- Patty - Tuesday - 3:30 AM -
I don't understand this nagging sensation pulling at my stomach. It's familiar, and not all that happy. I don't know. I feel icky all over- and not just because Kid is holding me in his sweaty little palms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's super cute when he's nervous and all, but his soul is totally freaked out! And he isn't the only one that's unnerved. My sister is losing her mind. I can feel her shifting uncomfortably in Kid's other hand and I can only imagine what she's thinking. I wonder if she feels it too. The yucky familiar pinch spreading through her bloodstream, just like me. We're close that way. At least, I think we are. I try harder to sense her soul, but come up empty handed. I hate admitting it, but we're not as close as we used to be. I didn't even know she snuck out tonight. Has she been doing that often? Why wouldn't she tell me or take me with her? Has she lost her trust in me? Suddenly, I'm filled with a whole new icky feeling. I don't like it all.
"Patty, focus!" Kid spits. I hadn't realized how lost in thought I was until his voice hit my eardrums. I smile brightly and try clearing my thoughts.
With a quick giggle, I chirp "Okie-dokie!" and let Kid swiftly race down the squiggly maze ahead.
I hate the phrase 'I don't know', but lately I'd been thinking it a lot. Like right now. Right now, I don't know what's happening. I don't know why the bright white light kept flickering around the city, like Death himself had been playing with a light switch. I don't know why people are screaming, and I don't know why Liz is so quiet and Kid is so focused. Too focused, in fact, to notice how uneven the roads are. I just don't know.
I try looking around to get rid of some of the 'I-don't-knows' in my life, and that's when I see it. The first shadow. Tall and slender, stretched out and hazy. Dancing. The shadow is dancing up walls and through allies in the street. I gawk at it, wondering what it's doing as it carefully dives into a nearby house. Immediately, a woman bolts through the door, the shadow is quick to chase her. And when it's stable hand reaches her, it transforms. I can't explain it, but somehow the shadow shape-shifts into a thousand sharp points and collides into her. Each spike pierces a piece of her body, and she explodes. Blood shoots out of every pointed wound and starts pooling at her feet. Her soul, blue and innocent, hovers just outside her now lifeless body. The shadow pulls back, regaining its barely human form. Gently, he places her on the ground and plucks the soul from the air. I expect the horrid beast to eat the soul, like so many other keishens we've encountered, but he doesn't. He cradles the soul into his chest and leaps upward, into the night.
"Did you see that?" Liz finally speaks, her voice shaking in horror. Kid freezes, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath.
"Yes, I'm afraid I did." He murmurs under his breath. He takes a moment of silence to honor the dead woman, then starts back up in a brisk sprint.
By now, the entire city is under attack. Shrieking erupts from all different directs making my ears throb in pain. I know it's no time to complain, but I feel the words dribbling out of my mouth.
"Why is this happening?" I whine. "They need to stop crying! It's making my head hurt!"
"Patty, I really don't think they can help it!" Liz snaps. "And even if they could, that doesn't change the fact that the city is clearly going down the drain!"
I can't help but be wince at her words. I pout and grumble under my breath. I mean, really. She doesn't have to be so mean about it! Despite popular belief, I'm not an idiot.
"There!" Kid shouts, before I have time to catch what he's talking about he's pointing Liz and I at a shadow with its transparent hands wrapped around a man throat. For whatever reason, the man's feet haven't quite gotten the memo to stop running. They keep scrapping against the pavement as the shadow's hands turn into claws and start drawing blood from his flesh. Kid takes deadly aim at the beast and rapidly fires away. My soul stretches out, quickly forming into tiny bullets and shoots away at the gruesome monster. Unfortunately, our efforts are in vain. Each soul bullet slips right through the shadowy creature and hits the wall behind him. Right before our eyes, another innocent human is shredded and his soul, taken up-up and away into the dark night.
"I think I'm going to be sick!" Liz groans dry heaving just a little bit. I'm not sure if it's exaggerated or not, but I certainly don't want to find out.
