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Her fingers wrapped around the waxed paper cup, interlocking with each other since she could not clench the fragile cup without hot, scorched smelling coffee spilling over her fingers. She felt as though her blood had turned to ash in her veins, and it kept replaying over and over in her head.
It was only supposed to be a means to get information for her articles, her blog...
No matter how many times she went over it in her head she couldn't quite figure out anything she could have done to change the chain of events.
She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, hearing it shiver as it escaped her lungs and closed her eyes.
The TV kept telling them that the ones in white were the twisted ones, the murderers, and the ones in black were their saviors. She'd always had her doubts since it was all words, and no evidence, it always felt too much like propaganda... but now it felt like wholecloth fiction.
He did not look like a monster. He looked like a boy, maybe even a little younger than herself. She found herself at best an mediocre judge of age, but the softness around the edges of his features had made her conclude that he was younger than she was, and his close cropped hair had fallen in thick waves that must have curled in cherubic fashion if it was allowed to grow out.
He would never grow it out again. The closest it would come to doing so would be when they laid him to earth, and contracting skin created the illusion that hair and nails grew. Death and rot making a mockery of life and growth.
She felt sick and cold inside... and angry besides.
She was surprised to realize she felt angry at all. It was creeping in around the edges of ashy shock like a slow trickle of glacial melt water, the first hint of what she suspected would be an great wave when it broke free.
She wasn't even sure exactly why she was angry. Maybe it was a sense of betrayal that such an sweet face and a kind smile had turned so bitter so fast. He had chatted freely, edging her back and putting his arms up to trap her against the wall.
She couldn't even think clearly. His words ran together in a poisonous blur of mutters from which she had somehow derived meaning. Some part of her already knew that half the world saw her as a thing, as a possession, a notch on a belt, but this was somehow different, as it dawned on her that he saw her as prey, with no trappings of social niceties or courtship, and she was suddenly afraid for what he might take from her.
That it might be her life had actually been the second consideration, when his hands reached up and started to push themselves into her body in ways that defied everything she knew of reality and violated in ways she didn't know were possible until that moment.
He'd pulled his hand back out and left her gasping in disgust and horror, playing with the collar of her Kurti as he rambled about calling someone else because she was cute and she could be his if she would agree to be like him... or he'd just take her...
What was the word? STARSEED.
She didn't even know exactly what that was, but he'd rolled it off his tongue like it was something precious to possess, boldly nosing forward to shove his nose into her hair and sniff. That, she realized, was one of the things that made her so angry. He acted like he was a god, and she were privileged to to have his attention.
He had been so convinced he could not be harmed by such a weak creature as her, that he had totally ignored her shoving her hand into her purse and grabbing the canister of pepper spray.
He had pulled back to speak again. She remembered his smug expression, the way a curl of his hair fell into his face, his open mouth wide with perfect teeth like a neat cemetery plot... and she'd sprayed it directly into his face. His nose. His eyes. His open gaping mouth, until the sound he had planned to make were ripped into a scream of rage and pain.
Gods fell before men all the time. The world was littered with dead pantheons.
When he staggered, she ran, dashing back for her car as he pawed at his face and shrieked things she did not want to repeat, even inside her own head. His distraction had let her get to the car, yanking the door open to scramble inside and leaning in to jam the keys at the ignition because he moved so fast clearing the distance between them in no time, even blind and slamming into everything in his path.
His fingers had grabbed at her clothing and hair, and she slammed his fingers in the door as she pulled herself free by the grace of his half blind pain.
After that things were sort of... blurred. Things had been a confusion of images and the need to survive. The sound of the engine reving, fists banging on the car, cracking glass and bending metal, and her foot jamming onto the gas pedal.
After that her clearest memory for several minutes had been the distinct heavy "Thump" and metallic crunch as she realized she had put the car in drive and not reverse, and was staring at his face as the rage and anger bled out from his face as he pawed at her crumpled hood, crushed against the wall high on his torso where her car had lept up and over the curb.
Gods fell all the time.
