
Chris raises his shoulders, loosening them in a rotating movement.
"Not even close as you."
Crack, crick. Shoulder blade, humerus, a joint creaking like an old hinge.
"You call?"
"I don't."
"Then you fold."
Chris thins his lips, Wesker bares his teeth.
"Just look at them."
A low, soft voice.
"Are you playing show me yours and I'll show you mine?"
Ada crosses her legs, gliding her fingers over the back of the card deck.
Wesker laughs, a scratching, obscene sound.
"You cut." he tells her, trickling blood "You let the dance begin."
Chris shakes his head, clenching his fists.
"I shouldn't be here."
"None of us should." Leon interrupts him, his feet on the table and the gun on his lap "Not everyone, at least."
Ada gives him an allusive, sideways glance.
"Yet..."
"Yet here we're."
A pale profile, a crown made of gold and blood all around her head.
"Call."
"Bold enough."
"Always." Alex replies, red on her mouth, between her breasts.
"Is there anything else you've ever done?" Claire murmurs, a strange, dried out cheep.
"Dearheart." feeling cold on her skin, all along her back "That blow must have hurt a lot."
Claire hides in the shadows, a moist sound -like the undertow- her only reply.
"Not even close as being torn apart from within."
Expensive perfumes, neat nails scratching - ripping Wesker's forearm to the white long bone.
"Uhm." Albert tilts his head backwards, stench of charred flesh and burnt land "Excella."
A perfect face, such blue eyes they could still hurt.
"Albert."
"It's hard to forgive, isn't it?" and those words fall, rolling down Alex's tongue and lying in the midst of a red and white table.
Excella looks at her -fragile, indestructible.
"I know you."
"We all know each other here."
Polished clothes, spoilt by a blackish mass writhing like a clump of snakes; stubborn and tired eyes.
"I've known her before."
Ada tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, raven's wings soon on top of her head like a grotesque painting.
Alex keeps betting, plic plic plic; coins of blood born out straight of her head, as was Athena from Zeus.
"Alexandra."
Someone breathing, someone gurgling.
"Oh." William participates "Can't you breathe, Claire?"
"Shut up." Chris hisses, constricting cards he cannot destroy "Shut up, or I'm blowing your head up one more time."
"No one ever managed..." Birkin shows his cards, betting big "so why would you now?"
One pair.
"Motivation." Jill starts, so little, so vulnerable "Rage, perhaps."
Alex half-closes her eyes, tilting her head.
"Do it." Excella incites him, skin and Uroboros dressing her "Do it, Chris; I'm craving to you see back in action."
"You bitch."
A venomous, sour laugh.
"Chris." Leon rebukes him, his cards a messy fan on the table "Make your move and shut up."
A sob, an abortive snarl.
"Someone's getting upset." Wesker mocks him and Alex laughs, an incredibly light sound.
"I'm gonna tear your heart off your chest." Claire threatens, and Ada hits her hand on the table, annoyed.
"Cut it." she whispers, but she sounds like a thunder "Go on."
"And then?" Piers bursts "And then what do we do, Miss Wong?"
Floppy, slimy flesh: not his flesh.
Nivans throws his cards, revealing two pairs.
"The pet whines and you run, Chris?"
Leon shows his three of a kind with a lazy gesture of the hand, as if he was bored.
"Piers died to protect your son." Chris screeches, strong fingers crushing a straight.
Jill studies Chris's combination, a flower blossoming and blooming amongst her ribs, pulsating - P30.
She looks at it, laughing without really being happy: truly his old partner had had a good hand, pity he'd played it the wrong way.
"Oh, I'm touched."
Excella leans towards the center of the table, as beautiful as a modern and lethal Medusa.
"Claire, sweetheart." Alex extends her chin towards the shadows, from where a liquid and melt eye floating on a pale half moon can only be seen "It's your turn."
Five cards, same suit: flush.
"Jake." Chris starts again "His name's Jake. And he's with Sherry."
Birkin flinches, swallowing irony in a mouth which is too big and has too many teeth.
"Fascinating." Wesker replies, the stench of burnt blood growing stronger, more intense.
Alex slips her tongue over her lips, red like the crown of thorns intertwining with her hair.
"Full house." she says, leaning back on the chair, thighs half-opened and hands intertwined "Goodness knows what beautiful and genetically superior babies they'll have; Spencer would have signed on the dotted line for even just a little piece."
Jill hides her head against her chest, lacerated flesh and cables from which Wesker's venom still drips.
She inhales, exhales, hoping the four of a kind she holds is not the highest combination.
Excella warps her aristocratic lineaments in a disgusted grimace, pinching the bizarre - everted - and shining heart beating inside her chest.
"An old man kidnapping thirteen children to make his own vanguard, to make them his slaves on the way towards immortality."
Alex stands up, walking around her like a panther with its prey.
Excella shrugs, showing a straight flush.
"And Umbrella his sour and sterile womb." she finishes, Alex's teeth few centimetres away from her jugular.
Chris averts his eyes, seeking Wesker's.
Albert takes his glasses off, revealing vertical, reptilian pupils and as ferocious irises as hell.
"Guess it's up to me now." he says, and Alex caresses his back, one vertebra at a time.
"As always." And there's no rage in Chris's voice, just quiet resignation.
Albert sniffs the air, sticky and dark - decomposed.
The cards slips from his fingers, dripping towards them.
Ace. King. Queen. Jack. Ten.
Royal flush.
Silence.
"I think I have won."
Claire moans louder, Alex closes her eyes.
"Can't say I'm sad." Excella reproaches, staring at Jill's nape "Yet..."
A chain falls, glass and metal.
"Why?" Chris asks again and for a moment, for a feeble instant, it's his old captain answering him.
"Because, in the end, we are what we've always wanted to be."
Ada raises an eyebrow, Claire clings to Leon's elbow.
Darkness becomes white, white becomes red.
Red and white, white and red, blood and dead eyes.
Umbrella.
Wesker stands up, Chris follows him; the rest of them mere dust from their memories.
"And what did we want to be, Albert? Monsters? Gods? Heroes?"
The nightmare falls to pieces below them, faces and smiles and regrets they won't see again 'till the next time.
Alex's hand is still lukewarm in Albert's, Claire's hold determined - adamantine - in Chris's.
"No..."
The silence fades, and everything compress, and compress, and compress, until...
"...just men."
Dark.
"Who's cutting this time?"
Ada declines, passing the card deck to Jill.
Piers curls his lips, his thousand eyes restlessly moving.
"And then?" he always repeats; like a broken record.
Chris sighs this time, Ada ignores him.
Nivans obstinately persists.
"And then?"
Albert barely presses the corner of his lips, showing sharp and white teeth.
"And then we play, agent Nivans."
Jill rubs her hand across her forehead, nervous, handing out the first hand.
The dry whisper of the cards will be the only sound breaking the silence for a long time; listening to it, mere ghosts.
"Make your move, take your time.
Every pawn threatens your life.
Go raise hell, come up short.
No mercy is granted here."
- Drop Dead Gorgeous -