...tendencies. (a story about obsession)
9: muddy death.
She fell, and the verdant brook wept.
Her clothes spread wide, and out of her basket, her weedy trophies
tumbled out.
Cloud's flowers, pink and red, and now, wilted, they fell from her grasp and
crushed underfoot in a puddle of mud.
She chanted snatches of old tunes, of /He loves me, he loves me, he loves
me....not/, as if she were one incapable of her own distress.
Then collapsed on a street corner and hugged her knees, confused and
abandoned and unsure of her own existence, of her own merit as a living person,
or as a mind. Slowly, slowly sleep crept upon her, it's pitying hands caressing
her, rocking her into sleep like the hands of her mother, her family, like the
hands of the cold murky waters. Though she was wet, she was tired, and so slumber
fell upon her, and the green eyes haltingly, but eventually slipped shut.
Thunder rumbled.
It had been raining and now it rained hard, and long it could not be before her garments, heavy with their drink, pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy...
muddy...
death.
Aeris opened her eyes. Maybe it was fate, maybe it was a curse, maybe it was
just coincidence, but it seemed like every single time she opened her eyes
lately, she saw something that made her want to scream. This time was no
different. Aeris wanted to scream. A hand, caked with mud, caked
with blood, was tugging at her skirt hem. No, it was doing more than tugging, it
was grabbing it tightly and twisting it, using her dress as some sort of lever
to push the rest of its mangled body upwards. Another hand joined the first, and Aeris
fell backwards, batting the hands away from her in a panic. "Who are you?" she cried. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"You...." said the voice in an asphyxiated gasp. "You....it can't
be....you...."
The body fell, and dropped its dirtied shawl, letting materia orb after materia
orb tumble delicately down the street in a rainbow of color. Aeris ventured
forwards, peering into the body's face. A pair of once-bright brown eyes now
glossed over, soft youthful skin, a tousled mess of black hair, and Aeris' hand
flew to her mouth to catch the name that fell out of it. "Yuffie!"
Yuffie couldn't answer. Because Yuffie was no longer Yuffie. Yuffie was dead.
Yuffie was very much dead. Yuffie had been shot several times through the chest
so that it was not a gunshot wound in the middle of her, but a cavern.
Aeris strangled a sob, shook the girl in front of her rapidly, several times,
trying to wake the young ninja up in the denying way that distressed young
flower girls have a habit of doing. "Yuffie! Yuffie, please. Yuffie, please
talk to me, please!" Why, oh why, did this trail of death, this trail of
corpses and bodies keep following her? Who, in all the world, would stalk behind
her like this, reminding her time after time of her own bloody death? The flower
girl placed her former comrade gently on the ground, walked circles around the
empty, sodden streets. "Help..." she said, her voice barely audible
even to herself. "Help me!" she screamed, and her voice echoed in the
abandoned stone corridors of a thousand thousand shut doors.
"Help you?" A deep, melodious laugh rung out from behind a corner. Vincent stepped out of the shadows, Death Penalty close to his side, eyes shining feverishly red in the dark. His bronze boots clanged as he stepped forwards towards the frightened Aeris. "Oh, my dear, dear girl. You're beyond help now."
The door to the weapons room in the basement of 7th Heaven slammed open
loudly against the wall, Cloud's extended arm pushing against it as he stumbled
frantically in. "Ultima...Ultima Wea...Where the hell is it, where is
it," he mumbled under his breath, fumbling through racks and cupboards and
drawers full of weapons. Knives and guns and staffs Cloud threw on the floor in
his fit of temporary obsession, savage daggers with teeth like sharks and
materia that glowed with energy nobody but a select few new how to harness. All
of this Cloud cast blindly to the floor at his feet, inconsequentially, as if
unaware of the bizarrely deadly arsenal he possessed in that small room. But
none of that put together was as potent as his favorite, his ultimate weapon.
And an hour later, Cloud had still not found it. He flopped to his knees,
surrounded by tools of death, and prayed to the high heavens that it was not
Tifa who had taken Ultima Weapon out for a spin. Tifa and her maniacal
tendencies towards the dramatic when it came to matters of the heart like
this....who knew what she could do. But then... a glint caught his eyes. Behind
a the door which he had so roughly shoved aside, a flash of silver, a spark of
light. Cloud pawed his way over there, pulling aside the door and peering aside.
