This took alot longer to write than normal, not supprising considering its 9 pages of waffle. I would like to that radiohead for writting '2+25', a seriouslygreat song (yet so un-SH) that stuck with me throughout, as well as you,the reader for... well reading this much.
Chapter 42: Sin's of the Father
Part 3: Resurrection
Parker looked up, letting the choking form of Jobe fall from his melting grip and hit the carpeted floor with a soft but harmless thud. His black eyes squinted in the hazy, intrusive light as he glowered at the figure framed in the door way. Just who the hell was this person who had the sheer ordacity to interrupt his work and pollute his fine church with such crude profanities?
And then, he recognised the shadow for who it was. Instantly, the scathing, irritable glower that had been twisting the few features he had left broke like a wave on a beach, giving way to a thin smile…though there was not one once of warmth in this expression.
"Ah, so it would seem that the whore's finally managed pulled herself out of the gutter…" Jobe jerked his head up, staring slack-jawed at the still open door and the shadow that stood there, all the while doing all he could to stop that little flutter of hope that fluttered madly inside his chest from blooming into something that would effortlessly carry him away. It couldn't be her…it just couldn't…
The shadow stepped away from the door and out of the clutches of the milky, distorting light.
Jobe felt something taught finally snap inside his chest.
She stood there, totally restored. There was no gaping hole in the side of her head, no gouts of thick blood clinging to her clothing and there was defiantly a pulse pushing it around her warm body. In fact, aside from the utterly confused expression that blatantly asked w.f.t, she looked perfectly fine, albeit a little ill. It would be very, very hard to believe that this woman was supposed to be twenty or so feet underground with half her brain splattered on the opposite wall and as dead as a doornail.
'It would also be hard to believe that Virgil's meant to be down there with her with a noose round her neck…' But that was as far as Jobe's thought got before-
"Oh my god, what the fuck is THAT!" Grace shirked, stumbling back towards the door as her eyes finally adjusted to the gloom around her and took in the mutated, twisted form of Parker in all its glory. The grin he shot her just sent her scrabbling for the door all the faster.
"GRACE!" Jobe yelled as he tried to force his dead-weight limbs back into life and stumble to his feet, however, the fat coil that smacked down on his back like an iron girder quickly put an end to any hopes of that. The sea of red fabric rushed up at him as raw pain raced up and down his spine, diffusing out to every nerve and blowing each and everyone like an overloaded circuit.
He lay there, gasping like a fish left to suffocate on air. Even if the mist of ache that had enveloped him cleared enough for him to even be able of thinking of trying to get up again, the tendril that had downed him jabbed into his ringing back, pinning him to the ground.
Parker didn't even bother to watch his handiwork. Instead, all he did was let his gaze lazily trace the woman who was struggling for the door.
Struggling? Oh wait, now he saw…
The only reason that Grace wasn't out that door and running down the street like the hounds of hell themselves were after her (or something as equally nasty) was because of the large, metal canister clutched between her straining arms. It weighted her down, rendering her slow and sluggish as she lumbered through the space that should have taken her a blink of an eye to clear. However, still she stubbornly held on to it, even when most who considered themselves sane would have cast it aside and run for the proverbial hills.
Well, he'd make her regret that misconduct of judgment, wouldn't he?
Parker felt the greasy skin around his lips shrivel back another inch or two as the tendrils around him dove back into the carpet, breaking its surface like water. Ahead of him, Grace barely had the time to flay herself back as they erupted right before her in a blur of dirty brown, criss-crossing themselves over the door way in an organic barricade that even the light beyond couldn't penetrate.
For a moment, the woman stared with gaping eyes and mouth at the twisted wall of muscle and skin that happily barred her one certified escape route; then the sense that had fled at the sight of Parker returned and she remembered why she'd dragged herself here in the first place.
She turned back to the madness. Jobe felt his breath catch in his throat when he saw the look of grim determination on her face, however, from where he lay he also was able to see a mass of coils fire past him aimed with a deadly accuracy.
