Blood Obsidian

Issue 21

Guilt lies heavy on a burdened head ... - Part 1

Alaina stared at Caitlyn, open-mouthed, for a long time. Then stared for even longer before making the slowest blink that Caitlyn had ever seen. It was a blink of epic proportions. The kind of blink that some social media influencers would have practiced in front of mirrors, for, literally, years before they even thought of posting a video doing it and would still have not come anywhere near to the sheer quality of that blink. There really should be awards for something like that.

"Say that again, but, this time, make it make sense." Alaina tilted her head, frowning, and rolled both hands at the wrists, urging Caitlyn to repeat what she had said. "Slowly. In English. Not that useless gibberish you just talked in."

"I'm quitting." The hands continued to roll, expecting more and Caitlyn wished she hadn't said anything. "Being, you know, that thing that I did those couple of times. In that costume ... thing. I'm quitting."

"See, there you go again, not making sense. Because no friend of mine would ever have that kind of ... thing, in the costume ... thing, and give it up. No friend would do that. No friend!" She turned to the side as she lifted her phone from her pocket and began typing, two-thumbed, on the screen. "I don't think so. Not on my watch, sister."

The only time Alaina lifted her eyes from her phone was to give Caitlyn the stinkiest of stink-eyes, a curl of the lip and nose and a sniff. A sniff! For Alaina, that was tantamount to absolute fury, which was something that never happened. Alaina was one of the happiest people Caitlyn knew. Probably one of the happiest people in the world. Nothing ever angered her. Well, not for long. Usually.

"What are you doing?" Caitlyn tried to look at the phone screen but Alaina blocked her view with her shoulder. "Alaina! I'm being serious. Rayna Alden nearly died because of me and I can't have that on my conscience. I can't. What are you doing?"

She had lapsed into a hissed whisper, eyes flickering everywhere to make sure no-one was listening. No-one was. They never did. No-one had even mentioned the fact that she had skipped out of school the day before. In fact, short of Alaina, Caitlyn was pretty certain not one person had noticed her gone, anyway. Right now, though, Caitlyn felt far too tired to deal with all these Alaina-isms.

She had only just made it home before Aunt Mary had woken up and she still needed to find some explanation for managing to walk into her bedroom the night before without Aunt Mary seeing her. Of course, there was no explanation. She hadn't made it home at all. The only silver lining she could find was that the suit had healed her face before every other part of her body, which, silver lining aside, hurt like hell. All of it.

"I am searching for ... what size are you, anyway? Only joking. I know every inch of your body." Not at all creepy. Not from Alaina. She always said weird things like that, though she still hadn't explained what she was doing. "I'm searching for a straight jacket, because you've clearly gone insane. Ooh! Fifty bucks! Boo! Too much. But professional looking. Noice!"

She showed Caitlyn her phone and she had, indeed, searched for straight jackets. And, in Caitlyn's new world, that wasn't even close to being the weirdest thing she'd experienced lately. Hell, it wasn't even in the top three weirdest things she'd experienced in the last twenty-four hours.

"Nice stitching." She gave an appreciative nod before over-dramatically tugging at her hair, pretending to scream. "Did you not hear what I said? I nearly ..."

"No, you didn't because she is, literally, stood right there. Look, if I pace it out, she's ..." Alaina uttered an 'urk' as Caitlyn dragged her back around the corner before she could make measuring strides to Rayna Alden's side. "See. Rayna Alden. Safe and sound and not a mark on that perfectly smooth skin. Have you ever seen cheeks so smooth you just want to lick them? Not in a sexual way. Probably. That would be weird."