Darker and darker the pieces of the plane became, until Avery was awash in cold and black. For a moment he found total peace in the velvety murk, only to be flung further into the recesses of the Reikai. His path was rough, and when he found footing it merely collapsed again to send him hurtling once more. Something was drawing him towards it, but he knew it wasn't Xanthe. The Old Witch God wasn't as… coarse… with its methods.
His head banged against the insides of an elevator shaft, an overwhelming pain overcoming all senses. Exposed, dead wires caught against his clothing and slowed his descent with their hooked metal. Soon, Avery found himself dangling inches from the bottom of the elevator's dusty shaft in a mess of wires and cables. They were bundled so tightly around his neck he had assumed they were trying to hang him, but with the rough fall it had inadvertently protected him from breaking it. As soon as he began to struggle, the wires immediately untied themselves and he fell the two inch difference onto the concrete below him. Old flecks of paint and sawdust kicked up from the impact, forcing him to scramble outwards past the broken-open doorway and cover his mouth.
It took Avery some time to clear his head and take inventory, he felt as though he'd just gotten off of the worst rollercoaster ride ever. Despite the physically intensive trip, he seemed relatively unharmed besides some lingering throbs. The same couldn't be said for his clothing, which had been torn and pulled too hard for him to consider wearing it in public again. Even the shirt he wore had some cuts in it that might have worked if he liked tacky looks and too much airflow.
He sighed to himself as he stepped on the tile flooring, finally gaining enough bearings to realize where he was. Soft neon lights lit stairwells, open-air plazas, and fountain displays. It definitely wasn't anywhere past the Veil, so he hadn't left the spirit world yet. It actually looked pretty close to a mall, at least the kind Avery had seen sparsely through magazines and shows. They'd never felt homely to him, but somehow the complete lack of people made it unjustly comfortable. Maybe it was the moody lighting, or just the prospect of the shops being unmanned and full of snacks.
He appeared to be in a side aisle of the mall, with some closed down shops blocked off by their scaling metal slide-doors. He wasn't sure what they were called. What alarmed Avery was the sheer number of screens and graphic displays that relentlessly stockaded the walls and columns of the mall. Each wall was a patchwork of flickering glass segments, and each support pillar was dotted with hundreds of screens. They were models anywhere from sleek and plasma to thick and boxed television sets from their first debut. What made it worse was the contents of each one. Avery could pick out a few as normal or tolerable movies and videos, but the rest ranged from tacky to downright deplorable. Slideshows of bombing victims and planes overhead played before transitioning to hardcore, raunchy porn. Avery walked deeper into the complex, driven by morbid curiosity. The videos continued on, only growing in absurdity and questionability.
Avery's sore legs eventually brought him to the center of the mall, a supercenter for all of the content being played. He could see everything here. Suicide by shotgun, burn victims, and scenes straight from Red Room private streams. Avery was apathetic to most, but the audio from some was so undeniably real that it tugged at his heartstrings through the layers of mold he'd grown over them.
Just as he had his fill and decided to leave, one of the decorated support pillars lurched towards Avery. The wires connecting it strained until they snapped and hit the floor, the shape converging towards him as if falling. Its bottom section split loudly into two thin, spidery appendages to catch itself, the top half shifting into a more humanoid shape. The screens began to flex and shift, collecting near the top. One singular, wide display emerged from the mess of glass and tubing to act as a partial face. Plasma and living static leaked from between the wiring, solidifying into an elongated skull whose cheekbones held the rectangular viewport in place. It smiled, though there was no skin or muscle on the body to allow otherwise. Transmissions echoed around the emerging spirit before it stretched and popped its spindly arms into place. All at once, the screens dotting its body like some horrible infection began to flare to life, all of the rest of the mall's lively displays going black as their regularly scheduled programs were sucked away from them. With a metallic snap of the spirit's spindly metal fingers, red headlines amassed and covered the imposing figure in a patchwork cloak of scrolling calamities. It towered over Avery, nearly to the ceiling of the mall and as tall as a radio tower.
Before he could make an attempt to run away from the spirit, they waggled their wirey, skeletal-shaped finger in Avery's face. A screech of static coalesced before they opened their mouth, a scraping of metal on metal as it did. The sound coalesced as a mixture of voices, somewhere between raw, unfiltered shreds of broadcasts and bits of modern media. Mixed in between was live studio audience laughter, no doubt recorded as long ago as this spirit was born.