For the nth time that day he found himself horsy screaming her name…
…And yet again, it proved to be in vain.
Grace barely managed to register the dark and twisting shape that suddenly loomed in her vision, chewing up the space between her and it at a terrifying rate. Not losing an ounce of its fearsome velocity, it violently bloomed into a wide sinus as the tendrils splayed apart, engulfing Grace's world of vision in nothing but dark, ugly tones. She'd probably got as far as lifting a single foot from the carpet's padded surface when the horde of coils snapped in around her, latching on to any unfortunate limb they happened to brush and snatching it in a cold, unforgiving grip. Grace bucked back, more in shock than anything but the tendrils held fast, proving just how futile any future attempt of the same nature would be.
For a moment, the scene was utterly still; Grace's stood awkwardly in a stance that would have caused anyone else to be over come by the lull of gravity and fall flat on their face, however, the coils wrapped around her anchored her upright, literally rooting her to the spot. Parker watched her, that elongated head cocked to one side and an expectant smile on his face that wouldn't look out of place on a child who was anxiously waiting for a promised reward.
Then, it finally came.
"ARRRRRGH!"
Grace's staggering brain woke up, jarred into life by the wailing of the nerves that lay just under the surface of her skin. Suddenly, she was horribly aware of the dry and nauseatingly smooth texture of the coils that bound her, but more than anything, she could feel how cold they were.
The woman rolled her head back, locking the scream that swelled behind her teeth with jaws clenched as tight as possible, trying to not let the unborn wail rip her apart.
'so cold..'. Her gaze slipped out of focus as that single though raced back and forth inside her head, but that word could never do justice to the icy sensation that pinned her violated body.
Grace found part of her mind deliriously swimming back to a time when she was little…oh, no older than seven… to when her school had gone on a trip to some science museum or something equally dull and nerdish. There'd been a guy giving a talk, but Grace (like most of her fidgety, inattentive peers) hadn't listed to a word he'd said until he'd rolled out this big canister. He'd drawled on about how it contained this thing called 'liquid nitrogen', supposedly the coldest thing these children would ever see in their lives and went on to demonstrate just how cold it was (as if they needed a demonstration, Grace was convinced the moment he pulled of the lid; instantly, it felt as though the canister had sucked all of the heat out of the room and froze the busy air in place) by dipping an elastic band into the strange, steaming mixture within. When he pulled it out, the band was changed. The bright, vibrant colour had been leached away, leaving nothing but a strange, shrivelled and ridged loop of hollow rubber.
That was exactly how she felt right now as the tendrils climbed over her. Dead, dead and cold…
Those sickly things that bound her jerked with a sudden violence that broke the scream loose as they tore her through the air towards their leering master at a break-neck speed. Grace dragged her head up as the static air whipped past it, renewing her high cry as she saw how quickly she was plummeting towards that twisted thing and its nest of eager coils. Oh god, she was going to crash right into-
The vines around her cut their mad, suicidal rush, killing their simultaneous speed instantly. There was a yank of momentum that through her forward, then everything was still once more.
Grace opened an eye, her features reluctant to un-twist.
Ok, so she wasn't dead.
With a cautious slowness, Grace looked up…only to come face to face with the smooth, featureless visage of Parker. Somewhere deep within her chest, her heart shrivelled up as the rush of panic that flooded her system clogged it up. Her eyes were stuck to that hideously smooth head and she found that she was utterly helpless to break the gaze with the two deep, black, hungry dots that stared back at her. Finally, it cracked a grin, the lips riding back to reveal twin rows of oversized needle like denture.
The following scream she unfurled emptied her lungs in a single blast.
Jobe forgot all about the pinnacle of twisted muscle jabbing into his back and went to through himself to his feet. Unfortunately, it had also slipped his frayed mind that his wrist had been reduced to nothing but a splintered mass of bone and his blind rescue was cut short by the torrent of white hot pain that cascaded up his arm the moment he put his hand down. A raw cry erupted from his throat as he fell back down, embracing the carpet once more.
