Sing Out My Soul

I shivered as I stepped out of the Near & Far. The wind was flensing today, as it usually was in Canterlot. It blew down hard through from the north, across the lakes and into the city, howling between the multi-storied buildings with restless spite. Cars drifted by in either direction, their occupants moving towards one thing or another, and I watched them for a brief moment before scanning around.

Chrysalis was waiting for me, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. She was leaning against the wall of the building a quarter-block down. If I didn’t know she was a brilliant doctor I would say that she looked like a hooker pretending to be one. Her long, dark coat was open down the middle, and she was wearing a clean white blouse that hugged her lean curves. Her pencil skirt suggested more about her legs than they covered, to be honest, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

And she was smoking.

Shoving my hands into my pockets, I closed the distance, stopped, and leaned back against the wall beside her.

“Mind if I bum one?” I asked, not looking up.

She drew a hand out of her pocket and held out the white package with a sharp purple square over the front, and flicked the top open before I could read the brand. They didn’t look local, though. I’d never seen that box in the bodegas.

I took one anyway and tucked it between my lips before pulling out a box of matches, taking a pair from the sleeve, and striking them alight. I watched them burn for a moment; I watched as the fire slow ate its way down the clean, pale wooden stem. I watched just long enough for the heat to reach my fingers before holding the flame up to the tip of the cigarette and light it with a few drags.

We smoked in silence for several moments, and the ash had crept nearly to my knuckles before I finally lowered the cigarette, put it out against the wall behind me, and said, “you’re angry at me, aren’t you?”

“Not everything is about you, kid,” Chrysalis said around her cigarette. The smoke drifted up lazily from the lit end, and her eyes were fixed on some unseen point in the distance.

I turned back towards the cafe, then looked back up at Chrysalis, who was taking a deep drag. Smoke spilled from between her lips, and it gave her a darkly draconic appearance for a moment before she blew it out in a thick, pungent stream.

“I told her, you know,” she said suddenly, and I looked up sharply. “I told her that if she spiraled, and it came back to the lot of us,” she nodded back towards the cafe without looking, “that I would make sure it came back to you, too.”

“You threatened…” I couldn’t get her name past my lips, but my blood was boiling anyway as I rounded on Chrysalis, but before I could get another word out she turned and nailed me down with that glare of hers.

Loathe as I was to admit it, but her glare was a lot better than mine.

“I told her that you’d bet everything on her and that if she fucked up I’d make sure you lost that bet.” Her expression was bitter and colder than the winds around us.

Swallowing back the lump in my throat, I squared up at her, tipping my chin up and giving her my best glare right back, and held my arms out wide. “So? Do it! I’m right here!”

That harlequin stare of hers was eerie in its intensity. It was drilling right into me like she was reaching into my head and dredging up everything that made me tick, and I knew in that moment that I was right. That there was something very wrong with Chrysalis Hive.

“Why bother?” She said, finally looking away and putting her cigarette out on the wall, leaving an ashen stain of her own right beside mine. “She did it for me.”

Rage wasn’t a word that could quantify how angry I was. Fucking volcanic got close. I was shaking. I wanted to hit. I wanted to drag her to the ground and beat her smug face in until it was nothing but paste!

“What,” I hissed, “the fuck is your problem?”

“You really want to know, kid?” Chrysalis asked.

I waited for a moment before realizing that wasn’t a rhetorical question. She was really asking if I wanted to know. The worst part of that realization was that I wasn’t actually sure that the answer was yes. Did I want to know? In that moment, I hated her. I hated her so much I really, actually might have wanted to kill her, but at the same time, I knew she was smart. Brilliant even. You don’t get to be one of the best medical diagnosticians in the nation by being a shithead.

So no. Honestly, I didn’t want to know, but I said yes anyway because I’m stubborn like that.

“My problem is that you think a million pounds of sweat and blood will solve everything,” Chrysalis said flatly. “My problem is that you think you’re so smart and so stubborn that shit just has to work out, but it doesn’t. Most of the time, it doesn’t, and better than half the time that it does it was because of luck and nothing else, and because of that, because of you,” Chrysalis jabbed a finger under my nose, “Wallflower floated through the system when she should have been sectioned.”

It would have hurt less if she’d just shot me, but at least I could have the satisfaction of know that I’d been right.

I really hadn’t wanted to know.

