(unorthodox angel)
. . .
A moment of silence. Flashing lights, stars that twinkle like candies before they are plucked out of the night sky by greedy fingers.
The calm before the storm.
She has only a second to react before the blood drenches her completely, splashing onto the dress she made herself, onto her flowers, onto her tongue, into every fiber of her being. Her veins are electrified.
(tommy backs away in horror and anger and disbelief, turning on the crowd, but the bucket hits him on the head and his eyes roll back in their sockets and he's gone, clutching at her with his nails and tearing the bloodied fabric as he falls and she gives a little gasp-choke of alarm, pig-like and shocked; a guttural sound)
Red obscures her vision. Red lingers in her mouth, on her lips, on her skin, sticky and saltysweet like beach caramels.
Her world looks like it's on fire.
(there's a phoenix)
And then, it is.
She thinks, TommyTommyTommy, and, SueSueSue, and, LITTLEBITCHLITTLEBITCH in her head, three obscene mantras repeating themselves over and over like a broken recording.
All around her, she can hear the screams of her fellow classmates, can hear the lights blow out, watch the sparks fall, see the room smolder and burst into flame brought on by the sheer power of her mind.
Carrie White's been cut in half, into two Carries. There's Carrie in the white dress, looking in a mirror, and on the other side is new, prettier Carrie, a Carrie bathed in bright scarlet and bearing angel-wings made of flickering embers and charcoal. The other Carrie smiles, and her teeth are filed into alligator points and her eyes are black coals.
"Kill them," other-Carrie rasps, her voice grating like nails across a chalkboard, and the Carrie in the white dress has no choice but to comply because, suddenly, inexplicably, the other-Carrie is real.
i'msorryi'msorryi'msofuckingsorry
(a tear, wet and clear like frosted glass, falls from her eye and lands on the floor)
She's burning, floating into the sky like a soul ascending to heaven, her hair whipping all around her in moist crimson strands, her eyes glazed over and unseeing, and from her throat bursts an unearthly wail. She whips her hands down, and like dominos, the roof crumples, peels, and collapses
(not on Carrie but on the ones that are still alive, bleeding and burnt and in agony)
in a shower of tile and masonry and metal. Outside, streams of water from the emptied hydrants rise into the air, hundreds of whipping, writhing water-tentacles. A car floats, hovering in empty space, and then abruptly drops, its headlights shattering, the chrome plating melting into silver puddles.
Carrie screams.
home. she must go home. momma's home, momma was right, she'll be alright with momma, and oh, for the first time in her life, she wants to go to the prayer closet and pray for salvation.
"Let us pray."
Momma was hiding a knife in her dress and now she brings it out and stabs Carrie near her shoulder, and a blade of piercing agony shrieks, blinding and deafening all at once, and suddenly, like a hurricane, Momma is thrown backward. Something in her rises (the other-Carrie) and it is dark and slimy and fuming, pacing in her head like an enraged panther. With a roar, all the windows in the house burst, the curtains flayed to shreds. Momma's flowerpots explode, porcelain and soil flying everywhere. The knives in the kitchen lift themselves up and aim, poised and ready, to fire like arrows.
Real-Carrie didn't have much planned (a heart attack, it was supposed to be) but other-Carrie is much more vicious, much more violent. This is the quiet twin, the black swan, and now, after years of being dormant, it has finally had enough. The shit has hit the fan.
(a sound like a police siren; time stops)
The knives fly forward and hit their mark.
she's bleeding her lifeblood onto the ground. she can hear it so acutely, splattering like jell-o onto the concrete. one hand remainds pressed over the wound, but the blood keeps running and, with an odd, high-pitched laugh, she realizes she's so covered in blood that it won't make a difference, anyway, whether she bleeds to death or not.
she's already bleeding, dammit!
At last, she crumples, her arms and legs splayed around her like discarded feathers, her dress as heavy as a lifejacket and not at all able to keep her from drowning.
Her heart beats slowly in her chest. Her eyes flicker on, off, like a television set. Her fingers reach for something that's not there.
The POWER.
She can't feel it.
She feels so empty, so drained.
And suddenly, a voice in her mind, ancient and fathomlessly old with a sound like an erupting volcano.
It asks
"Do you want to live?"
She answers
"Yes. More than anything in the world, yes."
"Then accept me. Let go."
She does.
Chamberlain isn't a ghost town, no. Not at all.
It doesn't exist. It's been wiped off the face of the planet, quite literally.
The government agents walk through the ashes which stretch out in all directions, haunted looks on their faces. Occasionally, they stop mid-stride and simply stare at all that remains. A massive black mark, visible even from space, stands like a blemish on the once-alive earth.
Not even the corpses are intact, they report.
They never do forget what they've seen.
Especially not Sue Snell, who still wakes up in the middle of the night to find that she's wet her panties and is soaked with sweat. She imagines that it's blood, sometimes, and that she's Carrie White on the night of the prom.
(she makes sure the world doesn't forget, either. she publishes a book.
months later, she is called into the u.s. on a special job assignment in a special department. there's a man in a wheelchair to meet her.
he says his name is charles. he says they have to talk.)
Fire rages. Fire blooms into beautiful, spiraling flowers; an Eden in the heart of the sun.
Carrie smiles, looking down at the galaxies that stretch before her, and licks her perfect, glossy lips. Her hair is a sunflare and her arms are phoenix wings.
She's finally beautiful, decked awash in the color of destruction.
(she used to wear her blood with shame. now, she wears a dress of blood and it's gorgeous.)