"Not in Kansas anymore, are we Toto?" The diabolical voice spoke, its headspace showing a very familiar set of red slippers before it flashed back to showcasing disasters all over the screens on its torso. Avery could recognize Pearl Harbor and the pivotal 9/11 among them, things he hadn't even been around for but that had been covered on the airwaves. He even caught some loose voices talking about The Hindenburg incident.
Unlike the other spirits you could usually point a finger to, this one was a conglomerate not unlike Heressa. There was no singular correct answer as to what they represented due to the scale of their growth. He could pin down television for sure, but beyond that…
"What are you?" Avery asked, bored. The spirit hadn't killed him so he assumed he'd been brought for a reason. It'd take quite the scale of power for the Reikai itself to bend its infinite pathways for you.
"I am part of all that I have met." The spirit responded, answering nothing other than what he was already doing literally. Avery could vaguely recognize the line, but he wasn't sure from where.
"More than that. What spirit are you? Why me? Surely someone with this much… uh… flashiness must have words." Avery responded, now crossing his arms. He wasn't really sure why of anything when it came to this enigmatic spirit, but he did know something. Xanthe still whispered in his ear, though with the dilutants emptied from his system they were quieter. He only needed to know one thing, and that was that he and the spirit were equals to Xanthe. Perhaps even Avery was placed higher than the spirit.
The spirit's voice flickered between quotes, unable to draw anything original forth. Avery could recognize fragments of movies, broadcasts, and songs stuck in the creature's teeth as it attempted to speak.
"We are the music makers —the gospel! — the dreamers of dreams! —I am He. You can call me anything you like— and don't call me Shirley."
It made perfect sense to Avery, regardless of the nonsense that'd been spewed forth. Even its words summed up what it was fairly well. Everything. Broadcasts, the love and joy of song paired with the tragedy of disasters. The given form of the power to both influence and puppeteer the masses, whether by fear or comedy.
"Well that's nice, but why am I here?" Avery remarked. Maybe he was a bit dulled after his travels, but the question still hadn't been answered.
"A friend of a friend is a friend! I'm — loyal to my friends, and I keep my promises."
"I've never met you before today."
"Your reputation's already ahead of you, lad — and! — you're gonna go places, kid."
The devilish roadshow extended an arm to Avery, a headline circulating its length before it snaked its way towards the dirty teenager. Avery's eyes widened as he inspected its circumference—an intriguing article with a date not yet come to pass.
'MURDER UNSOLVED: SUSPECT AT LARGE'
Avery gave the spirit a quizzical glance, only for the televising spirit's head to change channels. It was a fabricated report obviously, still using bits and pieces of existing media to craft the voices. The video showed a helicopter view of Avery's mansion home. Rather, his stepfather's home now. Avery doubted he could go back without the world attempting to correct his crimes of witchiness somehow. Probably by fire, if he had to guess.
The footage continued, cycling into a news segment involving a beloved Mr. Olsen and his at-the-time girlfriend Ms. Rich being shot dead in their own home. Avery grimaced a bit.
"What exactly does killing DeMain's mom do? My stepdad—sure, whatever. I know the guy's kind of a sleazeball, but DeMain's mom isn't a witch and has zero power over anything besides being a decent looker." Avery said, trying to repress any personal feelings he may have towards the kind, older woman.
"The tower — must fall. The Green — Goddess — plots against our best interests, gentlemen. Brick by brick — that wall's gonna blow!"
There was a moment of silence between the two of them as the spirit realized Avery didn't know what it meant by this. Avery was smart (he hoped), but it was such a word jumble and tone shift every few words that he legitimately could not understand what aspects the spirit referred to. He'd never seen a tower spirit, nor had he seen any spectacularly green goddesses. Avery got his reply by a snippet of his own voice played back to him.
"DeMain—" As Avery had said just moments ago. "—Has friends in high places. Take them away! — Off with their heads! — If you won't, we will."
Avery pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. "Even if I was to accept. I can't just waltz in. My step-dad has cameras everywhere, and it'd be hard to get around their waitstaff unseen. Plus, I only have three bullets left. I don't trust myself on those odds."
He prayed quietly that the spirits he'd surrounded himself with could give him a break. Avery was pretty sure he was going to develop heart problems with all of the tense situations he'd been forced into, if not die from the dozens of injuries he'd sustained.
"Like I said before — we'll do it! — even if you can't, kid."
"Okay, great, fine. Can I please like, get a bath, shower, eat something?" He asked, hoping his comment didn't turn the channels against him.
