“She is dead. Almost certainly dead. Nearly conclusively dead. She is, at the very least, not answering her telephone.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance
Cassiopeia Mares Apartment
Somewhere in Las Vegas
23.05.2022
7:29pm
“You know Cass, if you’re going to swear under your breath- you really shouldn’t do it standing on the other side of the door.”
With a blase smirk, Amber shrugged cooly. Readjusting her stance as she loitered in the hallway, the redhead was intimately aware of the ecosystem she was actively disrupting and how- with the longer time she spent outside Cassie’s door- the more questions would be evidently asked by those who existances were fuelled solely by a steady stream of everyone elses fucking business.
Amber had plenty of those in her building, she mused counting the seconds passing silently as numbers gently ticked away across her subconscious. Three… four… She’d taken great pride at many points in making them increasingly uncomfortable between the occasional balcony screaming, splatters of mud on the path leading to her doorstep and bloody handprints smeared clumsily across the door handle far more often than they should be.
… five … six…
Amber could feel the growing tension, the indecision almost radiating through the otherwise flimsy locks that separated them. It wouldn’t have been difficult to kick the door in, Amber mused, however it would have effectively defeated the purpose of showing up to begin with- this was a mission of peace and reconciliation despite the fact the redhead had little reason, at least within herself, to feel as though she had reason to atone for whatever misgivings had been interpreted.
… seven … eight … nine.
“Besides, I can see your shadow from beneath the door.”
It wasn’t intended to be patronising as Amber turned and leaned her back into the edge of the doorframe so that she might face the apartment door across from where she stood, however she made no attempt to veil the otherwise saccharine matter-of-fact virulence. A crack of fluorescence peeked through the door as the hinges protested just behind Amber's lithe frame, the fragment of telltale blonde and a bright, albeit more bloodshot than usual eye impeding the radiating glow for a few telling moments.
“I never told you where I lived, Miss Ryan.”
Insultingly irrelevant, the statement drew a raised eyebrow from the redhead as she pushed to full upright from her lean, rounding on the less than invitational space.
“No, you didn’t- however I couldn’t help but become concerned when you hadn’t returned any of my calls. Or my messages. When those at headquarters had admitted, under less duress than you’d like to imagine, that you’d not been present or active in the office for at least a week…”
Amber trailed off thoughtfully, her expression softening into something resembling genuine concern… or the closest facsimile that Amber Ryan might have otherwise been capable of under the circumstances.
“How did you find---”
Placing a firm hand against the door, not forcing it further open but ensuring that it couldn’t simply be closed without resistance, Amber leaned down slightly to come within eye level of the smaller woman who instinctively shyed back from her position a touch.
“Cassie, I spent YEARS of my life running from my problems. I can assure you that anyone who truly doesn’t want to be found- will make sure they cannot be. As for everyone else, darling? Deep down inside, whether they realise it or not… they are found cause they quietly want to be.”
Softly came the words, however they struck home like a sledgehammer through a chest made of glass and morality. Cassie didn’t respond, simply edging the door open further with a hesitation betraying her otherwise reluctance for the inevitable to occur.
With a dutiful nod, Amber stepped inside whilst making sure the door shut firmly in her wake, emphatically cutting off the rest of the world as though anyone else were to come to the ‘rescue’ of the otherwise quiet girl in apartment 209.
“I didn’t come here to make an ass of myself Cassie. I get you’re probably a little upset---”
Cassie turned on her heel, having managed to keep her composure and professional facade intact until this moment. Indignance shone through the usually passive features of the younger woman as her dress, seemingly caught in slow motion, condescended to her fury as it fluttered at her side.
“Upset? Miss Ryan, you didn’t even hesitate KNOWING I had previously had my jaw wired shut on that side for weeks prior. I find it difficult to believe that it wasn’t as premeditated as it was unrestrictedly vile.”
Cassie didn’t even have to turn her head for the shadowy stain spread across the lower edge of her jawbone smudged across her pale skin. Purples and blacks bloomed viciously, the vague outline of Amber’s best shot seemingly etched into Cassie’s skin like a forbidden masterpiece, an explosion of impulsive fury.
