{The Grand Finale}
Jul 28, 2010 1:41:06 GMT -5
Post by cinder on Jul 28, 2010 1:41:06 GMT -5
ooc- I used no song lyrics, will post a thread of inspiring songs later today instead c:THE BLACK, THE WHITE AND THE END
Dru was dead.
Simple statement, proven by the piercing sound of a final cannon shot. It sounded strangely loud, Dru thought to herself, although this was nothing to be alarmed by. Somebody had once told her that hearing was the last sense to go. She remembered rolling her eyes and smirking at the person, a teacher if memory served. How do you know? How does anybody know? Its not like you’re dead. People laughed because they always laugh when a pretty girl makes a joke, no matter how morbid and wrong it is. Actually, in District One it was more like because of how morbid instead of no matter how morbid. Careers like Dru get a kick out of death.
Still, even though she still seemed to be logical and clear-minded, Dru was in a state of disbelief. She was dead. Didn’t feel too different than life, although her fragile memories of life were slipping through the fingers of Dru’s grasp on reality. She struggled to recall the most important truths of life, from an entirely new viewpoint. Firstly, Dru was Drusilla Bellatrix Charlesburg, an elite Career from District One. She was tall, brown-haired and had piercing eyes that sliced through you. She’d inflicted more slicing pain using those blue jewels then she had with the blade of her falchion. Coming from the mind of the Limb Slicer, that was quite a lot. Speaking of her falchion, Dru was also a violent creature of habit who went for the most obvious weak-points of a person: mommy issues, daddy issues and feelings of not belonging. Oh! You meant weak-points in the physical shell of a person. In that regard, Dru usually used her strength and quick, sharp movements to stick her blade not only into an opponents limbs, but through them.
All around, the dead girl was impossibly perfect. It was as though somebody had carved her from a model of that girl. The one with beauty, brains, brawn and the mind to use all of this against the world she cared so little for. They had even given her a fatal flaw in the form of Aranica Petros. Who was this they that Dru referred to? She did not know nor did she care. Trite questions like why didn’t matter so much when you were no longer in the world of the living. What Dru did find she still cared about--much to her surprise--was remembering every detail of her life. Little things, the secrets she had kept from parents and boy-friends. Big things like the secrets she had kept from Aranica Petros and even herself.
As she contemplated her years on earth, Dru also took note of her surroundings. Strange. She could not see much besides her own body, and even that was strangely morphed into something the formerly bleeding, pale girl did not recognize. There was space all around her, or was there? She was lying down one second, and the next Dru was stomping her foot on nothingness, in the fashion of her formerly living selfs attempt to stomp her foot underwater. She had no living memory for her to compare this place to, but her ancient human memory told Dru that if she were comparing this place to anywhere, space was the closest she would get. The experience was literally unearthly. Death was lonely. There wasn’t even a Tribute to greet her, no passed away grandmothers to take her by the hand and lead her into the light.
Dru soon grew bored of watching her new world. Nothingness was incredibly boring! She instead focused on the little vision and lot of hearing she still had left from the Arena. There was a ripping, sobbing sound. A slight feeling of pressure, like somebody was holding onto her for dear life. Words were being spoken, but she could not understand them. For just a flickering moment Dru could see the blood-stained, watered down face of a girl. She seemed to be busy pulling something, a mask off of someone, Dru. The girl was Aranica Petros and she was furiously yanking the protective mask off of Dru Charlesburg’s face! Oh. She did care if Ara realized just how much her older sister valued her lovely looks.
Suddenly Ara was being yanked away too, and Dru was left with only the subtle screaming of somebody she once knew. Sight had left her, bringing with it the smell of all those disgusting fluids in the water. Taste had left her mouth too, thankfully. Touch was leaving Dru, but the ghost of a memory that was pressure, still haunted her. With sudden seriousness Dru knew what death felt like. The ocean. A weightless, gravity-less ocean of life, Dru was swimming in it. She took a deep breath, inhaling her sea of living memories.
Oh! Dru thought to herself as she recalled the three secrets of her life. The ones nobody would discover, the ones she had taken to the grave. Firstly, Dru had had three names. Lily was a baby girl born to a dying woman. Chanel was a Capitol brat. Drusilla was the daughter of District Ones third or fourth most important family around. Dru was a mixture of these three girls. She even had three secrets for each of them.
