The Keepers' Evil

Diary One: I saw a man

Song- Little dark age: MGMT

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A gentle hum clipped my eardrums making it feel like hordes of bees hammering and whirring inside of my body. The wind seems to effervesce with sound as it thrummed over me, creating tiny bubbles of a muffled noise I couldn't quite make out yet.

My cheeks ached with the minuscule collection of pebbles that pinpricked where my dimples should've been, and I began to feel the prickle of the stoned gravel over all limbs in my body. It smelt damp, like an almost dark yet fresh aroma lingering in each of the pockets the ground had eroded. Petrichor was a welcomed scent, any water was welcomed after all.

My palms took the place of my body, dented red with the grooves of the dull, yet somewhat sharp, stones, as I warred against the dizziness and heaved my sluggishness up from the floor. My eyes narrowed, somewhat counterintuitively, as if it would twist the focus of my eyes into place to see where I was.

There was a distinct taste of terror in the tongue of the town I had found myself in, the houses before me cradled in smoke, the paths swarmed with people too scared to make sense of. They were screaming, running, dying.

The panic slicked my face like water gelling hair into place, and my hands reached out before me, guiding my legs down the rickety descent of the hill towards the voices that vociferated in a volume that thundered miles.

The closer I stumbled, the quieter the sounds hushed, the more silenced the voices became. My shoes clicking on the crumbled pavements were suddenly louder than the shrill of screams I had previously heard, my breath the only one apparent amongst the hundreds.

My fingers intertwined with the bloodied fabric of a woman before me, her path clashing with mine as our feet, almost deliberately, collided us together. She held her fingers to her own lips, her breath in the cold only just snaking through the gaps as her hands shook against her face.

"Wha-where am I?" The way she shook her head at my question, the way she ducked me against the back of a burning house, the way she moved her hand to hold my mouth shut, told me that even sound wasn't safe from whatever enemy had slaughtered the innocence of this town.

"We should've run when we could." She mumbled through a desperate attempt to claw back her sob, the taste of metal lining my lips as her hands were her reminder of whoever she had tried to save.

"What's your name?" The woman dragged her fingers slowly down my lips as if the hesitation to take it away was physically holding her back.

"Isidora-"

"Listen to me, you need to hide and not even breathe until he's gone." Her whisper was borderline too loud for someone who didn't dare breathe.

I clung to the woman as if there was something safe about her, as if somehow standing here with her would amend the confusion in my eyes.

He?

"Who are you talking about?" I shook her slightly, unintentionally, fear's fingers rubbing creases into her forehead.

"Death."

Her final word acted like an alarm, a familiar figure towering into the sky, plucking her like a strawberry from a bush. The figure's eyes were hidden, as was his face, the same skeleton's fingers that had taken my brother's hand so gracefully now plucked the woman apart like her kindness was a threat.