“No, you are right. I didn’t hesitate and truthfully- I wouldn't if I had to again. I made what I considered to be the right decision for US Cassie. You and me. That's what this is about, always has been and I’m not going to stand idly by and watch what WE have built be poked and prodded at like some songbird in a gilded cage.”
Quietly, and in possibly the best decision she had made since deciding this would be a profitable and absolutely not a sociopathic power move, Amber didn’t continue the train of thought where it was decidedly derailing. If anything, the redhead mused silently as the blonde tried to employ blissful ignorance to any justifications, Amber considered Cassie to be a little ungrateful if anything.
How could she so easily fail to see that Amber had acted in their defence, in benevolence and their best interest instead of simply reacting. She had solved a problem before it had become one to be solved- prevention was key and she’d done precisely that and received an undue cold shoulder for the effort.
Granted, it would have been far easier to turn the journalist into the sum of his bloody and squishy parts, and even more likely she doubted that anyone would have sufficiently cared to take the time to piece him back together after stepping so willingly into a malfunctioning meat grinder… however Amber had determinedly chosen the higher road- and while the consequences might have been more steep, there was an actuality of intention that couldn’t be ignored.
It was for Cassie’s own good. For both of their good.
Perhaps one day she might come to understand.
Resignedly, perhaps in response to the continued feigned silence of uncertainty, Amber sighed loudly and dropped to sit on the edge of a nearby sofa arm. Swaddled in comfortable beige, in an apartment like unflavoured oatmeal and tap water dreams housing a soul unsure whether she was a little too intense for her own existence, Cassie paced with an uncomfortable hesitation as though sanctuary in these four walls held no weight in the zero gravity Amber had presented with.
“Look, I get it… I acted a little irrationally. It was a bit of over-reaction but I promise I only ever had OUR best intentions at heart. Besides, what this now means is that we can concentrate OUR energies towards things that are far more productive. Like this fucking tag match for example…”
Earnestly, Amber gestured in a vague direction as though it somehow validated her absurdity. As though Cassie was an active participant in their partnership instead of a passive passenger on the hurricanes roller coaster headed 140 feet straight down.
Unconvinced, Cassie continued to flit about distractedly. Unwilling to spur on Amber’s borderline delusional justifications, but unwilling to disagree knowing the redhead truly believed that her actions had been of a sort of misguided benefit.
“Honestly Cass, tell me… what other option did I really have?”
Logically, the answer was plenty. The answer was innumerable to the point it was almost ludicrous to contemplate counting them out- however Amber’s tone remained endearing, determined to prove itself as more than just another layer. Another mask.
Closing the distance between them, Cassie edged in reluctantly as though finding brief acceptance in Amber's words- or simply searching for a crack, a flaw in the otherwise imperious facade to prove that the redhead hadn’t, in fact, put her frontal lobe through a bleach wash.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Miss Ryan.”
Standing slowly, a hand pushing off the top edge of a knee- Amber reached out towards Cassie's shoulder. An attempt at humanity, drawing the blonde closer with the offer of reassurance- however fine that tightrope might have run.
Gingerly, each tenuous step almost an achievement within itself, Cassie moved within reach and immediately found herself swept uncomfortably close beneath Amber’s arm. That alone, almost terrifying given Amber’s reputation for avoidance of physical contact without reason. Cassie flinched beneath the pressure but soon found herself wrapped tightly by a lithe arm and the faintly heady waft of cinnamon…
Secure. Protected. Beneath the winds of a fucking hurricane.
“You don’t have to say anything- I just need to know that you still trust me… I made you a promise Cass. One that I don’t intend on breaking cause some dirt sheet bullshitter wants to go digging in the wrong cemetery.”
Amber sighed as she loosened her grip on the younger woman slightly, cocking her head so that she might feel slightly closer to Cassie.
“You know, I’m not so good at this shit. All I will say is that this is just another attempt at me trying to fulfil whatever the fuck it is you see in me… repaying everything you’ve done to keep my head above water.
