Best Served Cold

Day Seven: Showdown

Note: Your responses are overwhelming and wonderful and extremely encouraging. Perhaps you may be understanding why I’ve been cranking this out. I want to see what happens too, as I only have a vague impression of what happens next whenever I write. The characters are owned by MysteryBen and Artsy.

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            “Please, please, please…” Arthur’s breath came in ragged gasps as he neared the edge of the cliff. He could feel his heart beating like it was about to explode, the blood pounding in his ears. “Please!”

            “This is for Lewis!” A pair of hands shoved into his back, sending him hurtling over the edge. His body twisted around just enough to see Vivi’s grim-set face staring down at him.

            The wind rushed past his ears as the pounding in his head roared to a crescendo before stopping abruptly.

            He knew what came next, and tried to shut his eyes against it, but was unable to. A stalagmite protruded from the middle of his body, now streaked with blood. There was a moment or two of numbness, the disbelief and refusal of his body to process what was happening to it.

            Then it hit him. The searing pain of ripped flesh and the shattering agony of bone and muscle torn apart, organs ruptured and functions failing. He tried to scream, but the spike must have caught the bottom of a lung, because he couldn’t even draw breath enough to make a sound beyond a faint hiss. His vision began to blur, but before he surrendered to the blackness, he could just make out the silhouette of Vivi, staring down at him from the cliff ledge.

            Arthur’s soul gasped, shrieking as he writhed in the grip of the Spirit.

            "I quite liked that one, possibly the best response yet. Shall we try it again?"

            Arthur didn’t know how long he’d been sitting on the cavern ledge, his body calmly composed in a cross-legged sitting position as the Spirit toyed with his soul. For hours the Spirit had been replaying Lewis’ fall from the ledge in Arthur’s mind, only it was Arthur falling from the ledge. He felt every moment as if it was happening, and no matter how many times he braced himself, the fall was just as terrifying, and the impact just as agonizing.

            Every time there was something different about the scenario. Sometimes it was Lewis shoving him off, or Mystery. Sometimes the spikes were large, sometimes small, sometimes there was more than one impaling him. Sometimes he threw himself off. Sometimes it was his parents, throwing him off the cliff out of shame for having a murderer as a son. Once it had been a public execution, complete with police, judge, and jury in the cavern. But the Spirit had finally run the scenario with Vivi pushing him off through his head. He’d felt his heart crack at the image, prompting the Spirit to replay that one over and over and over.

            Even within himself he had no sense of how the Spirit appeared. He heard the fluttering of leathery wings and felt viselike claws binding him, but no vision of the beast presented itself. He had tried to regain control of himself, but the Spirit would only laugh and send him into another vision.

            His mind was fractured, fracturing. He was losing himself. He felt there was something important he was forgetting, something he had to prevent from happening, but it kept slipping away from him. There was someone he had to warn, but whenever he’d nearly recalled it, he was plunged into another vision.

            Had it been hours? Days? Years? How long had he been falling from the ledge without really falling?

            “Kill me!” He shrieked. “Just kill me! Do it!”