The girl from the mire

11

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"Relief" is the word of the moment for Jane. Relief like weightless shoulders in the knowledge that Rist and Rhie didn't intervene in the bloodbath that she was dunked into and held under and forced to climb out of like the bottom of a ringed black brick coffin well. They would've drown in the horrible blood soaking depths. They would've been beaten to death or shot and that would've truly killed Jane. It would've sent her into the mire, never to return to her mind. Her body could eat up every bit of her soul in that scenario, like a shark sinking its teeth into a hunk of meat. That's what her body is, a doll eye shark swimming through the terrified urban landscape, sloshing a trail of blood upon the decimation and feeding upon her mind, feeding upon her humanity.

She's chasing after her friends to let them know that she's ok and to make sure they're ok too. She needs them. She loves them. In the end, they're all that she has. They're her family. Rist is her best friend but she's also like a sister and also like a mother to Jane. She feels it, the sense that they could be a unit, their own little nuclear family, sort of. She would die for them without hesitation.

Here we go again. This is who I am, I guess. Someone who would die for her friends. The more that I live with myself, the more I understand that this one truth will always be inevitable. I'm sacrificial when it comes to my love for them and I think I'm coming to terms with this outlook in this place and in this time.

Jane makes her way back into the desolate areas of the city, listening for Rist and Rhie. She thinks they're somewhere between the giant sepulchre buildings because they wouldn't head home, not right away. Jane's confident they're smart enough to know the remaining Ghosts will now be after them. She assumes the one who got away will be the new leader and will try and honour the former Grand Ghost's final orders. Or maybe not. It's better to be prepared in case he does attempt to follow through with that plan.

The fucking Ghosts. What a joke. The good guys aren't the good guys and maybe they never were. I'm surprised Rist couldn't see through them. Nobody's perfect but I wish her and Rhie had been more doubtful of their own group of militants. I'm not mad at them but maybe I shouldn't completely trust their judgment. Ah, Rist. I wish we would have seen this coming.

Tears collect upon Jane's face. When she wipes them away, the crimson of the battle smears off and makes pale areas upon her cheeks and around her eyes. She crouches and holds her legs while looking at her feet. A tear falls and creates a microscopic flood upon the cement. The more she thinks, the less she wants to contemplate. Jane's a thinking creature, but she doesn't want to test her thoughts too much on what she's now centring in her mind. She's come to the realization that Rist and Rhie got her killed tonight. She stands and flings her running feet forward because she wants to flee the feeling by sprinting through the heave of streets and parkour off balconies and off walls and around street lamps and so she does. She climbs a rust orange emergency ladder to the top of a bleak five story building and looks out at the city's lasting epilogue. Perhaps she can fly.

Jane wraps her arms around herself while standing at the edge of the broken concrete crenellation and watches the world below like the many green eye shadows looking back at her. They were everywhere when her body was butchering the Ghosts and they're everywhere now, exposing themselves to her vulnerable thoughts. This's a dream and she's a nightmare and this's a nightmare and she's a dream. She's a dream that won't wake up, like watching the world from below trapping her under the ice. It cracks as she punches but it never seems to break. Then she thinks about the flip flops found at the edge of the mire. In her mind, she had associated them with completing the first level. How many levels has she beaten now? How many times has she lost and started over? How many lives does she have left? Perhaps her world's a children's game for a forever child. Perhaps this's her body and mind playing with her soul. Perhaps she's truly floating down a river on a ship of fools.