Curious yet? Dru just said, she’s taking her secrets to the grave! Not going to tell everybody about them. But did sharing a secret when you were dead count as not taking secrets to the grave? Oh whatever, her mind was easily distracted now, in the dead state that was in. Might as well share everything about herself.
Firstly, the girl called Chanel held a major secret in her hands. Dru had had her memory wiped at a young age when her surrogate, Capitolite mother decided to send Dru to a nice, District One family who would care for her as little as they would have cared for their own. Sweet, right? Thats not the true secret. The true secret was that over the past week, she had been catching flashes of that Capitol life. Little flash-backs that might have or might not have been a direct product of her unraveling mental-state. Over the past week, Dru had realized she was not the monster, born & raised, that she had always assumed she was. Strange gaps in memory, weird things that could not have happened to her--great news! Dru wasn’t crazy, she had not been born with the Homicidal, Evil Genius gene! It was just the Capitols meddling with her brain.
This was also bad news, for what excuse did Dru have for being such a horror if not the H.E.G gene? Why, that would mean that she was completely, utterly responsible for her grave actions against humanity. It would mean that Dru was just like any other messed-up person. She’d have to take responsibility for killing her peers. The past sucked. Really, it did.
The second Life-Altering (if Dru had still be alive) secret belonged to Drusilla, the Career girl. The one who had accepted her role as a hunter wholeheartedly. She was the one who was fine with doing monstrous things to others, so long as they were the prey. She was a hunter, the other Tributes were prey. You can’t blame her for ruthlessly killing them, and enjoying it if its in the nature of Drusilla. You can’t blame her for that final action the night before the Final Fight. Walking back from killing Mel, the Tribute had found some plants she knew to be poisonous. She had stuck them in all the water-canteens, knowing that Aranica would be dead by sunrise. She had accepted it with all of her being, only doubting herself during her final moments on Earth when the clash of her mind, body and heart became unignorable.
What Dru was trying to say was that she had been prepared to sacrifice Aranica in order to preserve herself. That storm had been the end of Dru and Semper, it had been the saving grace of Aranica. The Gamemakers had planned it out so carefully, they had made sure that by hell or high water, Dru and Ara would be the last to stand/float aimlessly in the middle of the water. She had triggered that final fight with her actions. The present, or the really recent past if you will, sucked. Obviously enough, her actions had done nothing to save Dru, only made her feel pangs of guilt in the last moments she had. Only made her purposefully miss because she felt so bad about trying to quietly take Ara Petros out of the Game. Life was a misery.
The last secret was really silly, a hopeful, blossoming thing that Dru had only started to suspect a few days before the Hunger Games had begun. She had incredible doubts when it came to this last fact that belonged to Lily, the girl of her first name. Lily, who would have been raised a simple, breathtakingly beautiful girl of District Twelve. A version of Dru that knew the difference between right and wrong. You’re sensing the disgustingly sticky-sweetness of this secret already. aren’t you? Its a sappy tale that Dru tried her best to twist even as she thought it, but a hand drifted to her usually exposed midriff [because Dru wore crop-tops that showed off her lean, tan stomach. Duh.]
You guessed it. Dru had been a very bad girl, and she was pretty sure there had been consequences. Details really weren’t needed, okay? One thing had led to another. People, the message of this secret is that better to be safe than sorry. Dru was, or had been, because she was dead now... Pregnant. Thats all, okay? Lily, the baby version of Dru who hailed from District One, would have been raised on hope and love and life, but circumstances took all of that away from her. The Games had taken away any hope of anything from Dru’s little nothing. Still, the Games had given her Aranica. Dru prefered an almost full-grown little sister to a growing, needy thing inside of her. Anyways, Dru was thankful she had died with a flat stomach, still beautiful and youthful looking. She was so not a size large. That would be a nightmare--Dru pitied the knocked up girl who got herself reaped with a big belly.
Anyways, Dru was pretty happy about that last secret. Imagining the looks of horror on the faces of her Tribute peers when they realized they had not destroyed Dru alone, but had also stolen away an unborn child’s chance at life, that was just rich! Vengeance. Dru sincerely hoped that wherever her fellow Child-Killers were, they realized Dru had been pregnant.
