the alive

Terra

Terra sweats. Watches the distance. Tops of buildings silhouette against the stone sky horizon twinkle. Feels the windless air like deep fissure buckles and indents along the body of an ancient wooden boy caught in the belly of a dogfish.

Smells portals. Breaths in the scent of open doorways like the sniff of crotch flap rubs upon the glans of meat clubs.

Flip flops closer to her destination. The olden Nietzschean bar. Wild and worn like a vampire's funerary clothing. Numerous blocks away from the epistemic hallucinations of the alley.

Holds the double blade portal axe in her right fist like she's preparing to swing its violence into the wooden memory of the war between revenants and dark forest boles. Something within her body screams to be ready for some such maledictive conjuring. But is it the laughter of legions sensing this? Telling her such in their way of things? Is her sweaty grip upon the axe mistaking preparation for compulsion? Maybe it's the horrific laughter she truly listens through. Multitudes which howl into her and through her. The many mocking voices groaning behind her thoughts. Maybe their laughter swallows her own screaming, like an ouroboros and yet again, all over again. Maybe that's all her particular screaming ever was; the tip of her soul eating the tip of her soul. Maybe the laughter knows what's coming even if she doesn't. The vast voices in a single mouth know she doesn't know that she doesn't know. They're a tightening claustrophobia. A whisper that beckons louder as its language of secrets fade beside the hum of the underground.

Something howls menacingly behind her gravities. Traps her in a tomb of darkening wolfish thoughts. Doesn't know what's really in her. Not really. Not yet. Inklings. Something wants to break free. Escape. Muerte? Maybe someone else.

Not yet. Whatever she is, not yet. Obsidian eyes glow green circles. Black teeth. Black fingernails. Black toenails. Long raven hair which holds no reminiscence of blonde. Bone white skin. Black body hair. Feels like the past misses the moment to only become the tomorrow of every tomorrow. Terra is the physical afterlife of Terra.

'Something's happening. I can feel it. I can feel it like the sun is dying on my skin. I can feel the city orbiting portals that have opened. Their gravity has changed the molecules in the air itself. They're pulsing like an anaerobic heartbeat. And...'

The vibration of many out of place existences catch Terra's intuition like stop motion inner shadows rising through floor boards. The corporeal of such dark reflections remain in the dreading depths of a rotting Hell. But they aren't shadows. She breaths in the new pollution and begins twirling her battle axe. The weapon is like another limb.

'They're here. They smell like electricity and metal. The stench of dead gods. The Leonard army. This place is already a tomb so why not let it be their tomb.'

Terra stops walking. Kicks her flip flops into a thin corridor between buildings. Hides herself in-between the brick and mortar walking alley. Touches the toe tip smooth dispersion paint upon the concrete.

Listens. Footfalls whisper. A kind of secret march. Moves closer toward her position.

They're across the street. Not in it yet. Watches the opposite alley. Darkness in the corridor. Waits. Boot steps. Something electric crackles. They're coming.

Figures march out of the alley across the street like statues made of an igneous landscape. Armour of rock face camouflage. Serrated spikes protrude from shoulders and forearms and the sides of legs. Armour is covered in what appears to be short sharp concrete nails which vanish and expose again and again in the tenebrous camouflage before her. Carry honeybadgers. They look invincible. Except for their necks. Witnesses a thin exposure of skin. A weakness which her battle axe will exploit.

Something deep within Terra smiles at whatever she is. Curls her lips.

Lets her enemy pass. Marches along the decline of the street. They move in the direction she was on. Doesn't expose herself yet. Waits another moment. Witnesses one final soldier climb out of the alley. This one has electrified horns on its helmet. Thinner than the others, like a skeleton in armour. As the Leonard turns its back to Terra's position, she silently flies out of the shadow of the thin corridor. Swings her battle axe like a noumenal whisper. Slices through the soldiers neck. Decapitates the straggler. Horn helmet head rolls back the way its body came. The armour collapses like it was already a corpse. The blood on her axe is black. Nothing leaks from what's left of the neck. Notices green eyes fade from the shadowy face of the decapitation.

'A revenant? Oh shit! They have revenants? I thought that I was the last to go extinct. Fuck...'

Fingers tap at her existence. Feels like fingernails claw from within her forehead. Scratches her brain to ribbons.

"It's time to be one of them again, Terra Coal."

Her own lips talk to her. The monster inside is back. It is Muerte.

'No. I'll kill them all myself. I don't want you and I don't need you.'

"Suit yourself. If you fall, you won't come back. We'll make sure of it. You know,  you're truly fucked, little mire thing. You're all ours. We're gonna eat you. We can't wait to be free of your knowledge. Your interpretation. Your soul."

'I hate you.'

"Then you hate yourself."

'Yes, but I also hate you.'