Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement No. XIII – Heartaches & Hurricanes
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[The Present – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, Summer 2022]
It comes in a single rolling wave of agony that cuts the urge from my lungs to draw in air. They freeze in mid-expansion, diaphragm trembling with the effort. Something deafeningly loud thunders between my ears, a bassy thump which loses all urgency as it slows to all but a crawl. There is the reaction to cry out but my jaw is locked shut, and there is nothing to power my vocal chords even if my lips could move to make the words. Numbness spreads out from the centre of my chest, making ice then making nothingness as feeling floats away. All the while, my mind continues to work and worry, because there is a little oxygen left to burn up in the blood with panic.
Suddenly, something violently twists behind the prison of my ribcage. Torsioned, my heart gives a single all-encompassing pulse before exploding back into agonising life. The diaphragm releases, my lungs collapse and then something primal and animalistic overrides every other consideration and commands them to fill. Molecular oxygen is torn free from their linings as soon as it is absorbed and consumed as quickly as it finds the blood. Rationality reboots, and some semblance of calm returns.
The numbness stays for a while – it always does. Gradually, nerves find each other again and neuropeptides recall their mechanisms of work. My toes and fingers tingle, and then they tremble and then they respond to my commands. Seconds become minutes, but time is relative when your entire existence is temporarily taken offline.
He looks at me for a moment from across the front seat but says nothing. I feel a warm hand lay across mine gently. It comforts me. Even now, he is conflicted and a myriad of feelings play across his tight jaw for just a few moments before iron will clamps down and removes them from view.
“Abigayle …” He begins, but never finishes. The words trail off into silence and die there, lost in the search for something of meaning that has not been said – been wasted – before. He will try again before we go home. Instead, he climbs out from the driver’s side and makes his way around to help me to stand. It takes a moment to find the strength in my legs but a strong arm around my waist gives me long enough to try.
The gnarled bark of palm trees baked a washed-out ochre rise up on either side of a concrete path which cuts through the dry flowerbeds; a pointed arrow towards the large glass frontage of University Medical Center. Cool blue lights diffuse through shiny panes – all intended to induce relaxation in an environment more used to facilitating fear, unease, suffering and worse.
There is something discordant about a hospital in the summer sunshine. A cold and sterile place, with cool tiles on the floor that make the bare skin of your feet ache with numbness. The powerful, bright white light shining overhead as you perch on the edge of the examination bed, paper gown crumpled up underneath cracked leather padding. The Doctor’s lips curl wide but the smile never reaches his eyes. And then they begin to talk but it sounds as if you are both underwater and you cannot hear the words …
What little breeze survived the rise of the Sun whips the fabric of my summer dress before dying out, providing just enough force to stir me from my reverie.The material begins to cling where the sweat underneath provides adhesive, making tight bands that bunch around my thighs and biceps and stomach. The gauzed veil across my features, hanging underneath the fastener strapped to my coiled hair casts all the world in an off-hue haze. Not a single person, either patient or staff, gives me a second glance despite my hidden face.
People stare all too often in the Sinful City, but this is a hospital, after all. Who knows what horrific wound I am hiding underneath.
Even more so … This is a hospital in Las Vegas, after all. Who would even care?
My Songbird walks slightly ahead, his long legs and deep thoughts beginning to carry him ever further forward. Occasionally he glances back, slows, but he never looks at me for more than a moment. What little stilted conversation died along with the engine of his car a few minutes previously, as the towering concrete and steel block of the main hospital building came into view. I am unsure if the surroundings unsettle him, or whether this is purely to be expected as he continues to wrestle with things that have come to pass through his action …
… Or inaction.
The receptionist is refreshingly terse and disinterested, once we exchange dry heat for industrially-cooled and conditioned air; hardly exchanging a word in favour of a clipboard and a forefinger pointed to a row of scarlet-red chairs arranged in a wide semicircle nearby.
Silence only survives another few minutes before becoming another statistic in a building full of morbid metrics.