Besides… we have to be fine, right?”
A small reassuring squeeze on the upper arm and a smile that looked just a little too out of place.
“Whatever happens- we’ll be fine. All this stuff with Masque- it's a means to an end. You can’t believe everything you hear else you might go mad. What we have is like a truce in a war not yet raging, an exchanged olive branch that's dripping in something that looks mysteriously like someone elses blood… Maybe the enemy of my enemy is supposed to be my friend, but truth be told… Masque isn’t the enemy. She isn’t a friend either- but it's about the best we might hope for.
Consider this OUR gesture of good will…OUR best shot at remaining at the end of a Rapture.”
Leaning over further, Amber pulled Cassie in tighter once more, finally fulfilling the criteria for an adequate side hug, while allowing the soft florals of the blonde's perfume to briefly dissipate the knot writhing in her chest and quell the bitterness rising in her throat.
Maybe soon, the redhead might have actually believed the bile that dripped from her tongue- if only for Cassie's sake…
Like a little sister.
Like a flower girl named after the stars.
Like another one she wouldn’t dare let down.
“We’ll be fine. We just have to be…”
******
“There are far smarter people than me out there that will tell you that hell doesn’t exist.
There are those that will swear black and blue on all they believe in that theres nothing left for us when we die, we don’t get the option to do it all again nor do we move on and experience the afterlife we supposedly deserve.
According to some people- once the lights go off. That's the end of it.
See, I had the relative fortune of coming across a medium in mid practice just the other day- now, as you can imagine… Not really my thing. If anyone wanted to speak to me from beyond the grave, I’d be seriously asking them if their purgatory is really that awful to want to come and spend time with my miserable ass.
There's this fervour though- this idea that ripples through humanity that we are somehow entitled to something after all of this… that we’ve earned the right to either move on, or some back in a new form.
Reincarnation is an interesting concept cause there are those that black and blue will claim they were someone important in a ‘past life’ and they are the embodiment of that person in a modern era. Others speak more broadly of their ‘experiences’ as fauna and flora respectively.
Personally, I feel like I probably built an orphanage in a past life… except I used the orphans as mortar and that's why the universe has a permanently fixed set of middle fingers outside my existential window.
Imagine though, if we really did have that kind of choice…
To step into a body, imbue it's soul with what makes us unique…
Which makes it all the more surprising that anyone would want to take the form of the universe's worst iteration of horror themed pinatas and yet here we are…
I mean honestly, do they even have candy in them?
My worst fear, you see, is that it's the kind of wrapped sweets that your grandparents thought they were spoiling you with- the ones you were absolutely sure had sat in the same bowl in the same room, tasting faintly like tobacco and crystalized sugar.
I figure that's why we got the toys to play with right?
I won’t pretend like I’m not a little disappointed that our original opponents suddenly and violently took ill the moment the card was released. I hope Mercedes Vargas especially makes a miracle recovery cause I can only imagine that she’s absolutely DEVASTATED that she can’t finally fail to back up any of the absolute tripe that she’s been spewing about me for god knows how long.
Diamond Steele though, well I think we’re all quietly hoping it's a voice loss on a more permanent scale but even then I doubt I’ve racked up quite enough good karma for that little gem to come through.
Instead though, we get… The Metal Maniacs.
Ladies, honestly… I have to ask. Did you even fucking try?
Have you, at any point considered… shit, I don’t know… actually learning to wrestle competently instead of relying on chainsaw scare tactics and dribbling fake blood. Yeah, blood doesn’t quite flow like that you sick motherfuckers but I can assure you that you’ll soon be learning all about the intacies of blood splatter patterns.
Or maybe you won’t cause they usually call in professionals bathed in accident blue and emergency red for that.
Perhaps next time you might actually choose to be something more intelligent and useful… like a coffee table, or a toaster.
No, see the medium waxed poetic about loss and tried to bring humour to mask the excessively generic statements as though humour itself wasn’t subjecting and it made me wonder if we were really better of with nothing beyond the veil. After all, I don’t think Great Uncle Fred really does care all that much about your bunions…
Yet we still so wholeheartedly believe cause we need it… we need to feel like we’ll be acknowledged after we’re gone.
