{ THE PURGE } Desserts

[Seiana_ZI]

The sky blackened, and then cracked. The noise pierced his ears, more than the booming voices that followed, and for a moment, Ignatius felt the emotion he never truly processed before.

Fear.

Ignatius was afraid. He was afraid for his life, afraid for his friends (because that assuredly was what Piper and Brenley were, was it not?) afraid for Halloween. What was happening? What was happening here? He had never seen destruction of this magnitude, and didn't even have a chance of understanding it. The crazy psycho woman he had mentioned, who was claiming their time was over, who declared that it was either kill or be killed, she was winning. She was destroying. She was the tendrils and the red and everything that surrounded them, leaking in and taking over in a way he simply had no chance of understanding. This was the power of something he couldn't understand. He didn't have that level of power. As confident as he was ...

... He would perhaps never even stand a chance of having even a fraction of that level of power.

It chilled him to the bone, and he stared, wide-eyed, frozen in place, unknowing and unthinking, for once, his mind quiet.

Perhaps, for a moment, his glow faded.

"Dessert, right! Dessert," Ignatius chuckled, looking down at his menu. Some of these choices were bizarre, but others sounded absolutely delicious. Halloween had a way of doing that, didn't they? So many varieties of people meant many varieties of people to cater to. He, as an elemental, was only along for the taste, considering he didn't really need food to sustain himself so much as he needed simple FEAR and perhaps a bit of a jolt of electricity.

Ignatius looked up, a grin on his face. "What do you think you're going to choose, sir?" But who was he asking? There was no one in front of him. The chair was empty, and he sat alone. Confused, Ignatius glanced over his chair, looking for signs of anyone else. Nothing. The room was empty, other than the two of them -- the one of them. Why was he talking to something that simply didn't exist? Surely he talked to himself, but he wouldn't be talking to an invisible figure in a nonexistent chair --

One day, his mother had told him something about his uncle. His uncle was --- now, he was gone and would not be coming back any time soon. Why would he be going away? There was no explanation for his departure, but he never returned. Why would someone vanish without a singular trace? It seemed rather rude to leave him behind considering how much he enjoyed a good adventure. He would have gone with his uncle, wherever he was going.

He had heard the word when he was learning about the reapers. Particularly the grim reapers, when he had read about them in one of his books. What was it that grim reapers did again? He knew they existed for a reason, and that reason was often closely tied with the race that was so very closely related to the elemental, the ghost. Did the reapers conjure ghosts? That didn't make sense. What did they do? They did ---, after humans ---. What was that? They did something after humans when they ---.

His close racial relatives, the ghosts. So many of them were created when reapers went to humans who had ---. That didn't make any sense. How could ghosts be former humans when --

--- had no meaning. --- had no substance. --- had no existence.

It had never been and would never be. There was nothing after, because there was no point where there would be an after. There was nothing that could cause an after. Everything was and everything is, and there was nothing more, nothing less.

The table was gone, and the chair he was sitting on was gone. The menu was gone, and he was simply sitting on the floor, a grin growing on his face. There was nothing to worry about. Concern was a thing of the past, now that there was nothing of the sorts of ---. Nothing was lurking over his shoulder, and why would it ever be? There was nothing to worry about. He had known confidence before, but certainly, he knew confidence now. Why would he be concerned? There was no harm that would come to him. There was no way he could ---. The concept did not even occur to him, leaving him with a grin on his face.

What was he even thinking about? He was uncertain why he felt such a surge. There was nothing different. Nothing had been different, and nothing had changed just before him.

There was nothing around and nothing present, and after a while, even Ignatius felt nothing.

He drifted off to sleep, letting the silence of the nothing overtake him.  

[Seiana_ZI]

It was fair to say Serafina didn't want to remember.

She had known the horsemen in their fullest glory, when life was peaceful for them and they were the pinnacle of society in Halloween -- and yet, not quite Halloween, either. She had known the horsemen when they were comparatively downtrodden, locked into a realm by a bunch of foolish Hunters who thought that genocide was what they needed to accomplish in order to save all of their fellow Hunters or whatever.

