Chapter Thirty-One: Save the Last Dance
"I...can't dance." I want to bolt in the other direction right now. There's an opening right there-
She smiles as she takes my hands, paralysing me, "That's ok, I'm not expecting the samba, just put your arms around my waist."
I've never danced with anyone before in my life. Fuck. I think I'm redder than her dress as I do as I'm told, she's really soft...and warm. She's the same height as me. Her arms go around my neck, "Just follow my lead." And we just sway to an unheard rhythm.
As the seconds tick by in silence I realise that she was drawing me in closer so that she could rest her head on my shoulder and her hold become more of a hug. "You know, I was going to confess my feelings to my crush at the prom," she mumbles into my shoulder. "I was going to ask him to be my date."
"I read in books that it's supposed to be the guy who asks..." I would find the prospect terrifying.
I could feel her grin, "Probably, but I didn't want to risk waiting. I wanted to jump in first and snatch him before anyone else...I'd probably be turned down though."
"I don't see why."
"Thank you. What about you?"
"Me?" I decided to tell her the truth, "I'm an Outsider. I haven't been near any proper civilisation until a week ago. So...no school...no dating...no dancing..."
"Ah, well...you're doing fine."
"Am I?"
She nods, "Yep, just fine."
I asked the question that made my soul go cold. "Can I ask you how you came to be like this, Zoe?"
"I was walking home from work, late at night then I felt like I was shot in the back...and I woke up in that place." Her memories saturated my mind. It was a dark night and she was walking alone back to her house. She checked her phone for a message only for something to puncture her chest through her back, blood pooling from her chest. She didn't feel pain, just collapsed forward onto the walkway and the world darkened into black. She woke up in the catchment area, to watch the door at the top of the stairs shut with a heavy thud, leaving her alone and scared in the darkened tunnels. Her ankles were broken. She could only crawl to the stairs by her hands. The pain was indescribable as she tried to reach the door and bang on it over and over until her hands bruised and bloody. She began coughing up black goo and her arms darkened. Things grew from her back, wracking her in pain-
"You don't have to keep seeing, I can feel it hurting you," she whispers, drawing me out of the memories.
I shudder and swallow the bile rising, "...Did you see who did it?" I realise that we've stopped moving and that she was holding onto me tightly.
"I can only make out dark outlines of people wearing army gear. Even if I did, my memories are starting to go fuzzy..."
The desert and dying trees...the wisps decaying into smoke were fragments that made up 'Zoe' were all disappearing. She wasn't going to graduate from school. She wasn't going to go onto collage. Get a job...get married...have a family...grow old...she was in a permanent standstill. Permanently eighteen, waiting to go to prom.
"What about your family?" I had to ask. Was someone missing her? Was someone looking?
"...I was in an institution. My parent were killed in the Disaster."
An orphan to top things off. She had no family. She was probably one of many orphaned children. One that no one would immediately notice disappearing.
"You're right about that," she chuckles, "I often skipped class when I could."
A perfect target.
"Yep."
She then takes her head from my shoulder with a slow exhale and strong determination in her eyes as she whispers into my ear, "It's ok now."
I pull back, still holding onto her, a mixture of confusion and anguish wreck my body.
"..It's ok." I could almost feel her say 'I know why you're really here'. "I'm ok."
I stare at her, blank faced. "Wh-wh-"
"I'm glad I got to be your first dance," she could smile. She could actually smile at me. "I always wanted to be a professional dancing instructor, you know."
I did know. Why do I know? I knew she liked cats. Had a strange fascination for bonsai but her matron never let her keep them in her room. She used to feed a stray dog on her way home every day. Every day without fail.
I look around and see that it's gone awfully dark. Her room was the only thing left that was visible. The trees and the forest were gone. Everything's gone.
"I-" I was speechless. I don't want to.
She hugs me properly, "It's ok." I realise that my right arm had moved back, my fingers straight and ready for a strike. No-
My hand moves before I could stop it. My arm sinks into her stomach without any resistance, right through to the other side. "I'm-I'm," hot tears spill down my cheek from the shock of what I just did. "I'm sorry." I'm so sorry. What-How? What have I done?
She still has her smile as she hugs me closely, "You saved me."
