Clutching The Darkness

Chapter 16: Conflicting Desires

For once, the cosmos had blessed me. Sort of. How lucky was I to dispatch more filth!? Heading back into town, I heard the whispers amplify just a bit more. Louder. Painful. Annoying. The usual.

I tried my best, but I couldn't resist it. The buzzing in my head was too much of a fucking issue. More stabbing of the ears. More bleeding. Like when you have an itch in your ear canal but you just keep prodding at it with a q-tip even though you're perforating your eardrum. Eventually, the itch goes away...just for a bit. And even though you're bleeding and deaf in one ear, you still feel cathartic. Because anything is better than the feeling of the itch.

I struggled a bit to walk, what with my ear being incapacitated and whatnot. 'Danger', 'heroin', 'druggie', 'young', 'easy prey'. The whispers again. Can't I just have some peace AND FUCKING QUIET!?

"Hehe. It's going to be okay Cali! Just sit tight and breathe! Just sit tight and breathe."

While weakingly strutting about, I lost strength in my leg, leading me to topple a bit. I fell but recovered, although the jingling noises of a pair of keys and my wallet rang out. I picked up the keys— Nasima's. I had pried them out of Benilde's cold, dead fingers during the four hour skirmish. Something about how both her and Isaac tried so desperately, yet so vainly, to hold onto something even in their death...I couldn't ignore it.

My inner voice told me I had to worry about myself, that I should be focused on killing the distorted, rather than wasting my time on something that could get me killed. I grabbed the keys anyway, and even though I wasn't able to say anything or even think of anything to commiserate both her and Isaac for their small nuggets of care throughout our friendship, I gave them a slight nod. A nod I hoped meant something worth in the demeanor of: "I'm truly sorry it ended this way."

But I wasn't sure if I was truly sorry. I killed them of my own accord. And I truly did believe they had it coming in some way. I suppose I just felt unfortunate in the way that nothing could have changed to prevent their death. It felt like it was supposed to occur. Whether it be the cruelness or gracefulness of the cosmos.

I picked up my wallet. It opened up, the brown leather (damn leather) in my hands. Inside was my student ID along with my debit card and some other useless business cards I'd picked up over the years. I had a blurry, decaying photo of Billy, my Mom's old Cockatoo. He was a sprucy little guy, and he usually loved to clean himself up. He often made my parents happy, and my mother called him 'My true son', in the way that he took to cleaning his room, unlike how I did as a child.

I remember that at twelve years old, when she first sent me to go buy some bananas, a pack of lean meat and some chopped chives, the day when I was first harassed by the homeless, that day something broke inside my Mom. Billy, had died. He somehow choked to death. His white feathers were strewn about in his cage due to his struggle. His red crest fell lopsided over his face. His breast was stained in dots of red; he seemed to have previously eaten some strawberries. Or at least that's what they told me. Maybe it was blood.

Sliding the photo out of one the tabs, I eyed my student ID again. Where there was once a man with his red bangs of nicely made curly hair and clean shaven sides. 'C A L I D R I S, W I L L I A M S' it read out. I pensively looked at my last name. Williams. You weren't very original with your names for pets were you Mom?

"Remember about the distorted."

I know. Just give me a minute. Under the photo of Billy, was another photo, a more recent one. One I had almost forgotten about, probably intentionally. Z e n a i d a, Zay's full, first name, was written in thick, messy black ink in the border of the photo. Her and I during our freshman year. We were both sitting in what I recognized to be her bedsheets. The camera flash blinded the point of view of the camera, seeing as Zay's skin was naturally pretty pale and my cream colors weren't that far from the same effect.