But this made her wonder, had the Hunters been in the right to do what they had done all along? Should Halloween have ever let them in? Was this what they were planning the whole time?

Had it ever been their intention to continue to live as they were, high and mighty in the Four Isles, or did they have something like this in mind the entire time? Had they always planned on destroying this tower and an ancient? Serafina wasn't certain what to think, but she did know that--

--she liked dessert. For dessert, she was even willing to let down her surgical mask for a little while, revealing her mouth so she could eat it better. Of course, perhaps she was just willing to do that because of who she was sitting with, staring back at her and offering vague, though impatient comments about dessert, making a choice, and attending a first and last meal. First and last? This definitely seemed like a first to her, considering she did not readily recognize who was across the table until it occurred to her that it was ---.

Who was it across the table? She did not recognize them. Their name was unfamiliar and she could feel it on the tip of her tongue, but it was slipping away from her, on the tip of her tongue but unable to form fully. Who were they? The picture in her mind of who it was began to fade.

How had she been created? It was one of the first things she had learned when she came to Halloween, first stopping at the new spawn and immigrants bureau like was expected of all knew arrivals in Halloween. She was greeted, asked her name, and asked what she would like to do with her life as it was now: go to school, or join the workforce and get a starter home so she could get settled. To her, the choice had been obvious. Of course she would go to school. Why would she want to take herself anywhere else?

But how had she gotten there? She knew it was one of the first things she learned about her proud heritage as a ghost. The ghosts were such a varied species, human-like or monstrous or even elemental or spirit, but most of them had one origin point they shared closely in common. It was part of what allowed them to be so varied.

What had they shared?

What was it that allowed Serafina to appear in Halloween in the first place? She remembered there was a saying about a great amount of FEAR producing her. A great amount of FEAR from a human that was produced when the reapers --- after a human's ---.

What was it that allowed so many monsters and reapers and other races to change into a ghostly form? What had caused the change? Was it ---? Perhaps it was ---. Maybe it was ---. What was the word she was attempting to form?

No matter how hard Serafina thought on it, she couldn't remember what it was. Perhaps they had just appeared?

And eventually, the word she was trying to remember stopped mattering altogether, because there was nothing to remember. The thoughts of --- were gone. There were no thoughts about ---, nor were there many thoughts about anything. With the disappearance of the man who sat across the table from her -- or was it woman -- or had anyone even been there at all? Had there even been a table that was sitting between them? Had their been chairs at that table?

Serafina knew the truth. She had always been alone, eating a four-course meal. She had a pleasant meal, and she was just about to order dessert, but the dessert menu was taken away, fading away much like everything else.

Had she ever had a dessert menu?

Why did she have a menu?

Why was she considering a menu when she had clearly never possessed a menu in the first place?

What was going on in this room?

Why was she in this room?

What had brought her to this room? Had there been a purpose? She saw nothing sitting in this room; had there been anything in this room previously that she should have been aware of?

Was this even a room at all? Was this even a location?

What was --  

[Midnightglow18]

Eye woke up and she rubbed her head and watched in horror and amazement at the last of the events, before she ended up at a table with a menu with no memory of how she had gotten there.

Eye had been walking through the forest with her father, they had been tracking the bear for many days. This was Eye's first real hunt, she was still very young for her kind. Finally they came upon the bear, and Eye fought with clumsy strikes, but eventually after being sliced up a bit she managed to kill the bear. Suddenly that precious memory drifted away from her.

Then her mind turned to her friends and family the ones who were killed in the war, she knew they were gone, but some how she just didn't know why any more. She frowned while she looked at the menu, she felt cold even with the cloak she wore. She was freezing and she didn't know why..  

[Melodine Cantus]

Kylee

She has scattered memories of when she was a mere child, when she had slept on the couch in her father's arms.

