King of Beasts

Chapter 25

Charlotte could hear the floor boards creak, feel the air shift as someone joined her in the room.  Her head was lowered, matted red hair looking more like a dull burn than the fire itself.  Her eyes were closed yet she remained awake despite being denied sleep for hours.  Days maybe.  Going insane made it hard to keep time.

Finding a small sliver of energy within her she managed to lift her head and open her eyes.

Gabe sat before her, cross legged, his knees centimeters from the edges of the runes.  His blue eyes were glowing, head cocked to the side.

"I know you're not real." Charlotte muttered, but couldn't take her eyes off of him.  "I know you're not real."

He nodded his head, blinking slowly at her and Charlotte's chest ached at just how beautiful he was, how perfect, despite the fact that he was a figment of her imagination come to life.  "Of course I'm not real, Charlie.  You're completely mad."

She found a small smile forming on her lips, one of pure exhaustion.  "I've missed you." Her eyes stung.  Tears?  God, she missed Gabe.  She missed him so much that it was like it's own separate ache encompassing her entire being.  "Where-- where have you been?  I've been waiting and you don't-- you haven't shown up yet."

He lifted a broad shoulder, then dropped it once more in a half shrug.  "I'm not really Gabe, remember?  I couldn't tell you."

"Aren't you going to tell me it's because you don't love me?" she asked in a small, hardly herself voice.  "Aren't you going to tell me that I'm a monster, that you haven't come yet because this is easier for you?"

He rolled his eyes, made her heart leap in her chest.  Every movement from him, no matter the mockery involved, made her heart beat faster, made that ache hurt just a bit more.  "I'm your thoughts manifested, Charlie.  You know deep, deep down that I love you."

"You never said--"

"We shouldn't have to say." he cut her off sharply.  "We shouldn't have to base our relationship off of spoken words.  You know how I feel, even if I didn't say it.  You've seen into my own damn soul for crying out loud.  You can't deny it."

And she couldn't, not when the manifestation of her thoughts was telling it to her directly. 

God, she needed the real Gabe.  He'd get her out of this circle.  He'd save her.  And if he couldn't . . . well at least it'd be nice to have someone there when she died.

"I would be really glad to spend the rest of my life with you." she muttered, choking on something in her throat.  Her eyes burned, tears threatening to spill but she could hardly care.  She was tired.  So very, very tired.  "I know that sounds crazy, I mean it should, I am crazy.  But-- jeez, Gabe, please just be real.  Please, Gabe, please be real.  Please, please, please--"

"Charlotte." his voice was sharp, cutting her from her rant, making the tears stop their downward track from her eyes even when she hadn't realized they'd spilled over.  "I'm not coming.  That means something's wrong.  Think, Charlie.  Your grandma knew I'd come for you.  She probably has me locked down somewhere, or worse.  You need to get out of here on your own, because I'm not going to be able to do it for you.  You're a brilliant person, use what little you have left of that brain."

"I don't know--"

"Think, Charlie!"

She started like he'd slapped her, and in a moment of panic her mind ran on full throttle for the first time in days.  "I have no way to make a rune of my own." she said, shaking her head.  "I'd have to break one of these but I can't get close to them, there's an energy pushing back against me."

Without him saying anything, she knew he was asking for her gaze and she offered it to him, meeting those magnificent blue eyes.  "You can break the rune." he told her, jaw tight.  "You're stronger than them, always have been.  It's why they're using you now.  You can break the rune."

She was breathing hard, eyes skirting over the black symbols coloring the floor.  She could break it.  She could do it, do it if she could ignore the fact her very bones would crack before she got close enough to them to run a fingernail through the charcoal.  But she could do it.

"You'll be sitting there when I do?" she asked, looking back up to see Gabe watching her.

"Probably not." he said.  "You don't have many moments of sanity left.  I'll be gone, and you'll probably forget this entire event all together."

She swallowed, but nodded her head.  She was strong, she could be strong for just a bit longer.  "I'll be okay." she told Gabe, told herself.  "If you're not coming for me, then I'll come for you."

He paused, then nodded his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.  "That's my girl."

.

She was a ghost, drifting through the shadows in her long white shirt.  She hadn't done a damn thing to herself yet her hair seemed brighter than before.  You could try, and you would fail, to catch her eye.  They were everywhere at once, never where they were supposed to be. 

She drifted like she was the darkness itself.  Uncorruptible, untouchable, you wouldn't be able to reach her, not in this state, not with her mind miles and miles and miles away.

Deeper into the woods, further into its never ending darkness she walked.  Her feet bled but she didn't feel it.  Her hand ached where it was shattered, bled where the pieces of bone had broken skin, but that ache belonged to a different part of her mind. 

Her grandma would return in a few moments to find a scratched up rune and her granddaughter's blood on the floor where Charlotte had pressed against her prison of symbols until she reached the charcoal.  Barbara would curse, move as fast as her frail body could to call upon those mad beasts who had hardly helped her up to this point.  She'd gotten them to cut her leg all that time ago, got them to drive Charlotte mad, so maybe they could be useful once more.

It wouldn't be until Charlotte was deep enough in the woods though that she woke up, that her grandma found her gone.  It wasn't until a pine cone seemed to embed itself into her heel that she snapped from the mindless trance she was in and looked around her, blinking slow, catching up with her thoughts and letting the confusion catch up as well. 

Because as Gabe had promised, not that Charlotte remembered now, she had forgotten everything that had happened sitting in her circle of runes, and once again she was alone.  For just a while longer, just a few more hopeless hours more, Charlotte would be on her own.

And it wouldn't be until Charlotte's most hopeless moment that the King of Beasts would catch her once more, and hold onto her tight this time.