“Going to tell me why we’re here?”
Over the past few weeks I have become much adjusted to his presence, to the point I often miss it when he is not around. It is not love – because I think I know what that is and this is not it. Nonetheless … If I had the choice, I would choose to spend time with him. Even if he would much rather be anywhere else. What might have once began as expediency has quickly evolved into something that might be friendship, if the circumstances weren’t so outlandish as to be laughable.
Still, there is no-one laughing here. Hospitals are where humour and their owners come to die, after all.
Signing my name at the bottom of the last sheet, I look up at a couple emerging from a nearby consultation room. She is sobbing, struggling to keep the tears from running over the hand clamped against her mouth. He does not know what to say, so he says nothing. Behind, the Doctor exchanges a glance with the same brusque receptionist and taps the glass of his wristwatch. She nods.
“I am here for my test results. You are here because I need you.”
An eyebrow climbs up his forehead, and SCW’s World Heavyweight Champion looks genuinely shocked for a few moments. “Need me?”
I nod, still not looking in his direction. “That is what I said.”
The Doctor so urgently concerned with timekeeping bustles over, gaze not towards me but the large crystal-plated clock inset into the marble frieze behind. It depicts some minimalist interpretation of Asclepius, flanked by stylized versions of the winged Caduceus and its entwined snakes. For a few seconds my attention wanders …
“Miss DeLune?”
Standing, I nod again and offer him the clipboard which he accepts without reading. Instead, he simply gestures with a hand towards the consultation room – its door still swung wide open after the last dose of bad news delivered just before lunchtime.
The smell of industrial air freshener is only slightly preferable to the otherwise ever-present stink of antiseptic that permeates every other part of the building. Factory-grade flowers, strong enough to make the eyes water. Taking a seat with Knox, the Doctor sets himself down at the desk in front of us and idly rifles through the pages of a folder. And then another. He frowns, pulls the drawer open and repeats the exercise again until he finally finds what I presume is mine.
“Miss DeLune …” He repeats, stalling for time as he flicks through.
Behind my veil, I indulge in a sigh. My Songbird turns suddenly, surprised, and smirks a little. “Congestive cardiac failure.”
His smile fades away. The Doctor nods. “Yes … We’ve … Yes.” He taps the page on the desk as if to reassure himself. “Your latest test results show an accelerated degradation – way quicker than we’d otherwise have predicted. Your transplant is wearing out fast. Have you been keeping to the restricted lifestyle? Minimising exertions, that sort of thing?”
My smile grows, but neither of them can see it behind the veil. “Of course.”
My Songbird narrows his eyes, lips parting momentarily before changing course and closing shut. Instead, he leans back slightly in his chair. Fingers steepled together. The Doctor glances up and offers me the slightest interrogation – a lukewarm effort to divine my truthfulness but he has no idea who he is dealing with, and is easily reassured.
“In that case,” He continues, blithely, “And on the basis of these results … I’m afraid I’ll have to recommend a return to the waiting list for a replacement.”
“No.”
“What?” Both him and Knox say in unison.
Although they share the same answer, it is given for different reasons. The Physician opposite is simply surprised to be offered something other than a desperation for a solution, a cure – anything that will prolong life otherwise threatened with an early end. More practised at explaining why there is nothing anyone can do than justifying why they should try, he is easily caught off guard by the simple notion that I might simply decline.
Knox’s reaction is more heartfelt. Ironic, given the circumstances. He is conflicted over me, of course. How else could he feel given the wonderfully grotesque things we have done together? … And yet, he cannot quite bring himself to cast me completely aside. Perhaps he simply wants to see the tragic ending I promise him, or maybe he is grimly fascinated by all of this – by me – and cannot quite give up such an intoxicating mystery.
Neither of them understand my motivations, although my Songbird understands the urgency of it all. He feels the building pressure as events come to a head that cannot now be stopped. We are so close now, all of us in this tangled web interconnected in myriad ways, and the tendrils flex and twist with every subtle vibration. My work is almost complete, but it has come at cost.