Cloud trembled.
Blades.
Yes that was Ultima Weapon, jammed behind the door, it's slight scuffs not
marring its glory.
Yes, that was Ultima Weapon, and yes, it was, indeed, lying in a pool of
day-old-blood.
Tifa sat in the exact same position in her room as she had been sitting all
afternoon and all night. She had barely moved since Vincent had came to her and
gently pressed this gun that now lay in her lap into her hands. Barret, and
then Cid, Vincent had told her. Any one of us could be next, Vincent
had told her. Really, if she was just to pull the trigger once, it could save
the lives of so many.
Back and forth she rocked, both her body and her opinion swaying back and forth
in some sort of comforting fetal movement, in a pattern reminiscent of the
waves. She should, she shouldn't. Forwards, and backwards. He loves me, he
loves me not. It is right, it is wrong, it is right, it is wrong, it is
right, it is wrong, it is....left.
What would be left, Tifa wondered, if she were to carry out Vincent's job?
Certainly not her free conscience, but perhaps she would gain a freer soul,
self-respect. But for what in return? Perhaps she would be losing Cloud: a
lover, someone she had been with for so long and whom she knew so well she could
tell him his every movement before it happened. More than that, most definitely,
she would be losing a friend, and though a friend who she fought with and
sometimes more than often hated, resented, was, nevertheless a friend.
But oh, to be free of Cloud's curses, his mistakes, his many, many stumbles. How
much more...simple her life would be. Tifa picked up the gun. She had made her
decision.
"And every decision," said Vincent. "Every action,
requires...sacrifice."
"Wha-what?" stammered Aeris, backing away from the steadily
approaching man in the cloak. "Sacrifice, what do you mea-"
"For the greater good," said Vincent, "Sacrifices must be made.
Those mistakes made must be undone. A bone that has been set wrong must be
broken again to be set right."
"Vincent," said Aeris, now truly crying, sniffling her tears as if
trying to hind them in the sprinkling rain. "Vincent, please, I don't
understand what you're talking about."
"I am sorry," said Vincent as he doggedly approached," For the
sacrifices that must be made, but the sacrifices must be made. One must be
traded for a hundred. For the one I am truly, achingly apologetic."
"Vincent!" Aeris screamsobbed at him, now backpedalling in a frenzy,
screaming his name in the hopes to wake him from his deadly reverie.
"The one," Vincent repeated as he closed in on her, "Must be
discarded for the lives of the hundred. Some things are satiable only by
blood."
"Vincent please," Aeris continued sobbing. "Please, don't tell me
I'm that one you're talking about, please..."
Vincent bowed his head, his footsteps continuing to clang forward like a
pursuing death knoll. Virginal, praying, overhanging cliff, holy, blood,
blades. "You are the sacrifice." And a traditional one at that.
"No," sniffed Aeris, weakly denying. "No, no, please,
no."
"Yes," replied Vincent, and that was enough. Suddenly, the footsteps
stopped, and ever so slowly, he started to raise his gun.
She turned tail and ran. Flowers dropping discarded as she went, hair coming
undone from its braid, green eyes anything but serene, pink dress muddied to
unidentifiable color, Aeris ran, not the image of the flower girl, but the
long-gone and faded picture of one, hardly believable as the girl she once was.
Cloud sat and stared at the floor in front of him. Day old blood, he could tell, because it was dark and slightly congealed, dirtying all that it touched. Dirty, Cloud shuddered. So incredibly dirty. He couldn't stand to get an inch nearer to it. But though he sat a good foot and a half away from the mess he so loathed, a shiver ran up his spine as heard a wet drip, drip, drip right beside him. Deeper, deeper, Cloud's breaths steadily grew faster to the point of hyperventilation, his eyes glowing the same blue as the dead, dead computer monitor in the room next. Fatal Error. He looked down at his hand and saw that he cupped a fistful of blood. "Dirty, dirty!" Cloud howled, shaking his hand free of the repulsive liquid only to discover that his hand, his whole palm had withered away into the rotted gnarled mess of a mummy or a corpse. Falling away in revulsion, yet incapable of escaping something that was, undeniably, part of his own body, Cloud fell upon the drawers behind him once more, tearing through the contents in a state of complete dread until he came upon a black leather glove, one of Tifa's old ones perhaps. Quickly, he pulled it on and around his wasted hand, looking about him to make sure no one had seen. No one had. With a deep sigh of relief, Cloud slumped against the wall... just in time to hear a crash.
