American Rust.
March 28, 2013.
Day of Rachel Amber's disappearance.
Chloe lay on the makeshift couch, smoking the last of her battered and twisted cigs. The smoke, acrid as it was, settled her down. Not by much, but just enough so that she wouldn't explode the moment she saw that fucking two-faced, double-crossing... Chloe sighed, exhaling another lungful of smoke. The weather outside was rather fitting, given her current mood: It was the start of spring; and yet the sky was clouded over in ominous black-grey clouds. Almost as though the universe knew what was coming next. It felt almost wrong to be doing this, but at the same time, she wanted to confront Rachel. No way in hell was she about let this go, and she wanted to get answers from Rachel herself. She'd made sure to bring the notebook with her too: one of the first things Rachel had said to her that she took to heart, while they were riding out on that boxcar having skipped school, was that "When you're the DA's daughter, I guess lying is... something you get used to." How the fuck she hadn't gotten the hint then, she didn't know. She couldn't believe, either, that she'd blindly decided to take that money from Frank to pay for repairs to the truck. Like hell she was going to do that now.
What was she going to say to her? Hi, I just discovered that you're banging Frank behind my back, so I'd like some answers. Pretty Please? No, like hell was that going to be the tone of things and she knew it. Accept the fact she had been two-timed, hold Rachel's hand and sing kumbaya? Chloe had to suppress an irate laugh at that notion. Nobody crossed her without getting the repercussions. Not even Rachel. Chloe exhaled, looking up through the holes in the rusted metal sheets as raindrops begun falling through them. This was going to be fucking torture and she knew it. A noise in the open doorway broke Chloe away from her thoughts, as she brought her eyes to study the figure in the door. The face she'd taken for her angel. The angel who had turned out to be a demon in disguise.
"So, uh, what was so urgent you needed me here so fast? Having a heart attack?" Rachel, ever the joker, asked. Chloe responded by flicking the butt of the cigarette, embers still lit, toward her, it landing at her feet and spraying embers, fanning out toward her foot. Rachel's smile faded somewhat, as it dawned on her. "You're not happy to see me, are you?" Chloe drew the battered notebook from the pocket inside her jacket, weighing it in the palm of her hand, before throwing it flatly. It landed between Rachel's feet, the thud like a gunshot. "Open it." Chloe's voice barely masked her emotions. Betrayal, fury, disbelief... the whole shitshow. Rachel knelt down, scooping up the book in her hands, before turning the pages open. Her face paled as she recognised the handwriting. And the notebook.
"Wh...where did you..?" Chloe's expression remained blank, her only real way of not caving anyone's skull in, for now at least. "I'm asking the questions here. One: How long has this been going on?"
Rachel's eyes lifted up from the pages of the notebook. She was already starting to tremble, her eyes watering up, her expression one of utmost fear. Fear of what was coming next, and probably of the fact that Chloe had somehow come upon the one secret that could easily blow them apart. "How did you..." Chloe snapped. Her patience had gone sailing out the fucking windows when she'd found this was going on. She stood up from her battered throne, closing the space between the two of them until she could grab Rachel. "How. Long?" Rachel was bordering on tears. "Five."
Chloe's blood was starting to hit boiling point. "Five what?" "Five...months." Chloe's poker face pretty much dropped altogether at this point, instead being replaced by an expression of outrage. "FIVE MONTHS?" she growled, edging ever-closer to her betrayer, "you KNEW I was going to get the money from Frank to get the truck working. You KNEW the only thing I held in my heart was the plan for US to blow this place off, together. So WHY, oh why, have I come across a letter that you wrote that prick suggesting you two leaving. Without me?" She grabbed Rachel by the shoulders. "More to the point, why the fuck stab me in the back?" Chloe's voive was almost a whimper by the end of the last question, but ahe just about held her nerve. She didn't know whether it was regret, anguish or outrage
"C...chloe, I-"
"No. No explanations. Not for something lile this." Chloe took a few paces away from the near-wreck she had created. "Looks like you have one thing in common with James, you sure know how to lie and deceive those closest you." she stopped as she looked once again at Rachel, the expression on her face almost wanting her to take that back. Almost. There were fucking submarines that'd have a hard time making as low a blow as that, and she knew it. The fire in Rachel's eyes as she stormed toward her, before slapping her across the face with more force than Chloe could remember ever being hit with. She recoiled, rolling with the hit. As she straightened herself, the fury inside her was let slip from its restraints. "It's on now!" She unleashed a sledgehammer of a punch into Rachel's nose, immediately drawing blood and a pained, distraught yelp from Rachel. She turned and disappeared back through the doorway, her sobs fading until they were overwritten by the clunking and screeching metal of the train passing, before a half-silence returned.