I am so very tired.
The fatigue has begun to sap me, drain everything from everywhere. With every passing week the medications lose their efficacy a little more, every exertion becoming that incrementally greater effort. It is building beyond the ignorable now. I find it difficult to sleep and when I do, powerful dreams wrestle rest from my weary mind.
That is to be expected, however, given the stakes. My work is almost complete … Just a little further to go.
“How many more pieces of me need to be cut out …” I begin, conscious the two men are still waiting for a response. “I have had three successful replacement hearts and one failure. Do you know what it feels like to have your ribcage broken four times?”
My flesh-and-blood hand reaches up, pulling down the neckline of my dress to reveal the thick rope of knotted scar tissue disappearing down towards my navel. “Not every flaw exists to be fixed. There is beauty in such ugliness.”
The Doctor frowns, smacking his lips together as his gaze switches over towards Knox who simply shrugs, and sits back. “Miss DeLune, I’d recommend–”
“I am not interested in your recommendation,” I interrupt, the plastic fingers of my prosthetic twitching as I reach into the small handbag sat between my feet and pull free a folded sheet. “These are the list of medications I will require to manage my decline.”
The frown deepens, but he takes the paper, unfurls it, and scans the dozen or so medications.
“You’ve got some medical training …” He nods.
“Likely more than you,” I reply with no small hint of sarcasm.
Suddenly reaching some internalised trigger point whereupon he considers himself to have met the ethical obligation to try, he nods. It is a jarring switch but one I recognise. A good physician does not see people, not really. They see problems to be assessed, fixed if possible. Given the bare minimum comfort if not before attention moves to the next problem. And the next. And the next. The Doctor reaches into the still-open drawer and pulls out a prescription pad. “I’ll need you to put your decision to forego treatment down in writing.”
My head dips. “I already have – it is on the other side.”
Twenty minutes later, clutching a large and flimsy box of brown plastic bottles, my Songbird decides he has had enough. We are still under the heat of the lunchtime sun and just within the shadow of the palm tree furthest from the glass frontage when he stops. “What the fuck was that?”
“I told you this would end in tragedy for both of us.”
He blinks. “Yeah, but you didn’t say–”
“DId you think you were the only one who would suffer?” I interrupt, turning on my heels. “I did not give you a prediction on tragedy, I made you a promise. This is my end of the bargain. Consider it your proof; insurance that you will be free of the things I know that you still fear others will come to.”
He does not like my reply, but his acquiescence or agreement are not required. Only compliance. “So you just let yourself die?”
I smile, but he cannot see it. No-one can. “My Songbird – I have already died three times before. This will simply be the closing act on a four-part design.”
Turning on his heels, Knox takes one step forward towards the car park and then halts. His head turns back but his eyes never meet mine. “You said you’d had four …”
“You do not want to ask me where they came from.”
And he does not, but it is quite the story to tell.
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[The Rapture]
Katarina – I am reminded of some words you spoke only a short while ago. A diatribe fuelled by all the sorrow and hurt you felt at what had befallen your so-called “sister”; a threat sent my way with all the force your bitterness could muster for transmission. A promise you hastily made to all of creation to teach me what, to date, no-one has yet managed. A gift from you, passed to me …
A dose of pain and violence?
Is that what you think you have in store for me?
You have no concept of the meaning of those words and they come tumbling, loose and free, from the meat inside your head that struggles to make sense of what it sees. A new world it was not invited to make new along with. Instead, some natural order that has stood the test of so much time begins to creak; black iron sags and screeches as the whole edifice of what you have watched built – what you have helped to build – threatens to crash down in splinters of broken metal and thick palls of poisoned, choking dust. You would do better to breathe it in deep, let your lips turn blue and the cyanide turn haemoglobin dark. Go to sleep and never wake up.