Parker paid not a speck of heed to the now sobbing man and instead kept his attention fully focused on the woman who squirmed within his grasp.
Oh yes, he was going to leech these two for all they were worth.
"Tell me…" He softly broke in causing Grace to look up at him, squinting from the corner of a hot, wet eye. "…What oh what did you possibly think you could achieve in coming back here, eh? Is this some desperate act of redemption, hmm? Pray tell, did you actually think something as…" The words slowed as the skin around Parker's maw wrinkled back in disgusted. "…dirty as yourself could breech these sacred halls and actually rescue our young male friend here?" At mentioning Jobe, he twisted the coil that pinned the man to the floor, reveling in the scream it forced out.
Grace flinched at the sound, her teeth knitting together as she tried to look anywhere but those probing little eyes as they scrupulously dug into her. The coils wound themselves ever tighter, grinding the bulky canister that had got her into this mess even tighter into her leg-
Somewhere, very deep in a part of her mind that was yet to come apart screaming like a lunatic, that sharp bite of metal against flesh was enough to turn on the proverbial light bulb and light her mind with a flash of inspiration. She'd managed to keep a hold of the canister through all of this, and she could just about feel the weight inside it shift as the gasoline it contained sloshed about its battered innards…
Grace opened her eye as the cogs in her mind cranked back into place and began to turn once more.
Wait…that meant the crazy, suicidal and not to mention utterly illogical plan she'd cooked up as she sprinted to the church with that heavy metal box smacking against her leg with each stride and her bunged up lugs threatened to collapse in on their sticky selves might still work... All she had to do was get out of this goddamn tangle of frozen skin and sinuses muscle.
Beneath it all, Grace's had dove for the bulge that now filled the once empty pocket of her jeans, her fingers clawing out the object. Ha, freeing herself might actually be easier than it sounded…
8 8 8
Parker felt the shot before he felt it. He'd barely had time to notice the sleek, polished form of the hand-gun worm its way through the cords that held the woman together before something tore into his face for the second time that day. The roar of it came like an after-shock, flooding his neo-existent ears as his world sunk into red.
8 8 8
Grace fell to the ground, gripping the still smoking gun and canister as the tendril's tight shape blew apart around her. Packing them both into one cramped hand, she made a mad grab for Jobe and did her best to drag the man... well, as far away from Parker as humanly possible. However, the twisted priest did nothing to stop her, his army of coils thrashing wildly about him as he launched his head back and bellowed into the church's roof, the black hole of his gapping mouth mirrored perfectly by the bloody gorge that had replaced his right eye. He crumpled in on himself into a tight ball as he tried to over come the pain, madly digging for the bullet lodged in the shattered socket with his long and knotted fingers. The screaming melted into a wet groan as he ripped the foreign, metal body from the gory wound and vehemently threw it to the ground. It bounced once, twice, then lay totally still on the carpet, the oily black that smeared it clashing with the harsh red. Parker glared at it for a moment before the sudden quietness it him.
The whole building may as well have died.
"Grace?" His lone intact brow knotted at the silence that answered him. Well, he shouldn't be surprised. It wasn't like she was just going to through herself to him on a platter, all ready to be carved into tiny pieces…
8 8 8
"Grace"
The woman swore, leaning into the back of the pew she and Jobe were huddled behind as the beast sung her name.
"You- you came back too?"
"Huh?" Grace let herself forget about the monstrosity that was probably going to tare her three ways from Sunday for blowing that hole in its head for a moment to glance at the man next to her. God, he looked terrible…
"Why Grace, why come back?"
"What?" She whispered a little too loudly. "I woke up in that room and you guys, Casper, you and Angela, you'd all disappeared."
"But…" Jobe's eyes rolled languidly onto her. "You could have escaped, been free of all this pain and shit."