“Fuck you,” I whispered, but the invective came out weak and broken. “I…I did everything that I could!” My words were coming out wet and harsh, but I had to force them out. I had to make her understand! “I couldn’t just…just let her go! I couldn’t just fucking let her go back to the streets! And she would have! If I hadn’t been there, then she would have!”

“You stacked the deck to force my hand, kid,” Chrysalis replied as she pulled another cigarette out and casually lit it, took a drag, and blew out another stream of grey. “I stamped her approval because I liked you, because you had brains and moxie, and you reminded me of me.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I said.

“Sure you are,” Chrysalis took another drag and shrugged. “You’re just smart enough to get in over your head and dumb enough to not be able to get out. You’re good enough to know when to duck—” she drew a sharp line across her throat with her thumb— “but not fast enough to save anyone else.”

I opened my mouth to refute her but, to my horror, I realized I wasn’t sure how. Her description of me was…eerily on point.

“You win some, you lose some,” Chrysalis said after a moment of me goldfishing and trying like hell to scrape some semblance of my self-image back together. “Take this as a learning opportunity and a chance to get smarter and faster, or else,” she shrugged and put out her finished smoke, “someone else will lose their head the next time you duck.”

More than ever, I hated her. Now, though, it wasn’t just because of what she’d said about Wallflower. It wasn’t about what she’d done or the threats she’d made. I hated her because I couldn’t tell her she was wrong.

Because she wasn’t.

Chrysalis was right. At the end of the day, it was my fault.

I was the reason that Wallflower died.

But, Written’s Quill, I just wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt her because I was hurting and…fucking hell, she deserved it. I could feel it in my bones!

“Is that why you’re here?” I asked flatly.

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes at my question. If we were as much alike as she thought, then I’m sure she knew what my change of tone meant. Volcanic anger was one thing. Red, fiery anger was stupid anger. It was the kind of anger that lead to me pitching myself headlong into a fight I couldn’t win.

Cold, blue anger was different. It was bitter and hateful and usually ended in blood, tears, or both.

“With them, I mean,” I nodded back at the Near & Far. “Are you here because you ducked?”

She gave me a flat, dagger-edged smile.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Then she brushed past me, and as she did, I decided she was right again.

I really would like to know.

Tightening my fingers around the geode that had ended up in my pocket, I gripped it hard enough that I felt the bite of pain as my scabbed hand reopened under the bandage, and dredged out the power buried in that stone. I dug it up, drank deep, and an amber fire bloomed between my fingers as I reached out my free hand and grabbed Chrysalis by the wrist.

Have you ever had a moment of real, true clarity? Like an epiphany? A moment where the truth of something fundamental was suddenly made known to you in such a jarringly blatant manner that you couldn’t help but confront the totality of it all at once?

Let me follow that up with another question.

Have you ever reached for something and been zapped by static electricity?

The moment I touched Chrysalis Hive’s skin with my fingers, I was hit with a static shock followed by the knife-sharp clarity that I had done something very wrong.

Every other time I’ve used my geode, it’s been like dropping into the deep end of a swimming pool. I go from freefall to total submersion. It’s a constant descent, going further and further into the corners of a person’s memories and experiences and what makes them who they are. In that very same way, though, it’s like swimming through still waters.

This was like getting hit by a surge tide of guilt, rage, pain, and hatred.

Be standing my ground. Feet are planted and she’s screaming at me. Accusing me.

Be smiling, bared teeth and naked anger. Not my fault. Not my responsibility. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I tell her. She screams at me. She hates me.

Be spitting in her face. Her sister was stupid. Stupid girl. Thought she was smart. Should’ve thought better. Should have—

—I staggered away from her, the intensity was pounding at my skull from all sides. Everything was jumbled and out of order. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t see straight.

“What did you do?!” Chrysalis’ mask of contempt and disdain was gone for the first time since I’d known her as she seized me by the collar of my jacket and heaved me off my feet. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

My head was spinning. I couldn’t make heads or tails. Up or do—

—be showing her the ropes. Tap-tap-tapping. Fingers dance across keys opening locks and cracking firewalls. Brush of a finger and the algorithm runs.

Be smiling as she sits beside me, her blue eyes are wide, her smile is wider.

Show me, Luna says. Show me how.

Be showing her how. Showing her shadows under shadows. Darkness under darkness. Places where faces don’t matter. Where ones and zeroes make and destroy lives. Where spiders spin webs of intricate code in dark places. Dark Webs.

