...tendencies. (a story about obsession).
8: The Sliver Breaks
Mommy?
Yes Aeris?
Why is there blood?
Someone died, Aeris.
How did he die?
Somebody stabbed him, Aeris.
Why is he bleeding? I thought...I thought the green washed away the blood.
You're not in the green anymore Aeris.
None of you are. You're in a different world. He's dead.
Did..I...die?
Yes, you did.
Did...I bleed?
The green washed away.
Do you know anybody who bled and never washed away?
...your father.
Mommy?
Yes, Aeris?
Am I dead?
Yes Aeris.
Mommy?
Yes, Aeris?
Why aren't I bleeding?
But she saw blood anyways, blood everywhere, spattered in Pollock streaks across the sidewalks as if the cruel hand of this murderer had a tendency towards the artistic. "A little dabble there, a little splat there..." Aeris held her stomach. Trails and fingertips indicating crawling, a puddle indicating a falling, a body indicating the very much cold and very much dead. She almost started to cry, and she didn't even know his name. Leroyelwaysleroyelwaysleroyelways. Didn't even know him, had never seen him and yet here she was with tears in her eyes for his gruesome demise. bladesbladesblades. With a little "ah-" Aeris' hands slid to her stomach once more in personal remembrance and sympathy all at the same time. She wondered what his last thoughts had been, wondered if he had been able to speak to his happy family faces floating dreamily in the green of the lifestream, wondered if that cold steel cutting through flesh and spine was as invasively frigid as it had been for her. Cruelly, bitterly, biting her lip 'til it left marks, she wondered if anybody would decide to bring him back.
As if on cue, a strong set of fingers closed almost roughly about her slim arm and pulled her abruptly to her feet. "What are you doing?" hissed a voice that was supposed to love her until she died. Again... Shake. Rattle. "What are you... get away from there!" Blue light eyes that were supposed to be alight with feeling for her were now gleaming aggressively, frightening with a paranoid fixation.
"Cloud, I..."
Before she could speak another word, the man clasped her to his chest, hugging her tight, one hand in her hair. "Don't you ever, ever go near blood again."
She blinked confusedly at him. "...But why?"
Suddenly he forced her out arms length, studying her, his gaze roaming her every inch, searching for the stray imperfection. Frantically, he dusted her off. "Because...it's dirty. You should never have blood on you. It's just wrong. It'd be like..."
"Like I was dying again?" cried a bewildered Aeris, pulling herself out of his grasp. "What, would it remind you that I died? That someone killed me with a sword? That you tried to at first, that..."
"Shhhh...." Aeris' words died a sad struggling death in her throat as Cloud pulled her into the shadows, hand slamming across her mouth, the other arm tight across her ribs. "Don't be so loud about it, Aeris. God, you want people to hear us?"
Aeris couldn't answer. Hell, she could hardly breathe.
"Hey!" shouted a cop who had been working at the murder scene. "You alright back there, Miss?"
"Now," said Cloud in a soft purr of a whisper, stroking her hair, her cheek with such tenderness, such loving delicacy that she couldn't believe he was the one that put those bruises on her arm. "I'm going to let you go, and you're going to be quiet, ok? After all," he laughed. "You were always the quiet, shy one. So cute and agreeable." He let her go, tapped her lightly on the nose. "Always the most innocent yet mature of us all, always like a mother and a child all at the same time." He kissed her.
The cop turned around, muttering "Damn exhibitionist kids," under his breath.
"We were so perfect together back then, Aeris. Let's be just like that, alright? Let's just...stay away from all the bad stuff like blood and death and we'll stay together forever. It'll be you and me. Cloud and Aeris. The most perfect couple there ever was." He grinned at her. If it wasn't for his sad, sad eyes, she could've believed him. "We'll be a legend. Eternal. We'll never ever die, at least, our story never will."
Aeris looked in the puddle of blood and saw the word love crushed under a Soldier's boot heel.
"Now," her one true love to whom she gave her heart and her soul and twice her life said to her as he turned toward the yellow ticker tape. "What's this mess all about?"
Vincent sat in the withered remains of once blossomed petals and listened to the flower girls sing. If he listened close enough, he could hear his, deep beneath the ground /6 feet/, and sometimes she called his name.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his
WHORE!
Vincent blinked. Redblackred.
leaves in the glassy stream.
There with
F*CKING FLOWER-
garlands did she come
Vincent watched the corpses of daisies slide across the floorboards as the whole building shook. He stood up and walked down the stairs.
F*CKING... FLOWER GIRL-
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
SLUT-
"Keyholes are the windows into the soul," said Vincent, joking with himself and the dead spider in the corner as he peered around the door of the workout room to see Tifa's ranting. "The eyes merely look through them and steal away what they can."
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them
Silent and invisible and blind, his best talents three, Vincent slipped into the room and behind the door and its ghostly fingers of shadows.
There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
THINKS SHE'S SOME KIND OF LITTLE PRINCESS-
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke....