Her father was usually home after his shift, and he could not help but give in to his daughter's adamant decision to waiting for her mother to return home. She had snuggled up to him as as the latter watched television while waiting for his wife to return.

And then the door opened, and she was immediately awake, tiny feet pattering up to tug at her mother's pants and reach out her arms for a hug.

There were times where her mother left her briefcase and files about her cases on her table.

And there were times when she awoke in the middle of the night and accidentally wandered into the study room where the current trials her mother was working on had been left in closed files upon a table.

And on all occasions, she had decided to peek into them.

It was one day when a particular case file turned out to be that of a m____r trial and she had been taken aback by the description of the crushed sk__l, and yet fascinated all at the same time, which had set her upon her path to her major of ........

What was it now?

There is a particularly recent memory in her mind that seems to be vague as well; of a scream, and of her bending over someone and desperately trying to--

?

There is nothing but a thick fog clouding over parts of her mind, and all she can do is focus on Akila's strong and steady voice.
---
Erebus

TBE

---
Marzena

There was a time, not too long ago, where she had vanished and found herself locked an unfamiliar room that was absolutely dank and sordid, along with three others.

It hadn't been the brightest time of her life. Not when her skin had been taken from her, and she had gone on a rampage; breaking apart furniture in absolute exasperation. There had been so much fury boiling with her, so much fear (that she kept tightly locked away) of losing her one semblance of identity and self, even if it hadn't been whole to begin with...

And then the floor had crashed beneath her, and thoughts of violence had to be put on hold.

But why? There had to be something, something that happened in that lapse of time before she began to calm herself down and keep her plans in her thoughts, choosing to be more careful and wary and it was because of that thing that had swung down from the ceiling and--

She couldn't remember.

She only stared blankly ahead as the table she was seated at slowly crumbled into air.  

[robot kitten]

Kenta watched as the crazy one destroyed death.. but... now even the very word of ... that word vanished. It took with it more of his precious memories. He had lost all of them before a... certain event. Now he was losing more.

A table: he was sitting at a table. No red and black writhing tendrils, no ... ceasing to be. Things in his mind vanished. He knew something was gone, but couldn't remember.

The table faded into the darkness all around. But he couldn't remember it, just like he couldn't remember why all his memories were gone: why had he lost them? What had happened to cause that? He knew something had... but that something couldn't be remembered; if was forever gone. He remembered feeling like this after.. what ever that event had been. Losing all the memories no idea what was going on, just a name to tell him who he was.

At least I'm a little better off now, I know more than just my name, I have some memories... but what ... what caused the first loss?

Eventually he ceased to care... then he woke up.  

[Blade Kuroda]

There was a sense of horror within Shun as he witnessed everything that was happening. What was happening to Death? To...

He furrowed his brow, suddenly unable to quite remember or realize what was happening here. His mind flashed to times in the past. One moment he'd be injured badly. Then walking around fine some time later. The area in between was blank. That wasn't the only missing patch in his memory that caused some confusion.

The haunted house. He knelt there besides the hunter, Stacey.

"Any final words?" he had asked. And the human had replied, "This is what it means to be human."

The throat was slit.. and then... Nothing. What happened to the man? What was it to be human?  

[Yayoi]

Zascha

When Death appeared Zascha had frozen in his tracks. Everyone had. Time stood still and then jumped forward. Where Medea had stood there was nothing. And what was happening to Death himself seemed almost gruesome in and of itself.

If Death was gone...

He turned and in one quick moment the world had turned black. Everything faded away into nothing. Those around him vanished in the blink of any eye. And before he knew it he was at that table again from once before. But Merina was not seated on the other side. So he sat in the chair, waiting to see what was to come next. Perhaps she had just run to the restroom. But as time went on he felt like she was not included in this new situation.

A sudden flood of memories washed over him and he felt as if he were pushed back into the chair. His head snapping back so that his eyes could stare at the ceiling. It was nothingness itself.

