Chapter Five

Chapter Five

1

“Echo,” Dr. Sannard said.  His pressed suit beckoned acknowledgement as my eyes raked over him.  “I gave you sedative.  It looks to be wearing off though.  How do you feel?”

Judging by the brown cuffs securing my wrists and ankles to my chair it’d be difficult to lunge at him.  Their sordid elixirs hindered my abilities while in this present form, but I assure you were I to shift into another nothing would prevent me from a display of ultimate power.

“It’s coming,” I hissed.

Dr. Sannard looked up from scribbling something across a heap of papers in front of him.  “What’s coming?”

“Armageddon,” I replied.

2

Mother may I, it thought.

"May you what?"

Rip the flesh from innocence and wear its intestines as my garb?

Two paces behind Mother a pair of lips parted. Within their cavernous orifice saw-like metal barbs shimmered as an emerald tongue snaked around her.  "You cannot swallow tears.  They are the promise for salvation," Mother replied.

But salvation doesn't know the way of the hero, it argued hotly.

Mother's eyes spun back into her head while the rotten meat slab enveloped her and squeezed. Color drained from her face, veins darkened across her flesh until by one they exploded, and splintering bone pierced through meaty walls that quivered with her last breath.

There was no room for forgiveness in a world dominated by hypocrites. There was no wrong or right anymore. There was only the sin. Hell was real. Do not think it was a fairytale. It existed. Those dwelling in its midst knew pain. They knew misery and their only companion was torture, it explained.

It shifted its sights as the tongue dragged the inert bulk toward its mouth.  It paused before continuing, feeling decay grip the atmosphere. Mangled escorts befall angels whose bold deeds rust shut solemn oaths.

"This not a game," hissed a voice.

It perceived Krosnos with a slanted view.

"You take no shape in order to remain hidden but you are as exposed as ever," Krosnos seethed. "You have much to learn. As a whelp you forsake true evil. Instead you make mischief your chief concern. You are not one of my true brethren!"

A swirling electrical mass evolving from thin air, it opened burning cherry eyes that narrowed to mere slits. It hovered a silent moment before drifting slowly left than right.

"Are you insecure in your position," it asked. "Your stench of failure is overwhelming. What have you really ever accomplished?”

"Don't you dare speak to me like some mighty power," Krosnos countered. "You haven't the authority!"

"And who says I don't? You? You are thousands of years too late to govern over a nation of souls whose plight in life is to forsake god and all the lies weaved into it."

"You haven't the right…."

"I have every right! You are stuck in your own conceded nonsense. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you haven't what it takes to be a master of evil? Your ideas are far from original. You lack depth and connect to feelings just likes mortals do. In fact they rule you."

"Talk," Krosnos barked as he unrolled two shadowy tentacles that swiped at concrete. Tiny hard gray slivers few and showered the unkempt lawn next to it. "All you ever do is talk. You must love to boast the very powers you do not have, will never have or feel entitled to have."

"We both were here since the start of time and even before," it calmly stated. "You forget we watched our siblings build worlds and invent life. We are not so different really. As much as you hate to admit we enjoy seeing blood fall like rain, bodies fly as bombs are dropped and even hopes die with shattered dreams."

Krosnos glided back on smoky hooves that narrowly skimmed the cracked pavement. "Do you think we are even remotely capable of agreeing? You are truly a fool. I thought Destra was hopeless but you overshadow that worthless excuse for an Ancient."

"Ancient," it questioned. "That is a word given to us by humans and you utter it like you except it. They name us like they name their dogs. That alone goes to show you are not worthy of being the rightful evil in this domain."

"I am not going to allow such morbid sentiments to tarnish my godhood," Krosnos bellowed.

"And by whose standards are you considered to be a god?"

3

He rested his chin on the back of his hand as he leaned forward, furrowed his sculpted brows and asked, “Is this the same Armageddon you spoke of before?”

I rolled my head back as my eyes locked on the crisscross pattern of the ceiling tiles.  He was a hopeless cause.  Perhaps I should demonstrate a bit of my power.  Of course that would prove nothing since he’d likely chalk it up to being a trick of some sort: an optical illusion enforced by a mentally ill con artist.

Wait a minute.  I squirmed in the confines of my straitjacket.  He thought it necessary to have me dressed in restraints rather than simply bound to a chair at some point in our previous conversation.  I don’t know why he thought it’d be better.  Maybe I was starting to wear on his nerves with my constant biting at my fingers.  Either way I chose to play along.