There was one last secret, or truth that belonged to Dru. Me, myself & I. This truth belonged to all the different versions of the dead girl. Dru Charlesburg had not been given a District Token. Nobody had expected her to... nobody had wanted her to go home, besides that, Dru really wasn't from District One. She was a cosmopolitan of the world. District Twelve, the Capitol, District One. Come to think about it, she was a creature of the Arena. Maybe even a being destined to die. A ghost. Dru suspected both were true. A ghostly apparition that would haunt this Arena-site for the remainder of her days, which was many. Dru was beautiful, young and dead now with nothing but time on her hands. That and she had a whole lot of anger building up in her soul that would eventually need an outlet.
Dying had done nothing for Dru’s soul. She was just as twisted as ever, still the murderous, lying scum-hag that had been alive a few minutes ago. Come to think about it, Dru was still the twisted sister she was, and there weren’t any consequences. Was death her punishment for being such a naughty, violent young woman? Where was the fire, the Hell she had imagined so many times, half-dreaming in the Arena that Dru had called home.
She supposed religion had gone right on out the window if there was no Heaven or Hell here to greet her. Honest to God, this universe was unimpressive. She had been hoping for something more than an endless void of nothingness. Tres boring! Unless of course this is Hell, and I’m meant to be bored into insanity for the rest of eternity. Dru turned her nose up at the unoriginal idea. In life, she had been quiet the sadist. To find that her only punishment was silent reflection for forever was a disappointment to her imaginative side.
She muttered something along the lines of come and get me, but when you’re dead, sound just doesn’t carry. Dru was stuck floating/lying down/standing in this darkness for awhile until she caught sight of something in the distance.
Aranica. Ara Petros was beckoning to her, Dru could just make out the shape of her arm, she saw the slight movement of fingers curling toward an up-turned palm. The universal gesture for come here. Dru Charlesburg did not stop to think about how strange it was that a living, breathing girl had stumbled into the realm of the dead. She began to chase Aranica, following the swishing black curtain of hair. That was all Dru could see now, a slight movement in the blackness of the afterlife. Hey, at least it was something to do. Running after Aranica, but never catching her. This was not Hell either. Dru wondered if Ara was her spirit guide, taking her to the real land of the dead.
Sending her one and only soulmate to take her to the fiery pits of Tartarus was brilliant on the part of the Universe. She respected the institution of it a little bit more than she had a few moments ago. Worse come to worse, Dru would be tortured by the lack of knowing what was really going on for the rest of eternity. People who were alive thought ignorance was a blessing, something to bring happiness (ehem, the Capitol citizens, anybody?) but from the viewpoint of a dead girl, ignorance was a curse. She had finished her journey, she was done, and now she was stuck with just as much information on the ways of the world as she had had when living? Oh yeah, a big patch of black nothingness. Certainly Dru felt enlightened by this dying business.
A few centuries later, or long enough for Dru to have started to feel pangs of sadness from missing Aranica... an unknown length of time later, Dru stumbled. Her vision (wait, she could still see) blurred just long enough for Dru to stop going through the motions of running. She stood, or she was pretty sure she was standing and not panting. Absolutely still, Dru scanned the perimeter of eternity in search of that blur of black that was the back of Ara’s head. She saw nothing.
Then there was a sensation, something that jolted her and made Dru feel more alive than she had since the time of her death. Really, it was that shocking. A tap on her shoulder. Her senses were returning! Dru turned around to regard the shoulder-tapper, the feeling of touch still making her whole being feel warm and fuzzily. It was a terrific thing to have happened. What Dru saw--yet another sense--made her taste--oh goody! another one--bile in her mouth. There was a disembodied arm poised to tap Dru again. It was just regarding her, twitching every now and then. Left arm, left arm, left arm! Dru the Limb-Slicer had cut off Aranica’s left arm. How had she forgotten to notice that before? This was a dead arm that belonged to a living girl.
Dissapointed, but still intrigued by her new friend, Dru shrugged, silently asking the arm WHAT is it you want now? The index finger stuck up while the rest of Aranica’s small fingers curled into her palm, an incomplete fist. She shook the finger back and forth as though the incomplete arm were chastising Dru Charlesburg. What a laugh, really, it made Dru snort with pleasure and familiar, warm feelings of the texture of Aranica’s voice, softly invoking the name of Dru, apologizing, screaming, banishing Cloud Assassins. Don’t even get her started on the feeling of Ara’s sweaty hand in her own. Oh, the sight of her little sisters body being lapped at by waves on an island where Ree had died. The instantaneous horror and happiness she had felt to know Ara was near, but not know whether she was dead or not. Life coursed through the dead, blue veins of Dru Charlesburg,
The palm slipped against Dru’s own hand. Their fingers intertwined and the arm started to lead Dru toward a softly shimmering spot in the blackness. The thing she had mistaken for Aranica’s long curtain of hair. She regarded it suspiciously, but the comforting five senses that Aranica Petros‘ dead arm had brought her reassured DeadDru she was brave enough to go on. The shimmering spot would have tempted her if she had rejected the arm. Eventually, she would go into the spot, better to get whatever it was over with now.
