Author Games: Town of Mayhem

Mayhem's Last Strike | Easton Adaire

The Doctor: Easton Adaire

She wakes with straggling tears still careening down her cheeks and the first syllable of his name on her cracked lips.

But it dies before she finishes the desperate cry as reality slaps her across the face. Visions of the blood leaking from his wounds dance behind her eyelids, the scarlet stains marking him as a goner; she sees the eyes that had always sparkled with such kindness suddenly sightless, glassy. There is no fairytale prince to sweep her into his arms and rescue her from memories of a carriage hurtling to the ground- he's dead.

She dries her tears, only to realize his blood remains glued to her fingertips, and crimson streaks now hang below her eyes and the dark bags proclaiming her sleepless. Her hands shake as for a moment, she stares at what she could not save. When was the last time she'd rescued someone on the brink of death? When was the last time a girl who couldn't be helped had at least helped someone else, instead of failing them like she always did? Once, she would have been proud of the blood on her hands, for it would have signified her hard work. But the dread curdling her stomach as red raindrops slip from her palm to her wrist and all the way down her forearm makes her realize just how helpless, how unskilled she is.

She should have been able to save him.

A lump rises in her throat. How had she been able to cope with that grief for her parents all those years, being so alone in the world? She doesn't remember how she could've possibly quenched this all-consuming sorrow and guilt and blame. Perhaps a girl of nine and three quarters had just pushed it out of her mind- but she can't push Ean away. Perhaps it was because her mother and father weren't really dead- only damaged beyond repair, and there was truly no return for him. Maybe somewhere in there Easton had always had the hope that they would heal, and by learning all the medical practices she could, she'd find a cure right at her fingertips, yet there is certainly no cure for death. And maybe because the image of her mother's drool slipping down her chin and her father's eternal sleep had been so drilled into her mind, and the memories of their warm embraces and loving smiles had slowly faded as she aged, the little girl had found she didn't know them the same.

She had known Ean.

Perhaps not as well as she'd have liked to, but she'd seen the way life rejoiced in his smile, felt the compassion radiating from him in waves. He had always been there. And though she hadn't had the faintest idea how to mend her mother and father's injuries, she had known how to help Ean. She wasn't at fault for them, but she had failed him.

She doesn't know how her world keeps turning without him, doesn't know how she forces herself to sit up from where she'd collapsed on the gravel of the town square and entered the abyss of agony. Somewhere inside her, she supposes, a little strength remains- strength created only from his memory and how he'd always kept fighting, always put others before himself. The first thing she sees is the noose, stained with the same scarlet that mars her fingers, swinging gently in the breeze. She swallows down bile and tries- to no avail- not to recall the rough rope beneath her fingertips as she frantically untied his rocking corpse. She tries not to remember the innocent man who had hung from those gallows, limbs limp and chest sliced to shreds. She tries not to resurrect the heartache that makes it impossible to breathe and sends her shattering into a thousand tiny pieces she doesn't know how to put back together.

But the pain of the past retreats to the back of her mind as she looks to the unknown figure standing just beside the noose. Sparks of light flash in between the woman's palms, a cruel smile resting on her scarred face; Easton doesn't dare move, fear widening her eyes as she watches blades of light skitter up and down in the stranger's grasp. With a tilt of the woman's hand, the sparks dissipate.