Withering Starlight

8. In Collapse

                                                 Chapter 8
                                               In Collapse

Eve didn't realize she had fallen asleep until she jerked awake in the corner of Raffe's apartment.

She was glad that he had entrusted the location of both the shop key and his private key to her because otherwise they would've had to sleep out on the street, bloody and freezing.

Eve had barely managed to get Raffe there on her own. He woke in spurts, helping to waddle himself along for a few meters before passing out again. She had no idea what the demon had done to him. He hadn't been touched by Foras as far as she could tell but Druj had done something else. Entranced him, almost.

Eve uncurled from her position in the chair and stood up slowly. Her body ached and twisted in places she hadn't even realized she'd hurt, not until she felt the familiar sensitivity of a bruise or scrape.

It was her ribs that were the worst though. Hospital felt like a good idea but she didn't have the money nor the transport to get there. The night before she'd had to make do with what was in Raffe's bathroom cupboards. She'd cleaned her wounds, stuck gauze over the deepest gouges, and swallowed a few pills to numb the pain.

Eve walked into the bathroom and went over to the sink. She didn't want to face herself in the mirror but knew she had to.

She looked just as bad as she felt. Druj's claw marks as well as the split skin over her cheekbone were only the start of her problems. A dark bruise shaded her left eye, another across the underside of her chin and the bridge of her nose. Her muscles were in painful knots and her neck ached something awful. She felt like a play doe figure built by the clumsy hands of a toddler.

She splashed her battered face with water, dried herself, and returned to the lounge room.

Raffe was still lying asleep on his bed where Eve had dumped him so she went over to the TV and switched it on. Raffe's place was much like Eve's. His bedroom was just a corner of the open floor plan in which a mattress on a simple wooden frame and a bedside table sat. His couch was old brown leather and inexplicably comfortable for the price he'd gotten it for. The kitchen was a miniature, modern version of one in any other home. Eve had watched Raffe bustle around it before, once upon a time making a crème brûlée she couldn't believe he knew how to cook. He even had a little blowtorch.

The TV immediately turned onto the channel Eve wanted so she didn't need to search for the remote. The newswoman's solemn expression was a herald of the words she spoke;

"The bodies of two local teenagers were found in Fleck park late last night by patrolling officers. The CDC have speculated that the spontaneous decay that occurred three days ago emitted from their general position. Until they can determine what caused it, the area has been put under quarantine to prevent further spread of the potential contagion."

But that was only the beginning. The news kept coming, each story worse than the one before it.

"An office building on the west-side of Marrowvale was destroyed early this morning when it's underground foundations gave out and caused the above levels to collapse inwards.” said the woman. “Search and rescue have already taken thirty-four people from the rubble but a further twenty-one still remain unaccounted for."

There was a series of unsolved, brutal murders in Winterbarrow, a torture victim found wandering the streets of Freycrest, an array of dead birds falling from the sky in Grey Acre. A man had stumbled into a preschool and drawn a gun. An elderly woman had jumped in front of a truck on the highway moving ninety kilometers an hour. A law student had spontaneously combusted in the middle of a lecture hall. Missing pets, disappeared children, unexplainable deaths.

All the stories were spread apart, interrupted every now and again by weather or sport, only to return afterwards to the grim tales taking place around the city, around the entire state.

No one seemed to be connecting the occurrences together, wondering if these coincidences were in fact not coincidences at all. No one was asking themselves if maybe something outside their normal comprehension was doing this.

Eve watched each newscast with a pit of dread growing in the bottom of her stomach. She knew. Crazy or not, she knew.

She grabbed her things and fled the apartment before the end of the broadcast, leaving the safety inside for the collapsing world beyond.