A calm settled over Dru as she followed the disappearing arm into a-a portal. She had not felt this serenity since her first death. All senses were simultaneously taken from Dru just as quickly as they had been given to her. She lost her grip on sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, but with great effort managed to hold onto her grip on the reality of death.
Dru emerged an eternity later in a world of light. It contrasted the darkness greatly, but much like the dark, Dru could not feel anything but herself and a tingling aftertaste of portal-traveling. The afterlife sure was strange.
Dru could not longer sense the presence of Ara’s Arm, which she was beginning to feel attached to. Newborn infants in the living world usually clung to their first teddy-bear until they adjusted to life. Much like a newborn, Dru felt the need to hold Aranica’s hand in her own until she had properly adjusted, and understood, the reality of death. She had never been much for reading, but Dru wished for a guide to existing as a dead person in that one moment. She would have read it cover to cover and enjoyed it. Really weird. A book to explain her sudden urges to read would be nice too.
After awhile Dru did manage something without the help of her arm companion. Her eyes had gotten used to the white backdrop that had previously made her squint although as far as she could tell, sight had not returned. Yet another chapter Dru wished was in her imaginary Guide to Existing As A Dead Person. The anomaly of loosing ones senses while also functioning just fine. People usually died, or at least went crazy when they lost touch with the five primary senses. Died, Dru. You’re dead, so rest assured you want die from lack of feeling, snapped a snide part of her mind that thought Dru was dumb as a post. Fine! she replied, feeling just that stupid. Hey, getting used to knowing you’re dead--it takes time.
Just as Dru was starting to get comfortable with her blank-white state, the arm reappeared. In the lighting, she could see it clear as day. At the same time, asking Dru to describe what it looked like was futile. There was no bloody stump, no scratches or bruises, but at the same time Dru knew there was. She held up her own hands, staring at the unfleshy surfaces of them. Dru felt like the same Dru she had died as. Torn up from the floor up. Pale, bleeding and oozing, wet... but still, she was clean and ravishing like she had been. She looked like her childs self, and her would-have-been adult self. Dru supposed this was a spiritual question she could mull over later. The arm seemed impatient.
Yet again as Dru eagerly reached out to feel Aranica’s Arm, her senses were reactivated. There was a shimmer far in the distance, similar and different to her last portal. She skipped toward it, literally skipped on her tippy-toes and scooted her feet in its direction. The arm kept up perfectly well, by the feel of Ara’s hand in her own. She didn’t dare to rip her eyes from the portal, so fearful was Dru that when she looked back, it would be gone and she would be stuck skipping like an idiot and holding onto an arm. That was not her idea of Hell, but it sure as hell would be embarrassing, now wouldn’t it be?
The portal seemed further away than the last one, which got Dru thinking about where this next one would take her. If the past played its part in her next location, Dru guessed she would end up in a grey glob of nothingness until the arm found her and took her to all the shades of death. That could take forever, sadly. It seemed Dru had to resign herself to the unliving fate of taking trippy portal-rides to silent, senseless unplaces until the universe finally got bored of that, if ever.
Where are we going? She thought privately, but found that there was already an answer developing in her head. Someplace else. Dru broke her own rule and glanced sharply at the arm. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but grudgingly turned her attention back to the portal, which was still there, thank whatever power there was to thank.
Dru began to walk again, slowly, ever so slowly toward the light. Or maybe she stood in place and waited as the portal swiftly made its way toward her. By any rate, only half her attention was focused on the shimmering spot of light. Most of it was thinking about death. She was a little bewildered by her direction of thoughts. Dru had always assumed that when you died, you reflected on your old life, missed the people worth missing and decided that if given a second chance, you would change this and that about your life. Now that she was dead, Dru no longer found these things interesting. Even the blobs of weird colors captivated Dru more than stray thoughts of living Aranica Petros.
