Topic: The First Arisen: Pilgrimage

The Crow

Date: 2011-04-02 09:03 EST
((Continued from the Cemetery))

The wee hours of the morn - WestEnd

The building was dark...deserted. A fading sign hanging askew on one boarded up archway proclaimed that this building was a public safety hazard and condemned property, while another attempted to ward away trespassers.

As the winged shadow of a crow passed over both, a soft sound of approaching footsteps could be heard.

The woman's appearance was different - the corseted top of the dress remained, but most of the gauzy fabric that had flared so elegantly out from her hips was now mostly gone, save for a few wispy trailing remnants that only barely served to cover her legs.

She does not see the buildings as they pass them, the signs. No one crosses their path as they approach their destination, but even if they had she would not have known. The ground is cold under her bare feet, but that is only a dim sensation.

Her eyes, her entire being, is focused on following this spectral vision floating before her. It hasn't spoken to her since the grave was left behind, save to urge her onward.

The bird floats around a corner of one more building, and like one entranced she follows after...

The crow glided, flared and landed on a trashcan, a silvery squat cylinder amongst other like fellows of different shape and shade. Looking to the side, the head tilted to regard the wrought-iron figure of a fire escape that lead up the side of the building.

As the girl approached, the crow turned to her, its wings flapping once as it called to her in its raucous voice.

This trip, this whole night is so...confusing, so strange. Like some horrible dream, only too vivid...too real. All she wants to do is lay down and rest, but something - some unknown purpose - drives her on.

Here. Climb, Alexa. It won't be long now.

She's so tired. The voice wants her to climb, and she's so tired.

There is time for rest after we get there. Now CLIMB!

The command is undeniable. She cannot even raise her thoughts against it.

Slowly, wearily, she begins to climb.

The Crow

Date: 2011-04-05 15:11 EST
With each laborious step, things begin to become focused. More familiar. She's sure she's never had to climb this. But she recognizes it.

The next to last window is not boarded - the only one that isn't in fact, on the whole building, though neither her nor the inky winged shadow that alights on the window frame deign to notice this fact.

Here, Alexa. We are here.

Insanely, a strange little verse runs through her head. Home again, home again, jiggity-jig! Goooood evening, J.F.!

Where does she know that from"

The answer does not come, doesn't seem important. She starts forward, climbing into that black maw.

The bird watched as the girl slid easily through the frame, watching after her for a moment. Red-rimmed golden eyes regarded her with their bright, alert gaze as she moved slowly, hesitantly further into the room.

Taking wing, the crow flew over the threshold, flapping its way past the girl to find a perch on a small table, the only piece of furniture still in one piece. Silently it watched, now in vigil, as though it knew nothing else need be said.

The rest of the place is a shambles. Destroyed. Dry and musty, it was easily apparent that no one had set foot here in some time.

Neither would have cared to know that nothing has been moved since that fateful night.

There was no mistaking the soft mewling of a young orange-and-white tabby cat as it stepped into the watery gravelight of the moon streaming through the window, the scrawny look of a once-well-fed house cat forced to hunt for itself and at least partially succeeding.

"A-Artemis...?" The girl bent over, her voice husky and disbelieving as her fingers pressed into the fur, moving to scoop the cat up.

And suddenly the cat yowled and hissed, its claws reaching for skin and missing as the girl suddenly dropped to her knees and grabbed her head, screaming in pain.

The cat had been hers. She'd been living here for two years, had gotten the cat when she moved in, when she thought she'd be living alone for a long time to come.

A year after that she had found them hiding in the stairwell - two girls, one just over the cusp into budding womanhood, little more than a teenager, the other surely not more than a few years beyond that.

She remembers. She remembers now.

Escaped from a cruel man, they had been slaves. Had been on the run for days, and one night had holed up in the darkened stairwell of this run-down old apartment building that she lived in pretty much by herself...save for a few other, less savory characters that she rarely, if ever, saw.

Where she had found them.

And a year later, their former owners had caught up.

She remembers it all, now.

The sudden pounding in the dark of night, a battering ram of a hand pounding on the wooden door. There hadn't been time to escape in their surprise before it had come crashing in.

Three dark, hulking figures, beasts of men. Cruel laughter over screams, sounds of forceful grunting, brutal pleasure over pleas of mercy.

One face stands out first before the others, a name that comes to her amidst the chaos of horrifying images. Jack.

She feels it all as if it's happening again.

Lines of fire across her skin as steel slices in her mind's eye. Deeper, more invasive pain as heat and flesh batter into her again and again, despite her struggles...her screams.

Pain everlasting.

But what she sees is so much worse than what she feels.

Jessica. Lisa. So much more than friends...they had been family from that first night.

And now she watches as they are tortured.

Beaten.

Raped.

Sliced.

Stabbed.

