Chapter Text
It’s one of those days.
Where Kris feels the harsh jut of their jawbone like it’s protruding through their skin. Where the fragile bowl of their ribcage feels too weak to hold the leaking blood of their heart.
They hate their ribcage. They want to pry it open and crawl out of themself, taste the blood beneath their fingernails as they lick their hands clean, use a practiced knife swipe to carve a place for themself in some other body, pray it feels more like their own than the last one.
Under some other circumstance they’d like to be in the dark world, with armor to keep everything where it should be. But the funeral is today. There’s nowhere else to run.
They should really have gotten over this by now, but strangely, or maybe not, pouring over anatomical diagrams and occult books about where exactly you’re supposed to stab has made this awareness so much worse. But it’ll be over soon, one way or another.
It probably should hurt them a little more, knowing how little time they have left. But really they’re barely here anyways, flitting in and out of their body in fits of derealization and resisting orders as well as they can.
No one else can die. That’s the promise that’s going to see them through.
They’re glad Azzy isn’t there but they want to see him more than anything, want him to fix it for them and hold out an arm to hide under. But he can’t. And they can’t let him die. At least he'll have some closure, knowing the last thing he said to them was I love you.
“Kris, darling?”
Mom walks in, leans on the doorway and hugs her arms to her chest. She smells like home and cinnamon and love that they wish they knew how to fit inside themself.
“Mom?”
Her eyes go wide, and then she walks over and sits down next to them on their bed.
“It is lovely to hear your voice, dear. It has been…a while since I have heard you speak.” I t's been since Susie that she heard them speak, is what she cannot say because last time she brought it up Kris went catatonic and freaked her out so bad she had to call dad. “Do you wish to…discuss everything? I cannot imagine how difficult this all has been for you.”
They say nothing but bury their head in her shoulder and cling to her.
“I love you very much, Kris.”
They squeeze their eyes shut and bite their lip until they taste tinny copper blood. “Love you.”
“Do you think you will be able to do the speech today? I understand if you have decided you cannot.”
Angel. A pang of self preservation strikes.
This is not a time to be selfish. There is not a place within them for selfishness when there is something else there taking up the room.
Kris does not want to die.
But what they wanted has never really mattered. What matters now is control, and they are going to take it back if it’s the last thing they do.
“Yeah.”
“I am very proud of you Kris,” Mom looks very sad. “I wish you did not have to do this.”
They wish they didn’t too. They wish they were ten years old and only a little fucked up, crying in their moms arms about a skinned knee.
“Noelle will be there. If you sit next to her, you might feel a little bit better, no?”
Noelle. Voice like an off-tune jingle bell. Hail ice flurry, gentle silhouette of a death angel in the sky with a halo made from snow albedo, cold fingers on the inside of a wrist kris is. Is that my watch? Kris loves Noelle like an estranged sister. They want her to be able to choose. And so they will be brave for once. For her. So no one has to know what it made her do. What it made them tell her to do.
“Yeah.”
“We must leave by eight if we wish to arrive on time. Will you be able to get ready by then?”
Get ready. They take a steadying breath.
“Yeah.”
Mom stands and they stand with her and bury their face in her shoulder, pressing back the sting in their eyes.
“I love you, mom.”
She rubs their back carefully.
“I love you too my dear. I will leave you to get dressed.”
She shuts the door and they stare at themself in Azzy’s long door mirror. They look horrible. Like they haven’t slept in a month. Like someone whose best friend is dead.
Friend feels like a flimsy word for what Susie means to them. She got closer to saving them than anyone ever had. And she paid for it. So now it’s their turn.
It’s not, they reason with their nervous system as they tug a brush through their hair, as if they have much of a choice. The thing is bearing down, impatient and bored of three weeks of routine. It wants something interesting to happen. And, they reason, it will be getting that. Just not how it wants it. And then it will be gone. If everything goes right that is. And that’s all they can afford to consider.
They open their closet, where their mother has hung two funeral appropriate outfits.
Options. They can almost feel an excited gasp.
The dress was probably a Holiday sister’s at some point. It’s black, of course, and cinched around the waist, but otherwise more or less just a slab of silky fabric. The suit was Azzy’s, it smells like mothballs and it would probably be a bit too big for them.
The dress, it says calmly.
Okay. Whatever.
They needed pockets, but whatever. When they finish changing they stare at themself in the mirror. They look solemn, and like someone has smudged of charcoal under their eyes.
It’s a quarter to eight.
They lean into their closet and grab the stack of books and the binder. Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery. Forgotten Early Magics. A History of Humans, Monsters and the Occult. A diagram they ripped out showing all the organs. A page they ripped out detailing the steps. Their notes are all over the edges. The best place to make the puncture is
She laughed at the computer screen.
So like the third and fourth rib? between the two?
Yeah. Guess the author was wrong. Coughing up blood sounds cool though so I get it.
It was written before google. Guess they had no way to know.
Could’ve asked a fuckin’ doctor or something.
Normal thing to ask your doctor. Where do you have to stab someone so they cough up blood and also die.
Well like most stabs will kill somebody right. So they wouldn’t really have to ask that.
Shaddup Suz.
Stop calling me that it sounds like a cartoon character's name.
Kay Suz.
Fine Krissy.
Ugh shut up.
“Kris? Are you ready?”
Mom is standing at the door. The clock says 7:58. Oh.
“Yeah. Bathroom?”
“Be quick. I will be in the car.”
The knife is in the bathroom drawer. They slip it into the dress bodice.
Okay.
Okay Okay Okay.
They pull the letters from between the folds of the towel under the sink.
Noelle. Mom. Dad. Azzy. Dess, if they ever find her.
Okay Okay Okay.
Take a breath. There aren’t many of those left.
Knife. Letters. Steps memorized. Location of incision marked. Cage planted. Site prepared. Witnesses confirmed.
Okay okay okay okay okay.
“Kris? Are you alright?”
“Yeah. Coming.”
They walk into the stark light of the winter day. A thin frost covers everything. The trees are all dead.
“Get in the car, dear, before you catch a cold.”
Hometown is desolate as they drive down the roads. Everyone must be at the church already.
Cars crowd the road around it as they pull up, like maggots swarming rot.
The air is tight and cloying when they step out of the car. The church, which always seemed so looming, now seems so small in the face of their entire town. Everyone can barely fit inside.
Berdly’s mother is in the center of a clot of people offering consolation.
Noelle is sitting in the very back, curled up in one of the pews. She looks very small and very pretty in her black satin dress. Her sleeves are long and drooping and embroidered in lace. She’s staring blankly at the stained class window behind the pastor’s pulpit.
“There Noelle is, dear. Go sit with her.”
Kris swallows and obliges.
Noelle barely looks up when they sit next to her.
“Kris.” Her eyes are red rimmed “Can we talk? Outside?”
They stand and follow her out into the graveyard. The ditch for Berdly’s coffin has already been dug, and his gravestone is already there. Berdly Warshawsky. 200x-202x. Beloved son. May the angel bless your spirit.
“I need you to be honest with me, Kris.” Noelle looks at them. Close up, the frizz in her hair and the red in her eyes are glaringly apparent. “That wasn’t a dream, was it? Susie and Berdly didn’t just drop dead.”
Susie didn’t drop. She screamed and fought and writhed until every last breath had been burned out of her.
“No.”