You would do better to lie down now in the Rapture I have brought about than stand back up and meet me pseudo face-to-face. Show a little of the modicum of emotional intelligence that has otherwise seen your stand at a distance and watch while others tried to stop me, suffered, and failed.
A dose of pain and violence?
You have no idea what that even means. What it feels like. You do not know how to articulate the concept in some doctrinal definition, let alone supply something empirical alongside. Do you know what it feels like to have your ribcage flex along a thrice-broken, thrice-healed fracture line for making the mistake of trying to reach for something above your head? Do you know what it is like to lose a limb and still feel an impossible heat when the missing forearm passes over a burning hob?
Your puerile visions of doom for me cannot possibly come close to matching the agonising reality that has already been my past. Your portents cannot scare me any more completely than the agonies I have already suffered through.
Have you ever cried for your mother, alone and desperate? I have.
I have peeled back the veneer that makes this company so bright it hurts to look at directly; stripped away the coloured layers which seem to pull in the wandering eyes of so many people all clambering to make something from nothing; become somebody from nobody. With the sharp facsimile of a fingernail made from hardened thermoplastic, I have scraped away the thin protective layer that stops oxidation and resists tarnish and I have seen what you all keep underneath it.
Rot. Decay. Filth. You disgust me.
There is a sickness inside me, and it is filling my soul up until it drowns in bile and poison. I watch this rotten edifice soldier on, shored up by the endless supply of relatively supple bodies ready to trade agonies for dollars and the opportunity for something approaching recognition. Their names bleed into each other: Adrienne, Jessica, Crystal, Chloe … They are representations of the status-quo. That somehow, within the state borders of Nevada, entropy is paused and the system somehow continues on in some strange homeostasis. Nothing new enters, nothing becomes lesser. As if the laws of thermodynamics themselves are willing to allow this place and everything in it to simply exist undisturbed. Unmolested.
It disgusts me.
For my part, I tried to change it. Remake it into something new and shining. The Rapture sought to rebuild in glorious renewal what had become stale, and jaded and worn. And yet months on, what is there to show for my efforts? For all those I have carefully gifted my vision unto with choice suffering and beautifully-worked miseries, how many more remain ignorant? Wallowing in that status-quo, unaware of the fate that will soon be unavoidably, irresistibly theirs.
I am tired, Katarina. Does it show? My hand shakes sometimes, when it rests on the tabletop. My greatest work is gone, My formerly Resplendent Hurricane, smashed apart by that same hand because of the poison you cut into her veins and pushed inside. My grand design unpicked by the blind who did not even destroy it out of jealousy or fear, but idiocy. You could not even oppose it on merit, or ideology. You stumbled into its innards and destroyed it through incompetence and ignorance.
You have taken something very important from me, so I will repay this in kind. I am not finished with Amber Ryan. Does that make your heart hurt to hear?
It is not enough to incapacitate. It is not even enough to cripple, because such a thing is one-way. Something that happens to you – not brought on by your own actions or decisions. It is not enough to hurt Amber physically, or even make her spend a while considering what is really, truly important. Such a plan is doomed to failure because even though she may be thinking about anything other than this company and its phantom zone-esque existence, the hole in her chest only aches for one thing, and that can only be found in Nevada. In SCW. Currently, in the all too flesh-and-blood hands of a certain Superhero …
I am looking forward to meeting Miss Johnson, very soon. She is so important to me.
It is not enough to hurt her in body, or cause a crisis of faith. Instead, I want her to come back when every single logical point, coherent argument and sane piece of advice points – screams – to walk away. I want … I need Miss Ryan to heal, to walk tall and strong and still learn nothing from the lessons I have taught her and darken my company-provided doorway again.
I think I know how to do it, Miss Jones. I think I know what will bring her back to me even after all of this. But first, I must deal with you. Again.
