Diamondback

17: Red Waterfalls

"Diamondback! D-DB! Wake up, wake up!"

A pair of slender hands were wrapped around my forearm, shaking me to and fro. The touch was unfamiliar. I was eye to eye with a dark ocean of worry and melancholy.

"It's me! Oliver! C'mon, don't look at me like that. I-It's kinda scary..." Oliver, Oliver, Oliver...Oliver!

"Hey, lil bit, what's wrong?" I sat up, nearly bumping heads with him.

"Jeez, it was like a nightmare in here! Once you fell asleep, everything got dark and-and there were voices around every corner. Th-They were chasing me around, then, your attic flew open and-"

"Did you go inside?"

Oliver stopped for a moment. "N...No. N-No, of course not."

"You did, didn't you?"

He combed through his hair and nodded shamefully. "I'm sorry. I was just looking for a place to hide."

"No need to get crazy. I can't even remember whatever the hell is up there anyway..."

"But DB, those voices weren't just any kind of voices, though. They sounded like you. Some even took form in front of me and tried to grab me or eat me! I-I was so scared. Meanwhile, you were still down here, twisting and turning. At first, I thought that you were okay and that it would be really dangerous to wake you up 'cause this could just be what normally happens. It wasn't until I heard you screaming. Oh God, it was bloodcurdling. You kept screaming and screaming and screaming. I-I didn't know what to do, so I started looking through some of the boxes up there. I read someone's name off of a picture, then everything stopped. The light in the house returned and the attic door opened. When I got to you, you stopped screaming, but you were mumbling someone's name over and over again. A-And there was -- um...That's when I reached out to wake you up."

His story was so much to take in at once. To be honest, I was hella lost yet I could tell that something was clearly missing from the story. "Woah, woah, woah. Slow your roll. Please. Whose names?"

Oliver crawled up on the couch next to me and crossed his arms in thought. "The one I saw in the attic was Zypher and the one that you were saying was Eliza. Who are they?"

"I dunno. Doesn't ring a bell."

For some reason, it felt like he knew something that I didn't. "Okay," That's all he said on the matter. At least, that's what I thought. "Eliza must be important to you. If you said her name, you have to know her."

"Really, Olly. I don't know."

"Sister, mother, teacher, friend, lover?"

"Oliver, I don't know her. She can't be important if I can't remember her." My own words tore a heartstring within me.

Again, Oliver sized me up skeptically. "Fine. Enough about her, then," His eyes fixed on the small hole in my nose left from my missing piercing. "What about Zypher?"

He was prying into something he shouldn't have. My immediate instinct was to turn hostile. "Whoever the hell he is, he can go die for all I care. His shit must be crowdin' my attic. Chewy said he killed him about a year ago anyway. That means he musta been out to hurt me."

Oliver glanced over at Chewy next to me on the couch. "Have you ever considered that Zypher could be -- oh, I dunno -- your name?"

My fangs clenched on their own, seething with some form of anger. "That's ridiculous. I'd kill myself with a shitty name like that. My name's Diamondback. Nothin' else."

"From what you can remember."

"Dude! Just drop it already!"

His shoulders spiked up. "I...I'm sorry..."