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Zack lay awake, Rachel next to him, in the cold warehouse they were currently occupying. Finally being out felt so… surreal sometimes that he wondered if maybe he was dead and living in some sort of dream.
Voices. So many fucking voices. He just wanted to go through them with his scythe; make them just shut up for a second. The white coats or dark uniforms they were attached to touched him, bound him, tied him up and down and together so tight that he couldn’t move an inch. They refused to let him know anything about Rachel.
The blanket laying on him itched and scratched, and the girl next to him shivered in her sleep. He pulled her a bit closer.
Execution. Such a nice word. They said it a lot, before the big hall and the man with the white wig (judge; what right does he have to judge me?), during that time, and after, but he didn’t fucking care. They said a lot of words; big words, little words, all annoying, but none of them the name that he wanted to hear. He never stopped asking, and they never stopped talking.
The two of them had stolen his stuff back (that they could), so his brown hoodie, still stained with blood, now sewn up. His red pants, also stained with blood. They had to steal new bandages, though.
Every moment without them had been terrible, horrible, breaking him apart until all that was left was the anger and the fear and the fire. The fire had been spreading across his skin, licking his face, nipping at his hands, catching in his hair. They had been burning him long before the chair.
For the first time in a long time, he no longer felt like ripping off his skin. He didn’t feel like stabbing himself over and over and over, tearing and scratching just to get rid of the burning itch that covered him. He felt right, now.
The chair was cold, with rough wood that dug into the wrists at the end of his sleeved arms. Orange was such a stupid fucking colour. He missed his hair, which was now gone. If they hadn’t drugged him to shave it, he probably would have ended up with scissors in his head, or whatever the fuckers used to cut it. The metal dug into his arms and legs.
The only light that came through the windows was the light of the moon outside. It was less blue than he had thought; boring. The shadows were long, hiding scuttling things in the dark. Was he a scuttling thing in the dark? Maybe.
The metal thing chilled his head, and the thingies with the wires that they attached to him made him so angry, he wished he could rip them off of his skin and wrap them around their necks. They reminded him of Danny. He fucking hated Danny, with his weird fucking eye-fetish. He hated them all.
He hadn’t killed anyone after the first day. It was a struggle. The laughter and the lies and the noise drove him insane; he just wanted to see some blood pour, see if it still looked the same as in there. Hear if the screams sounded the same as in there.
There was no warning before the pain. It ran through his brain and his face and his neck and his chest and arms and legs and feet and all around, round and round and round and round. Someone was screaming. Oh wait, that was him. Electricity flew around him, lighting up the air and the chair and him and it hurt. He didn’t stop screaming.
Rachel stopped him from killing. She’d take his hand and remind him that if he was caught, he couldn’t kill her later. He agreed; she still had to die, and only the hands of her god could give her what she wanted. Only her god could give her death.
He didn’t die. The necromaniacs were even stupider than they looked if they thought they could off him that easily. He was an angel, after all. He wasn’t dying; hadn’t last time, wouldn’t this time.
They didn’t know what their plans were. Maybe they would just hop around, hiding with the rats until everything blew over. Then maybe he could kill again (he probably would anyway). He would feel bad about dragging Rachel around (he wouldn’t), if he didn’t know how batshit insane she was. He wondered sometimes if she wanted to kill just as much as he did. She still carried her sewing kit with her.
He didn’t notice the explosion, only the rubble when the pain stopped. Some of the shitheads were dead; a few shots to the head got rid of the rest. ‘About damn time, little bitch.’ Shit, his throat hurt.
He didn’t question where she had found his scythe, but it didn’t leave his side. His knife ignited his brain and body in the best way possible.
He cut up a few of the dead and dying on his way out; can’t talk without a head. It felt so good, so fucking good, and the blood was beautiful, and their pain echoed in his ears until he felt like he might explode. That’s for thinking they could kill him. That’s for trying. That’s for failing.
There was no pain now. The jagged, white marks blended in with every other on his body. Nothing changed.
His head and legs were bleeding. He didn’t care. It mixed with the rest of the blood on the floor.
Rachel moved closer to him in her sleep, and he let her.
The moonlight bounced off her hair as they left, the blue and red lights off the buildings around them.
Tender skin, not yet complete scars over on his temples, covered by hair that was growing back, and on his legs, covered by his pants.
Everything new,
nothing different.