12
…
The party ended a lot sooner than I’d have liked.
I
was doing a run through of my favorite clubs in Berlin. Everything going like
it usually did, I’d stay at a club until sunrise, jump back to sunset and hit
the next club down the street, not stopping until I’d run out of clubs. This
night, I didn’t make it halfway through my usual circuit before certain events
made me cancel my plans.
Threw
open the doors to one of the clubs and stepped inside; but instead of the usual
sight of people drinking, dancing, and having a gay old time, I saw a lot of
blood. And bodies. Mutilated bodies strung up from the ceiling by their own
intestines, with chunks of their flesh torn out. Only saw two living people in
that club: one was the piano player, on stage and still nervously playing his
music. The other was Grendel.
He
had taken a seat for himself at one of the tables. A man’s body had been spread
across the table, his chest torn open. Grendel was licking off the last bits of
meat from one of the man’s ribs when I came in. Once he saw me, he tossed the
rib aside, pulled a pistol from his coat and shot the piano player through the
head.
“I’ve
been waiting for you, darling.” He spun around on his chair and wiped some
blood of his chin with the back of his hand. “Do you like what I’ve done with
the place?”
I
froze up when I saw him. His physical appearance looked the same as how I
remembered from when I was Lisa, but the way his body interacted with the time
around him…. All the timelines bent towards him, as if they were being
attracted by some force, reaching to him and then going further, as though his
body were a black hole from which time infinitely fell into, the flesh and skin
I saw with my eyes only a small part of the greater beast hidden within….
“No
witty reply? No angry declaration? Not even a flirty snark? My, I knew the
younger you was inexperienced at this, but I hadn’t realized you’d be this
green, dear.”
“Don’t
call me that.”
“Hm?”
“Why
are you calling me that? Darling, and dear, and-and-” He stood up from the
chair, and I felt dizzy trying to follow the shifts in time that slight
movement made.
“Why,
haven’t I earned the right to do so? After all we’ve been through together?”
“We
haven’t been through anything together! The only times I’ve seen you was when I
was Lisa, and that hardly counts as having a history together! I still have no
idea who the hell you are!”
“Darling,
darling!” He placed both hands over
his heart and pouted. “You’re breaking my heart, acting as though you’ve
forgotten me. Was I just another passing fancy? Another of your conquests to toss
aside once you’d had your fill? I thought we were something special darling.
All those adventures we had together, running from the Slender Man, robbing
that bank, that kiss we shared as the Archangel burned down the city….”
….
No. No no no fucking hell no. “Who
are you?”
He
smiled, and his face… morphed. Bone structure shifted, eye skin and hair color
changed, until I was looking at the face of Dorian Gardner. The next words he
spoke were all in Dorian’s voice. “Help me Elizabeth! Help me!”
“Doria-!”
I stopped shouting when he began to laugh, his face and voice shifting back to
Grendel’s.
“Now you remember me!”
“The
hell happened to you?”
“Why,
the very same thing that happened to you, honey. I just didn’t have the good
fortune to be pulled out of the Quiet before Daddy was finished working on me.
You really should thank me for that, you know. It took quite a lot of work to
make sure Lupine didn’t fuck the whole ritual up.”
“But…
why-”
He
just kept grinning. “Why what? Why slaughter, torture, and maim my way through
life?” He shrugged. “Why not? It’s not as though any of them would have
survived much longer anyway. Is it really that terrible when a mayfly dies a
few seconds early?”
There
was no way I could conceal my disgust at that. “You’re not Dorian.”
Laughter.
Every chuckle sounded like claws raking back and forth on a blackboard in my
head. “Of course not. And no matter how much you pretend, you aren’t Elizabeth.
We are the children of a god, beings beyond the weak grasp of the humans used
in our creation.” He shrugged. “But that’s not the reason I came to visit you.
No, I merely wished to welcome you to this universe. And also….”
He
crossed the distance between us in a moment, and I was staring directly at his
chest, into the heart of time’s abyss, a blackness that went on forever….
“To
tell you that the revolution is coming.”
“Th-the
what?”
“The
day when I will lead the gods of old in uprising against the empire of the
Fears, and burn this reality they control to cinders in the glorious fire of
rebellion. Tell me, my love, do you know the reason why you can’t travel to
this universe’s future?”
“W-well-”
He
leaned his face in so it was level with mine. “It’s because there is none.”
Then he was gone.
…..
Well fuck me. Looks like it’s serious adventure time again. Dorian… Grendel….
It’s my fault you fell into the Quiet in the first place. Which means it’s putting
you down is going to be my responsibility. You screwed up by coming to talk to
me, Grendel. Now that I know you’re up to something, there’s no way I can let
you continue. Whatever it is you’re planning for this revolution, I’ll stop it.
Just watch me.
I-330
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