We have our legacies I suppose- I’ve built mine like a ruined temple, long since abandoned for it's hedonistic and overtly violent perceptions. Masque has built hers on what you, yourselves, claimed to have perfected. A personification of what fear is supposed to resemble, what weight its presence is supposed to carry instead of a pair of B-movie rip-offs looking for an extra credit.
I mean, that's the greatest fear of humanity though, isn’t it? It's not devils and demons, it's not the choice between heaven and hell. It's not even the monsters looking for wayward toes in the periphery or black sludge lagoon creatures dripping in ectoplasmic bullshit. It's not even those who look you in the eye and tell you every truth you’ve sought to bury within yourself, dredged for the amusement and enlightenment of others.
No, it's the simple fact that when you die… sooner or later, you will be forgotten.
Lost. Alone. Stricken from any meaningful memory you might have created.
No more flowers. No more kind words spoken. Reminiscing gets less, the conversations segued and sidetracked to more important matters like whats new in reality television and why it's fucking insufferable.
I suppose when you look at things that way though- it makes it all the more comforting, cause come Climax Control on Sunday, my darling Metal Maniacs… even though you aren;t dead and gone yet, it seems that you won’t at all be missed.
That no one, at all, really gives a fuck.”
******
Calico Basin
Mojave Desert, ND
26.05.2022
1:28pm
“Don’t you know the wicked witches wore black?”
Even the comment came off dehydrated as Amber stepped from the truck finally, a cringe shuddered through as she found herself washed over with the kind of Las Vegas desert heat that made her regret deciding to leave the comfort of modern air conditioning.
No, nothing about the place decided to welcome her.
Not the arid landscape that stretched further than the eye might comprehend, nor the glare of a sun determined that it's wrath and might be experienced before the ever-loving heat death of the universe. Especially not the woman who shaded herself almost vainly with a lace parasol that, in any other circumstance, might have brought fits of laughter to the redheads lips for the sheer absurdity. Cotton draped loosely over a frame that belied a devastating strength of will, even the facade of painted white seemed to have wilted under the harshness of the heat- rivulets of paint almost stripped from its surface as though determinedly reclaimed against nature.
Some might have called this place hell, Amber mused as her boots crunched and sunk into the loose sand deposits as she strayed further from the relative comfort and safety of the Oblivion Garage decaled truck and towards a figure others might have proclaimed as the Devil herself.
It wasn’t hell though, and Masque was far from the type to bear horns and a pointed tail- no, this was far closer to the purgatory that Dante had described. Hell had implied a level of suffering, but purgatory in it's vast desolation provided detachment. Hell wanted you alive to find salvation in eternal pain, purgatory though didn’t care if you died nor did it celebrate survival.
Something about the infinite apathy and its ultimate emptiness was far more terrifying than anything hellfire and brimstone might have tried to offer.
Masque merely shrugged off the Wizard of Oz reference. Amber suspected it wasn’t soul crushing enough to have cracked her top five favourite films, however it had been worth the attempt to break the ice nonetheless.
“Still you came.”
A shrug of her own, and a pause for effect.
“Despite my lack of feline qualities, I like to think I’ve got a few more lives to rattle off…”
Amber replied thoughtfully, while watching the gears behind those cobalt blue eyes slowly continue ticking over- threatening to tug the threads of Amber’s very being into the perpetual mechanism.
“Curiosity, then? Even at this late stage, in our penultimate chapter together, you are still not entirely sure what this is.”
Masque made a wide circle with the parasol, a supposed grand gesture in a place that took offence to the idea of life.
“What this is.”
“What this is, isn’t my pressing question. Why we are in the desert during the middle of summer is more concerning – I get that I’ve said before I have a death wish, but this isn’t the way I envisioned going out.”
Bluntly, Amber softened her tone as Masque cocked her head slightly as the rivulet of paint tracing down fell with a defined hiss into the scorching sands.
