Author's Note: This isn't much, really. It's a very short story very loosely based off of a theme from a game called Fatal Frame.
Disclaimer: I own zip. Absolutely nothing. Enjoy!
I should have known better than to step foot into that God forsaken shack where the cries of children echoed like ghostly lullabies and dead sockets peered at you from behind every corner. I should have known better than to stare directly into those sockets, so dead and vindicated – fueled by a need to take more than what they had been given in life. I was a bloody fool. My fate was sealed when I refused to leave, when I caught sight of a crimson butterfly and followed it without care as a child might do. I was a moth drawn to the flame, and I paid dearly for my mistake that had dubbed me so terribly imbecilic.
The wretched beings crawled from the shadows, eyes having been plucked out presumably by the ravens that circled the dreaded house, leaving black portals in their deteriorating skulls. Their pale flesh dripped from their bones like sap from a dead tree, and they made a horrid screech that resembled the ominous creak of a door coming unhinged. It only took one look, one lingering gaze into their eyes to force me to my knees and tear my own sight from my sockets. I writhed and cried out on the molding, splintered floor and covered my face, feeling a wetness run down my cheeks that I was sure was blood. The bastards must have ripped my vision out. It hurt unnaturally so…
As I lay there defenseless on the ground, the beings cold hands that smelled of death grabbed at me, tried to pull me under in my vulnerability. I kicked and shrieked for mercy, for God, for anyone. The floorboards had smelled damp and rotten, and the scent still lingered bitterly in my nose, and I knew for a fact that I had no intention to perish in that infested burrow. I cried out now, reminding myself of an infant only looking to be held and loved. I opened my wet eyes wider and tried to see anything other than darkness – any spark of angelic light would have been so precious. Though my straining to see through the blackness was to no avail, I soon realized that the putrid bones had ceased to grab at me. I felt something light brush my hair, and thought it another butterfly for a moment, when a voice I recognized all too well choked out my name.
"Alfred," I sighed in absolute relief. He held me closer and breathed my presence in, as I did his, yet it wasn't enough. I wanted to see him. He was weeping for me, but I wasn't able to brush his tears away. I felt weak. I couldn't see, couldn't reach out to him, as if the energy had been kissed out of me by Death himself.
"Baby," he sobbed, "Baby please. Please Arthur, sweetheart, please look at me."
He must have realized how unfocussed my eyes were. He musn't have realized….the poor lad. My poor love. "I-I…Alfred," I croaked, realizing that that wetness I had thought to be blood tasted like tears instead. "I-I can't, love. I cannot see you anymore." I suspected that my own eyes, now dull and stripped of their lively emerald, were not even level with his. I tried to look up, but imagined that I had terribly misjudged how far when Alfred gasped lightly.
"Don't look for heaven, sweetheart," he whispered , clutching at my limp form fiercely. "I won't let Him take you from me. It isn't your time. Baby, I love you…" his voice so smooth and strong had dissolved into raindrops beating in my heart, and on my skin, and in my ears, and all over the place really. His words were so rapidly spoken and so choked with grief that I could not bring myself to listen any longer. I meditated on the feeling of him lightly brushing his fingers through my hair. He planted tearful kisses on my face and neck before leaving two very light ones, so light that I barely felt the chapped lips descend, on my eyelids. I closed them and felt a warm, red aura glow within me. And I could see…butterflies. Crimson butterflies.
Alfred was silent and still for many moments, but I could momentarily feel his awe. They had shown themselves to him – the pure spirits, the ones of the children and the innocents that had perished so long ago. They were flying around us, circling us in a halo of red wings, before ascending into the motionless night. I knew because I watched as they left, in my mind at least, and heard their whispers. Thank you.
"Love set them free," he murmured when all had stilled once more.
I regret the wails that surely broke the silence that night when he finally realized that I had been set free as well. Even so, many moons passed when I finally returned to him and kissed those wounds, freeing them of infection.
"Hey little guy," his words were shrouded with sadness and his face bore a tear-stained smile, but his eyes shone with a subliminal understanding as I perched upon his finger, crimson wings clapping in adoration of him and our sacrifice.