It is interesting to see how quickly you have held up the record book as evidence that you are prepared for what is going to happen to you this Sunday. In all my time in SCW, I have never referenced such meaningless accomplishments as victories. What do they really matter, except to underline what I already know – that this company and its so-called talent lack the faith in their convictions to endure. There has never been any doubt in me, and so I do not need an echo chamber made of factoids and statistics.
And yet you cling to your victory over me as desperately as a life preserver adrift on a cold and lonely sea. Does it bring you comfort? Are you made more safe, more secure in the knowledge I can be beaten within a rules-based order? It is so curious to me that so many spend so much time espousing all the ways I will meet my comeuppance, be struck down. Destroyed. And yet here I still walk, and all that can be levered against me is a single match in which I was not even personally put down to stare up at those bright lights.
You have made this so very personal, Katarina … So why use such a technicality as a shield?
You do not strike me as a woman who pursues accolades, or accomplishments. Perhaps in that singular aspect, we are more alike than you could ever stomach to admit. The Internet Championship I hold is less proof of some metric of excellence, and more a gateway against which they will come and they will be hurt so very badly all in the service of desperate, hungering recognition. Could it be that your Roulette Championship serves the very same purpose?
Somehow, I do not think you would say even if it were true. Do you remember when we exchanged words sat on top of transit cases, only a few short months ago backstage? I remember how much you wanted to say and how little made it through impulse control. I wonder why you have suddenly found such strength of will to speak to clearly, so passionately now. Is it purely because of your perceived connection with Miss Ryan? Or is there something deeper motivating you, pushing you …
You have made this so very personal and yet, you think you have a level of involvement and depth all out of proportion to your actual worth. You believe Amber was tricked and beaten down? You had such a rare opportunity, Katarina – a chance to see the objective truth without the refraction caused by bias and interpretation and all the foibles which make us question what the lens so accurately captures from the light. You could still have saved yourself, perhaps, if you had taken advantage of that final proffered prosthetic hand. I could have pulled you from the freezing waters, sodden and shaking in foamy brine but still alive, if only you had not decided to stay in the rolling waves with the rest of the damned.
If only you had not confused the illusion of safety, of being right and just, with the reality. So you drown with everyone else who thinks they understand, instead of huddling in the warmth of the truth which I so generously offered to share despite your willful, repeated discourtesies.
I did not trick Miss Ryan. I did not turn her from any path she was not otherwise walking – even if her eyes were closed while she stepped. You all drink from the same delusion, cupping your shaking hands and letting that sweet lie spill free in your greed to slurp and gulp deep such complete and total self-delusion. Only my Songbird has so far broken free from that spell but you? Just like all the others. Their names are a litany of sacrifices made for no reason or value at all; a gas-stop martyr bleeding on the oil-stained forecourt, dying in defence of ten dollars and change because they chose to take a stand with no reason to stand behind it.
Just like you will do this Sunday, in Scottsdale. You will sacrifice yourself for no reason – no good one – because the cause you think is worth dying for never existed at all. Why surrender your last breath for something that has no dignity? Why are you rushing headlong into annihilation with the flimsiest of pretences?
Why are you so eager to fall? Is this self-flagellation and penance for failing to protect your so-called sister? Are you punishing yourself for some perceived inaction? There is no need to create a new justification for your shame and guilt, when there are so many other good ones still intact and available. You were never supposed to intervene, Katarina; that was not your role to play.
Instead, you were only required to react. Be aghast. That you have chosen to do something more is inconvenient, but not surprising. For a long time, you have followed her in a desperate and transparent attempt to fuel your own reputation and importance by syphoning off just a little of her magnificent radiance. A theft, but a clever one that obviously paid dividends, considering your status as Roulette Champion. You project a kind of purity of spirit and intent all out of odds with your more debased and cunning strategies. I am quite impressed.
