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THE DOZEN.
xiii. MERCILESS WORLD
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THE DOOR CLOSED.
He made sure not to slam it, but she hardly noticed. The departure itself was enough to strike her to her core, leaving a welt traced by anguish and adorned with touches of dejection. He could have slammed every door in sight, and all she'd have cared about would be the fact that he was gone yet again.
She thought of all the empty assurances of, "It gets easier," – a short, little sentence contrived only to ensure that she wouldn't lose hope, but each and every time he left, all hope lagged behind. The walls had become suddenly bleaker, colors not as lively, and the air not as fulfilling. He who brought all the beautiful shades of unimaginable colors into her darkened life, erased them every time he reluctantly uttered the words, "I'll see you soon, Scarlett. Don't worry."
This time, however, he left her with their own child - a little boy that he'd hardly had the chance to spend any time with. When the baby's cries echoed through the hallways, pulling her from her state of grey, she saw before her an array of blue. Every shade of the saddest color to dare exist engulfed her, whispering peaceful phrases to the war waging within.
She let out a soft breath, shoulders sinking in defeat. Finally, she took a step back from where she had been standing since he attempted to piece together an adequate goodbye.
Her husband had to leave, again, to go serve their country, again. That was that. There was no grey area to it, and no grey state to linger in. Just acceptance, a sea of blue, and a screaming baby.
"Oh, hey. Look. Sky's blue. Finally."
She didn't have a response. Everything that tumbled from Subject Two's mouth was futile and pointless (and rather annoying), she thought. He was desperate for a conversation, and she was desperate for some quiet.
But nothing would ever be quiet. A baby's cries lingered in her head, echoing off every thought that tried to be coherent. It was all she could think of, all she could hear and process. The words that escaped Subject Two were just words, they held no significance and she'd never fully hear them. Her maternal side only took notice of the distant baby that just wouldn't stop crying.
It wasn't real. She knew that it wasn't. Every rational voice in her head told her to stay where she was, but the mother in her insisted that she help. She was already thinking of all the reasons the baby could be crying, silently asking herself if it had been fed or changed as if somehow the baby was her own.
Her feet carried her closer and closer to the screaming newborn, all while her mind had become nearly incapacitated and she lost all say in her own actions. Subject Two scrambled to keep up, desperately trying to spark a conversation with the wordless, childless mother. He wasn't even audible at this point. All she was hearing was crying, and lingering whispers of, "I'll see you soon, Scarlett. Don't worry."
When the wailing was at its loudest, she stopped in her tracks. Before her was a small car barely grasping onto its vermillion color. Dust blanketed the rusty steel, as if promising to protect the neglected car from all that could harm it, but the dust surrendered the very moment Scarlett's hand clasped onto the door handle.
In spite of her vigorous efforts to simply pull the door open, it remained stationary. She took a step back with a defeated sigh that failed to muffle Subject Two's voice. "What are you doing?" His fretful voice was laced with concern, but she ignored his question all the same. Not enough time to answer such a rhetorical question; it was her job as a mother, childless or not, to comfort whoever was previously wailing.
She turned with haste, looking past Subject Two at the sleepy street littered with abandoned cars. A determined look on her face, her eyes scanned across a nearby lawn where she spotted a substantial rock adorning the decorated yard.
The only thing able to stop her swift movements towards the lawn was Subject Two's hand gripping onto her arm. "Slow down," he said softly. She realized how she must have looked, frantically reaching for something unobtainable. To him, she must have looked unhinged and extremely pathetic, but she already thought both of those things of herself, with or without his intrusive opinion. He was entirely irrelevant and it made almost no difference to Scarlett whether he coexisted with her or not. "Just–"
She yanked her arm from his hold. "Don't touch me," was all she muttered to him before she was out of reach again, off chasing down the ghost of her failed motherhood.
She returned with the great stone in tow, lugging it towards the car with no complaint of how heavy it was, or how its edges dug into her palms like the blade of a knife. None of that mattered. Her plans to shatter the window were derailed when she took notice of Subject Two, standing beside the ajar car door, peering inside with a disgusted look washed over his tired face.
Her eyebrows furrowed. All thoughts of how she could have sworn the door was locked fled. The rock fell from her loosened grip as she dragged her feet over to him. Only upon arrival did she see what had him so taken back.
A blood-stained car seat lied in the back seat of the car. Tiny chunks of organs and flesh littered the seat, dried blood adorning the seams and the toys that dangled ahead. A blood-soaked, cartoon-themed children's shoe rested beneath the seat, with what looked to be the remains of a small leg still hanging from its velcro-supported grip.
A shaky breath spilled from her mouth, and she took an unsteady step back. She tried swallowing all of her shock, her fear, her delusion, but was only greeted with a lump in her throat and a constricting feeling around her neck. Another breath left her trembling mouth, this one abrupt and heavy, and she backed away again.
"Hey," Subject Two began, closing the car door as he turned to face the blonde, "it's–"
"H-help- can you help me, please?"
Subject Two turned. He gave a quick glance to Scarlett, engulfed in stoicism and catatonia, but ultimately looked back to the smaller woman before him. Violent coughs burst from her chapped mouth, knocking her small frame to the concrete.
With no hesitation, Two rushed to the woman and pulled her to her feet. Her scraped knees blatantly couldn't support her own weight, but he had no qualms about holding her up if he needed to. A thick blanket of dirt marred her skin, with sporadic hints of blood scattered about. "You're alright," he told her eagerly, shaking his head in assurance. "I got you."
