74- Upon Death's Door
"'See, O LORD, for I am in distress; My spirit is greatly troubled; My heart is overturned within me, For I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword slays; In the house it is like death.'" – Lamentations 1:20
The hum of death is a beautiful, awful thing, and no place knew it better than Joey Drew Studios. The way it vibrated was like a siren call to the river Styx, its quivering the rigor mortis of a soul much bigger than a single person was meant to contain…-
But of course, it was not one person who died but very, very many.
Sammy tried not to remember this as he prayed to his god that one would remain alive.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
No matter how far away, each drop of the broken pipes felt like it was falling right onto the man's liquid spine. It was as if being of the same body and blood, he could feel the spirits of the puddles crawling inside him with each passing second, with every hollow, quiet crash of ink.
Like he was in the puddles all over again.
Drip.
God…
Lord…
Please don't let her be there.
Drip.
Please don't let her be there.
Not the puddles.
Drip.
His god had finally taken her, and there were only two choices he could see:
That she would ascend to something greater. What was greater…being uncertain. He could only determine it to be unfathomable.
The other choice, the other weight on Francine's scale?
That their time hand in hand was a parable to be lived through- merely a lesson for the straying prophet to take to heart- that the mortality he craved was good indeed, and it was something he was to receive after this.
Very.
Sacrifice.
Indeed, it was possible that her mark as a lamb to the slaughter was not removed with his lord's lingering over her dying body…
…But rather remained to prophesy the beginning of her end.
Sammy felt so sick knowing that he had considered this before, in the times of quiet with her eyes closed and her body at rest. He'd look upon her and in the back of his mind would think:
"He may come. Any second, he may come. And from this hell we will both be set free."
But as they not only passed but cherished time together, Sammy slowly began to see a salvation…with her. Within a world of true, natural light touching his skin and kissing her face until it glinted not like the black which he was carved of but rather with something so familiar yet so far away that he being trapped outside of reality could only feel that what was real was in truth totally, utterly magical.
Her world was real.
And so was she.
And as the light of her candle soul flickered out of his sight more and more with each panicked step, Sammy felt the stab of wondering if he'd ever want to be set free without her…
His faith had led him to want sacrifice, but faith in her made him fear its completion.
Drip.
With every smile, every frown, every glint in her eye that only someone so human could contain, the doubts of her healing were pushed back while they were in each other's company, and he began to trust that maybe someone like her could belong here- with him- after all.
But of course, they weren't above ground yet, and so the drop that came upon him with revelation of impossible expectations hit so, so hard.
Drip.
He could feel the hollow sockets in his skull trembling. He had never seen anyone die himself- not someone of flesh- but he could still see it.
…See it happen to her.
And long habituated to the sounds of maiming- screaming, howling, and ripping- Sammy suddenly had reason to match them to possibilities. Stolen life could now have a face, and it was the same spotted one that looked at him every time he was unsure what to do.
She heard her scream over and over and over. That same scream as when he saw her last.
And if their god loved her, the prophet was growing less and less certain what that love really meant.
Drip.
Whatever he did to her.
If she ended up there- in the puddles-…
…Sammy started to imagine himself going after her.
Would he die again at the hands of his master simply to chase for a woman special no more?
The more his own body melted underneath him, the raspier his breath- the more sure he became. If their god took her away, even as a lesson, he'd go back to the place he hated most. She couldn't be alone.
He could never let her be alone again.
Sin.
Sin.
Sin.
Each turn he made was wrong. He wanted to trust his god, and he strived to achieve what he believed the dark lord wanted. He was punished, in turn, for not one attempted shedding of blood but two. And so he strove to prove himself to the ink demon by becoming the steward of whom he had spared. Tempted by all she had shown him of both her and himself, he chased after who has was, and now the woman was gone too. It should have been no surprise that a man so profoundly aware of every last molecule of himself to be damned that he wanted to abide by his horrific flesh and join his friend in the hell to which he belonged.
Perhaps this was retribution for seeking out the angel- the keeper of the knowledge of evil and she who blasphemed against the way of the demon the most- to ask her who he was before the ink-…
…
Everything stilled.
Air left his frozen lungs, and all he heard was his own body and blood- both from his own form and the pieces of himself in the black coated glass- falling to the wood.
Drip…
Drip…
…Sin.
Sometimes the sinners need saints worse than they, and so with the discomfort of religious doubts and a life's upheaval wrapping around him like a ribbon of wind, the preacher with no flock ran to heaven's devil without daring to speak another word to the walls.