“Oh,” I exclaimed as realization flooded my head.  Maybe I could impose thoughts.  His mind wasn’t a secret chamber after all.  “I can let you see.  Think of it as a mind movie.”

He sat back, pen rolling between his fingers with confusion swirling in his eyes, as he replied, “What…?”  His sentence was cut short as I began projecting images of an earlier time into his consciousness.  He gasped, but was helpless against my will.  He went limp.  What was this?  He wondered with no explanation as to how his thoughts were suddenly not his own and soon was engulfed by them.

“Just watch and listen,” I said before the present faded to black.

4

Echo rose to her feet. With the candle in a hand she shuffled forward. The brass holder's handle was cool in her grasp, foreign and yet somehow familiar. Floor boards squeaked beneath her weight and she came to an abrupt stop.  She shook her head. She didn't know it, did she?

You are tied to them in more ways than one, the voice replied.

An utter growl hushed the voice. Raising the candle a tad higher she narrowed her gaze as shades of gray swam across the room. 

This isn't reality, is it?  Why does everything keep changing? 

5

Echo sat up with the realization reality had again shifted. Sunshine streamed through the window and caressed every dark strand of hair flooding over her slim shoulders and down her back. As her gaze panned the room her grip on the blanket tightened. She swung her legs over the edge and shuffled to the closet. Inside she crept and closed the door, her palm producing illumination that aided her in her search. Pushing dresses and other articles of clothing aside she nudged a shoebox with her big toe.

With her free hand she removed the lid as she kneeled. Inside nestled amidst tissue paper was the Dagger. Its ivory handle, smooth and cool, slid into her reach. Its blade glistened as she turned it over and over again.  Snuff out the light and she what happens.  As she rolled her fingers into a fist the light extinguished though the sharp silver still glimmered, distorted shape, sound and color until reality again became the past.

6

     As she lifted the candle higher her brows furrowed.  Dense fog ensnarled the passageway.  She moved into it inch by inch.  Cold damp stone bit at her bare feet; each step finding dirt, pebbles and other masses she dared not to examine.   Then there was the voice.  It rang in her head like a dying siren.  She lowered the candle, her arm a piece of lead that became heavier and heavier.  Against moss blanketed wall she slid down until floor met her aching bottom.

Flooding her conscious, the voice seized her as it said, “We are siblings.”

“Krosnos,” she whispered.

 Slowly the life of the candle's flame ebbed away.  Darkness spun its inky web and even though she closed her eyes macabre visions slithered into frame.  They ate at her resistance, channeled forth screeching voice clusters that pounded in her ears, and when icy fingers curled around her wrists she shot up.

  In heavy obscurity it stood before her.  With eyes as red as blood and a face as white as snow, it smiled and said, "There is no time to rest."

 She shivered.  It's foul breathed fanned a green mist toward her.  Her hands clasped her nose and mouth.  The urge to empty her stomach's contents was strong, nearing impossible to resist.

"I have a gift," it continued.  "You, like all your siblings, have many names.  Your name in this realm is Annabelle and the body you inhabit is not your own."

Echo shook her head.  The name brought with it vague memories of another atmosphere, yet no matter how hard she concentrated it slipped from her grasp.  She doubled over.  Pain jetted through her.   From the corner of her eye she caught sight of her hand rising on its own.  A single finger flicked and light flooded the corridor.

"This body," Annabelle/Echo rasped.  "Who or what am I?"

Her eyes adjusted to the brightness.  Its warmth thawed a set of memories that flashed by too quickly for her to dissect.  Dizziness claimed her a moment and she stumbled before the sturdiness of the wall collected her.

 There is no time left. No space large enough.  Annabelle/Echo slouched. Dead space drifted ahead. Breaches of rusty fog crawled by. She clawed at the wall behind her as she pulled herself into a stand. Feeling her fingernails peel back she winced and consulted the damage. On closer inspection they were fingernails at all. What held her interest was gleaming talons growing from gray digits.   She shook her head in hopes to silence the voice ringing in her ears. Swaying she stepped over pinkish glops that seemingly appeared after the atmosphere shivered and groaned. Bodies moved from her left. They paused as though to acknowledge her and grunted. With overstretched jaws, disfigured hands and torsos, they appealed to a greater horror.

 "Go away," she hissed and like whipped puppies they retreated.

 She lingered at a desk with an overturned chair. Scattered paper and bottles cluttered its surface. In the haze swirling around her she squinted. A broken pen lay bleeding near a corner. Books lined shelves of towering cases flanking a barred window. She gripped the solid beams and backed away as they melted.