"That was not very nice." I comment trying to keep my voice chipper despite everything, but I don't think it's helping much. Kid is staring at the man, his face pinched into a tight frown as he holds us loosely by his side. I don't know what he's looking at, but I can feel how sad his soul is. He's not use to failure. That much I'm certain of. And the screams echoing throughout the night just adds to the pain. It's hard to believe not even an hour ago, the city was quiet and clean. Now it's cluttered with monsters and stained by blood. And the air is filled with loud pleas for help. We need to think of another way to fight these things. But how?
"The symmetry...the symmetry..." Kid's voice is a broken record. His eyes widen in horror as he stares at the pooling blood. "The symmetry...it's off...it's off...So uneven...disgusting...awful...dreadful...disgraceful. I should have...I could have... prevented this tragic uneven blood spill."
Liz sighs and shakes her head very clearly annoyed with our master for being so focused on something that doesn't even matter. He drops to his knees and tears begin to form in his eyes as he babbles on and on about the nearly decapitated man lying dead in front of us and how unsymmetrical everything about this crime is. He's completely useless. Liz and I both know it, but neither of us quite know how to snap him out of his trace. I giggle awkwardly, she facepalms. Kid is stuck.
Something inside of me shifts. I don't want to be awake anymore. I don't want to feel the night or see the heartache and fear raging around me. I don't want to fight a battle that's losing. Like Kid, I want to crumble into myself and wake up later, when it's all over. I just want to slip
Slip
Slip
Away.
I close my eyes. I turn off the night. I let go of the cries. I let go of my thoughts, my brain, my emotions. And I turn on a smile. I pretend like I'm in a different world where everything is okay and no one is hurting or bleeding or dying. The shadows are friendly and want hugs. The blood is a glittery rainbow sprinkling the roads in good cheer. And I'm Queen of this land, spreading good cheer and happiness with songs and giggles.
I lose control of the ability to sense my sister's soul. All I can see now is a brighter, better world. I know she's talking; I know she's trying to reason with Kid. But I can barely hear her.
"Hey, Kid." Her voice is soft and somehow stern, like a mother speaking to a child. I stifle a laugh. It's actually really cute, I've never seen her use this approach with him before. I picture her in a pink dress, frilly and sparkly- something she'd totally hate- and I can see her smiling brightly, glowing with a maternal instinct I swear she was born without. "I need you to snap out of it, okay? I know this seems like the end of the world and everything, but surely there's some kind of symmetry out there, right?" She presses, I can't hold back my laughter. "I mean, there has to be. Try to find it, okay? Can you do that?"
Her speech doesn't work right away. He continues crying for a solid ten seconds, too engaged in the lack of perfection amongst us to fully grasp her words. I imagine him crying over a spilled ice cream cone. Staring at it in the middle of the street, wanting so badly to do something about it but not having the correct tools to actually help. The hopelessness is firm, but not soul crushing. Finally, he stiffens and lifts his head into the air. He notices something Liz and I don't and cautiously pulls himself to his feet. I imagine he's filtering through the screeches to try to find that symmetry he desperately needs for whatever reason, and he must have found it because in a hurry, he's racing through the city again. Looking for that ice cream shop to replace what he has lost.
"That's the spirit!" I squeal, letting go of my dream world piece by piece. "Yay!"
"Yay is right, Patty! That's what I'm talking about!" Patti agrees. Kid is determined. Laser vision eyes and everything. The bright magical world I created crumbles. Blood and death is everywhere.
I'm shocked to see him passing dead body after dead body. Shadow man after shadow man. I have 0 ideas as to where he's going, but he seems confident enough. Liz, not so much. "Hey, loser! Where do you think you're going?" She screams. "Can't you see people are dying?"
"Liz, shut up!" He screams right back at her. "I found the pattern. You were right! There is symmetry out there and I know exactly where the pattern is going to end! I see it! It's so clear. So beautiful. So perfect."
My sister and I are speechless. Kid might be a lot of things. Adorable, annoying, and distracted to name a few. But above and beyond any of that, he is absolutely brilliant. We don't dare doubt him.
