Anthem - Day 4 IC

[gamemaker kelsier]

a z a z e l .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

The days and nights begin to blur together until time is nothing but a concept. I don't remember my last proper meal, if I even ate it or if it sits on the coffee table in my office, going bad.

I stand in the dark of the basement, eyes on the dead children, pulled out of their refrigerated storage and put on display for my pleasure. Their little bodies are sewn up, skin dusted with preservatives and mouths stuffed with cotton. I do not know how long I've stood here for but my fingers unscrew the cap on my flask again and I inhale shakily in the darkness. They sit up and smile at me, hating me in the black dark and I whisper my apologies to the corpses of seven children.

I stroll between their metal beds, stopping beside the resting place of one of the younger ones. Alejandro. I remember his sweet voice in the vastness of the training centre, how it echoed in the hall. I remember watching him fall before he even had a chance to rise, the pang of loss I felt at his death. The first chip in my facade.

The whisky is too warm going down my throat; I crave the distance of ice.

My phone vibrates again in my pocket, screen lighting up the basement through the fabric of my pants. Another missed call, this time Achilles, before that my Grandfather, demanding to know why there had been no deaths this last games day. I'd listened to the voicemail and deleted it.

My feet take me to a second body; Vesper, the girl with the apple seeds whom I'd awarded a one in disgust. I'd been argued up to a two for her training score. I suppose I'd been right. She looked pretty in her sleep, calm. Her body was lifeless, empty of everything and I found myself wishing that it was still a few days prior, that I could hear her story about her apple seeds again. I crave the apathy I held then.

A body lies in the corner, too long, too full to be a child's and I know whose it is without pulling back the sheet to look. I know it can't be here but it is. My fingers fumble with the flask and I step backwards, back hitting a cart with a child's body on it and we both go tumbling down. I fall on top of the corpse, eyes never leaving the form lying beneath the sheet in the corner. I pull the sheet back on the body beneath me. Amelina, pretty even in death, the madness gone from her eyes.

My flask has left me, skid across the floor when I fell and I crawl forwards, towards it and the body in the corner. My eyes don't leave the figure as my hand searches for the flask and I look away briefly, too slowly. When I raise my head again, the body is sitting up, cover falling away and there is Apollo, grey and a hole in the side of his head, pink and grey matter falling out and blood dripping, I still. His eyes are cloudy, dead and I catch the scent of his cologne finally, the same one he's been wearing for nineteen years. My fingers haven't found the flask but I cannot look away.

"Azazel," he whispers, a leg over the side of the table, shifting his weight to come to me.

I scream, sitting up on the couch in my office, chest pounding and sweat pouring down my back. The moon is high in the sky outside my window and there is a pounding on my door.

"Sir," a voice comes, muffled, "Sir you're needed in the control room!"

Reality comes leaking back in.

"The day is starting, it's time for the announcement."

A plate of eggs and toast sits cold and stale on my coffee table.