Be showing her words and phrases. Cracks and passwords. Push this button. The lights go off. Push that button. Alarms go silent. Be who you want. Whoever you want. Anyone and everyone.

She pushes the buttons. She learns the ropes. I show her how and she—

—Chrysalis dropped me and I hit the ground hard with my stomach in knots. Coughing up a mouthful of bile, I tried to let go of the geode. It was chaos. It was a mess. I couldn’t—

—bang-bang goes the gavel. Be listening to the words of the man at the pulpit. Be staring into her eyes. Blue eyes. Pleading eyes. Help her. Celestia begs me.

Be ignoring the pleas. Ignoring the eyes. Not my fault. Not my fault. Not my fault.

My program. My skills. My ropes.

Not my fault.

I finally let go of the geode. My mouth tastes like acid and oatmeal, and I wipe my lips clear as I looked up at Chrysalis. Finally, I understand that look she always has on her face. The look of total contempt. Like the person she’s looking at is lower than dirt. I understand because that’s the only way I’d be able to look at Chrysalis from that point on.

“You let her take the fall,” I said flatly.

“It wasn’t my—”

“—fault, yeah, I fucking got that part,” I snarled over her, and I saw real emotion cross her features. “Not your fault Luna got sent to juvie, right?”

Guilt—the kind of guilt that eats at your gut from the inside like acid—was plain as day on a face that was pallid despite her dark complexion. I stood on shaky legs, spitting another gobbet of phlegm and bile-flavored spit onto the ground.

“She was a minor! The record got sealed, and she was fine,” Chrysalis snapped.

Somehow, I doubted that.

“You and Celestia,” I said, rather than respond to her defense. “You were together back then, weren’t you?”

Chrysalis opened and closed her jaw several times, and I watched the war happen behind her eyes. The need to defend herself warred with the desire to be done with this conversation. I knew which one she would pick. I knew because she was right, she and I were too much alike. We were both too proud.

“It’s past and done,” Chrysalis bit out. “She and I are done, and no, she never forgave me.”

“But you want her to,” I said quietly, and she froze.

“I don’t—”

“That’s why you’re doing all this,” I gestured back to Near & Far. “That’s why you’re helping, and why you’re working shit hours in a shittier clinic in the shittiest part of town despite making more in an hour at your day job than what Bright and Sticky make in a week!”

I advance on her and to my surprise, she draws back. Maybe because she’s afraid I’ll drag something else out of her.

“And why?!” My temper is boiling but I don’t know why. Maybe because the geode leaves my emotions raw. Maybe for another reason altogether. “Because you think she’ll love you if you try hard enough?! That all you have to do is save enough kids from dying on the streets or in a padded cell to make your shitty excuse for a life mean something despite the fact that you couldn’t save the one that mattered most?! Is that it?!”

I was screaming by the end. My voice was as raw as my soul, and Chrysalis was looking down at me with a stricken expression. I could see the hate boiling behind her eyes. She hated me. Good. I hated her too.

“You’re right,” she said is a voice so soft that it put a chill down my spine. “Is that what you want to hear, Sunset?” Chrysalis straightened and flattened her blouse, then pulled out another cigarette and tucked it between her lips. “You’re right. I want her to love me again, and she probably never will, but I’ll keep trying even if it takes me the rest of my life—” she lit her smoke and took a drag— “because at least she’s still around to forgive me.”

She blew a stream of smoke into my face as I numbly registered her words, then she turned on her heels and I listened to them click-click-click away.

It took almost an hour for me to register that I’d promised to come back to the cafe to get a ride home from Sticky and Bright, and that that was probably why my phone had been blowing up after I left.

I bet it would still be blowing up if I hadn’t turned it off a half-hour ago.

As I walked, all I could think of was how much I hated her. How much I hated Chrysalis. I hated her because she was right about so much. About her and I being alike. About her still having the chance that I never would again. She was right about all of it and I hated that more than almost anything, even if it wasn’t quite as much as I hated myself.

She was right about me and right about Wallflower, and in the end there was nothing I could do about that. A numb, angry part of my brain wanted to curl up in an alley and die just so I could make it all stop.

Everything hurt so much, and…

And it would never stop hurting, because Wallflower was gone, because I wasn’t enough and couldn’t do enough and couldn’t save her.

I couldn’t stop her.