“This is an end, of sorts. You are here because this is the most appropriate setting for your rebirth.”
Recoiling slightly, the redhead found herself unable to contain her disdain.
“Rebirth? Please tell me you aren’t about to start waxing lyrical and quoting Bible verses – I’m not sure I could emotionally handle having come out here to be accosted by the inaccurate writings of the ‘Good Book’. I swear if I hear the word ‘salvation’ I might actually just throw up.”
Masque began to circle, the parasol still daintily held as though it made a difference. A shark sensing blood, measuring up all the ways Amber might fit in between her teeth.
“Start? Oh my Resplendent Hurricane, we are so very far from where we began. This is not the start – that came when you chose to walk out on the man you thought you loved and left him to my merciful attention, before he was replaced and rendered obsolete. This is not the start, but the end.”
As the sun seemed to arc gently above them, Amber swallowed hard as though there were more than just sand and air left in the back of her throat.
“Bible verses? No. There are no Gods, no Kings. Only men and the monsters they create. Or are. Like you.”
Vehemently, Amber shook her head. Disgust and disruptiveness radiating like a mirage unfathomable.
“Not like me at all. We’ve established that – you don’t get to pigeonhole me cause it happens to self-service your precious Rapture. We are a partnership after all, not a martyrdom.”
“Pigeonhole? Like all the others have already done so? A damsel in distress; a fuckup in need of fixing. I am not the one offering you salvation – they are. I am not the one trying to force their reality upon you and your life. I am the only truth you know.”
Amber could almost taste the paint as it trickled now, the acrid chemical stain almost dizzying under the heat as Masque pulled up as close to face to face as their height differences might manage.
“The Rapture is all you have left, Amber, and before you leave this place, you will embrace it.”
A silvery laugh escaped Amber’s throat, previously confined to a prison of scalding sand and mixed emotions unable to be tangled from the created web of destructive purpose. Perhaps this was the point, the redhead contemplated silently, where Masque thought she might just verbally brain fuck her into compliance. A momentary existential horror broke through the shimmering mirage enclosing around them as Amber’s prior encounters with Cassiopeia Mares reeked of the same tinged misguided truthfulness.
No, not the same. Amber reminded herself firmly. Similar perhaps but not the same- that would have implied that she was some kind of monster after all…
“You know, you tend to say that a lot. ‘All I have left’ but the more I come to think of it… The more I start to wonder if I’m actually not the one walking around with their eyes closed.”
Deflective and derogatory, Amber's defiance forced through the space in her vocal chords in hopes of masking the inner maelstrom that she’d unintentionally created in her chest. However Amber finds little time to revel or celebrate in her ill gotten victory as Masque’s prosthetic hand, captured briefly by the combination of the suns glare and an unhealthy level of dehydration into an ethereally glowing weapon that Amber could do little to counter.
Flat footed, the prosthetic caught her cheek… through her cheek… her legs forget the existence of knees as her body contorted in a state of over balance and counter productive hypertensions. Sand sprayed as her body sunk below it's loose surface briefly, partially buried by her own momentum, eyes squeezed shut avoided the worst of the sand blast however her clothing seemed to capture more of it- withholding it's prizes as she struggled to find an equilibrium that might have been knocked clean of her existence.
Unsteadily, Amber drew herself out of the sand enough to loudly swear under her breath- however the willpower and grit that might have brought her back up swinging had contentedly buried it's proverbial head in the disrupted sands. It wasn't a situation to be met with violence, nor devolved to be as such. Civil until it no longer could be…
Amber had seen the line approaching and had done nothing to stop that step across it's threshold from taking her legs from beneath and the last breath of clean air from her lungs.
“I’m gonna pretend like I did something to deserve that…”
Trying to ignore the thick strings of red entwined with saliva as she spit loudly into the sand, congealing into something unhealthily solid in the harsh sands. Amber scraped the words out, trying not to choke on the heat and dust washing down her throat.
“Cause if I don’t… I’m worried that this is just going to devolve into something other than the civil conversation we were otherwise engaged in …”
Forcing an inaudible chuckle, Amber drew up to her knees with a distinctively familiar smirk.