"But I couldn't have just got up and left with you still here. How the fuck would I live that down…" The words clogged into a tight little knot that jammed up her throat. Ironic, she'd done many, many things in her life that none should be able to shrug off quite as easily as she did…
'Don't think about that, not now…'
"Anyway," She shot a glance over the back of the pew at the skulking Parker, heeding her brain's advice on not lingering on that particular thought for too long. "You and Virgil explained it enough times for even me to get that we can't just walk away from this. As much as I don't want to say it, if we ever want to go back then this is something we're going to have to end ourselves…which is just what this is for." Grace gave the brick-red canister next to her a friendly pat, prompting Jobe to let his eyes sink onto it.
"What is it?" He asked in a far-away voice as he struggled to take it in. It was as if the feverish pain had wrapped itself around his skull like cotton wool that stopped anything getting in or out without getting utterly mangled.
"I found it down at some petrol station, along with this," She motioned at the gun. "It wasn't like anyone was going to mind me taking it. Anyway, this is a can of gasoline and I swear, I'm going to take it and burn this place to the ground along with that freak-" Grace was just about to ask what the hell was that thing anyway, but the half-formed words never got the chance to leave her lips.
"And why my dear, would you want to do a thing like that?" Parker's twisted excuse for a voice cawed from deeper within the gut of the church. Grace shut up, biting her lip as she cramped up behind the wooden bench in a sad attempt to become invisible.
It didn't work.
"You know, my dear Grace," Parker drawled on, slowly gliding up between the pews. "I think I've realized the answer to that little question I left you to ponder over before all that…" He paused, letting the tension swell as the word built up pressure behind his teeth. "Unpleasantness. Now, before I blurt out my theory, would you care to hazard another guess? Hmm?"
Jobe looked sidelong at his restored ally in time to see the taught muscles in her jaw jump and found himself sighing, for he knew what was coming next. Parker was going to break Grace under the weight of whatever words he was cooking up and dying to let loose, pretty much like how he'd tried to break Jobe time and time again.
'You sure he didn't succeed?' The little voice quietly asked in the silence.
"No?" Parker's high whine of a voice cut in. "Alright then, allow me to enlighten you if you will. I think the only reason you dragged your rotting corpse back here was not for redemption or, as heroic as it would be, to save young Jobe. In fact, I think the motivation that fueled your coming here was of an entirely self-centered nature… Can you give me an amen to that?" Parker let a pause that he knew none would fill, for Grace's only response was to tighten her grip on the handgun as the silence gnawed away at her rapidly fraying nerves.
'He's playing us again…' Jobe shut his eyes, biting his lip at the revelation as his head viciously hummed. He didn't want to see this… and he didn't want to hear it either. Even though the pain wouldn't be his own, it would still hurt, inflicting a wound the shattered man didn't know if he could bare. And what would all this agony be for in the end? Feeding the monster that was Silent Hill itself, an entity that was truly more terrifying than anything born of the town's rotten soil. He and Grace… why, they were nothing more than slaves to its system now…
"I think," Parker drolled on, continuing to preach to his dumb audience. "The only reason you came back to this house of god was for reason that many do, though not usually so well armed. It is not glory you seek Grace, but purpose. You see, all your life, you've never had a reason to draw another breath and it drove you mad… in fact, it rotted your sanity to the point where you porously chose an utterly degrading and self destructive…career. You were probably over the moon when that letter from your doctor finally came, telling you just how limited your time on this earth was!"
Jobe shrunk back from the woman, watching her with eyes hollowed out from his mounting worry as the skin around her knuckles drained of all color, shaking as they clutched the gun with enough force to reshape the clammy metal.
Oh god, she was going to snap.
In the background, Parker chased up his words with a volley of dry laughter.
"Oh, but Grace, that wasn't what you really wanted, was it? Suddenly, it dawned on you that, in some perverse and twisted way that even I cannot possibly conceive, you actually loved your so called life. In fact," A manic grin blossomed on his face as Parker let his head loll back. "You were addicted to itYou couldn't get enough, so you went on polluting and corrupting hard working men like Casper. You went on, and on…"
Next to him, Grace choked as her lips raced to form a jargon of inaudible words.
