Soul Arts

Chapter Five

After the embittered girl fired her last shot, but mere seconds before Marshall dropped her was the exact moment Melody Kalia knew the impromptu job she acquired of being Savoir of the Souls was going to be significantly harder than she thought when she finally got the weapon in her hand. Her first shot missed Marshall completely. She moved far too slow, and then hesitated when pulling the trigger, which, despite him initially not paying attention, gave him plenty of time to grab her wrist and throw off her aim. Then, there is Ringer. Kalia is not certain. However, it is as if Marshall intentionally picked her up to help her aim at Greiis Ringer, steadying and calming her. Ringer stood there in front of that door with the smuggest of grins, arms crossed, feet firmly planted on the ground, watching the chaos unfold. Kalia shot five innocent passengers. She knows this. She knows everyone is already dead, but it is the fact that she harmed innocent people that grinds her insides.

It bounced off his forehead. The shot was perfect; right between the eyes, above the bridge of his fat nose. One shot to end Greiis Ringer. One shot to end it all. Even though she did not kill Marshall like she intended to, the tides would have turned greatly in her favor with Ringer gone. It was one shot, and it was so easy; easy until she watched the bullet bounce clean off his forehead like a pest bumping a window. It didn't even scratch him.

His thin pink lips part showing his stained yellow teeth. He closes his eyes, shakes his head, and chuckles. Kalia looks up, and for the first time, she sees Greiis Ringer express an emotion that is not anger or irritation.

"Who the hell told you to damage my precious cargo?" Says Ringer. With his hands still pointing towards the ground, he narrowly opens up his arms as if beckoning someone for a hug.

"When you were alive, I didn't come into your home, uninvited, and shoot your family up, now did I?" Ringer looks over at the injured passengers. "Although, maybe someone would have, I guess, if you lived in a bad neighborhood," he says, followed by an obnoxious chuckle.

Trembling, Kalia slowly begins to rise. Ringer inhales deeply; much longer than he usually inhales. He closes his eyes, spreads his arms further apart, and throws his head back.

She wanted to put off looking at the passengers she had shot in her blind fury for as long as possible. She didn't want to see. In the deep recesses of her mind now exists an inkling of a doubt as to whether or not all her shots at the elderly passengers were truly accidents in the heat of the moment. After all, curiosity is one of the most primitively basic human elements.

What would happen if one were to shoot a person who is already dead with Marshall's gun in this realm? Would they wake up and then die again? Would they bleed out?

Kalia takes a long, hard stare into the faces and the eyes of broken elders to her left. She takes in the sight all of their wrinkles, their sunken eyes, their gray hair, their sagging skin, their rotting teeth, crow's feet, liver spots and gigantic portions of their faces that are now missing due to the bullets she put into their heads. They are all completely still, just as they were before, as if nothing at all happened; perhaps they are not even aware they have been shot. Some are missing left or right eyes, others had the top half of their heads completely blown off. One still has his eyes, but no nose or mouth.

In the aftermath, what lies before the girl is not blood and gore, but shells. Kalia can see into the heads of four out of five of the people she shot. It is clear to her that all of the passengers on board are missing their brains. No thick rivers of crimson spurt out of the wounds. Instead, golden particles are dispersing. The passengers are like shells, but with no life to protect, or nourishing nutrients on the inside. These shells have been fractured, and are now disintegrating into shimmering particles of radiant glowing dust. The particles are moving as Ringer inhales.