Implode [edited version]

o3 Implosion

When her hands hit the door, she noted sickly that the prints they left resembled the blood of a victim, which she could say she was. She staggered through the door numbly, the world a whirl of dull and muted colors. The edges of her vision blurred, her breath coming in rapid, ragged bursts. She made her way to the sink, fingers brushing against the counters and walls. Washing it off, she was again reminded of blood. A shriek bubbled into her throat, which she pressed back with a fist to her mouth.

Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she was filled with new realization of terror. Her eyes were rimmed red, a signal that her tears had already begun. Her wrists were still cuffed in symbols and the words filled her head like the chatter of a television on a channel of noise. One down one down one down one down one down one down one down one down one down one down one down

It never ended, a continuous loop in her thoughts. The tears came harder, and she retreated into a stall. She had no idea of what could so wrong with her, but she knew there was something not right. There had never been anything right in her, not that she had ever seen. She found that her difference had been early on, or as early on as she could remember. It dawned on her, in those moments of pure terror and agony, that she couldn’t recall a single childhood memory.

Her echoing sobs receded to pathetic whimpers and sniffles, muffled by her hands pressing over her mouth. Her eyes throbbed from being shut so tightly, finger sore from curving forcefully over the contours of her face. Her legs ached from being brought so close to her frame, knees burning now.

The sound of the door opening silenced her altogether, not ready to face a new set of abuses. The footsteps reverberated softly, slow and calculated, until they stopped at the stall she had hidden in. They stood there for a time, as if thinking on a way to approach the matter. A thin hand, familiar in the sun-kissed complexion, curled over the top of the stall door.

“Are you alright?”

She knew this voice, and the way she craved it in an instant was horrifying. She stated rooted in place and didn’t answer. Silence stuck, and her visitor grew impatient with her. He opened the door, reaching over in an unnatural feat that she hadn’t seen and unlocking it. He seemed relieved when he saw her, features relaxing from whatever tensed position they had been in previously.

She noted, dismally, that he looked like he’d stepped out of the nineteen twenties, his ensemble a suave mixture of formality and casualty. It was a drastic change, she realized, from his first impression of a disheveled savagery wrapped in an intimidating bow to the allure of a poised gentleman. Either way, she thought, he would have been an enticing treat. Stomach plummeting with the thought, she stared meekly up at him.

“Did you like the gift,” he asked, continuing on as if there was no need for her to answer his previous question.

She stared up at him blankly, wondering what gift he could be speaking about. Then she managed a timid, “You’re not supposed to be in here; this is the girls’ bathroom.”

He ran a hand roughly over his chin, where there had formerly been a layer of stubble to scrub his fingers against. His new clean-shaven look didn’t seem to diminish the immediacy of his habits, a thought that Exodus hadn’t been expecting to pop into her mind. How would she know what the little habits he did were anyways? She shook off the revelation with unease, but stayed coiled up on the floor of the stall as Ambrose battled his self-control.

“You didn’t answer the question,” he stated, his words strained. His fingers, poised on the stall, pressed little indents in the metal, as if it were a softer material.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she choked out, eyes trained on the marks left by his hands.

There was a pause, and she could feel the tension dissolving slowly. Sparing a glance upward, she noticed his expression softening. Where there had previously been an almost insistent sort of anger lining his face was a light hurt, but mostly confusion. His brows were furrowed, lips slightly agape with questions lingering behind his teeth, and golden irises wondering.

It was almost like a neglected or kicked puppy.

He rocked back on his heels, running both hands through his seemingly less tangled hair. He looked lost, like there had been a wrench thrown into his plans, and he had not the means to fix it. His gaze wandered to everything but her, shamed into a tendency to stray from one object to the next. She felt then, as if it were rooted deep in her physical being, that she had done something to hurt him. Maybe he had sent her a gift, and she really had just been oblivious to it. She didn’t know how to remedy the situation at hand, and soon found herself lost in her own sort of hurt. Hurt that she was the cause of pain, or maybe it was hurt that she was being implicated for something again, and she didn’t know what it was. The rough sound of clearing a throat shook her from her reverie, and she looked back to him in anticipation of what he might do now.

“You’re in the wrong bathroom,” she supplied, seeing that he was still lost in whatever shame she’d brought upon him. His gaze made its way back to her face, as if seeing her in a new light.

“I’m sorry; my mistake,” he murmured, nodding absently as he turned to go.

He hesitated for a moment, as if vacillating on the idea of speaking with her more or with retreating to his lair of some sort. It would seem the latter option held more appeal, as he moved as quickly as he could casually and was gone.

Watching the silent inner turmoil, Exodus felt the unease creeping into her. It was like ivy on a house, slow and suffocating. Such was her existence, she noted, a choking house falling to pieces bit by bit. It took her a few minutes to realize that she was shaking, the world on an angle around her. Her eyes dropped down her hands, holding on to stable leveling. She stared for a moment before her gaze circled back to her wrists, and the symbols.

They couldn’t have been the promised present; she’d done those herself. Matt’s mauling was out of question, as nothing human could have been the cause of it. Inklings of trepidation welled up within her again, and a thought shot through her psyche.

Maybe what they were looking for wasn’t human.

She let the thought take control of her system for as long as she could stand it, before she had to clamp her jaws together to keep her teeth from chattering too loudly. She let the idea of it wash away in a sea of nonsensical thoughts, just in time for the bell to ring the sweet sounds of freedom for those waiting for it.

Standing, she left the bathroom in a daze, immersing herself in the anonymity of the crowd.

She was still waiting for the gift, she realized, hours later. She was beginning to wonder if Ambrose’s appearance had all been an act put together to thoroughly ruin her during senior year by the rest of her graduating class. She had no idea what this gift could have been, but she hoped it wasn’t a bucket of pig blood to spill over her. While she did admire Carrie’s innate need for vengeance and ferocity, she knew that she would have broken down and never have been able to put herself back together enough to want to massacre the town.

She stared at the walls of her room, which would have been considered a suite if her life were lived in a hotel. Despite the thoughts of others and base insults from her classmates, her family was well-off. It was simply that she had a need to be Spartan in her style. She was not philistine, while not learned in the art of fashionable dressing, but she did prefer a minimalist approach as opposed to the varied spectrums of some outfits.

Brought back to the gift, she still wondered what it could be. There was nothing nice and new in her life, aside from a fresh set of bruises having been shoved roughly into a locker earlier on in the day. She hadn’t bought anything with the money she made selling paintings, and it couldn’t have been an indirect gift to one of the overachievers in the house with her. Her parents’ barely provided her with necessities, too wrapped up in the better children, the ones who weren’t hated by all walks of life.

She paced the bland room, anxiety growing as she gnawed on her lip in thought. The televisions from the floors above were loud enough for the sound to bleed into her room and drown out all others, making it close to impossible to hear the world outside. She could tell they were all reporting on the same thing as they had been for days: Matt. She tried ignoring it, and was saved for the moment by a shriek at the door.

“What the hell is this?”

//oh, look, an update. Guess what they're talking about?