"…And on." Parker halted his soliloquy, reveling in the silence left by his own beautifully crafted words. Ha, that feeble minded whore… he'd break her any minuet now at this rate, and the best was still to come…
"So you see, your coming here was inevitable. Claudia, bless that fool and all her faults, was able to se all this and find a use for you Grace, or should I say…"
Jobe grabbed his head, clawing his scalp with tight fingers in a pathetic attempt to halt was he knew was coming next.
'Don't say it, don't say it, don't sa-"
"…Lust"
That one word was all that it took for Grace to finally brake. The echo of it hadn't even died by the time she'd rocketed to her feet and stood aiming the gun with shaking hands at Parker, her face warped by smoldering rage.
"How much of that goddamn head of yours am I going to have to blow off before you shut the FUCK UP! Just die already, goddamnit!"
Parker didn't even bother turning his head, more content with watching the speckles of dust that lazily waltzed in the candle's ambience.
"Tut tut, such language in a place like this…"
"Screw you!" Grace snarled, jabbing the barrel of the gun at the inattentive priest with enough force to pop her arm from its socket. "And what the hell do you think you're doing saying I'm- I'm some kind of monster, huh?" Jobe almost laughed as he lent into the unforgiving bench. It was uncanny, she sounded just like him when Casper had first pointed the finger and screamed 'Envy'.
"Why the fuck am I still talking to you?" Above him, Grace re-trained the gun's aim and let her teeth flash as she spoke with drawn back lips. Jobe looked up at the smoldering woman in time to see her finger draw dangerously tight around the trigger. "I should have killed you and burnt this hole down first chance I go-"
"And then what, sweet Grace?" Parker swung his head round fast enough to make the small woman jump as he eyed her with the yawning, impossible, bloody crevasse she'd created . "You were just going to waltz out of those double doors back to your sad excuse of a life? Let me ask you, my dear, do you even have a life left to go back to?"
A pause…then-
"What the hell's that meant to mean?" The women asked slowly as her eyes narrowed into wary slits. Suddenly, she didn't look quite so sure of herself and the gun no longer seemed so comfortable in her restless grip. Parker looked at her for a moment more before that hideous, misshapen visage cracked into shrill laughter and collapsed into an up-turned hand. Someone might as well have told him the most side splitting joke in the world for all it seemed…
"Oh," He managed to wheeze out. "This is too much…I-I'd think it almost incomprehensible to fathom your ignorance if it hadn't been for Jobe's display of…" the words were lost in a rising howl of dark mirth and the monster was barely able to chuck out his last few words. "…Utter lack of anything close to understanding the dire situation he found himself in! Please don't tell me that you also suffer from his adverseness to the truth." He brought him self together for long enough to look up at Grace, but the look on her face which plainly stated that everything he'd barely been able to splutter out had gone straight over her head was all that it took to set the priest off roaring helplessly once more.
"Shut UP!" Grace thrust the gun forwards again as she spat. However, the action had lost all of its previous conviction, but that didn't really matter for Parker didn't see it anyway. He was far too busy trying to keep himself from rupturing some internal organ as he choked on his own laughter.
"Oh god….Jobe?" Parker straightened out his crooked back, wiping an oily tear from his pinprick eyes. "I think it's high time you brought this somewhat overwhelmed young lady up to speed. Please, before she kills me!" The changed priest hardly managed to get the last word out before his vocabulary disintegrated once more into a fit of laughter with a dry, drawn out snort. Grace watched Parker as he strived to keep himself upright, her lip drawing into an ever tightening snarl that parted to reveal clenched teeth…
But suddenly, it caught on something. For the first time since she'd thrown herself to her feet, her brain stuttered, slowing down enough to think. For a split second, her eyes darted to Jobe as her venomous expression lost its sting.