How can someone made of emptiness feel even colder than before?
Sammy asked himself this as he trudged towards the seraph's lair, one burdened step at a time as the oil of his body seemed to attempt a retreat back to the well of souls with each second, every thought. A trail of black followed the shepherd, splatters shaken with even the slightest movement off of arms and legs so shaken from the inside out. He kept silent, he himself unsure if he was noiseless as not to be caught in the misdeed lest there be consequences, or if he was simply and purely ashamed of what he was about to do.
If he was returning to that which precipitated his friend's taking, certainly the musician had reason to feel so about a return.
But what choice did he have?
None, and he knew it.
Her reaction, of course, required much more evaluation.
As she toyed with the near-corpse of a Piper strapped to a table, small electric bursts still twitching extremities, Alice kept her back turned as she heard Sammy enter, at first pretending to continue to busy herself with the experiments of becoming whole again. Although she knew deep down that such efforts had been for nothing for a damn long time.
She could recognize that sniveling without looking, and in her…curiosity of his coming, she allowed no barriers to hold him.
Shoulder blades shined as the colorless woman felt his stare and the shadow of the room shadow slide across her profile with her readjusting posture. Alice didn't know what to think of this- his disgusting slithering, his dropped jaw- and so it was not something she could ignore.
"What the hell do you-"
And as she turned to face him, that one eye of hers widened.
Indeed, the angel was witnessing a man melting before her very eyes- and not by her own hand. Her eyes sharpened as she scrutinized her enemy, lips parted. But to solidify her own sense of self, a look of upset at such an appearance soon was wiped away by a snarl.
"…What is it?"
And even after more than a lifetime of living in the same confines of twisted fate as he, Alice still never saw it coming.
As soon as two eyes painted and one sculpted met, Sammy threw himself at her. A hand threw back and a feminine voice cracked in two screamed at being touched not only by the substance but also the person she hated most.
She was just about to kill him when she abruptly noticed what he was doing.
One grasp firmly, desperately on her forearm and the other quivering in palm, the hand poised to swiftly strike with divine retribution froze in the air as Alice saw Sammy fall to his knees and bow his head.
Sniveling was one thing, but never had she heard him…cry.
"A-Alice!" Is there even a word to describe how he sounded as he finally spoke? A voice quiet like a whisper but so loud with dismay? "She's- She…- Francine!"
Her fingers made a sudden jerk as he gripped hers even tighter, but they did not pull away.
"Francine…-" he tried again, verbalizing the impossible, "My lord! Taken! Francine- taken!"
Alice could barely see a gaping expression matching hers as that wretched mask finally turned up to face her. His own soma leaked from underneath the cover of that smile, a now flimsy shelter for his shameful, pitiful veracities of belief.
So much time together and yet it was only now Sammy found their common ground. It didn't begin nor end with the stolen woman but she did, very, very much, encompass what Sammy and Alice both wished for most in a world where they could have nothing they wanted.
And so he had crawled to the deity at war to his own, accepting that even someone he spent so long despising maybe could love Francine and all she became to them, too. So yet again, Sammy made himself vulnerable with she who he dreaded to reveal to his softest spots to strike.
As he seized her so tight, the angel couldn't discern if this oozing of tar was his alone or if she was melting along with him and his dripping hands, too.
"Angel-…my lord…he-…" Teeth bared as the jagged hole of broken into another set's cartoon row showed a mouth stretching with anguish and appall. What was said next could hardly be heard at all, both in its volume and in its awful truth.
"He took Francine."
The last reverberations of his quivering voice fell apart with utterance of the unbelievable. The humming of the pipes was the silence now- a subtle, all-consuming aura that surrounded prophet and seraph, eating away every last scrap of comfort they had found in the presence of a woman now gone.
Sammy felt veins filled not with blood but something so much unholier rush up and down his neck, throbbing until it rattled his skull and began to blur the image of the angel ahead, but no amount of horror of his could spare him from seeing her own dawning comprehension.
Somehow, an empty socket and a filled one could match each other in expressing a hollowed spirit.
Two sides of a mouth so unalike now mirrored the same gaping terror.
An ink-gloved hand still raised midmotion slowly…slowly…curled until closed.
And the last thing he saw was an expression of shock turn into one of rage as a closed fist slammed into his jaw with every ounce of blame he had coming.