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 Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:14 pm
The phone was battered and nearly dead, but still functional. Sasha was now on her seventh day.
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Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:21 pm
The phone clattered to the ground as Sasha's hand fell to the side, a low groan ripping free from her throat. Her hand moved to the customary place that Nona's totem rested in hopes of finding the necklace there with the music note attached. The gesture was paired with a harsh mental whisper. Nona?
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Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:22 pm
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Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:28 pm
A broken whimper was the only noise that Sasha made before she rolled to her side. A wave of nausea broke over her, and she struggled to her knees before picking her phone up so that she could slip it into her pocket. Once that was finished - for all the good it would do her - Sasha used the wall as support so that she could rise to her feet.
Everything hurt. Her arms, her legs. Her head, back, feet.
The silence that resounded brokenly in her mind.
Biting back a groan, Sasha shuffled over to the other body in the room, looking for something in the room that she could use to prod it from a distance.
The last thing that she wanted to do was get too close.
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Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:34 pm
It turned out not to matter. The old woman was quite dead and unresponsive to whatever pokes and prods Sasha cautiously administered. Her face was a mutely wide-eyed horror, the lower half covered in blood. A few feet away, her jawbone glinted wetly in the low light, a mute testament to what was likely a violent and painful death. In one stiff, claw-like hand, the old woman clutched a thick piece of paper.
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Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:38 pm
She wanted to cry. Sasha wanted to sob and howl. Tears welled in her eyes, but she bit back any sound.
Biting her the inside of her cheek so hard that she tasted blood, Sasha reached for the paper in the woman's hand.
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Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:59 pm
It was difficult to remove without damaging the paper, but after some struggle, Sasha held a photo in hands, only slightly streaked with blood. The paper was worn and fuzzy at the edges, a picture that had been handled often, but gently enough to keep it intact. It was of large family, standing in front of the castle in their Sunday best. The clothes were a bit dated by at least a decade or two. In the center of the clan stood the old woman, the obvious matriarch. Beside her stood a young woman, a girl really, and the twin to the one she'd seen previously, the twin to the Sasha who had yet to step enter the world of Deus Ex Machina and the hidden, vicious war it fought. They were surrounded by men and women, each sharing certain traits, most particularly in the way they held themselves. There was purpose in their bearing, and confidence. This was a family with a purpose, one they embraced fully with all their being. The only off note was to the side, a woman great with child, her eyes pensive and watchful, giving a strained smile to something out of frame. Her resemblance to the old woman was marked, a daughter no doubt. On the back, in scripted hand, it read: Delacroix
Réunion de Famille
199-
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Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 11:06 am
Brushing her bloodied thumb against the familiar woman's face - her mother - Sasha's brow furrowed. The pieces were all there, laid out before her. She felt crazed as realization after realization crashed down on her. The familial similarities were terrifyingly striking. She would have to deal with it later. Sit and think it all through. Sasha hardly felt herself, incapable of processing everything that had happened up to this point. She still wasn't even sure what had happened up to this point. Where had the last three days gone - and before that, the previous two? She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home and she never wanted to come back - except there was no resounding song in her mind, no warm lilting melody of encouragement, no aria of joy, nothing. Only silence. Sasha was alone, violently alone - and until she had Nona back, that wouldn't change. Tucking the photo into her pocket, Sasha hunched over the old woman's body. She stared down into her mangled, agonized features, realizing that this old woman had been a tie to her past, one that could have answered questions, perhaps even given her insight into what had transpired here. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt the same. She felt out of touch with herself, her emotions, everything around her. Something horrible had happened to this family - her family - and perhaps it hadn't happened here, but it had happened. Tears rolled unbidden down her cheeks as Sasha glanced from the jawless, lifeless woman - she hadn't even thought to try and ask her name days ago, when she'd had a chance to lay the proper groundwork here - to her bloodied, grimy hands. There was one thing that Sasha did not contemplate, could not linger on - had she been the one who had killed this woman? Had it been the one who had possessed her, instead? Those hands, talented and delicate and covered in sick red-brown, lifted up to press against her face as if she sought to assure herself that she was really herself.
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Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 8:22 am
What felt like hours later, Sasha rose to her feet. Tears had tracked through the dirt and grime that tainted her face. Her eyes were swollen and red, and her skull ached with an insistent, dull pain. She didn't want to just leave the woman there. She didn't want to think about what it all meant. Sasha couldn't stand to think about it, couldn't stand to contemplate how things had ended. She hadn't really accomplished anything aside from losing her weapon, and Sasha didn't want to think about that either. All Sasha wanted to do was go home, back to the island. She wanted to lose herself for a few days in the arms of the man she loved, and only then - after she felt confident enough to sort through everything that had happened - would she return to this place, to her Nona, and find a way to get her weapon back. Before she left the rectory, Sasha spent a few moments looking for anything else that might be of importance. Pictures, papers, journals, anything - anything - that might answer any of the questions that she had. lizbot idk if you had anything else you wanted to do? use me and abuse me u wonderful beast
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Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 1:37 pm
There were more pictures, stored carefully in boxes. Thousands of them, chronicling the many generations of the Delacroix clan, dating back to photography's earliest days. There were more than she could carry, more than she could even look through in one sitting.
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Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 2:24 pm
Shoulders bowed, Sasha realized there wasn't anything else she could do here. Well, nothing that couldn't wait, at least until she got home and took a shower and tried to sleep.
It felt like giving up. It felt like abandoning her weapon - which it was, and she knew it.
She wasn't even thinking about what dangers might await her back home, on the island. It seemed all she could focus on was the deafening silence that rattled around in her mind. Even as she teleported out, bloodied and covered in filth, all she could do was think of her Nona.
I'm so sorry.
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