AnimeCon Harem 14: Finale pt 2

   The violence and impossible horror of the situation turned away just as abruptly as it had arrived. Alternating red and blue light from a police car washed back and forth across the expanse of the convention center’s cinderblock wall. The siren was painfully loud, but there was a kind of grating purity to that which bit through the chaos of the previous moments, because it prompted all of her assailants to turn and flee, running on down the alleyway.

   Chloe’s mind was still so frozen in panic that she clambered over to the dumpster and clutched at the filthy steel corner of it as she shook and sobbed. This—this wasn’t supposed to happen. This was all that bastard Brian’s fault. It was all his fault. All his fault all his fault all his fault if he’d only showed up sooner, if he’d been there when he was supposed to, if he, all his fault, if there, his fault, if it wasn’t, Brian’s, if the, Brian, if—

   She wailed and felt tears and snot stream freely down her face amid the blood and grime, pressing herself into the safety of a tiny corner between the brick wall and the restaurant dumpster.

   Fear and shame and sickening, horrible rage leagues beyond anything she’d ever felt before crashed throughout her with apocalyptic silver fury. Everything had—it was—everything was all over. Her life was over now. Everything was over, and it was all bastard Bryan’s fault. Brian should have—could have EASILY showed up just in time. Chloe knew he was fit and shouldn’t have had any problem tossing aside the three rapists. Brian wanted to see them defile her. He’d practically stood by and just—WATCHED it happen. He’d barely even tried to intervene, and what Brian actually did to help her amounted to practically nothing.

   He’s—he’s standing over me, right now, isn’t he? Chloe’s ragged breaths were coming quicker and quicker as she began to hyperventilate. SMIRKING. Looking down at me, laughing at how things have turned out, just fucking, just, just fucking GLAD to see me this way!

   No matter what, consequences be damned now, she wanted Brian dead. Only after he was thoroughly taken care of would she be able to turn her mind towards anything else. Every thought now had that edge of pain and violence to it, each one broke off and joined the chaotic sawmill of sparkling blender blades ripping and raging through the inside of her head. He needed to fucking die, and that was all there was to it.

   Shaking with fury, Chloe cracked open one eye to cast a glare of hateful unconstrained insanity up at Brian, who was standing over her—

   He wasn’t there.

   ...Brian? Chloe sniffled in confusion, unable to make sense of what was going on. Did he just… LEAVE?

   Did that worthless PRICK Brian just show up to watch me humiliated, and then fucking RUN AWAY?! Chloe was almost unable to contain her indignation, she felt it mounting into a horrible pressure behind her eyes, her cheeks, and her trembling snarl. I’ll kill him. I’LL FUCKING KILL HIM. He’s NOT going to get away with this. I’m like this, and where is he? Where is he?! He—

   Just as another glassy storm of manic mirror shards crashed through her psyche, Chloe’s homicidal eyes darted back to the unmoving person on the ground. The body laying there on the asphalt was… so familiar to her that the rolling chaos of silver shrapnel seemed to hang and stall and then peter out within her mind.

   Broken pieces of memory and emotion, robbed of their violent momentum, began to drop down—because Chloe recognized the shape of his shoulders, that shirt, the shape of his neck and the downy soft taper cut hair resting upon the pavement.

   Brian? Chloe’s mouth fell open in disbelief.

   The fierce migraine seemed to drop away as if the talons of hate squeezing the pain into place were so stunned they’d simply let go. Chloe knew Brian, she could tell that this was him, but—his actual face was now an almost unrecognizable discolored swath of bruise; eyes swollen shut, nose clearly broken, mouth a completely bloodsmeared mess as though they’d taken turns kicking his face in. As she mentally replayed the sounds of impacts smacking into flesh that’d had her flinching against the brick wall earlier in fear, Chloe realized that it wasn’t as though they’d been kicking his face in. They really did.

   No, Chloe’s sinking feeling continued into a most unwelcome freefall. No, no, no no no—Brian?

   This wasn’t how she wanted it to happen. Brian getting his comeuppance wasn’t satisfying this way. This wasn’t the punishment she had planned for him, this was something different, something wrong, out of the field of her expectations, and to her surprise, she really hated it. Brian deserved… other things, not this. Brian didn’t deserve this.

   I-I was almost raped, Chloe thought to herself in a numb daze. It was—it was—they attacked me an-an-and then I was almost RAPED.

   She sagged down in place against the dirty dumpster and dared to breath again, feeling only shock and disbelief. Chloe could hear the doors of the police car opening, then quick footfalls echoing down the alleyway as a pair of policemen approached in a hurry.

   I just want to go home! Chloe fell forward on her hands and then moved forward through her tears, crawling towards where Brian lay. I just—can we just go home? Can we have it so that this whole stupid fucking weekend never happened? I-I’m so tired and scared and I just want to go home!

   “Br-Brian?” Chloe cried, hovering over him with hands out but unsure of what to even do. “Brian?”

   This wasn’t supposed to happen. It looked bad. His face wasn’t handsome anymore, it was—it was contusions, it was puffy and broken and wrong, his eyelids had puffed over all but one corner of his left eye, but in that little visible sliver she saw only saw wet blood. Was he even breathing? Was he dead?! She’d hated Brian with every iota of her being, but he wasn’t supposed to actually die. Was he? If he was dead, then what was she supposed to—

   What am I supposed to do?!