She sees it all before she realizes that she, too, is dying, her vision darkening...

The crow watched in silence as the woman writhed in agony on the floor, as if she was on fire from within. No screams came from her now, only anguished whimpers and cries, pleas for the torment to stop, just stop, please stop...

...and finally, she got to her feet, turning to the wall next to her and lashing out with her hands at the boards there. First a crack as knuckles impacted it, then a splintering crunch as it gave way.

The woman did not notice the split skin over her knuckles, the splinters digging deep into her skin. Each strike was punctuated with fresh screams of pain and rage, until, finally, she reached some point of exhaustion and collapsed to her knees, looking down at her hands.

Bloody skin drips crimson onto the floor for a moment.

And suddenly, as she watches, the splits begin to close. The splinters push out of the skin as though being rejected from within.

And it occurs to her, suddenly, that she had felt nothing.

No pain.

The Crow

Date: 2011-04-07 16:10 EST
http://www.youtube.com/watch"v=qfKKBDFCiIA

Sunny came home to her favorite room Sunny sat down in the kitchen She opened a book and a box of tools Sunny came home with a mission

The cat had fled. It belonged still to the land of the living, knew that this woman - who looked and smelled like her old woman, but did not feel like her at all - was not of this world, had business and would not be here long.

The crow flapped across the room, spying a scurrying form with chitinous legs. The bird claimed its prize and flapped off again to enjoy its evening meal.

Oblivious to all this sat a girl on a stool that seemed to be only barely supporting her weight. Before her, a battered vanity - its shelves splintered, the mirror broken but still serviceable - reflected her hunched form. Her hand moved to touch the scarred surface.

She hears a voice as soon as her fingers touch the wood. "Sit up straight, Aly! Geez, no wonder you complain like an old woman about your back in the mornings!"

She turns, expecting Jessica to walk in, and sure enough, there she is, slender and petite and lovely, her long blond hair still unstained and streaked by blood. Towards her she walks, a sleek silky cream-colored negligee adorning her form, coming to a halt just before her and turning to show it off. "What do you think, lover?"

She grins, remembering this. Eight months after she had taken the pair in, three months now that she and Jessica had first confessed their feelings. "I think that we might keep Lisa up if you keep parading around that way, dove."

Her pet name gets a girly giggle as the petite blonde looks over her shoulder at Alexa, her hair whipping around to slip over her features as she smiles a slow, sultrily seductive smile. Her grey-blue eyes seem to deepen as she creeps closer, flicking the door closed behind her with her foot. "Actually...she's already asleep...so if you think you can keep that whole Amazon Queen scream down to a low roar..."

And as she comes closer, she swears she can feel heat, a faint touch of lips...

...and then she's gone.

The Crow

Date: 2011-04-07 16:11 EST
She says days go by I'm hypnotized I'm walking on a wire I close my eyes and fly out of my mind Into the fire

From the room the girl sits in comes the sound of weeping. Soft at first, the first indications of tears that cannot come. Her spirit has mourned enough, it seems, so much that there is nothing more the body can do to express its grief and pain and rage but make inarticulate sounds of grief.

The crow, as if it senses something, flaps into the room, taking up a perch near the desk, watching the girl closely.

More memories flood in. Of cleaning the pair up, how undernourished they had been at first! And filthy!

She had not been afraid to say as much, and had frowned at their wincing, simpering, servile responses. That had angered her perhaps more than anything else.

She can tell what a slave looks like.

From then on, she had taken care to nurture them. The younger of the pair - Lisa - was perhaps fifteen, quiet and shy, the older of the two - Jessica - painfully even more so.

Over time, with care and love, they came out of their shells. Became stronger, healthier, more vocal, more confident.

They blossomed.

Lisa had formed a crush on a boy her age in the building, a homeless vagrant but with a good heart. Alexa had fed the boy many times, and he did odd favors and kept a watch on things in the neighborhood for her.

And then Jessica had come to her one night...

The pain overflows there, and she cries out her pain, her grief and anger to the walls, the ceilings, the vanity in front of her. Ripping drawers out of it, she hears the voice again.

Demanding her attention.

Showing her.

This is the face of Death, Alexa. You loved them. You cared for them, you did nothing but save them and then they came and took it all from you. They took it ALL from you. And not just you, but from the ones you loved, too.

She looks at the crow, now perched on the desk next to her. When had it gotten there" But as she hears its Voice speaking to her, she knows it is the truth. She sees the Face of Death.

Her Face.

Pale white smeared over skin, bone white. Fingers find and fumble a moment with black lipstick before lines are drawn, hollows outlined and filled. A smile to mimic Death's own manic, gleeful grin, dark pits to outline dark, righteous rage.

Looking down, the shreds of her shroud are seen, then torn away with frustrated finality and tossed aside. A sharp cry gets her attention and she turns, spying the crow settled upon a shelf in a closet which catches a shaft of cold light from the moon's breathless face.