As it enveloped her, Chloe imploded. She already knew what she'd just done as she tried putting the fragments of herself together. She was the one in the wrong, not you Chlo. But did I fucking have to go and drag it out in the open like that? Gah, I don't know any more. As she lay, the pool of rainwater mixing with her tears, she felt the tingling of the white nothing trying to reclaim her once more. She hit herself across the side of the head, causing the interdimensional repo to stop for the time being. She got out her phone, damp from the downpour, and started typing as thunder begun to fill the air.
Chloe,Rachel has more than likely broke up with you. You discovered she was banging Frank- as in your dealer, Frank (or should I say, ex-dealer?) and you found out about it, and confronted her. If you don't believe it, go to the hut and look under the makeshift table. There should be a notebook there. Whatever you do... don't look back.Good luck,you.
As Chloe hit save on the memo, a pain worse than any she'd experienced before tore through her.
Limbo
"WHY? WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?" Other-Chloe's incredulous screams pierced Chloe's eardrums as she found herself back in her own personal hell. By the time Chloe had got her bearing back, Other-Chloe had punched her in the stomach with the force of a cannon. She cried out in pain as she fell to the floor, with Other-Chloe following up by giving her a kick into the side of the chest, hard enough to break the ribs unfortunate enough to be in the way. Chloe was sure she would pass out with the pain. She felt a force on top of her, as her incandescent and heartbroken other form pinned her to the floor, both hands around her throat, as she continuted to rebound Chloe's head off of the ground. "I SWEAR, I'M GONNA CHOKE THE MOTHERFUCKING LIFE OUT OF YOU!" Chloe could feel her body starting to numb as the air failed to reach her limbs, her vision beginning to grey, and her lungs screaming out for air. In the moments before she passed out, she had an idea. This other motherfucker, if it really was some version of her, would be pretty vulnerable to a hit to the wrist, seeing as how the break still hadn't healed properly after that skateboarding accident and not being able to afford a trip to the hospital.
With the last of her strength, she aimed a blow against the hands threatening to crush her larynx like a grape. Other-Chloe howled in pain and released some of the pressure on Chloe's neck. It wasn't much, but it was all the window Chloe needed. She followed with an elbow into the side of the face, knocking Other-Chloe onto the floor. Now, Chloe went on the offensive, raining blow after blow onto Other-Chloe. She collapsed forward, exhausted, grabbing Other-Chloe by the jaw.
"Now...you...fucking listen...", Chloe started, exhausted from the near-asphyxia combined with the effort of beating the crap out of her alternate tormentor, "It..had to be... done". By now, Other-Chloe had just about recovered from being beaten to within an inch of her life, and Chloe had enough breath to have a coherent sentence. "Think about it, dumbass: Why were you in the bathroom with Prescott to begin with? Why did you take out that loan to begin with? Who the fuck encouraged you to do it?"
Other-Chloe begun to whimper, trembling as she tried her hardest not to cry herself to death in front of Chloe. "God... I think... I think you've... done it."
Chloe was confused. "The fuck do you mean, done it?"
Other-Chloe pointed to a porthole. The porthole that had shown the graves of Chloe and her father, flanked by those of Rachel and Max. It was replaced, now, by something somewhat different. Rachel's grave was there, but the date was different. It now stood at April 20th, while her name, along with Max's headstone, had disapeared.
"W-wait. What does that mean?"
Before she got any kind of answer, she was met with a deafening whining, like that a microphone made sometimes, as everything now went black.
A/N
I can imagine some of you will want my head on a spike, either for executing this or for executing it badly. My inspiration came from The Butterfly Effect, also the inspiration of Life is Strange. The synopsis of that film should make it clear enough. Things may be going slowly for the next few chapters BUT it will get faster and faster paced. I'm aiming to keep chapters up at a length though.