I only realized I was going somewhere specific when I got to Wallflower’s apartment, and as I came to a halt I realized it was a place that I had been both consciously and unconsciously avoiding coming to even though I knew I would have to at some point. Or at least, someone had to. Some should have, anyway. If this were someone else, it would have been a family member. Next of kin. Something like that. Wallflower didn’t have anything like that. All she had was a piss-poor excuse for a friend who literally couldn’t help her to save her life.

Even now, all Wallflower had was me, and wasn’t that a crying shame.

I’d been given her personal effects by the funeral director—what few she’d had on her, which amounted to nothing more than a broken cell phone and a keyring with a two keys and a little electronic fob on it. The fob got me through the locked door, and a few flights of stairs later I had the key held out to get me into the apartment itself.

I tell myself that I’m going there to tidy up. To make sure that nothing gets swept up by the apartment cleaners that should have been kept. It’s as poor a lie as I’ve ever come up with. My right hand holds the key while my left is laid over the pocket carrying my geode.

Surely there would be something left, right? Something that would have enough of an impression to…to see her. To feel her. Just a little bit.

Fitting the key to the lock, I turn it and push the door open.

It’s musty and smells vaguely of wilting foliage. There are plants in the window that are sagging and dying from lack of sunlight, fresh air, and water. If I had anything like the green thumb that Wallflower had, I might have tried to save them, but I was always better with machines than plants.

The apartment was so painfully small that it was almost claustrophobic. I carded my fingers through my hair, brushing through the slush and snow that had matted down the long strands as I looked around for something to gather things up in.

I spotted a stray grocery bag on the floor. That would do.

Stepping inside, I hip-checked the door closed and knelt to pick up the bag. I reached out and flicked the light on as I stood, and immediately my heart leapt into my throat.

Her apartment was a studio, so it was one room plus a bathroom. Nothing else. The bed was right there in the living room beside the kitchenette. It was a simple twin-size with messy sheets and blankets, and there was nothing at all important about it except for the severed length of rope that had been thrown over it, and which was still tied into a neat slipknot.

A sick, awful part of me was so, so tempted as I walked over, dropped the bag by the bed, and sat down beside the rope. I tightened my grip over the geode through the fabric of my pocket as I reached out with my free hand and scooped up the rough length.

It felt awful. Just physically awful. It had a terrible, scratchy texture that gave me rope burn just thinking it, and on the heels of that, I realized that this was the last thing that Wallflower had ever felt.

My stomach rolled and suddenly I was dropping the rope and sprinting for the bathroom. I shouldered my way in and collapsed in front of the bowl as I emptied out the rest of my breakfast.

Sobs ripped raw from my chest and past my lips as I bawled against the dirty porcelain. Clinging to the edges was the only thing keeping me upright. Soon even my fingers failed me, and I slowly slumped over as hollow, breathless cries wracked my body. I curled in on myself sobbing bitterly. I think her name spilled out of me a few times.

I wanted her back. I just wanted to have her back. I wanted to hold her and bury my face against her hair and tell her that I loved her and that she was everything to me. I wanted to tell her that she was the first thing I thought of every morning and the last thought on my mind when I went to bed, and that I would be there for her no matter how bad things got or how ugly life became. I wanted to but I couldn’t, and all because I was a coward who couldn’t tell the girl I loved more than life itself precisely those few words.

Maybe if I had, she would still be here.

If only I were better.

I don’t know how long I was lying on the bathroom floor, but it was long enough for my tears and my sick to dry up. When I finally came back to myself, it was to a feeling like someone had hollowed out the inside of my chest and dumped it in the cistern.

Everything hurt and I was exhausted, so for a few more minutes I let the world pass by while I laid on the floor in abject misery, and it was there that I saw something that seared itself into my mind forever

There was a small box behind the u-bend of the toilet.

Part of my brain told me not to pick it up. Don’t, it said. Just don’t. There’s nothing good in that box and if you pick it up you will regret it.

I reached out and I picked up the box.

Sitting up, I ran my hand over the brown surface. It was cheap metal and about half the six of an average shoebox, and for being where it was, it was surprisingly free of dust.

It had a simple latch lock which was, predictably, locked. I pulled her keyring from my pocket and eyed the smaller second key. It looked about right. The real question was, did I want to open it? Obviously not. I obviously didn’t want to open it?

Was I going to?

I fit the key to the lock and it turned with a light, oiled click.

