How To Dissect A Witch

iii. watching a hero fall

( cw : gore, violence, graphic descriptions of death )

.

The second time you met Morie Yun— only weeks after you defended him from those kids— he had flowers in his hair. A wreath of something pretty on a boy, blisfully unaware to coming harsh critics and judgments and reprimands.

You didn't think you cared. It was pretty— he was pretty. Braided rosemaries and peonies and daisies and everything else that had been weaved perfectly into a crown and into his brown hair glittering in gold from sunshine. You thought you fell in love, but you didn't know what it was like to love so you never knew.

Maybe you always did. You just didn't know.

These thoughts kept you sane for the blighted sight that laid before you. That can't be Morie, you think. Morie is bright, hardworking. He had gotten pessimistic and cynical from the past years, because he's learned life isn't always kind. He always chides you like a mother would. He doesn't care if you're the Hero. He's the only one you can be vulnerable with. The only one you finally trust with your secret.

He's the only one who really, really cares for you.

Where is he? Why is there a puddle of blood in his place? Is he dead? That can't be real. He's alive. He's just smiling a few seconds ago until, until—

Until he is everywhere.

You gaze drops off towards a cracked white chip coated in dark red. Then you trace it from a grotesque, dismembered limb still twitching. Crushed flesh barely hangs on. Yellow fats ooze around the puddle of red. Your senses are tingling. This is not alive. This is not Morie.

So where is he?

Another scream breaks you out of your reverie. You turn around, alarmed. A little girl, face ashen and trembling, flails around.

She has nothing from the waist down.

Only a wide stump of angry red flesh and exposed nerves and fats and anything else you couldn't name.

You look around. Almost everyone in the beach has been crushed, beaten and bleeding to death. Some suffered large gaping holes in their bodies, some viciously torn apart, some still crying as they gasp desperately for air despite their opened stomachs and mangled throats. The once white sands are now coated with nothing but red, red, red.

You take a step back, (e/c) eyes trailing from the bloodshed fearfully. Then you turn back and make a dash for the city.

But the city has not fared any better. Lives were taken in the most brutal way possible. The pavements, once boasting gray-white asphalt and bricks and pebbles, are now sprinkled and muddied with crimson and strips of flesh. Bodies are thrown all around the place, either broken in angles no person could ever endure, or twitching as their dismembered parts swivels around the concrete road, or crushed and sliced in half with their organs—

Morie isn't here.

You help the remaining few who is lucky enough to only be injured, stranded by a debris or a car. You all order them to vacate the premises this instant— and though you never really expected them to thank you after your very late arrival, it still pains you horribly from how they glare and curse at you for being so inefficient.

"You let my mommy die!" a little kid screams, "and daddy! And my sis! And my friends! I hate you! I hate you I hate you I hate you!"

Another brushes you off when you offered assistance. They didn't spare you another glance as they allow themself to be escorted by others who aren't you.