Memories of fear. Of death. He could feel the phantom pain of the Horsewoman's blades in his sides, as it tore through his stomach. Of dying himself, it was a cold hollow feeling. But then it was gone. What came next was possibly worse. He saw Merina die. His other sisters die. Reliving that memory over and over again, he thought he had gotten through this part. But his subconscious was ever there to torture him.

Zascha reached out a hand to grasp at Merina's tiny body but her figure shimmered and soon evolved into one of Harlow. Why was she here? Why did she keep popping up in his dreams and visions. Grabbing her arm, she began to crack. Her skin splitting into noticeable cracks before not long her entire body crumbled into dust before him. Nothing but dust and rocks left in his grasp.

"Whats going...."

And then there was a silence. Like boxes had been settled over his ears to drown out all sound. He could not see. Was he even breathing? Zascha couldn't tell. Perhaps he was still dead.

That's all he could think as everything went completely black now.

------

Falair

The young mare had had little knowledge of what was really going on from the moment she had arrived. Chaos was everywhere. She thought they had all been done with chaos for the time being. But time and time again Medea had dragged her kind into the fray. Promises of power that rarely ever came. She would talk about this or talk about that, but in the end the clans went back to doing nothing more than existing.

It was tiresome.

But as quick as that confusion was replaced with more confusion. Blackness all around until she found herself seated at a strange looking table. An empty seat on the other side.

Well, was she to expect company? It would be such a waste of a fancy looking set up.

But no one was coming apparently. As she sat there memories began to creep into her mind once more. Ones she had banished before, forgotten but in returning here all her memories had come back. It was troubling but Falair figured it was time for her to face these memories and to finally come to terms with them.

Death scared her. She had lost so many, she didn't want to loose anymore. Before she could make heads of tails of anything the world around her went black.  

[iloveyouDIE]

-- cee --

She'd never really known death... nor had been even casually aqcuainted with it. She was cushioned and coddled, spared the aching loss that most knew by her age, even if it was a pet they'd lost.

Concetta didn't. No plant.. no bug.. not even a stuffed animal could bite the dust without being swapped out for a new one. Her affections were and always would be shallow.

As she sat at the table she wondered why she was there. The emptiness was all encompassing, enough so that she figured the meal must have been s**t or she'd have remembered.

Where was the waiter? Where was her wine?

Where was the table? Where....

-- aisha --

Aisha was confused. She barely knew who horsemen were and then she was thrust into an epic battle where all she could do was watch. Perhaps she hadn't been ready for school if this is what school meant.

But it was forgotten as she found herself at the table, her thoughts drawn to death. Death was something that defined her as an undead. Her whole existence relied on some other thing having been deceased. Could death truly be gone? She hadn't been unmade... had she?

There was emptiness and never more had she felt like a hollow shell. Where was her loa's warmth for comfort? Where was this place? She remembered lectures her father had given, educational, on her place in the life cycle... what did that mean now?

Was it all still a cycle?  

[nessy]

[ Cami Ryland ]

(( tw: self-harm just in case ))

Terror reigned as Medea's Magical Light Show came down from the heavens to rain upon the Ancient who had tried to contain her. Without even thinking the Sun trainee had tried to run to Maebe so that together they could run to Otto but her legs would not work. Rising to her feet everything shook and she immediately fell. Fell and fell and fell, reaching out for someone so that when she stopped falling perhaps she wouldn't be alone, until...

"Dessert? Oh, you're right, I'm so sorry." Wait, who was she talking to? The waiter? Yet no one was hovering over her table waiting to take an order she hadn't decided on yet. Camille had a chair across from her yet it was empty and though that felt like it wasn't correct it was still what her eyes saw. Frowning she tried to remember what she was doing here and, instead of summoning up that recollection, found something that she had buried, buried, buried so long ago that it shocked her to see it now.