Crack. Smack.
Tifa beat viciously at the punching bag, each hit resonating through her bones as she slammed fist after fist into the hard leather, knuckles impacting with satisfying slaps, cursing profusely through gritted teeth.
"Ah," said Vincent finally, out loud. "The sliver finally breaks from its dangling perch as I expected it to." He pointed his bloodred eyes amiably in the direction of Tifa, extending his empty arms. "I come without my companion this time, friend. Would you care to tell me the story of the branch who broke the princess?"
"Wha-what?" Her eyes narrowed. "Have you been listening to me this whole time? What're you talking about?"
"I amend," said Vincent, bowing his head. And when he looked up, there was a queer expression on his face. "In other words...I...have a job for you, Tifa."
"Eyes?"
"Brown."
"Hair?"
"Black."
"Race?"
"Black."
"Estimated age?"
"Eh...35, 40? Maybe 45. Looks old, but is he ever in shape. Take a look at
those biceps. They're huge." A whistle.
"Heh, yeah. Estimated height and weight?"
"About 6'2, 3, 200 some odd pounds. "
"Any particularly distinguishing features?"
"Well...he's...hunh. He's got a gun arm..."
"That man," said Aeris hushedly as she moved forward. "That
man was killed. He was stabbed through the stomach."
The detective looked up from his pen and pad and grinned at her. "Sure was,
honey. Pretty messy too. Run along- 'tain't a site for pretty eyes like
yours," he said, gnawing on a cigarette.
Aeris ignored him. "Cloud, look. That man was stabbed through the stomach
and he looks just like...Barrett."
"Barrett and then Cid. And before, there was that little red kitten in the alley," said Vincent.
"Got a fingerprint match yet?" yelled the young detective to the
cop car.
"Yup," his colleague said back to him, voice muffled. "Uh...one
Mr. Leroy Elways. Formerly of Kalm."
"Wife? Kids?"
"Nyet."
"Omigod."
"What?" Aeris looked up at Cloud's face, concern radiating.
"What, what is it?"
He looked like he had seen a ghost, and yet, he wasn't looking at the ghost that
inquired over his state, standing next to him in a new pink dress years old.
"That...wound. It's huge. It's absolutely massive." He raised a
tentative finger to point. "You see his sternum? The sword went straight
through and didn't rip anything around it. Just went clean through," he
said in a daze. "There's only one sword I know that can do that..."
Aeris gulped and didn't ask. Blades. "M...masa...masa..."
"Ultima Weapon."
Aeris' eyes focused. "Wh-a-t?"
"Ultima Weapon, I don't know how or who, or...nobody knows where that is
except for me and Tifa," he said, shaking his blonde spikes distressedly.
"But it has to be. I could recognize its mark anywhere," he gulped.
"Don't know how or why or..."
Cloud felt a twinge of pain in his hand looked down and almost screamed. Blood
was on his hand. Blood, dripping from a cut that seemed years old on his palm,
scar tissue, blood, and he hadn't even touched anything...except Aeris.
"One of us is probably next, " said Vincent. "One of us or a lookalike. It's all the same."
"You!" screamed Cloud at Aeris, aghast, as if, for the first time,
he saw a corpse walking, a decomposing, rotting mummy. "You're dirty!"
Aeris shook her head vigorously, tears flying from her emerald eyes. "No,
no, Cloud, please..."
"You!" screamed Cloud at Aeris, holding up his hand. "You did
this to me...both of you! You and Tifa!"
"Tifa?"
"Oh, don't you think I know? You know how that Highwind man died? Tifa's
kitchen knife, that's how. You...you witch, teaming up with my murdering
ex...all you women are...are.. evil!"
"But Cloud," sobbed Aeris. "I didn't do anyth-"
"How dare you accuse me!" frantically hissed Cloud. "Me? Cloud
Strife? Kill?" He panicked, remembering Tifa's words in the bar. "No,
that time was self-defense, it wasn't me, it was....she took her kitchen knife,
the doctor told me, and now, now she's going to kill all of us, oh god I gotta
go, I gotta go...." he said, mumbling wildly as he backed away.
"Go far away, Aeris," he shouted over the confused crowd. "Get
far away from her. She'll kill you, the sicko. And stay far away from me. You're
all dirty now. Don't want you...all dirty..."
Git thee...to a...
And the noises and the bodies of the crowd swallowed him up, and he sunk into
the city.
Git thee to a lake?
Nay.
Git thee to thy home.
"He's in the wrong, and you know it," said Vincent to Tifa's
denying eyes. "What he does must be undone. He must learn his lesson."
He put Quicksilver into her hand.
"You've taken life before, Tifa, I've seen you. Now is the time to take yet
another. Justified, just as always."
Tifa looked up and in her eyes was not pain or sorrow or anger but the
compounded very picture of horror- the type of horror one only feels when
discovering that dark secret part of oneself that no one ever wants to find.