Words: 752

Opened his eyes.
There was red everywhere. Most of all coming nearer. Red eyes and red hair and ash had condensed in rocky formations around his arms, his legs, mimicking venous, sinew-limbs. Bones of Blackrock instead of the bones of living kind or any Earth he knew.
That man was smiling. It wasn’t a hideous, frightening smile. It was pleasant- the bored plastered kind of someone well used to seeing to a customer and then moving on. The sort of smile that woudl forget him once it turned away to more important matters. Turn away, yes, and only once he was finished.

Cakes are done, people are finished. Cakes are done, Senshi are finished.
He was finished. If he couldn’t move, he was going to die, just like everyone else there. All that red was blood, all those twisted, fallen forms were bodies that dangled-slumped in the ripstop nylon scrims and boney-rock frames. He was at the carnival. They hadn’t escaped. None of them had. They’d all failed.

As the Captain’s hand slid into his chest, Thraen screamed.
Woke up.
Quenton clapped a sleep-numb hand over his own mouth as he bolted up, his own voice a sudden muffled echo that hadn’t melted away with the sudden clarity and focus of his dingy grey efficiency. He bit his forefinger, other hand clawing over the skin of his chest violently, masking memory with reality. He was fine. He was alive. Iron and salt in his mouth, on his teeth.

But the salt was the same as the tears on his cheeks and the heat of his own blood was just a mockery of all those whose veins ran not at all- cold and dead to be carted off like so many limp pinwheels from the colours of the circus. They’d all failed their city. ********* had given him his pen, they all had been given their pens and powers, to defend this planet. To defend their home, their city, their fellows, and they failed over and over. People were dying, and they were dangling like puppets, reacting to the calliope of the Negaverse’s tunes. The Negaverse’s plots were songs, and their own leadership left them blithely on the dance floor. There was no structure, no reason, no strength as they were divided.

Quenton threw his hand away from his mouth. Muscles jerking with pins and needles, he swung his feet to the floor and stood, letting the grey blanket fall away. He crossed the grey world to the only light- a single sliver of cold pre-dawn that shivered uncertainly behind his curtains. He drew them aside and let the icy light wash his bare skin. It did not help his blueblood complexion to feel alive, but simulated what should have been. He should have died. That captain had him dead to rights, and Thraen should have died, picked up off the pave by paramedics and tossed away in a plastic black sack.
So much fertilizer for a garden.
With Thraen went Quenton. But what much is the difference anymore. Superman wears Clark Kent, just like we all run around pretending to be normal and trying to lead normal lives. Pretending that we are safe. We aren’t any safer, with our powers. All lambs to the same slaughter, whether we have horns or no. Am I arguing that it would be better if we didn’t pretend? If we were scouts all the time? Surely someone has already tried. And how would they eat? How would they protect themselves as they slept, as plain to the extra senses in rest as in waking as long as their uniform was on. It can’t be done alone, and the workings of this planet, this society and country we live in, can’t just be abandoned, even if they hardly apply to the strictures of the war itself.

Is that girl with the wings this hunted, haunted, human-affected? Is she waking screaming every time she tries to sleep? Does she feel like she’s doing enough? Is it just me?

Every one of those black-souled bastards deserves death and more. Not just under the law of the city, the state, or the country. Under rightful law. Life forfeited paid for by their own lives to a rightful executioner. But it isn’t me. God above, I make flowers not swords. I make flowers. Somnolence and Scent and somehow I’m supposed to bring justice to the slain and peace to this people I protect.

I make flowers.
And they make graves.