“Which, basically, what I’m trying to say is… Are you fucking done?”
Stepping across, the parasol did it's best to shade from the sun while thick trails continued to cut swathes through the once impeccable facade of the blonde.
“I am bored of this.”
Of course she was. Amber couldn't even consider herself surprised as her stare remained fixed on Masque.
“There was a little hope that you would reach this final stage in your rebirth independently, but I can see you require one final push. It is not a question of if I am done, but whether you are.”
Dropping to her knees, Masque spun the parasol creating a patterned shadow effect across the ochre sands as they shifted in an imperceptible breeze.
“Tell me, Amber. Did you ever answer the question you did not think you had come to ask me all those weeks ago? About what you did, and why you did it …”
Those words stung more than Amber would admit, as the blood pooled beneath her tongue once more. Indignation gave way to anger, which gave way to resentment and guilt- unfiltered and raw, running roughshod through her veins.
“Did you think about him? About all these people who inexplicably step in to save you from yourself without invitation, without need? Oh, the list grows so very long now. Fexxfield, Knox and the man you profess to love today, at least. Your husband. Tell me, Amber … Did you lose the World Championship on his behalf?”
“You don’t get to stand there with a God complex and try to tell me that you understand [i[everything[/i] as though you’re somehow infallible. You bleed, you die. You’re just as fucked as the rest of us – so lets cut the proverbial bullshit perhaps so that we both might not die of delusion.”
Fury finally broke free of it's oppressive bonds of determination, her patience and ability to simply accept having finally depleted to the point it became unhealthy to engage- however obsession and guilt drove her further to stay. As though Karma might have demanded it, only they didn’t know for whom it might have been drawn in by.
Emphatically, Masque twisted and otherwise tore her prosthetic free and threw it towards Amber. Heavy fingers grasping for nothing grazed Amber’s skin before it fell to a halt at her knees.
“Infallible? Are you blind as well as willfully ignorant? Are you stupid?”
Aggressively Masque pulled at her neckline to expose thick knots of scarring, as though Amber didn’t have her own twisted art tracing across almost every possible inch of skin.
“I have bled more than you ever will,”
A lie that Amber forced herself to swallow the response to.
“Even now, you wrestle with such pathetic feelings as guilt, remorse. For your lost heart, for his lost Championship. Could you have done more? Should you? Was this all your fault? Poisoning yourself with compassion.”
Mac. She wasn;t wrong, she never seemed to be. Amber had watched Mac fall into the same trap she had, only he’d had the benefit of hindsight… of watching her collapse under the weight she’d brought upon her shoulders. In that fleeting moment… the moment they’d lost focus, the moment they allowed themselves to empathise… the moment they started to care about something that wasn;t the debilitating weight on their shoulder.
They’d lost everything.
Amber had fought almost a year before she’d slipped in her own hubris, her own inability to separate thought from feeling. Mac though, as a wave of resentment and disappointment flooded her veins, he hadn’t learned- or simply hadn;t paid attention. Which, in itself, might have been the worse crime.
Deep down inside, as much as she wanted to tell him that she was proud and that he’d been a great champion, there was a pervasive voice disgruntled that he ‘should have known better’ and instead had chosen the heroes route straight off the fucking cliffs edge.
“You mewl like a doe, uncertain. Lost, while professing strength and power. You talk of gods, but it seems that you are truly divine given your ability to deliver three hundred and fifty seven consecutive miracles with such insipid, tender, flaccid weakness. I have only one question.”
Part of Amber felt regret- that she was to blame for his loss. She’d been the poison in his veins, the reason he’d felt the need to ‘white knight’ for her reputation as though she had anything worth salvaging from her interactions with a certain Matt Knox.
… However, Amber had also been the one to tell Mac not to go down that road, and he’d done it anyway.
Perhaps she was starting to only now grow bored of those around her not heeding the weather warnings that flashed red and neon before their eyes…
“When will you wake up from this distorted reality and emerge the vengeful angel you were always meant to be?”