Aeris panted, sprinting into the dark rooms behind 7th Heaven feeling as if
her lungs were on fire. Behind her, she could still hear the steadily pursuing
footsteps in the eerie corridors of Midgar, always following, following, gun at
his side. Already weakened by days of fear and confusion, Aeris' legs finally
gave way immediately after she passed through the threshold of the house, her
frail body falling to the ground with a dull thump. Crouched on the ground on
her hands, on her....oh God, on her knees, hands before her, unable to turn
around and see what was coming behind her...anything could come behind her...
Clank. The footsteps kept coming.
A sword, a gun, a man, blades, if only she had the strength to turn
around and look...to protect herself...
Clank.
God, he was so close, she could already feel the cold metal pressing into
her back now, he was so close, she could hear his breathing, the way his cloak
swished in the deathly frigid breeze, she could...
Clank. The footsteps stopped.
"The job must be completed. The chapter must be closed," said
Vincent quietly, apologetically.
"No," cried Aeris. "No, no, no-"
Thunk. Vincent's body fell to the floor and slumped against the wall,
unconscious. Aeris slowly, slowly turned around.
Tifa stood in front of her, one hand on her hip, one hand on the pistol butt she
had used to knock Vincent out from behind. "Hey there," she said, with
a wry grin.
A door creaked, opened by a gloved hand. "What's going on in here,"
Cloud's wavery voice ventured as he stepped into the room to see Tifa holding a
gun, Aeris collapsed on the floor, and Vincent knocked on in the shadows. "What..what
the hell...?"
Aeris looked up at him, absinthe eyes glistening. "Oh Cloud..." she
cried hushedly, then wobbled to her feet and fell into his arms, clinging to him
tightly. "Please Cloud," she whispered. "Please don't let me go.
I'm too scared. Please don't ever let me go." Cloud's hand, his own sullied
soul hidden by the glove, lifted to stroke the girl's tangled hair. "I
won't, Aeris," he said, holding her close. "I won't."
Tifa stood and observed this scene from the doorway, the savior, yet the untouched, the unloved. Her hand tightened around the handle of Quicksilver.
In the dark corner, Vincent's eyelashes fluttered briefly in his catatonic state.
And then...
Click.
The resonant sound of a loading gun sounded in the fleeting silence.
"Cloud!" Aeris' voice ripped out of her throat. "Cloud watch
out!"
To her dear protector's blonde head, by his azure eyes so wide in utmost
confusion and turmoil, was held the cold, cruel silver barrel of a gun.
"Put...put down the ...." Cloud swallowed, and enveloped by his fear,
could speak no more.
Aeris, the forever watcher, shook with sympathetic terror. Her green eyes took
in all. She saw Cloud's sweating scalp, the way the long barrel of the gun
pressed into the flesh, saw his hands motionlessly seeking a weapon and finding
nothing, saw-.... wait.
Upon further inspection, Aeris realized the gun held to Cloud's head was Death
Penalty.
muddy
Vincent...Vincent's gun was the one pointing at Cloud. But Vincent was
knocked out in the corner. Vincent's hand was lying limp next to his sodden
body. So who...
muddy
Aeris's eyes flew to Cloud's frightened optics, and slowly, slowly trailed
down to his temple, down the long metal length of the gun. Aeris saw the gun
handle, Aeris saw that the gun was loaded. Aeris saw knuckles gripping tight,
whitened with the effort and a finger dancing dangerously on the trigger.
death.
And Aeris saw her own hand holding the gun.
sordidstory@yahoo.com
www.sordidstory.cjb.net