This was the moment—the second between open and closed—where I could turn back. I could set it down, push it back behind the u-bend, and pretend I’d never seen it. It would be better, and I knew it, and that’s why I wasn’t going to do that.

Because I didn’t deserve ‘better’.

I flipped the lid open, and almost choked on the sob that rolled up my throat. If I were naive and stupid, I could pretend it was a first aid kit. First aid kits had bandages, after all. They also had cotton swabs and metal bandage clips and little bottles of rubbing alcohol.

They didn’t, however, have neat little boxes of single-edge razors. They wouldn't have single orphaned razor lying discarded amongst the otherwise tidy organization of the box.

A razor whose edge bore a faint patina of brown rust along its edge.

I couldn’t have said how long I sat there with that miserable little box in my lap, but I do know what I was thinking about that whole time.

Do I, or don’t I?

The question of should or shouldn’t was a given. Obviously, I shouldn’t. The problem was that that was also a given for everything I’d ever done in my entire life, apparently, and that hadn’t stopped me.

It’s not really a question, though, just like opening the box wasn’t really a question. It was a hesitation. All I was doing, then and now, was hesitating. Just like I hesitated with Wallflower. That hesitation cost the world the brightest, most perfect soul it had, and now…Written’s Quill, how dare I even think about hesitating?

How dare I.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered hollowly as I took the geode out of my pocket and rolled it around in my palm.

It was stained with blood again from where I’d gripped it painfully hard while ripping a vision from Chrysalis. There were rough abrasions on my fingers that I hadn’t even noticed during my walk. The scabs and rusty brown stains on my fingers were neatly mirrored by the ones on the edge of the razor that I pluck up out of the little bed of clean, white cotton and linen.

Closing my eyes, I gripped the geode and called up its power, with the rusty little razor held carefully between finger and thumb. It’s time I face what I should have long ago. No more hesitati—

—be numb. Be so, so numb.

Be burning and itching and screaming on the inside.

Be numb. Be so, so numb.

Be swallowed by the silent scream of the world—so loud and deafening and soundless that nothing else can fill the void, and it’s all coming from the gaping hole in my chest that’s so empty it’s choking me to death.

Pinhole vision. Grey and empty and tightening, tightening, tightening, until I can’t breathe and can’t think.

Bathroom. To the bathroom. Find the cure. Got to let it out. Let the quiet out. Let the pain out. Have to—

—the razor drops from my fingers, falling with a tinny clatter to the cheap tile below. My eyes were burning and my throat had constricted to the point that I couldn’t make a sound.

Not enough. It wasn’t enough. Not yet. I wasn’t done yet.

I scooped up the razor and—

—be shaking.

Be tired.

Be so, so numb.

Be pushing the metal to the soft, spongy flesh. Metal bites deep. Drinks deep. Let the quiet out. It lets the quiet out. It has to let the quiet out.

Why isn’t it letting the quiet out!?

Thunder. Pounding thunder hammers the walls. Voices. Laughter. Low bass and high treble. Happy voices. Cheering and laughing and jeering and—

—I spat a curse as I jerked my fist open. I’d gripped the razor so tight it had bitten straight into my palm.

“Shit!” I hold it up and let the blood drip from the blade.

My eyes were burning. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my ribcage.

More. I needed to see more. I needed to see everything because I wasn’t here to see it when it mattered most. She deserved to have someone see it—see her. One more time, just one more…I gripped the geode in one hand and it flared with ruddy, amber light, and held tight to the razor in the other.

And nothing happened.

“Come on,” I hissed. “Come on! Y-You were just working!” I brought the razor and the geode closer as if that would help. “Come on!”

The amber light flared brighter and angrier, and the lights in the apartment flickered spastically, and finally, something inside of me snapped. I screamed at it. At the geode and the razor and that whole damned room. I screamed out all of my rage and my anger and my sorrow and everything.

Amber fire exploded around me in a sharp and sudden wave, and every light bulb blossomed impossibly bright for a split second before they snapped with a whipcrack pop as their filaments burnt out, and the bathroom and all the rest of the apartment were plunged into darkness, and the only light was the geode which was burning low like a sullen ember at the back corner of a hearth.

And nothing happened.

Why?

Why couldn’t I feel her anymore?

I held the geode and the razor cupped in shaking hands as I stared down at them. Pleading with them. Was I that much of a failure? Was I so far gone that even the memory of her wanted nothing to do with me?