"Walk with me, dear." The screen-faced spirit adored, snapping its fingers again. They didn't so much walk as sitcom transition into a large penthouse suite, complete with a lavish bed, pool, and closet full of clothing.
Avery meekly looked around, eyeing the fanciful wines, window view, and extensive laminated menu right of a dial phone. When he turned to thank the spirit for its hospitality, Avery found they'd been replaced by a woman in a suit. She reminded him of five-star hotel staff, dressed nicely and always smelling of either expensive meals or the overlapping scent of barely-concealed old people. Her face was a bit odd too, somehow never quite in-focus enough for him to make out any real details. It was like she was being shown to him through a gas station security camera.
"Welcome!" She began, speaking in a voice Avery could only place as that of an automated customer service 'assistant'. He'd never liked them, but maybe her being a real person would remedy some of that.
"We're happy you chose to stay with us. Is there anything you'd like from me?"
The usual slew of pervy, low-brow answers came to mind, but Avery felt as though they'd be wasted more than usual on what was probably just a minor spirit of… service jobs? He guessed people probably hated them enough for one to manifest. Avery didn't answer right away, his hungry eyes nearly snatching away the kitchen's menu for him before he could read it.
"Uh… yes. Can I have an order of…"
Avery stared at the menu a little baffled. The food was normal, but the pricing options were something he couldn't really afford. Two souls for a glazed salmon? A beloved memory for a cheeseburger? The food was either unbeatable in flavor or the economy in the Reikai was in shambles. It wasn't like he had any treasured memories to give up for a quarter pounder anyway.
"I don't think I can afford these prices, sorry. Do you have a kids menu by chance? Maybe something with less—"
"Oh, don't concern yourself with such things! Your meals will be offered on the house."
"I still get to eat them right? This isn't some thing where you say that and then they arrive on the actual roof?"
"Haha." She said dryly. "No. The one you serve is quite the influential name here. We are indebted to his services to us."
"Oh. Well I have more questions, but can I get a glazed salmon, a cheeseburger deluxe with fries, and a large caesar salad? Oh, and a strawberry lemonade."
"Certainly." She said, doing nothing. Avery waited for something to happen, maybe she'd pull out a notepad and write something down or make a call over a radio. She did neither.
"You had more questions?" She asked a moment later.
"—Oh, yeah." Avery spoke. They must be able to do things remotely as spirits, he should have figured. "Xanthe is a known name around here? I thought spirits had no reason to worship a Witch God, especially an Old One."
It was true, spirits didn't have the same need for fellowship. Television and what Xanthe represented seemed pretty far disconnected, people didn't typically like to watch his work. Avery couldn't imagine a pay-per-view deal on the lowest of the low the world had to offer unless they starred in a LiveLeak video.
"Oh no, my boss and yours go very far back." She continued, crossing her hands behind her back. "You see, for every downfall there's a story, and we can share that with the world! Not to mention the countless outbreaks of diseases, gross videos, and pollutive efforts people watch and listen to. My boss owes a lot of his early rise to yours, and as such any employee of Xanthe's is welcome here. We love to give back to our shareholders any way we can."
"Oh. That's pretty cool. I guess…" It stuck with Avery that neither of these things were objectively 'good', but Xanthe's plan had such a justified end it seemed ignorable.
"So…" Avery began, swallowing any shame he had and attempting to look his best in the moment. Even if she had a weird face he was a little desperate for anyone not trying to slice him in two. "When do you get off?"
"Oh, I never get off. Part of my clause with my boss is that I will work dutifully for the rest of my life without any of my former human worry! I do get sleep and breaks, but the rest of my time is spent making sure our customers get 100% guaranteed satisfaction. Anything you need, I will provide."
"Oh. Wait, so you'll do anything people ask?" Avery asked, more concerned than personally intrigued.
"Well I won't do anything that endangers myself, but otherwise yes."
Avery chewed his thumbnail in contemplation. She wasn't even a spirit, just some girl the TV-head had managed to snag up on a lifetime deal.
"What do you get out of this? Sounds kinda boring."
"I'm glad you asked. Our manager makes sure that, while we are working, we spend our life free of worries and full of joy! If I had to guess. I'm somewhere deep in my mind reliving my first watching of Friends!"
So she was an automated customer service bot, the rest of her was just living it up off of old memories. Somehow that made his flirtatious attempt seem more pathetic, and he dropped the subject.
"You can uh, go if you need. I think I can sort the rest out by myself."
"Of course. If you need me, I'm just a call away!"