"Jobe… what's he talking about?"
For a moment, the man in question remained silent, dully staring off into the empty void of air that filled his listless gaze. Then:
"He's trying to say you and I don't have a place back where we came from… but it's mainly you he's getting at."
"Oh!" Grace's eyes flicked from the man on the floor next to her to the beast fast enough for her pupils to become nothing more that twin black blurs. "And what makes you so special?"
Jobe felt his mouth go dry as any liquid in it crawled down to his stomach, collecting in a heavy ball of nauseatingly heavy bile.
"Because…" His tongue tripped over the words. Oh god, he didn't want to do this-
"Don't be afraid," Parker softly crooned in a sing song tone, having finally got the better of his morbid sense of humor. "Just tell her, after all, unlocking the truth is such a liberating experience as I'm sure you've found!"
Jobe dropped his head and mumbled pathetically into his chest in hope it would swallow the words he couldn't bring himself to even mutter. However, luck would have it that the church's hall was quiet enough for even the deaf to hear a pin drop.
"Because… you're dead, Grace."
…
For an instant, the world stopped, grinding to a halt on its axis. The only thing that dared to move was the sick excuse for a smile that was slowly inching across Parker's face.
Then Grace laughed, shattering the silence like fragile glass. It was a horrible, high thing that made Jobe wince and want to black his ears as it racked the woman's slim form.
"You're bull-shitting me…" But Jobe dodged her gaze, choosing to let it sink deeper into his chest than look at her. Her bray of force laughter slowed to a nervous trickle. "…Right?"
"I wish to god I was... but Casper, he- he- damn it, Grace, he shot you. He killed you!"
Jobe let his pupil crawl to the corner of his eye and nervously brought himself to look at the dead quite woman. The expression she wore would have been enough to break his heart… if there had been anything left to desecrate. She looked so afraid, so small, so lost and all the while her eyes silently begged for Jobe to say this was all some twisted practical joke as the flux of emotions welled deep inside her…But then, in a blink of an eye it was all gone and replaced with something cold.
"You're full of it, Jobe…" She glared up, firing her venomous gaze at Parker as she took swift aim at the writhing mass. "You both are, and you can just go to hell!"
"My dear girl," The creature at the opposite end of the church looked up, meeting Grace's eyes with a glare that utterly dissipated it. "Neither of us, as you so eloquently put it, are full of anything. You were killed Grace, killed for the simple reason that through your death, Jobe would finally wake up and acknowledge just what crime it was he had committed." Grace's lip had begun to tremble as she held the gun aimed at the monstrous preacher, her finger clamped so very tightly on the trigger. Just an ounce more of pressure, even less…that would be all it would take to shut him up and halt the torrent of crushing words that spewed from that dirty mouth of his. "Casper just let himself get a little too carried away with carrying out the necessary act of retribution on your rag-tag band; but do not allow yourself to make the same mistakes Jobe and fall into the fatal grip of delusion. He snuffed out your life, Grace, with a single shot…"
A whimper rose from her throat and scrapped out into the open air through teeth that were to busy worrying her lips to even try and suppress the pathetic sound. The world lurched around her. Suddenly, Grace found her arms were barely able to hold up the bulky fire-arm before her as Parker's words burrowed into her like a crop of carnivorous maggots whose army of needle teeth would not stop gnawing away until everything was gone.
'It's a lie, a fucking LIE!' Something hot slid down her cheek as some internal voice screamed at her to just pull the trigger and be done with it. However, with each tick of time that slipped by, that crying voice grew smaller and smaller as it was gradually assimilated by the fearful paranoia that swelled around it.
'NO!' This- this couldn't be right. Wasn't the fact that she was standing here proof enough that she was alive? How could she be dead, she'd been in that room and not a single shot had been fired for the whole time! Sure, Casper had got pretty comfortable with jamming it into the side of her head but that had all stopped when… when…
Blank.