My Diminished Hurricane was such a sight. Did you see her? Weaving and spinning and swirling; such beautiful chaos painted red. A monster made from random chance, cruel irony and deliberate, brutal mistakes. Something that pretended to be a force of nature, unsteerable, uncontrollable, but that was never true. Something claiming to be rudderless. Something wicked that way came, and it was terrible to behold. For three hundred and fifty seven days they dashed themselves against her, snapping bones in shrieking winds just for the opportunity to experience that agony firsthand. Oh, to be put down by her own hand. So many sacrificed so much for the chance. Of course we both know there was never really any chance at all.
So tell me, Katarina … Who has ever made Amber Ryan do something she did not want to do? Amongst all the mock-outrage and hollowed-out fury, where is the self-reflection or the much-vaunted “closeness” that those who supposedly knew her well – like sisters – should have applied before opening their mouths and disengaging rational thought or impulse control?
Who has ever made Amber Ryan do something she did not want to do?
Consider the question carefully, because I will extract the answer from you at Climax Control. In what coherent way can one of the most dominant competitors this company has ever seen, a woman who has forged a reputation made from stuff stronger and darker than wrongs or night, be reduced to some befuddled simpleton, accepting external input like a radio-controlled marionette?
I wonder who has done the greater damage to Amber long-term. Me, or the small but potent army of sycophants and self-appointed carers, such as you, who have taken it upon themselves to rewrite history as they fall over each other to offer ever more plastic platitudes. You spend so much time caring for the version of her you think you see, that you do not even grasp how it was that I was able to make her mine – if even for a little while.
If nothing else, perhaps you will appreciate that I have left Miss Ryan in a state that most closely parallels the image you hold of her in your heart, necessitating your mewlings and your worry: powerless, broken. Enfeebled. Asking who had done the greater damage was an exercise in the hypothetical – it was me.
It is me. Perhaps she will finally come to appreciate your love and support when you offer to change her catheter as she recovers at home. Remember to pinch the drainage port to prevent backflow.
Would you like to know how I did it? How I redirected her wrath, usurped her control? Made her mine?
I told her the truth. Such beautiful simplicity. No Machiaviallian subterfuge, threads so tangled the mass blots out the sky. Nothing so conniving, or subtle. I did not have to find a new cause to split her soul, or conspire to turn a sore spot gangrenous until she tried to cut it out herself. No. All I had to do, Katarina, is point out the obvious. Highlight the aching wound in her chest that made every step a gut-rattling struggle and ask: why not sew it closed? I am not surprised, however, that this truth of a truth is unknown to you. Why would you acknowledge something you helped create?
It should be obvious, but I do not think you are clever enough to feel it, let alone see it and acknowledge lucidly, consciously. The blade used to cut deep into Amber’s heart and lever it out from her aching ribs was never in my prosthetic hand – it was in yours. In Mister Bane’s. In every single person who cared for some idyllic version of Miss Ryan who had never existed outside the twisted collective fantasy of a dozen mind’s eyes, working in fever-pitch unity. How could you not see this particular truth? It was less hidden in the long grass and more towering in front of your slack-jawed face, as you mouthlessly worked to understand why everything you have ever known is coming to an end.
You cut her with your love, poisoned her with your compassion. You told her she was a good person.
I told my Songbird a lie once, Katarina. I told him there was no such thing as monsters, only monstrous people, but that is not the case. Amber Ryan is a monster, and I think you have seen its lumpen, misshapen glare burn out from underneath a tangled fringe of red. She is a creature made from spite and rage which rails against the crime of being made to take part in a world she did not ask to be brought into. For decades she has taken unjustifiable revenge against those whose only sin was to take a little happiness in the agony of existence, before the former was snuffed out by the latter.
And then you cut her with your love.
Told her she was a good person. Humanised her; taught her how to have compassion without explaining the consequences of equipping a monster designed only to destroy with the capacity to regret. Tell me, what did you think would happen? If I had not done what I did, she would have destroyed you all as surely as she would ultimately have destroyed herself.
Instead, I receive your scorn. Hate. Because I corrected a terrible mistake you made.
