the alive

Patricia

DEPTHS OF THE FACTORY

Janice wasn't lying. There she stands as a human being in the Crater. A ghost. Like the ghost of a ghost. Just spun down the rock face rope like gravity is a colloquial theory. The main acrobatic attraction in the circus of this place. Coal fingernails hold the soft rope beside the climbing wall. Terra Coal. Thin and short and pale but with Corvus hair like she's been burnt upon the sunless cosmos shores of Hades. Maybe her hair truly found itself too close to Old Sol's solar touch. Eyes a charcoal last name which fuel the rings of her emerald ardour gravity. The revolutionist. The warrior. Death.

Witnesses Terra watch her gaze like the horology of a clock. Fearsome memories grip Patricia's inner intuition and bend the lineal back over and upon itself, like she's once again in the horrific butcher cleaver lobby with Garret. Sweating beneath her clothes. Watching the door. Waiting for death.

Patricia doesn't look away from Terra in this moment. Eyes have drastically changed but they're still somehow Terra's eyes. Not dead voids. Not like the thing that slouched through the lobby door ten years ago. Not Muerte. This girl spun down the long rope from the very top of the rock face climb only seconds ago. This is the nimble Amazonian Grand Ghost of legend. This is her old friend.

Patricia's tentative response and inhibition dies within her body. Dies so as to escape the prison of her soul. Wonders about the possible futility of amends. Must try.

Dashes up to Terra and the Glare girl standing beside. Grabs Terra's ropey palm. Pulls her old friend toward her chest. Grasps her body into a tight encompassing hug.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I fucked up. I fucked up bad when I left you alone, when I went with the others into the trap. I fell for it. You were killed. We abandoned you. I abandoned you. I'm sorry, Terra. Not a day goes by...not a single day..."

Patricia feels her old friend shudder in the hug. Terra's arms don't move. Patricia's heart pounds like anxious cardio. Terra smells like a salty vanilla wine dark sea. Feels like a rib cage and a spine and breasts and a fever dream. Terra wraps her arms around Patricia's waist and whispers in the language of penitence.

"I killed your family..."

"It wasn't you, Terra. Those fucks made you a monster. It wasn't you."

Patricia hugs Terra tighter. Squeezes. Terra sniffs into sobs behind Patricia's ear. Glare backs away until she's with the rest of her gawking group of Ghosts in training.

"I was there but I was buried away. I was watching through the coffin drill holes behind my eyes. I knew what was happening and I remember being grateful when my body fell to Garret's bullets. I was grateful when you chopped me up and turned my body into ashes. But I became even more of a prisoner to David. The Bone Saw Man made a portal in my mind and my mind existed without my body, except I had a body in there. In that empty city. Or, at least other monsters did. We should talk about it, Patricia. And not here. But I'll say, I was David's prisoner earlier today. He was here in the city. That all ended this morning."

Patricia can't believe what she just heard. David Leonard was in the city? Was? All ended?

"Come up to Janice's rooms. We can have privacy."

"Janice needs to hear this, too, I think. I also have a package for her. An important package. I want to see Garret, too. Haven't found him yet. I've words for him as I'm sure he does for me."

"Oh, Terra. Garret's dead. He stared too long into the abyss. Became a monster and jumped into it. He had to be put down."

~*~*~*~

Two parallel couches are in the centre of a chess board area rug. Black stitch skulls needle in the white spaces and white stitch skulls needle in the black spaces. Janice and Patricia sit on a white couch with a big osteal sable tint window behind them. The day looks dreary and misty behind the exterior glass. More so because of the quietus tint. Terra sits alone on the black couch facing the warped custom commercial grade window. Her hair surpasses her shoulders. She's the monochrome metonymy of lomography in the lighting of the Grand Ghost living room.