Eyes closed, face rapt, yellow rabbit and his passenger stood in the lounge, listening to the water run.
Though delicious, Freddy's attack on the man with white hair wasn't enough to bring the dream back.
Simon whispered into the ear of the fox-child.
It didn't take much, this pouring of poison.
Sometimes, all it takes is little reminder of the truth.
Truth kills.
Even when the victim is already dead.
The water pouring down the remains of Spike's face suddenly turned scalding. Screaming, he threw himself sideways out of the stream and onto the tiles – the very air he moved through a whip on exposed nerves as something who stank of carrion, electricity and dust wordlessly hauled him upright so that the bones in his broken leg ground together, and pulled a blade thorough his guts from where abs became ribs in a single, efficient upwards slice, sending him flying with a kick.
Landing heavily, the stink of his violated body and the smoke of a dying building filling his senses as he tried to hold his entrails in, Spike felt himself yanked violently backwards in the small space by steel cables that writhed and bit, only to send him flying so that he fell through what felt like the door of the toilet stall, breaking the toilet off the wall in a crash of broken porcelain and a sudden gush of hot, dirty water. Whatever it was pulled him up by the remains of his uniform shirt, slamming him again and again against the floor, making his spine groan and his ribs slide around as his hip slipped back into it's socket. Finally able to move on that side, he kicked painfully outwards, trying to get enough leverage to escape, boot going through the wall, as whatever it was attacking him, skidded in the torrent of filth.
The old theater groaned, guts sluicing, veins hemorrhaging, convulsing in it's death throes as the former Mayor's pride and joy, ignored by a city council that didn't understand the artful ballet of the delicate balance in a land of earthquakes and drought, joined the dance of spitting wires and groaning gas pipes.
Inelda's chair slowly tipped forward beneath its own weight as the brightly burning floorboards submitted to gravity. Eyes closed, she contentedly sipped her coffee from this new angle, savoring its bitterness.
Yes, indeed, it would be over soon.