"I'm-" The dark-haired woman struggled to speak, eyelids fluttering more and more by the second. "I'm... 220960176. Alicia Marie Carver. 220960176. Alicia Carver. Class of 2009. Child of Charlotte and James Carver. 220960176. 220960176."
"No, you're okay," Two reiterated. "You don't need to speak. My name is Kellin, I can help you. I just need you to take a breath–"
She spun on her heel, turning away from him in a flash. Another fit of coughs erupted from her mouth, these rougher and harsher than the previous coughs. Blood splattered onto the damp concrete.
Kellin's eyes widened. He took a reluctant step forward, an arm raised as he readied himself to catch hold of her for when she inevitably fell. Eyes focused on her strained facial expression, one of his hands rested on the back of Alicia's shoulder: right where a gory bite mark lied proud.
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THE SOLIVAGANT BOY wept.
Steadfast tears streamed down his troubled skin without relent. Skin like the harshest of silk, drowning in the most heavy-hearted of rain dropping from the boy's damp eyelids that fiercely tried to obstruct the tears, but only gave up in the end.
He tried. Oh, how he tried.
And how he sat crying in the woods. Like a child who'd just lost sight of his mother, he remained in one place and yonderly awaited something he couldn't quite explain.
He only waited. He waited and he sobbed.
Like a child.
He was too weary to push that thought from his head, to muffle that voice mercilessly tormenting him with belittling words. Words that orbited around him; he was the sun, shining brightly and relishing in his own warmth, and then there were the planets. Trapped in his gravitational pull, never to be mislaid. Never to be changed.
The boundless words would never be altered. Always the same: "grow up," "men don't cry," "you did this to yourself," "you deserve this." And the voice they belonged to was one he couldn't identify, but it felt oddly familiar. He wouldn't expect it to not be well-known; its presence was sempiternal.
What was he supposed to do?
Weeping seemed to be the only feasible option, with all remnants of hope lost, all friends absent, and a mind plagued by the most disheartening of thoughts. The weight of a merciless world found comfort atop his shoulders, leaving choked sobs and tear-stained cheeks in its wake. And he could only let it. There was nothing more he could do.
He could try, but he found that recent events proved to him that sometimes he just wasn't enough. This moment felt like one of those times, for in no way was he mentally nor physically prepared to survive whilst simultaneously drowning in solitude. And while, yes, he could try – the little girl would inevitably die in the end. He'd unavoidably lose sight of his greatest friend. He'd somehow end up crying in the forest.
Then, was there even any point in picking himself up from the snow? Admittedly, the cold provided him with an unprecedented consolation. The snow cushioned his never-ending descent, crawling up his blood-stained skin, accommodating both his weight and the weight on his shoulders. Perhaps, he thought, the bitter cold was his new home. One of the most echoed phrases of the time before was, "home is where the heart is," and never had his chest and the aimlessly pounding organ within felt so cold. It was where he belonged, he told himself.
He wasn't crying anymore - or he was, but the wet snow masked his tears. He wasn't sure. He couldn't muster the strength to confirm neither the former nor the latter. It seemed rather taxing, and he was all too comfortable where he lied – almost in a fetal position with one side of his face caressed by the powdery snow.
His thoughts stopped racing, slowed by the immense ataraxia that consumed his cold body. All he could think of Jasper; all the times he beamed that toothy grin, all the times they laughed, all the times they made unspoken promises to never ever leave one another. And that a life without his closest friend was a dismal one, one not worth the effort of simply moving for. One not worth the taxing, repetitive act of aimlessly inhaling, aimlessly exhaling.
Inhaling, exhaling.
Inhaling... Exhaling.
Inhaling...
He didn't fail to remind himself of the tragedy that had taken place just hours earlier. The glint of the blade and how it was the last light he'd seen since that moment. The death of Subject One beckoned an everlasting darkness. It was winter before her death, but it wasn't until she lost her life that he realized just how frigid the air was, how thick the snow was, and how brumous and lifeless the sky was.
And now, it would always be winter. It would always be dark. Nothing could ever change that.
... Exhaling.
"Isn't it cold down there?"
Parker couldn't answer. He possessed every ability to, and simply couldn't. His bloodshot eyes would rather blankly gaze ahead at the blanket of snow and the army of trees than at the figure that towered over him.
He wanted to tell them that, yes, it was cold; it's always been cold, but he didn't open his eyes enough to see until now. And that it would always be cold, whether he liked it or not.
But he only stared.
"You've got to be freezing."
I am. I can't remember a time when I wasn't.
"You wanna get up?"
I don't think I can, and I don't think I want to.
"Yeah. Let's get you up."
Please don't.
"Pseudo-kidnapping aside, I'm a relatively cool guy. I have nice friends, too. We have beds that aren't, you know, snow, and it'll be a lot warmer where we're going. I think you'll like it."
The solivagant boy could no longer weep. Such strength had forsaken him. He could not speak, could not move, and severely wished he would just stop thinking, so his heart would stop pounding in his chest as his body became overwrought with anxiety and fear at the mysterious voice.
The cold slowly abandoned him as his body was lifted from the snow. Nothing hurt more. Not his abrupt realization that he was a failure, not his isolation, not the lump in his throat — his dereliction and the brokenness it left behind.
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sorry this took so long i had greater plans
parker is now played by steven yeun!!!
word count: 2253