Life and Debt
From Lavosbyssals
Done at WTF in the morning. Subject to revision.
A little ghost's faded body huddled up next to the fire, unable to tell the warm night from its memories. Ice-blue tears streaming down the little round thing, rags, fingers, the edges of matter fading into essence and blurred in the smoke. One little pleading gaze and he knew he was doomed.
--
"Heeee-eey, somebody's moving up in the world."
"Who's it from, you got some rich broad someplace we don't know about?"
Fancy letter. "Shut up." Talking and fighting and red muzz.
He opens up the letter to find a card rimmed with blue lace, and it takes him a moment and a half to place the sender. You are cordially invited to the wedding of Alita Balamada and...
"Yeah. Somebody is moving up in the world."
--
"I see you come not unrecommended."
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't," he breathes. The other man is almost twice his size, with a mane like a horse and fingers like pins, and he does his best to look calm, to evoke the experience that he wishes he had. "You're told to be very good at this sort of thing."
"Said," and Mark shivers trying to read his tone, "and I thank you."
He grips the arm of the chair and notices out of the corner of his eye that under the oil-soaked rags and whiskey the tables are covered in hand-knitting. Something in him breaks with relieved laughter and makes a note for payback.
--
Wipe the blood off. Stand up.
"What the fuck you going to do, you little punk? You're a fucking ant compared to me."
"Ever seen an anthill eat a man?"
And the others stand up behind him, young, weak, small, and all he had to do was be right once- better pain and glory than taking more of this shit.
--
He feels numb and cold, and he laughs. Does it have to be so much like a story? It would be so much more dramatic to end with a twist. Maybe death is just a trick. That would be a great one right now... Maybe? Just one more little streak of luck?
You think that was luck?
It's amused. Nice. He can feel the darkness flow through him, and it's calm, at least. He could drift away on this.
Mark. You're not done yet.
I don't wanna be a ghost, they're boring...
You're a hard one to place, aren't you. What you are, or what you could be?
Hey, random voice-thing? I'm supposed to be dead now. It's been... a few minutes? I think. Can we be done now?
No... I think I'm keeping you.
Wha-
And
the world was split open and the numbness was ripped out like ice water splashing and ripping and the darkness was in everything and so much of it? and ghosts don't feel like this do they? and every inch of shadow was in his head and his forehead split open and it hurt
He curls his hand around the painful thing and tugs it out of his chest, and with coldwarmcold power running through him he opens his eyes and the smoke is everywhere