There was a gapping hole in her memory, burning a great black gap in the sequence of events stored within her head. Grace blinked, running over it again and again, but each and every time she tried to play back a little more for her mind's eye, it would always clamp shut at the exact same point.
It was as if it was afraid of seeing what came next.
"If I recall correctly," Grace looked up, her head swimming as she tried to focus on the Father and repress the thumping urge to be sick there and then. "He laid the bullet into you right here…"
Jobe watched with dread, having finally pulled himself up on the pew to leave some of his apathy to wallow on the floor without him. Transfixed, he followed the preacher's skeletal hand as it ascended to the side of his head, molding itself into the unmistakable shape of a gun before resting its long fingers against his temple.
"Blam."
Grace choked. She staggered backwards as if Parker's imaginary shoot had been fired right at her, embedding itself in her chest. Without meaning to, she raised a shaking hand to the side of her head, sloppily mirroring the preacher's smooth and controlled gesture. Before she could stop herself, she let it grace against her skull and the uncontrollable fingers at its end burrow into her dirty blond-hair.
Something cold and wet greeted them, slicking her hair into clumps as if it were caked with jell.
"…no…" The sound that passed through her lips could barely bring itself to rattle the dry air as the muscles in her eyes tightened. Her fingers dug further in, ignoring the desperate cries from her brain to stop and just let it go. Deeper and deeper they went, until they found the scalp…along with the oozing hole that broke its surface.
Grace jerked, yanking her hand back as if she'd just stuck her finger into a socket. The sticky, saturated strands of hair clung to her hand for a moment longer, lashing them with bright red as she ripped them away as fast as she humanly could. Grace stared at her hand for a moment, mesmerized by the vibrant color that dyed her skin crimson. She looked at it, shocked dumb as if the familiar limb was something totally alien to her.
And then she screamed.
"What the FUCK IS THIS!" Sobbing, she desperately turned to Jobe but he could offer the disintegrating woman no answer; he was far too busy gawking at the twin blood-red stains that were slowly gestating on either side of her scalp to bring himself to say anything. Wildly, she shot a pleading glance at Parker, helpless to stop herself from shaking as the stone cold liquid began to creep down her neck with a heavy slowness.
"This, my dear Grace, is the truth. A truth that you were too afraid to accept because you could not stomach the thought of what it is you are." He spoke, his voice seeped to the point of dripping with that self righteous confidence that came so naturally to him. "A sinner; and a dead one at that!"
Grace stumbled forward, grabbing the pew that had sheltered her. How- how was any of this possible! Her brain felt like it was about to explode under the sheer pressure of the preacher's words and with each one, she could hear her fragile mind crack and splintered that little bit more. Jobe took a step forward but quickly stopped himself, his arms locking awkwardly at his sides. Just what the hell could anything he tried to do achieve anyway?
"So Grace, just what are you going to do?" Parker cocked his head to the side, his lone eye in a half closed grin as if the infectious smile on his lips had managed to spread even there. "Take the path of hardship and tribulation that you brethren sin, Envy, has chosen to walk… Or perhaps I'd be so lucky that you'd decide to do the sensible thing and just submit to God's will. I must warn you though," The light that danced so joylessly in that oil black eye clicked off as the preacher swung his suddenly cold and heatless gaze onto the man beside her, boring through his flesh as if it were as thin as paper. "You will not be able to stand up against this town and its immeasurable power for long. Your assimilation into it and our God's grand design is as inevitable as her coming…"
Jobe shuffled back as he felt the pitch-dark orb unscrupulously run up and down him again and again as if her were something that had just walked in out of the gutter while Parker's words dug in at him.
'Don't let him get to you with all this junk he's tossing out. You made your choice and damnit, I'm going to see that you stick to it. After all, you don't want to give that creep the satisfaction of seeing you just roll over and die, do you?'
No, no he did not. He was going to fight against this life that had been thrust at him until his last living breath left his body…
…But then, would Grace be able to muster the strength to stand with him? Looking at her right now, the man seriously doubted it.
