Shadows Black And Blue

chapter 10

Why are deadly things so silent?

Floating away from the ferris wheel after being jerked back to her senses a minute ago, Cherry saw it. It spread like a grey vine along the little girl's leg, through her pelvis, across her belly, enveloping her chest and concentrating in her head, rippling with every drop of her consciousness trickling away, it fed on her life force.

Fed on her?

No, it blocked her. It blocked the little girl out of her own body. Like drain clogs, not letting her screams past. And somehow Cherry saw. And somehow 🍒 knew.

Then she saw the man.

A mop of blond hair bent down on the girl was all she could observe before something hit her. An unreasonable intuition. It was like hearing a rattlesnake for the first time. You don't know what it is. You don't know what it'll do. But you freeze up. And then you run. May God forsake this land, you run.

And that made Cherry curious.

After all, she didn't become dead to still be scared of rattlesnakes.

She turned her body and kicked the air, swimming through the air like a dried leaf to get under the mahogany tree, where the two sat.

The ground was a carpet of lights and shadows. The meagre moonlight slipped through the trees and made the pavement into a zebra's skin. Dried leaves coldly crunched under her feet, a few blowing away in the cool air.

The man looked up, the expression of a frightened deer, not seeing the danger. His body seemed to move ever so slightly, hesitantly, above the girl's.

The bloody, battered, dying and almost naked girl.

Cherry's eyes narrowed, her mind placing a reason behind her earlier intuition. She took off again, rising slowly to the air. A few leaves caught the updraft and moved up with her.

This broke him.

Standing up and screaming like an electricuted bat, he leaped over the girl's body and charged towards the column of air she left behind.

"Leave me alone!" He screamed to her feet which were dangling near his head.

She rose up, careful not to catch another volley of dried leaves. But the cold draft from her flight caught his face, shifting his hair.

Bellowing, he swung his fist, under her legs. And again. And again, grunting and cursing each time he did.

As the guy battled away hordes of invisible Enemies, Cherry carefully made her way towards the girl lying on the pavement.

The vines were thicker now. Smoky grey and almost a cocoon around her, it looked more like spiderwebs than vines at that point. They weren't even pulsating anymore, simply twitching from time to time.

And there was something else. A small flower, whitish yellow and glowing small against the darkness of the night, bloomed from her thigh. Cherry bent down to pluck it.

She held it's long grey stem with two fingers and yanked. It didn't pluck.

She yanked again. She had to acquire this flower. She didn't know why. She just had to. But the flower stubbornly refused.

She held it with both her hands and yanked, harder, twisting the stem. It seemed to give a little. Blood, dark under the elusive heavenly brilliance, oozed off from the root of the stem. But yet she pulled.

Then it came. Like a roll of tissue paper, it came lose, trailing a long string of vines behind. All of it, infact. The following vines slithered into her fist at blinding speed, like a scared and quick little snake. She opened her palm to look at the flower, but there was nothing there.

Looking at the girl's thigh, she saw a blood-soaked cloth wrapped around it. Probably the thing that had prevented her from bleeding to death. It also explained why the girl's dress, which she could now deduce had been a blue hospital gown, was in the condition it was.

"Come and face me, you damn vaginaface ass knob!" The guy in the jacket roared up at another falling leaf. He punched but the leaf simply danced away from his fist.

"Hey," she decided heck with it, "there's nothing there."

He froze, mid punch. Momentum carried his body around while his feet stayed true to its ground, causing him to flip himself and fall on his butt, with almost stuntmanly dramatics.

"W—what do you want with us?" He looked directly at her, letting her know she was successful in her endeavor in making herself visible.

"Nothing," unusually, uttering the word didn't feel like puking out half her guts.

"What do you mean by nothing?" He slowly got to a reserved sitting position.

"Nothing. You're in my home and I'm checking you out." this was a miracle. She could speak, pronounce full sentences before almost fading away from the place.

He looked to her feet and his eyes widened.

"What did you do with Emma?" He jumped and ran to the girl, colors now returning to her cheek. Cherry stepped infront of the body.

"First, explain yourself." She held both her arms up in a barricade.

"Explain what?"

"Explain who you are and why you're popping up in my place in the middle of the night with a injured and undressed child."

The guy blinked, and then buried his face in his palm.

"Ah, devil, I'm Ed. That's Emma," he pointed to the girl, "and I don't have a cowshit of idea what the fucks going on."

"That's not explain," Cherry took a step towards him, "explain is when I have a good idea who you are, what you are to this girl, and why I shouldn't wipe this floor with your ass right now."

"I don't have fucking clue what I am to her!"

"Well, find one, mister mystery man," Cherry smirked.

How much more different is this gonna be from a Ouija board meeting?

As it turned out, very different.