Sunless Cinema [COMPLETE]

V: The End

Teddy was hopelessly lost. Tears poured down his face, blurring his vision as he rounded another corner. As far as he could tell, he was on the other side of the Sunless Cinema Production Studios, somewhere in the abandoned wing. He was in a dark hall with no lights to guide him-- except for those that were coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the wall to his right. Teddy knew that they shut this part of the studio down forever ago. There just wasn't enough money for it, especially in the wake of the depression.

He paused and braced his good hand on his knee to catch his breath. The hanger was still in his hand. He was tempted to pull it out, but he was afraid of the possibility of splinters being left behind and the blood that would spill out was enough to keep it in there. 

He wiped tears from his eyes with the side of a bloody fist. The salt and sludge burned in one of the small cuts near his nose. It wasn't like he was rubbing salt in the wound. It was more like he was dumping pickle juice down his cheeks. 

He patted his pockets, taking stock of what he still had. There was one gun, with exactly ten bullets left, a small scrap of paper, the hanger in his hand, and nothing else. His butterfly knife was gone, and so was the lemon Ralph told him to shove into his pocket earlier. He must have dropped it sometime during the fight, or when he was running. 

Teddy snacked himself in the forehead. How much of a coward was he? He left Ralph behind. Maybe if he stayed, he could have saved him. Maybe if he stayed, he would have made some sort of noble sacrifice and he would have died a hero's death rather than running like a yellowbelly. 

He knew that was a foolish train of thought, but he couldn't stop beating himself up about it. 

Trying not to cry, he straightened up and wiped his running nose with that same dirty fist. He looked out the window at the afternoon sun and tried to ignore the pain in his hand and the grief in his heart. The sight of the courtyard and the windows of the other wing (the one that was full of gore and corpses) didn't still his troubled soul. This really was all his fault, wasn't it? Over the course of one day, he had ruined everything. The day wasn't even over yet. He didn't know how to fix it and he didn't know if it was possible to do so.  

He squinted out the dirty window. Something was moving on the other side of the courtyard, behind the once-clean glass of those analogous structures. After a moment of trying to figure it out, his blood went cold. It was Lemoine. 

And she was staring right at him. 

Her mouth as stretched out in that same grin, with the torn corners, smeared pink lipstick, and slick black-covered teeth he had grown to fear. Teddy's heart nearly stopped as he froze and stared back, not breathing, not moving. She banged tauntingly on the glass, one-hundred-percent mocking him. 

Teddy did what he was best at. 

He ran. 

Just as he was starting to become familiar with the turns and the doors around him in this wretched place, there she was, at the end of the hall, looming like a creature straight out of a nightmare. And maybe she was. Maybe she was ripped straight from his worst dreams, the kind that would drag him out of bed and into the kitchen before dawn, still shaking from the adrenaline of it all. 

Wasn't this day horrible? Wasn't he wishing that it was all a dream? Wasn't he hoping to wake up tangled in his pajamas and under his covers, drenched in sweat but otherwise okay? Teddy was waiting for the sound of his mother banging on the door of the room he shared with his sister, telling the two of them to get up and get to work. 

That sound never came. All he could hear was his blood rushing in his ears and Lemoine scraping her long, sharp fingers against the stone-and-plaster walls of the abandoned wing. 

"Do you know how long I've been waiting for this?" she taunted. Her accent was as thick as ever. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for the chance to glut like this? Papa doesn't let me do it nearly as much as he used to. When was the last time... Oh, maybe the fourteenth century? It's been forever since I have truly eaten." 

"Please, please-- stop-- stop talking!" Teddy backed up slowly, holding his gun and trying to aim with tears in his eyes. Everything was spilling over the brim of the mug in his eyes. 

"Theodore, Theodore, Theodore! My sweet, sweet Teddy Beitel. Shut up and let me speak. I'm trying to reminisce! Do you know what it's like, to go so long without eating? I was famished. Really, I should be thanking you... Of course, I'm not going to do that. Criminals like you, who prey on women and the young? Kidnappers, rapists, all of you... I would never thank you. Men disgust me." She spat her last statement, screaming it to the dusty walls and the rest of the world. 

She kept speaking and speaking and speaking. She was a sound that he couldn't drown out. He wanted to stick his fingers in his ears but his hands were wrapped around his gun, shaking as she was lecturing him. 

"Of course, men like you are on the wrong side of history. You're always trying to shut up powerful women like me." 

"I'm not-- I'm a-- I have a sister!" 

"That doesn't mean you respect women, Theodore." 

"I--" 

"You can't argue with me on that, Ted. You're on the wrong side of history." 

He lowered the gun a little, confused. She kept speaking, "Women are the future. Maybe not women like me-- the little aberrations, the monsters in the upper class, the ones you worship-- but women like your sister, your mother, your neighbors... In the future, they will rule the world." 

"But not you." 

"I will be there, Teddy. I will be there." 

What she said held weight. It was a stone in the pit of his stomach. He knew he wasn't digesting everything she was saying, but maybe, maybe, if he made it out of here alive, he would. 

With all this in mind-- and a simple desire for survival resting in his bones-- Teddy shot her as many times as he could. He shot her five times, six. Only a few of the bullets hit, dealing enough damage that he could see the oozing wounds and shredded flesh under the torn-apart fabric of her middy blouse. He continued backing up as much as he could while she still pursued, matching his shaking pace. 

Then it was her turn to attack, and attack she did. Still monologuing (he didn't care to listen; there was too much fear in his lungs and his trembling legs as he reached a wall he couldn't get around), she approached him, leaned in close with her horribly-contorted body, and stuck her fingers deep into his chest. It was worse than the time she did the same thing to his thigh. That was easily explained by the fact that she had a finger in his heart. He couldn't explain how, but he could feel it. Her finger was a heart attack waiting in the wings. 

She looked into his eyes and he saw nothing but the inky blackness of death. He scrambled for something, anything to hold on to, but the gun slipped from his fingertips and he lost control of his body. He fell toward the ground, catching on her knife-like fingers, bleeding out onto the concrete below him. Teddy could hear his blood hitting the ground under him, dripping, dropping, dripping. All he could hear was her breathing. All he could see was the apathetic heavens in her pupils. 

Was that the cosmos he was seeing? Or was it the face of God? 

Teddy wasn't sure, and he never figured out the difference. He was dead before she took her fingers out of his body.