"This isn't saving!" I scream out, a breath shudders in my chest. "That boy said that too. How is this saving anyone? I haven't saved anyone!" I hug her back as tightly as I could with one arm. "Saving you means you get to go home. You get to ask that guy out in this dress and you get-"
"Sssh," she covers my mouth with her hand. "You stopped me. You stopped me before I did something terrible. You saved me from that."
I sniff, looking out into the darkness.
"I got to meet you, Kae. I think that makes me lucky." I don't see how. I think that if anyone sees me they should run and hide before I get them killed. "I hope you find your brother and sister..."
I don't remember saying anything about them. I look up to see her gazing up at what should be the sky...or at least the ceiling, "I always wanted to see the real sky one more time. The one without the Fence in the way."
She then looks back down at me, "I'm so sorry that you are the one who has to do this, it really isn't fair on you to carry this much weight for us," she kisses me on the cheek, "but I'm also happy that it is you," and pulls back, revealing that half her face was the one from the 'real' her; freakishly grey skin, a slime band covering her right eye and the lipless hole with spikes, but I couldn't pull away.
She shuts her remaining eye as her body starts to turn to dust. "It was nice to finally meet you, Kae."
And with that she disintegrated before my eyes.
"It was nice to meet you too, Zoe," I say to the empty air. A single wisp sings out as it darts passed my face and turns into smoke. Her room was gone. Everything that was 'Zoe' is no longer here.
Something snaps in my brain and I'm pulled back to this fucking reality. I stare at the monster that was once Zoe, I had almost mirrored what I had done to her in her mind. I had somehow gotten free of her hold and my own claw was buried into the chest cavity of the 'human' torso. The Queen lets out an odd creaking sound before snapping apart entirely, crackling as the skin starts to darken and peel away like ash in a fire. I pull back from her as she crumbles to dust, feeling dead inside as I look at my hands as they took up my view. Both mirrored each other. They were dark as midnight, the white tips nails gone and only left long pointed black talons. I'm turning into a monster. It suddenly became hard to breathe, my lungs no longer wanting to cooperate. It hurts.
Collapsing to my knees, I beg for someone to end me. It hurts so much. End me before I do something else. My breath is painfully laboured, my vision spiked at the edges as a headache spears through my skull. My body wouldn't move as I sat there, sagging with my claws on either side, looking into nothing. The room was too bright for my eyes but I didn't care. Someone please kill me. The slime around the room started to harden and crack, flaking just as the Queen did. I look at the pile of mush in front of me. She was gone. I knew that her clothes had sunk to the bottom of the tank I don't know how I knew that. What does it matter anyway? Why am I alive?
"Kae! Kae! Look at me!" Someone had grabbed onto my face, forcing me to look at them. "Look at me!"
I see the mismatched eyes, still slit like a cat's, staring straight at me.
"What you can't accept, you can give it to me," he whispers gently, caressing my face. It was comfortable...soothing. I felt a weariness sink into my body. My bones and muscles ached so much. My shoulder felt like acid fire. But the touch of X's skin seems to be dulling everything. He slowly presses his forehead to mine, "Until you can, I'll be the one to do it."
I look down at my hands with blurred vision, I couldn't stop myself from crying. I see that my left hand had gone back to looking human and my right back to the weird-ass scaly/smooth, French-tipped claw that it was before.
"How many more will I have to do?" I'm not sure if I was asking X or just the empty space. I don't know how much more of this I can take. I was ripping someone apart from the inside out. I destroyed them completely.
"I don't know," X murmurs to me. "But don't keep it to yourself like this again. It will cause only you pain and destruction."
"I don't know what to do," I sniff, looking at him in the eye. I don't even know what he's talking about.
"Just let go of everything," and I feel his arms encircle my body completely, his cheek resting on top of my head. "For now, you don't need to do anything. Just let go."
My body went stiff in surprise at the contact. His warmth seeped into me and I couldn't stop myself from clutching onto the front of his coat, pressing my head into his chest and closing my eyes and poured my broken heart out, probably smearing snot all over his front. I've lost my family. I've destroyed a boy who doesn't remember his name. I killed Zoe before she could go to prom...I was beyond broken and yet...I've never felt this comfortable before. This...completeness was disturbing and it scared me but I couldn't move. I don't understand this feeling and it was scary but, I wanted it.