A pair of black cargo pants, far more practical than the shreds of a dress. And to make it even better, still left here by a miracle rather than being stolen by some vagrant, a pair of old, worn combat-style boots.

Walking over to the window that she had entered by, the woman climbs out onto the balcony formed by the old fire escape. The ink-black shadow flaps out and settles on her shoulder, and as she looks up to the moon's full face shining down on her, it regards her with its red-rimmed golden eyes approvingly.

She watches as the crow takes wing, hearing its voice ringing in her head.

Come, Alexa. It is time for things to be set right.

She knows.

It is time. And she has waited for so long.

She follows into the night after her shadowy companion.

((Continued in Vengeance.))

The Crow

Date: 2011-09-14 16:19 EST
Continued from Vengeance.

She says days go by I don't know why I'm walking on a wire I close my eyes and fly out of my mind Into the fire

It was quiet now.

The first part had been dealt with, without so much as an eyeblink. And you want to know something"

It had felt great.

She had never been a killer. Never been a violent woman, had even hated raising her voice in a heated debate. She had always been peaceful, happy, with her meager existence. If someone had thought to tell her that she would ever be capable of killing, she would have laughed. Her talent was in her hands and her mind, her imagination, the way she saw the world.

She had been an artist. Her hands had been meant for crafting beauty, inspired by the mean and the mighty, the lovely and the homely, a gentle purpose worked in long hours of tender care and loving touch. Sometimes into the night she would work, her only companions candlelight and the occasional mewl of Artemis demanding his meal that she might have forgotten.

The room around her, where she sits at a battered and beaten desk, is torn to pieces. Littered with the refuse of her works, shredded while others laughed.

No. She'd never once thought that murder would bring her peace - she had known peace. Had known love and happiness and light, contentment caught enfolded in the wings of a dove.

Her hand trembles, threatening a fist over the piece of paper under it as the fingers start to bend, to clench, forming a rough claw-like form as the paper starts to crumple.

A dove captured in flight, done in pencil on plain white paper, finely detailed, can be seen there, under her hand. Her other hand holds the pencil she had been drawing with as her mind's eye played over images again and again.

Images of peace. Of love and tenderness.

Of her and Jessica, her dove, curled up together in bed. Naked save for the sheets entwining them and tying them together, their passion sated as they lay together. Her dove already sleeping, her face clean and peaceful, a slight smile touching the lovely girl's lips as Alexa would stroke her cheek, watching her sleep.

Of the three of them sitting round in a circle. Cards dealt out, Texas Hold-'em style. The chips were buttons, safety pins, pebbles...whatever they could find.

"Check it out. I got a straight." Lisa's voice, proud and haughty as she laid her cards down.

Then Jessica's, her tone outraged but still laughing. "You little b*tch, you broke me!"

Sounds of intermingled laughter as the scenes play before her eyes, in her mind. Such happy times.

All gone.

The paper is abruptly crumpled in the woman's fist, wrinkled, then shredded as she lets out a cry of rage and frustration, the pieces thrashed and pounded into the desk in a frenzy of pain-filled screams of grief.

The ink-black shadow appeared out of the darkness again, it's raucous cry finally bringing her to silence.

Focus.

She needs focus. There is so much hate, so much rage and pain and wrath in her that it fills her veins, threatens to tear her mind to pieces. The injustice...the UNFAIRNESS of it all!

They had been happy. Perfectly, blissfully happy. And in one night, in a single fell swoop, an uncaring world had taken it all away.

Not only had they taken it, but they had ENJOYED doing it.

The voice halts her, calling through her mind as the crow settles near, and she focuses on it, on what it has to say.

You have to let it all go, Alexa. I know you loved them...but this is greater than that. Let go of the past and turn your wrath to the ones that deserve it...

She can't help the words that rip out of her as she screams at the bird, her face a contorted mask of righteous hatred. "WHY ME!" Why in the f*ck couldn't this have happened to someone that F*CKING DESERVED IT!?"

By now she's halfway out of the chair, leaning over the bird, enraged, an insanely maniacal fury in her face. "This is NOT RIGHT! All I wanted was to have my life, to have my love and my happiness and my art...and they F*CKING KILLED IT!"

She sees herself screaming, hears the words coming from her, knows it is her voice, feels her heart breaking over and over with each fresh memory that rips at it. With a furious scream she reaches down and grabs the desk by the edge and flips it up and over with all of her strength, sending it crashing across the room and the bird fying away to find a new perch.

As soon as she's done it she sits back down, her head falling into her hands, where she sobs tearlessly. It's all she can do when the grief comes, when the waves crash over her, when all she wants is to have it all back.

Now, the best she can hope for is what little peace vengeance can offer.

To be continued...