Breed and Burn: Faceless

chapter 30- you thought, bitch

Happy endings. They were all made to believe that once happy endings existed but the world grew cold and dark and merciless. The more they lived the more the image of their perfect happy ending fell apart: there was no home to go to, no mother to cry on and his best friend was dead. Now all Sage could hope for was a new beginning in which he could pick up the scattered pieces and move on.

So, when Sage forced his eyes open and found himself on a train station, he readily accepted whatever fate was thrown at him. Facesmiths had turned every moment he had spent with his friends into painful memories. When he found himself all alone, he closed his eyes in gratitude.

The platform was empty except the bench which had been carved from a fallen, black tree, the roots still sticking out from the fractured stone. It made it low to the ground but Sage sat it in without complaint and stared up at the sky. When he did, something squeezed his heart and made him laugh. Tears started down his cheeks and his eyes filled with joy. At that moment, everything he had endured felt worth it for this single feeling.

Sage never realised how pretty the sky was, how the blue was bright and soft all at once. In areas it was mottled with clouds that were made of white velvet which became gentle, silky spirals flickering in soaring winds. Where the clouds caught the sun's rays, they were a brilliant white like a turning page catching moonlight.

"Yes, bitches," he screamed, pumping his fist in the air and jumping to his feet. "We're back."

And for that second, he truly believed he was on the ground. On Earth.

But the fantasy faded and he felt the voice in the back of his head laugh at him. Painful memories reentered his mind, the ones that he clung on to remember Axel as he promised. It felt like he was hugging a teddy bear made of shards of glass.

Sage emerged from freezing water in which huge chunks of ice were floating in. Weak. Hardly breathing. He felt like crying but he could not remember why. No sound. No light. Everything disorientated him. All his thoughts were far too slow for his surroundings. He wasn't even sure why he was breathing.

Eventually, a figure approached him. Everything was blurred and the only thing that told Axel that smear of grey watercolour was a person was because it moved like one. Even its shape was faded and lost into the surrounding darkness. Or light. Sage couldn't tell. It stretched him thin. Unbearably thin. Nothing in this place made any sense. He couldn't make out where he was or how he got there.

Eventually, the figure somehow managed to grow to double its size, reach into the tank and pull Sage out of it. After it reverted back to its original size, Sage was dragged against the floor by the figure. The floor was smooth and cold against his cheek but still stung.

There was a silence to Sage's soul. This winter had frozen his heart and with that his Will to live. Now he knew what Axel and Haven had felt like. Shaking with grief that came from his bones, Sage prayed for real warmth. Nothing was there to subside the hollow feeling in his mind. The tiredness that needed so much more than a good night sleep made him move his eyes slow like they were heavy and required so much effort.

But although he looked everywhere, he saw nothing. Sage couldn't describe it. No matter how much he concentrated, no matter how many coloured smears he saw, he could not take any of it in.

He recalled Seven saying that that Facesmiths were smart but he didn't realise it was to this capacity. Eventually, the figure pulling him let go. Sage lay there in the dust and ash with blood trickling down his face. He was dead and it was his own curse that his heart was beating.

When Sage finally sat up, he realised that there was a woman staring at him. There was something eerie about her appearance. Even after all this time, he would never get used to the incredulous perfection that science was able to create on people's faces. Skin stretched over the woman's flawless bone structure like silk over a piece of glass.