EXTRA WARNING for brief extreme gore. It's only a line but it's along the lines of Darren Shan's Demonata series. Which, if you haven't figured out, is horrifically gory. (If you can handle lots of gore and death, I really recommend the series! And also his Darren Shan Saga, which is less gory I think but SO FUCKING GOOD. [And while I'm recommending books, if you've been enjoying this fic, you'll love the GONE series by Michel Grant.])

sixth interlude

A week before Elizabeth Hummel died – not that she knew it at the time – she took her son to the park. It was terribly hot and terribly dry, being the middle of summer, and Kurt had only reluctantly exchanged his smart pants for shorts. Instead, he was wearing a bow tie.

Ellie didn't pay much attention to him once they got to the park and Kurt had finished his ice cream. He seemed to be playing well enough with a couple of little girls, and Ellie enjoyed talking to other parents, so she kept him in the corner of her eye and relaxed on a bench with her bag at her feet.

Until she realised she'd lost sight of him.

It wasn't an immediate panic. The park was quite open, but there were many hiding spots for a small six-year-old to squeeze into. She excused herself from the conversation, picked up her bag, and went in search of her son.

No, it wasn't an immediate panic, but the terror quickly began to set in when she realised Kurt wasn't in the playground at all.

"Kurt?" she began to shout as she hurried towards the tree line. "Kurt!"

And there he was, bent over a small body. For a moment, Ellie froze, but then she realised the other body was twitching and relief flooded through her, thawing her limbs and pushing her forwards.

"Kurt, you can't just disappear like that," she said to her son's still back, and then, "Move back, sweetheart, I need to see what's wrong."

But Kurt wouldn't move – he didn't even seem to notice her, his eyes stuck on the little boy on the ground.

"Sweetheart, you need to move," Ellie repeated, trying to separate their hands. "If he's having a seizure, it's not safe for you to be so close. C'mon, honey."

She wasn't a nurse; she only volunteered at the hospital sometimes. Still, she didn't think the boy was having a seizure. His eyes were too lucid, fixed too firmly to Kurt's own.

"Kurt—"

Her fingers made a gap and slipped through the boys' hands, and terror pierced her heart. She gasped and trembled and saw all her deepest nightmares

—Kurt and Burt bodies torn apart blood drenching dripping from the sheets stench of copper in every room Kurt's body mangled except for his head still perfect lying on his pillow as if he'd just gone to sleep—

and then the boys' hands parted around hers and the visions remained nothing more than imprints on the backs of her eyelids. Blackness began to creep into the corners of her mind, and she almost allowed it to take over, to follow the little boy into true unconsciousness, but her own little boy was wailing. She forced the blackness away and turned to her son, and allowed the paramedics to take them all to the hospital.

Every night after, she awoke in a cold sweat and with a cry on her lips.

A week later, the blackness won. And she wouldn't see either little boy for ten years.