Was I—

creak…

creak…

Cold. I was suddenly so cold. I knew that sound. I knew it because I’d heard it in my nightmares. It was the creak of rough rope and old wood.

creak…

creak…

“Stop it,” I murmured the words as I clenched my eyes shut. “It’s not real, it’s…it’s not real.” It couldn’t be real. I was snapping. I was finally losing it completely.

creak…

cre—

…thump…

The sound came from the apartment just near the bed. A sound like two feet striking an old wooden floor. I didn’t look up. I wasn’t sure I could. I wanted to. An awful, twisted part of me wanted to and it was the same part that wanted to believe that it was real. That I wasn’t losing my mind.

Or maybe, it’s the part that was hoping that I was.

That was, actually, far more likely. Yeah, that had to be it. I was finally losing my mind. I wasn’t really hearing footsteps coming from the den outside the bathroom door. I wasn’t hearing the old doorknob creaking as it was turned. I certainly wasn’t hearing the door open as I stared down into the ruddy, dead-ember light of my geode.

“I tried,” I said hollowly, even though I knew that, rationally, there was no one there to hear my words. “I tried to help…I…I did everything I could.”

Everything was buzzing faintly. My fingers and toes were prickling with pins and needles as blood dripped from the shallow cut on my palm down to the bathroom tile. My ears were buzzing too. Static wash was all I could hear. Static, and…

…shshnshet…

“I miss you so much.” The words left my lips like fire, burning my throat and tongue on the way out. “I miss you with every inch of my heart, and I…Quill, I should have told you how I felt…I could have told you, but I…”

…amshihshhillsshprshhcioushhshhtshou…

“I know you’re not real,” I said quietly, “I know I’m losing it. I lost it and everything else that mattered the day you died.” I turned the razor over in my hand and stared down at the rusty edge. It was still sharp but… I set it down, then reached for the metal box.

I didn’t look up. There was nothing there, after all.

Tugging a fresh razor from the box, I admired the keen edge. It wouldn’t take much. Go deep, then a little deeper, then a little bit deeper, and that would be it. Carotid artery. Femoral artery. Both, maybe. Then wait

…shshnshet…

I wasn’t really hearing her. I wasn’t hearing her voice because she was dead and gone and it was my fault. It was my fault for not doing enough. Not being present enough. I could have done more. I should have done more!

…shunshet…

“I miss you,” I choked the word out past a throat that could barely drag in air.

My hand was shaking.

…amshishtillpreshioshhshstoyou?

“Always,” I sobbed dryly. “Always and forever.”

Carotid first. It was the easiest. It wouldn’t be fast, but it would work. This was my fault. Everything was my fault. It was all always my fault.

I raised the razor up and—

…am I still precious to you?

—a pale hand with a soft green complexion that was limned in a strange, static glow settled on mine, and slim, gentle fingers curled over the razor and around my hand and pushed it down.

I could feel it.

Under the wash of numbness and the prickle of pins and needles, I could feel her.

Impossible. This was impossible. Even by magic’s standards, this was impossible. Was this really happening? Or had I snapped even harder than I thought? Was I really staring at her hand? At her arm?

“Wall…Wally?” Her name passed my lips as I looked up and—

CRACK

Gone. The hand was gone. The vision—apparition— whatever it was, was gone with a gut-wrenching and heart-stopping snap of bone.

I blinked several times, trying to get the spots out of my eyes as I stared at the spot she would have been occupying a breath ago. I could still feel the warm tingle of her skin on mine. I could still hear her voice in my ears. Had it all been an illusion? Just my brain breaking down so badly under the weight of my sins that I hallucinated that whole encounter? It had to be that, right? It had to be.

Swallowing thickly, I tightened my grip on the geode, and in my other hand, I…

My fingers closed on nothing.

The brand new razor was gone. I stood up sharply, knocking the metal box away in a deafening clatter as I looked down and around myself. It had been right there! The razor had been right there in my hand! It couldn’t have—!

creak…

creak…

I snapped my head up like a bloodhound with a scent. That sound! I knew that sound. The sound from dreams and nightmares and febrile visions! I knew that sound!

Stumbling out of the bathroom. I held up my geode which was burning just barely as bright as a candle. It was enough to illuminate a small portion of the little studio apartment. Enough to glint off of something lying in the center of the noose’s loop I’d dropped it onto the bed.

A bright and shiny single-edged razor. Fresh from the box.