Phantom Chained

Chapter 37. The essence of madness. Ingrid

Everything is making sense! One look at Elm is enough. I, or more accurately my brain hasn't generated it for a while and now look at it! He's supposed to be a copy of Johan... Johan's archetype also didn't turn out to be very pleasant, what is up with my luck when it comes to them? Why are they all so retarded? So, where is the copy? Where is Johan? Nowhere! One archetype completely replaced another, and it's definitely a sign.

Signs, symbols, they are everywhere, you just have to think about them sometimes. It's good when corpses are symbols and not real things. And the chewed-off finger, too, only the pain feels real. Oh, to wake up in a ward right now and thank the kind doctors for recovery...

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, but nothing changed. Clara's moaning continued to pierce my ears while Elm slowly began to slide down the wall before being loudly slapped.

"What do you mean you cannot?"

The sound of another slap made me wince. Interesting, what was the point of archetypes fighting? There was no point hoping for them to kill each other; Clara was dominating, greatly over-exaggerating the situation with her loud voice.

"I will ask you again; what do you mean 'I can't', 'It's not working' and 'too soft'? Do you want to die a slow and painful death? I could very well arrange that for you! I cannot take any more of this! Elm, my love, I beg you, please! Do something! You are not even trying to get it up. Do you want me to touch it, kiss it better?"

Elm made the sound like that of a dying swan and weakly waved his hands in the air.

"Well alright, if you do not want me..." Clara turned around, at which point my stomach dropped into my bladder, and headed for us. Her monstrous hand clasped around Cherry's neck, squeezing a weak squeak out of her, but despite that she still held onto me. That only lasted for a few seconds, until Clara literally chucked her into Elm and started to push her head into Elm's crotch. She shouted threats and orders to immediately proceed with arousal but Cherry only shrieked, covering her face with her small hands.

The shrieking ended abruptly, accompanied by the loud cracking of broken vertebrae. Clara then kicked Cherry's lifeless body to the side.

Elm dropped to the floor like a marionette.

And now Clara was glaring at me.

"Come here!"

I crawled there on all fours as my legs refused to work. 'What else does my hallucination want?' bubbled in my head. It was obvious that Elm was beyond help; his jaw was hanging loose and his eyes were rolled back, not to mention his entire body turned a hue of blue, what could possibly be done?

And then I was roughly thrown onto Elm's body, and the sensation of his hair was the last thing that I felt before being enveloped in an orange glow.

***

A dust devil twists around my legs like a kitten, the wind throwing sand grains into my face. I cover my face from them and the dying light to take a look at the Incubus' face.

No, not a face, but faces.

The monstrous denizen of this crimson desert has obtained a human form, yet he still does not have his own face.

The faces flow from within, seamlessly changing on the surface, but this time it is even somewhat pleasant to gaze upon them... I recognize Johan, a boy I adored in my earlier years, a handsome bloke at the supermarket, a Hollywood actor, a vocalist from a famous boy band, another singer, then Johan again. It's a collection of my love interests!

"I am lost." Says the Incubus.

"So am I" I reply.

"What do you see around us?" He asks.

"Cracked red earth and a dead tree. Tops of houses and towers in the distance."

"A place of birth and bloom."

The faces change, yet the voice remains the same; a booming, well-put voice like that of an opera singer. I have not noticed this before, but he also talks in a song-like manner and drags out words like he is enjoying the combination of sounds.

"What do you see?" I ask.

"Nothing good. Your astral projection reflects itself where the black puddles of rotting plants gave way to a field of flowering irises. Upon these circumstances, the synchronisation of wave characteristics of our energy bodies is heading to zero but in a strange way it turned out like this."

"Maybe because I lost my mind?"

"Maybe because I died?"

"Death and insanity on the crossroads of eternity?"

"Death and insanity." He repeats and stretches out his hand toward me.

Our hands interlock and the earth trembles, dropping down all around the tree. We stand on the edge of an abyss, holding hands like best friends. From the abyss spring forth tongues of flame, and amidst them, in the deepest part, burns a fragile body of a girl with long hair. 'Sophie! What is she doing there? Why is she burning?'

I scream and point at her body. The incubus winces, turning his face against the fire, then jumps in place and clicks his fingers. 'What is up with him? Is he... happy? Now?'

He embraces me, pushing my cheek up against his bare chest.

"I have a chance!" His happy shriek nearly bursts my eardrums. "And you have a chance, the beauty has a chance, even this loser has a chance... do you understand? We all have a chance to stay alive! Sorry, dear, but we'll have to jump into the flaming gehenna, the Ignis Sanat!"

"What? No!"

A-a-a-a-ahh!