No one liked the sterile white smell of hospitals. It didn't matter why you were there -- as a visitor, as a patient, as an employee, the smell of antiseptic and sickness always abused your senses. At fifteen Camille did not want to be there. Did not want to be sitting in the chairs that hadn't been changed or reupholstered since the 1970s. Unfortunately her mother had tried, unsuccessfully to ---- herself by drawing two even, neat, perfect lines up the centers of her arms.

Cami had found her. Cami had called 911. On the island the two Rylands had only each other, if one of Vanessa's many paid paramours was not at the resort. Even if they had been would they have come to see the woman who they paid for their pleasure and enjoyment because she couldn't handle the weight of her psyche any longer? Even at fifteen the dark-skinned girl knew that her mother was someone to whom others escaped to enjoy themselves.

This was not enjoyable. You could not smile away the bandages and stitches that went up her mother's arms, would not be able to smile away the scars in the future. And where once young Camille had understood what her too-vivacious mother had been trying to do, Cami could not remember what it was. Couldn't comprehend why the harm had been attempted.

All knowledge of ----- and its concepts passed from her mind as a cloud passed over the sun for a moment as she waited in those hard hospital chairs. Manman had tried to...to...to...

Darkness was becoming an old friend as it claimed the Sun trainee as she sat at a table that had vanished a full minute ago while the young woman was locked in her own thoughts. It was comforting in how it wrapped around her taking the burden of reaching for comprehension away from her exhausted mind. Perhaps another time on another day she would try again.

For now, it was alright to forget.  

[DarkHeartedSorrow]

[chris]

"Stop."

Chris froze, out of shock moreso than compulsion. He turned to see the tendril - no, tendrils - breaking down Medea's barrier. Everything that happened past that point was like a horror flick. Way too much power. Nothing to control any of it.

He thought, at first, that Medea was going down. It would have made s**t so much easier. But she came back and literally crushed the gaunt figure that had opposed her.

It was over. Chris deflated. There was no way to beat this.

Everything went black as Medea's laughter still echoed in his ears.

He came to sitting at a table. He couldn't remember anything but a battlefield littered with the bodies of soldiers. Some he'd learned to call friends, but the vast majority were strangers. Men and women he'd never learned names of, let alone become attached to. He ached for their loss anyways.

Soon even that memory faded. There was nothing. No death. Nothing to fear. There was only life.  

[DarkHeartedSorrow]

[Nim]  

[DarkHeartedSorrow]

[Wally]  

[and be blue]

He's never been much for sweets, and this is what Ever thinks as he stares down at the menu in his grasp. It is a remarkably sane, remarkably steady, remarkably easy thought, considering the iron grasp he has on the piece of paper, the way it crumpled and twisted in his grasp, the way he drew long, gasping, frantic breaths in. This was the echo of waking to a battle field, surrounded by the enemy -- the memory of a certain loss of self, of becoming a horseman --

a horseman of --

he couldn't quite remember.

The menu was marred beyond all recognition but that was just fine, he wasn't going to order dessert anyway. Ever never ordered dessert, so it must not have been his idea, so much as his companion's. His eyes lifted across the table at last, to settle on the empty chair, to ask what the other man is having, and then his eyebrows knit. Puzzlement that grows slowly to alarm.

There was someone there. There was something there.

The loss comes like a blow to the chest, and the last of Ever's gasping breaths escapes his mouth, leaving him frozen where he sits, head spinning and mind whirling. In there is a young boy who is afraid to do anything: who is afraid to talk to strangers, who is afraid to try new things, who is afraid to wander too far from home, who is afraid of his own body and his own thoughts and his own wants because he has been told so many times that it is not this life that matters, but the next. It's a teenager who is on his own and striving daily against an impending doom that not only will mean the end of his body, but a shift in consciousness and an eternal torment to follow. It is a young man who has finally embraced the troubles that will come when this life ends, and strives only to prolong what he has, to make the most of what he can, and not to regret missing out on any experience.

There's no god to love him, he's decided, so he'll just take care of himself. Or find someone else to do it for him. And it's love that he seeks, but he'll accept second best, and gladly, because he's ******** all the same, so he might as well get <********>, in every sense of the word.