If he'd though she'd looked ill before as they'd both said what they must have though would be their last goodbye at the motel, then she was practically dying on her feet right now. It was if the disease that slumbered within her had been awoken and its appetite for life multiplied by a factor of ten hundred. In the space of a few lone minuets, the woman seemed to have hollowed out as if everything within her rotted as it was rapidly chewed away by some festering, internal entity.
"Tick tock, Grace…" Parker sneered.
Snap
Grace's head cracked up, the cords in her neck bulging against the surface as her jaw locked together like the iron teeth of a bear trap. Through her tears, her eyes burned.
Before Jobe even knew what was happening, the woman had vaulted over the pew, canister in hand, gun prone. The tendrils had barely had a chance to twitch before the shooting started.
BLAM
There was a dry crack. Some of the plaster on the pillar that stood behind Parker exploded in a tiny puff of dust as the bullet drove into it.
BLAM
The next bullet tore splinters of wood from the floor as it raked through the carpet beneath the priest's limp feet.
BLAM
This one bit right into one of them. Having finally found the mark, the next three came so fast that the gun's blasting holler rolled into one horrific scream.
Gut. Chest. Shoulder. Each one of these snapped back in turn as the hot metal slugs tore through Parker's battered body. His eye shot wide, the invisible pupil locking onto something in the far distance as his jaw sagged open in a tragic expression of painful disbelief. That… that bloody whore had stood up to him. How? It was never meant to end this way. They could not prevail, they-
White blazed across Parker's vision as Grace slung the canister into his face with enough force to send him crashing into the ground.
'…They were meant to fall…' A voice whispered flatly inside Parker's broken skull as the lights within it slowly started to dim and the fog rolled in.
Grace looked down at the scraggy, misshaped human as it tried to work its arms in a pathetic excuse to get up.She didn't even feel a flicker of remorse as she un-twisted the (now deeply dented) canister's lid and poured the thickly scented content over the fallen monster.
"You know…" She began, her voice rising shakily over the wet splatter of gasoline against skin and carpet. "I've had a really shitty day today," The can fell to the floor with an empty, hollow thud. "And you're not helping." Parker's eye rolled onto her, the little black ball barely visible in its swollen socket. It watched as her shaking hand went to the pocket of her grimy jeans, pulling out the metal lighter and box of cigarettes that had faithfully accompanied her through out the hell that had been the last two days. "Last thing I fucking well want is you acting all high and mighty telling me that my only purpose is to put up with crap like this or whatever it is some god has planned for me." Grace opened the box, only to find an empty space staring back at her. Oh well, she'd been thinking of quitting for her health's sake…
At that though, she found herself feeling as empty as the box. Ironic, she could pour as much tar and nicotine into her lungs as she wanted without having to give a second thought to lung cancer or anything like that.
Ha-fuckidy-ha ha.
Beneath the suddenly still Grace, Parker gave out a choking laugh, blood bubbling between his lips.
"So, you think you've won? How can you say that, you've got nothing left in this world!"
"Yeah?" Grace raised an eyebrow. "Well that sure as hell doesn't mean that I'm going to fit in with your little plan for humanity because you say so. Can you give me an amen to that?"
A smile danced in Parker's lone eye as the woman flipped open the cigarette lighter with a casual flick of her wrist, watching as she sparked it and let it drop from her hand, all in one fluid motion.
"Amen." He chuckled between bloodied teeth that could barely contain the sarcasm of the final word that would ever pass his lips.
He was still laughing at her as the lighter hit the sodden carpet beside him, setting both Parker and it ablaze in an explosion of orange, white and blue.
A/N- and so ends the climatic battle of this tale. I hope you had as good a time reading it as i had writting it (i don't think i could ever get sick of breaking charaters down into itty-bitty peices. gah, i'm so morbid)
E.P.O- No, this isn't an AU fic. All willbe reviled in the up and coming epilougue.