   “Brian, Brian get up,” Chloe pleaded. “Please just—Brian get up, it’s okay. You’re okay, right? You j-just—just. Brian? Brian?”

   Those fallen slivers of broken glass embedded all over felt like they were going cold, and Chloe reeled through hysterical tears as the pain they’d given her bled away into an empty feeling of loss. There was no comfort in that, and it wasn’t better than the headache. It was worse, it was so much worse, it was a hollowing sensation, it was her insides being eaten away by the acid of despair.

   She tugged at him gently, wanting some sign, any sign that he was still alive, and then she pulled at him with increasing urgency. This just—wasn’t supposed to happen. Chloe bowed low and tried to clutch Brian against her, she sobbed and pressed her face to his. It wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. She pressed her lips to Brian’s battered brow and tasted blood—

   “Hgg-kihkk—” Chloe choked as the taste of blood wicked away into nothing and her entire world shifted.

   The uncountable shards in her head shivered and then sung, leaping towards one another without regard to Chloe’s fragile sanity and began cold-joining into a single surface. Something inside her nose popped as cartilage that had been bent ever-so-slightly askew from Stephanie’s fist realigned itself, and her scraped-raw knees knitted and regrew until they were once again the pale marble of unblemished skin. Chloe inadvertently squeezed where she was holding Brian, and felt the flimsy bones within his wrist grind against one another. Then they snapped, twigs breaking beneath the meat and tendon she was—easily—compressing into a crushed pulp.

   Wh-wha-whhaat—isss— Chloe released Brian with a jolt.

   Her pupils contracted to pinpoints and then dilated wide as they filled with color, now a vivid and unnatural red, and then with an eerie rush all of the brown in her loose tangle of hair washed out and faded until she was left with only a silvery shock that hung over one shoulder. Some incredible magic thing had happened, but it didn’t feel like a miracle—Chloe felt as though everything imaginable was given to her all at once, while some equally unseen hand took away vital parts of her that she might never recover.

   Like puzzle pieces slotting themselves into rapid completion the last of the shards flitted up into the expanse of a mirror pane, and then the shatterline faults faded until they were invisible, receding out of view as the entire thing healed into full clarity. A rush of jarring noise and motion snapped Chloe back to her present circumstances, where policemen were rushing past the dumpster and into view. Both of the uniformed cops immediately crouch down next to her and Brian in middle of the alleyway, and then one of them noticed the fleeing figures in the distance and alighted back up to his feet, shouting at the figures retreating down the distance of the narrow lane.

   “Hey! HEY! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

   “Squad 220, we’re at uh, East Lake drive and Seventh—can we get EMS code two? EMS code two, we’ve got somebody down, uhh, alleyway towards that west end of that convention center plaza.”

   “Copy 220,” a dispatcher replied in a crackle over the radio. “Rescue to—convention center west.”

   “220, we’ve also got suspects fleeing the scene towards uh, they’re headed south towards View, down the other end of this same alleyway. In pursuit,” the man next to Chloe reported in a brusque tone, then turned to Chloe. “Ma’am—jesus, you hurt anywhere, or—”

   “I’m fine,” Chloe flinched back from him, nearly dropping Brian’s shoulder out of her lap and back onto the ground. “He’s—please, my boyfriend. Help.”

   She was naked from the waist down, her blouse was torn, but all of that now felt distant and alien to her, because she simply didn’t care. The police officer was warm and weak and full of blood and that terrified her, because that important part of her that had been stripped away screamed for sustenance, she needed to forcibly take his head and shoulder and bend them until the gristle of his neck popped and then sink her teeth into all the meat there. Not in the dainty, pretty, kissy way like the vampires from her beloved Dusk romantic drama novels. Like a predator. Like a starved, desperate predator pushed past all other wariness and consumed with the gnawing dread of unthinkable hunger.

   That’s—this is, this is WRONG, Chloe backed up. S-some, some kind of sick joke. What the fuck. WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME.

   The tiny dab of blood she’d accidentally gotten from Brian—what had it done to her?! Why wasn’t it enough? She needed more—she needed it all. All of it, more and more, she felt impossibly strong and impenetrably fast but that didn’t fucking matter because some existential part of her was gone, and she absolutely needed to do everything in her power to replenish it somehow.

   All that kept her from immediately savaging the police officer and Brian was the crisis overhead.

   Above her but not above her, a silvery surface spread out several meters in every direction. It was invisible but couldn’t be unseen, it was there in her head and maybe not there for her frantic, searching eyes. The mirror did not reflect Chloe’s physical body, her surrounding environs, or the prone figure of Brian visible just beyond the crouching policeman, where the officer had a tiny diagnostic flashlight out and was hastily pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves. The mirror didn't seem to reveal any of the reality it seemed to hover over. Instead, a grotesque hate-riddled corpse-like nightmare-scape of every ugly and cruel thing Chloe had ever done was reflected within, horrible old thoughts and pieces of memory and wretched emotions stirring there and occasionally visible, all of her actions laid bare now with enough distance for her to enjoy complete perspective.

   I—I’ve really fucked up, Christine despaired. I’ve fucked EVERYTHING up—it’s—I-I can’t—this isn’t—no—no no no—please—no—!

( Previous: Finale pt 1 | AnimeCon Harem | Next: To be Continued... )

/// Potentially really good, potentially really bad, and surely a lot of both! :D 

RE:TT ch 43 work will prob delay a bit, I want to keep in working away on these AnimeCon sections and get more of them ready and posted before I switch over.