❝how do you kill a monster without becoming one?❞
In the last city ruled by man, fish soar in the skies above and monsters lurk in the alleys below. Ten years ago, Jase lost both his legs and his mother to one such monster. However, tragedy couldn't...
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Jase ended up sleeping on the floor that night.
He'd just passed out there and the next morning he woke to sunslight trickling in through the curtains and Huraira snoring on the couch. Sitting up, Jase winced as he stretched his stiff body and pulled himself into his wheelchair, reattaching his legs.
Everything he once felt had fled, leaving only memories with sharp edges and growing pains. The emptiness seemed to grow and shift, eating away at everything he once thought was true. Smiles were people. Perhaps not like humans, but they were still people fighting for their lives. That information sat like a rock in Jase's stomach.
He longed for the ignorance he had held just a day ago. Twenty-four hours ago he'd been fine, but now he was past the edge of a breakdown.
Jase just... wanted to forget.
So he did what he always did when he needed to forget. He left his chair - and his apartment. Huraira would be fine alone. Hopefully. The cool morning air slapped his face. Jase ran without a sense of direction, just desperation.
He traced familiar streets and explored new ones until the entire world faded and he was running just to feel the ache of his lungs and the burn of where flesh met metal. He ran and ran, pain forcing the memories away so that he lived in a world without Smiles and without humans. Without a dead mom, and without a guilty conscious riding on his shoulders.
When Jase ran, he lived without emotion. There was no guilt or sorrow or anger. There was no fear, no worry at all. But there wasn't any joy, either. There was no hope that when he stopped running, his life would magically be put back together. He barely felt alive at all as his metal feet collided with cement.
Jase never felt anything when he ran. Sometimes that was good. Sometimes he needed to be away from his feelings for a bit. But other times, when he finally stopped running, even if it was for only an instant, everything would hit him at once.
People needed to feel. Jase needed to feel. But most days it was like... he couldn't. He couldn't feel less his body to be shattered into a thousand pieces and be blown away by the wind. Deep down, Jase knew that everything was made of dust. Something held that dust together in people-like shapes, but it would always be dust.
All Jase had was revenge. He had smeared it over his body like glue and used it as tape around his heart. Jase lived by the idea that one day he would kill the monster who robbed his life of light. The air he breathed was tainted by these thoughts and the blood that coursed through his veins might as well have been poison.
Red Riding Hood had been the glue keeping Jase together for years.
And now, he was supposed to believe that she had a consciousness. That she was more than a mindless monster. That she was a person, just as capable of love and redemption as anyone else. He had to believe that she had made a conscious decision that day.