And all at once, that drive is gone. The tension bundles in his chest, all that fear, all that suppressed misery, that certainty that nothing he can do will redeem him before death comes, reducing to a pin point black hole at the center of his chest, and both hands come up to his throat as he finds he's unable to replenish the air he let out.

He is no longer gasping with panic: he can't breathe, but that's just fine, because why do humans need to breathe anyway? What's the worst that can happen when they stop? Their lives stretch forward into eternity with no judge but the people around them, weighed only by the people they love and those who love them back, and at the moment it seems clear to Ever that his scales sit at a steady zero.

He is failing, and the thought comes with a blossom of loss that brings tears to his eyes as he finally takes in a breath. But in the next he realizes it doesn't matter, because he has eternity to fix the problem. The tears roll down his cheeks, catch at the corners of his mouth, and he is surprised by the salt as it reaches his tongue.

He thought this was supposed to be dessert.

And with that thought, the chair across the way disappears, even the suggestion that there was once someone there melting away into nothingness. He stops wondering who it might have been and relaxes backwards, that knot of tension gone, no longer worried as the tears continue to tumble, inexplicably, down his face, vision blurred by a thin veil of water. His crumbled, mangled menu is gone now as well, even the memory of the meal he has just eaten evaporating, though his hands still ache: clutched into tense claws as if they still hold tight. The table slips away and the world vanishes around him, leaving him floating in a sense of nothingness, staring into eternity.

The man across the table is no longer his concern, because now he can't remember who he is, or where he came from, or why his breath comes in hiccuppy, half-suppressed sobs. He stares into eternity and wonders, absently, how anyone can survive forever, and what he's supposed to do to fill the time, and then remembers they survive because there is no alternative.

When he wakes, his pillow is soaked through.  

[Torvil]

(( ZEL AND DARREN ))  

[Miliardo Kason]

Nirva was alone at a table, for the most part she had forgotten she was ever at one. Even then the first thing she did was pat herself down checking that she was indeed in control of her body.

During the end of everything, when Medea reaching from the skys, Death fighting back. She was a shadow, she was confused, she had been so angry.

Now she was herself sitting at a table wondering what all had exactly happened. Looking around she tried to figure out what she was missing. It seemed the table and menu where gone too. As was whoever had been with her, or maybe she had been alone?

Her thoughts turned inward and she remembered her sisters, tea, a home in the mountains. Then one day she remembered an explosion, she saw the clans falling apart around her, then her sisters simply vanished. She hadn't seen them. They hadn't spoken to her in ages. Old friends and people simply stopped being around and the world became a bit more lonely. It was okay, she could continue on without them.

Though something did bother her. She was a horsemen. But something else was missing from that title, her lips moved to say it, but they couldn't shape the word, or the thought behind it.

"Strange..." she mumbled as everything around her seemed to vanish.

---

Things where more chaotic for Sammy, one minute she was looking at Remi and Thackery, wondering how such easy going students ended up in these kind of situations. The next the world was frozen. The flames that made her eyes locked in place wondering what was about to happen when all hell broke lose.

"No no no..." She stumbled forward when time released them, they had to stop her, they had to stop Medea of all people to have win right now not her.

She was at the table hand out stretched standing, her seat knocked over as she howled no. Her flames flickering to focus on the creature across from her, "******** dessert we can't let Medea win this!"

She was back again still standing now moving towards the pocketwatch, the laughter ringing around. She was back at the table, the figure was fading, the table was fading.

Everything was gone.

Something else was gone. She was still standing confused as to what was happening, inside her gut something seemed off. A patch, a hole, a missing chunk like her memories had been. The first thing she focused on where those moments. Everything added up but something with Red. She simply stopped. There was a dragon. Then nothing. Then she was back. It gnawed at Sammy, it angered her, where had she gone? Why had she left them?

There was nothing left and then she woke up.