Such monsters are finely-tuned engines of destruction. A thousand whirling blades in carefully-orchestrated, synchronised violence. They are intricately balanced things, crafted to hurt to the exclusion of all else. And yet you and all the others with their fawning feelings and misplaced emotions loaded such a remarkable machine with second-guesses and doubt. Unbalanced the blades, made them sweep against each other; inwards instead of out. So they cut inside, cut her instead. And she bled so heavily until each step became a stumble.
Then, Katarina, what did you do, after you cut her with your love?
You poisoned her with compassion. Told something terrible and malevolent that it would be okay, if she only stopped to feel instead of fighting on. It is a testament to Amber’s strength of will that she resisted the corrosive effect of your caring for as long as she did, endured the toxicity of kindness that hollowed out her bones and made the blood in her veins thick like molasses. Nothing is invincible, of course and eventually she fell. Not by my plastic hand of course, no. Many weeks before.
You are the reason Miss Johnson became Bombshells’ World Champion. You are the reason, Katarina, that my Diminished Hurricane lost her heart to a Superhero. You were the cause that manifested an effect which led me to take the only course of action open. To intervene, to bring down a monster about to rage against the unsolvable equation – a paradox – of knowing how to love, to be kind, to be human without the mechanism to do such.
You wormed your way into her with your kindness, a cancer that twisted her up and malformed all the strength and power and grace and made it into something foul. Made the flesh red and puffy, engorged with virulence and rot.
And when finally, because even the most mighty must fall, she stumbled and fell to her knees and lost that heart …
I knew that the damage could not be repaired. There would simply be nothing left if that twisted, engorged tumour of feeling you had spent so long spreading through my Hurricane were cut out. Nothing left to heal. So perhaps in the ultimate irony to be expressed here, now, I offered my own kindness. Of a sort.
I put her down myself. Sacrificed everything she could have been to correct the errors of what she had ultimately become because of your interference. Your compassion. Your love.
A dose of pain and violence?
Perhaps you have already visited this on me, months before I would get the opportunity to respond in physical, in kind. You have interfered to destroy something that would have remade all of this; torn down this miserable company so bloated with average, so engorged on normalcy. The beautiful thing that could have stood in its place afterwards would have been such a sight to behold. Instead, we are left in ruin. Walking bleary-eyed through a shattered landscape of torn-up potential and burning hopes. Follow their ink-black pyres up into the pale sky and watch them occlude the Sun.
Recognise the wrong you have made against me darker than death or night. Something not even family might forgive.
Family. Sisters.
Do you really believe that?
Here is a woman who has cut the sky and made it bleed, fought impossible odds, won and then defeated them in rematches. A record-breaking monster who commands whirlwinds and hurricanes effortlessly – the mere mention of which begins social media wars and creative excuses as to why defeat follows defeat whenever she is opposed. For what reason would she stop and look down at the likes of you?
Katarina, you have spent too much time in the company of the soft-headed. Mewling children like Miss Benton, who lack the intellectual rigour or the simple good sense to protect themselves from long walks versus short cliff faces. You cannot be something special, or worthwhile, because you wish it so. There is no way to be remarkable when made of unremarkable stuff.
You are an exercise in leaping up as high as you can to see over the fence, catching glimpses of something exciting through sun-bleached planks. At the top of your jump is a solitary moment of relevancy, but do not confuse making eye contact with someone inside as validation. It is not an invitation to join them; only politeness at best, or maybe, curiosity.
Amber never cared for you. She has never cared for anyone, herself included. Why would anyone do the things she has done otherwise? She did not ask you to save her.
She did not ask anyone to save her.
This Sunday, there will be no salvation. No second chances. No opportunities. The Rapture is no longer concerned with rebuilding; making anew. Instead, it will uplift only those who are found worthy and promising, and deserving of something greater.
I have already judged this company, its competitors – you – and found nothing worth saving. Welcome to the end of everything you have ever known, Katarina. If you remember nothing else, remember this:
You cut her with your love. Now it is time to cauterise the wound.