Maybe these thoughts were there for a reason. The living were very different. Difficult to confidently state that life was easier or harder than not life, but anyways Dru had no mind to put herself in the shoes of somebody with a body, heart, and soul all tangled up. She shuddered at the thought of all the emotions, all the feelings that had been swirling around and bringing her down X amount of time before now.
There was one memory that stuck to Dru though, a poem she had learned while growing up. It was hard to say what age or level of maturity Dru had been at the time she had read the poem--units of measuring time were also becoming foreign concepts to Dru’s dead mind--honestly, how did living people measure time without the ever-so-heplful unit of measurement Dru was now going by: length of time spent at a certain glob of colorless color. But anyways, judging by the girl in her minds picture, Dru had been too young to appreciate the concept of the poem. It now seemed like the closest thing Miss Charlesburg would get to a Guide to Existing As A Dead Person.
Fragments of the poem were scattered across her psyche like shards of glass that had once formed a full-fledged mirror. She puzzled them together, putting pieces in the right place and finally ending with a line about an inn. Dru viewed the poem, appreciating her living memory and admiring the simplistic beauty this once-breathing writer had put into the poem.
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
(--Uphill by Christina Rossetti)
Dru felt like the antsy question-asker in the poem, standing outside the door of the mythical inn. She was eying the shimmering doorway into the next colored blob with distrust written across her being. What if it did not bring her to another empty, colorful-colorless place like the last two? What if it brought her somewhere else like the hand or whoever had promised Dru? She did not like the idea of another change in scenery. All of the sudden Dru Charlesburg the brave yearned to hide out like a hermit in a shack, spending the rest of her time existing peacefully with absolutely no company. Whatsoever.
The universe had other plans that not even Dru’s sheer, forceful will could not change. Onward the hand pulled her, actually tugging at the former Career like she was a stubborn mule. Hey, Dru would never bow down anybody or anything. The universe and Ara’s hand might want her to go on, but she had to make the choice herself. She had chosen to let her hand slip from the falchion. She’d chosen to stop her heartbeat and goddamn it!, any choice made in the future would be hers and hers alone. The Capitol had tried so hard to take away that natural right of Dru’s, that she now felt the need to guard her choices with her unlife. They had made her value her ability to choose, probablly made Aranica value her right to life.
Dru wondered if her soul sister was feeling the same things Dru felt. Surely being a Victor gave her some unlife-like qualities that normal people did not possess. I’m thinking about you Aranica, all is well, sister mine. She forced the thought, poking at it with her mind and willing it to cross the barrier between life and death, somehow worm its way into the crowded mind of her delusional darling.
Delusions... Dru hadn’t had any of those since her arrival in the realm of the pale, glassy-eyed. There were no drops of water whispering comforting words of wisdom to Dru, although she was pretty sure that in the end, before hearing was finally ripped away from her, the voices of Aranica and the ocean had mingled harmoniously. They had sung out to Dru together, a chorus of beautiful, shrill cries that comforted her because--hey! Dru would not be forgotten after all was done. The waves that lapped at the sandy floor of the earth would whisper words of Dru to the sand. The sand would tell the birds that rested on it, and the birds would tell the trees in the woods. There we go! The sappy circle of life would preserve Dru in its mind, heart, body and soul. Aranica would too.
This existence was frightfully worry-less. Dru felt like she was footloose and fancy free which was nice and all, if you were used to it. Growing up with stresses and strains of normal life, just like most people, Dru was wary of this sudden lightness in her unbones. She was clearly a suspicious person in general, only opening her heart to loons like Ara Petros who she knew for a fact could keep all her secrets.
Further proof that Dru Charlesburg herself was a paranoid, homicidal psychopath, to use the big words doctors back home in District One constantly labeled Dru as. She usually ignored them, taking things like extremely sadistic and unbalanced for flattery, but sometimes it had hurt her living self. Dru was dead now, and she knew who she was, thank the Universe. It seemed there was no differences between the way the higher beings treated bad girls like her and good partial-girls like the One Arm that had belonged to the Wonder that was--is--Aranica Petros.
Dru had to constantly remind herself that she was being and Ara is being. She was the one that had died, while her charge lived on. Tenses of the dead. It would be tedious work getting used to this being dead business. There were so many little sayings that needed to be modified, so many questions that had no answers....
The arm tapped Dru again, but this time she hardly cared enough to give it a sharp glance. The dead girl got the distinct feeling it was time for her to go through the shining, shimering gateway. Ahha! Dru thought excitedly as the arm proved her right, flicking its wrist in the direction of the portal. Yeah, she was just as smart dead as she had been alive, thank the universe! Dru had always been a clever maniac, but she prefered to keep her brain-cells, or memory of brain-cells. Whatever they were, in the realm of the dead.
Anyways, with the pointing, ghostly hand and a bizarre push coming from behind, Dru stumbled toward the spot of eternity, slipping through it easily. She caught sight of this new place before actually entering it. Immediately Dru felt a shock of pain, yes pain, (she hadn’t felt that sensation in awhile, had she?) has an army of colors assaulted her eyes. She almost wished for the color-blob-tour right about now. Let her eyes get used to the images of colors before overcoming her so suddenly with a range of vibrant neons.
The background flickered and changed with every passing second, but the people waiting for Dru remained silent and still as statues. Hell, they might as well be statues for all Dru knew. Statues dressed in identical clothes, the clothes of a Tribute. There were twenty-two milling about the courtyard/city street/beach/chaing backdrop. They spoke in hushed whispers, but their mouths did not move. None of them moved at all, nobody broke rank.
Behind the initial twenty-two were so many other teenagers. They flickered and moved like the scenery, but each wore a similar uniform. Tributes of years past. Dru averted her eyes, for they changed and shivered with so much feeling. Easier to look at this years victims, who stood so perfectly still.
Dru watched them curiously, a small smile on her twisted face. What would they say to her now? The hand of Aranica was still holding onto Dru. She clung back to it, treating the piece of her small sister like a lifeline. Or a deathline. You get the bloody point.
They stared back at her with the glassy eyes of so many corpses. Dru finally realized something about the statue-still persons present. They were still in the state they had been in at their T.O.D Dru herself glanced over her body to make sure she was still a flickering, spirit-like entity, and not one of the dead-like bodies standing before her. Luckily, she was still a spirit-lookalike.
Reassured by her own appearance, Dru casually glanced up and down the rows of Tributes, noting former friends, allies, enemies and strangers. She winked and thought a message that went along the lines of so, what now? When it happened. Every sense Dru possessed, more than just the five of the living were assaulted by an overwhelming, emotional statement.
”We forgive you, Dru,” they told her in the hushed tones of the dead. The voices sounded sincere when apart, but together they were nails on a chalkboard. The branch of a dead tree scraping against Dru’s bedroom window, the one she used to sneak out. It was a breath on the back of her neck, an icy chill that traveled through her. She flinched, turned from the power of all those peaceful, young voices. So much good, so real. Nobody had ever told Dru it was okay to be who she was. They accepted the monster in her for being a part of her, not exactly unique where she was from.
These people, they not only accepted her apology, the one she had unwittingly made while still living... these people loved her for it. They loved her to death, no pun intended.
Dru turned back to face her agreeable judges, to find smiles splitting their skulls. Ear to ear. In some cases ear to gap where a second ear had been amputated. The dead smiled at Dru, shining with their inner beauty that pierced the unphysical shells of their dead bodies.
She watched them for what seemed like, what could have been an eternity. Dru took in a deep breath that filled her lungs with sweet air. The dead could breath! With so many thoughts floating around in the dead girls mind, with all of her senses on stand-by as she regarded her fellow Tributes, Dru felt the strangest thing building up deep in the pit of her being. She took shallow gasps, hyperventilating. Tears spilled out of her eyes and suddenly the grip of Aranica’s hand on her own was a crushing weight that pained her to even think about. With her other hand, she held her stomach where the unborn, undead baby would have been. There was a pressure there too, so tight, so painful and real...
That poem came to mind, the one Dru recalled from a childhood memory of life and love and joy. She was a traveler, here was her ending, her Inn. Dru looked at the shing, bright, happy people and something inside her collapsed, it came alive with fury and spite and pure emotion unlike anything she had felt. Ever. Not during life, not during death. Here it was, she could feel it deep inside of her, but suddenly Dru was statue-still too...
Dru Charlesburg watched, and she watched, and she watched and finally something happened. Those smiles, that blissful feeling, it became too much for the monster within. Finally her feelings bubbled up to the surface and Dru Charlesburg screamed.
[Fin.]