She left the room by the door instead of phasing out like a ghost, so at least she wasn't supernatural on top of being super braindead. Avery's lengthy order of food arrived on a massive platter signified by a knock, but nobody was there when he opened.
More platters littered the tables of the suite, Avery's stomach felt like it'd been inflated to twice its regular size. He'd only gotten halfway through his first order before he realized he might need to make a second and third. He was at least thankful that the food wasn't illusory or bland-tasting. It was very clearly neither of those, the way it stained his shirt was unmistakable.
Avery stood by the outlooking panes of glass as he munched on a burger, gazing upon the nightlife skyrise of the spirit's city. He could see everything from here. The screen lit streets, the bustling casino-goers, and the alleyways of which his eyes stayed peeled for far too long. It truly was an unspoken Xanthic domain, an underbelly of deplorable people. Maybe they'd lost their way, but even he had ended up among them here. No wonder the Yellow God was favored here, nowhere else could fit him better unless it was his own domain.
He'd stripped off his overclothes and inspected himself in the suite bathroom's full mirror, so large it covered the wall wholly. Everything here was so large compared to Avery it felt better fit for a group than a solo act such as himself. Even the bath was almost a pool by itself, and the shower had high-pressure nozzles to spray from any direction he chose. He wasn't terribly concerned with it right now, eyeing up the nasty cuts and bruises all over his body. His eye especially looked bad, though it thankfully showed no signs of infection. Still couldn't see out of it though, which didn't help his odds in the future.
After some difficult scrounging with one functional method of sight and long, dirty hair covering his face, Avery was able to lay out a semi-adequate outfit he was proud of, though he wanted to wash himself before he wore it. Basic dark blue jeans, a dark graphic tee featuring a yellow rattlesnake he liked, and a gray polyester zip jacket he much enjoyed the soft insides of.
After changing, Avery peeked outside his room into the empty hall, disappointed. How was he supposed to call for an attendant if he was alone at the top floor? He went back into the room and looked at the phone. No numbers or keys, just the single button for picking up and ending calls. It wasn't a model he'd seen before either, with old but clean white plastic and a weirdly curvy receiver. Avery pressed the device to his ear, hearing only the crackle of a lost signal.
"Uh… hello? Room service?" He started. An immediate knock at his door made him jump, with immediate consequences as the jolt tore open the slash across his abdomen.
"May I come in?" The voice of the woman from earlier rang.
"Ugh… yes… Do you have a doctor here or something…?" Avery groaned, clutching his bleeding stomach. The scabs and shallow healing had reopened from the sudden force, and he swore to himself as the pain refused to leave him.
"Certainly." She said, stepping in. Instead of a suit, she had donned light blue scrubs complete with a matching facemask, her hair tied up inside of a surgical cap. The room transitioned elsewhere like a cutaway gag, and Avery was carefully laid down on a surgical table in the midst of a sterilized white room. Avery had little time to fuss before a soothing numbing spray doused his open wound. The woman bent down next to the table, pulling with her a bag with all the right tools as she stood back up. A needle punctured Avery's skin over and over, with sutures pulling the skin back towards itself. It hurt even despite the spray, but she worked so efficiently the moment was over before he could begin to agonize in impatient waiting. Avery didn't sit up, but strained his eyes to look down at his now stitch-covered midsection.
The treatment was long overdue, and he knew she'd done more than he paid attention to. Spray bottles, q tips, tweezers, and other assorted tools had been laid out on a newly-appeared shelf next to both of them. Avery could even see a bottle of liquid full of stilled tapeworms, each a noticeable length but still young. He wasn't surprised with all that he'd eaten, but he was still a little disgusted.
Had he slipped out of time? He knew he wasn't the most observant person, but it was as if the worst parts of the procedure had been erased from consciousness. Avery remembered getting on the table and then… the end stitchwork. It must have been a part of their bosses influence, seeing as they themselves were lobotomized as his servants.
But was it really so awful? If what they said was true, they essentially lived in ignorant bliss while their bodies did the dirty work. Even so, they did the dirty work perfectly, and not too much that they would break down from overdoing it. Avery could imagine how useful such a thing would be even if it were more temporary. A nine to five without the mental toll, or a service job where you needn't remember the strain it put on you. You'd have worked but experienced none of it and still come home to a full paycheck. Paychecks…
Avery was reminded that in the world he and Xanthe sought to bring about, such grating circumstances as work and hard labor wouldn't even need to exist. Everything one needed would be within their grasp, and the spirits could assist with what wasn't.
The woman stood over him and time flashed by again. Avery blinked and found bandaging had been put over his wounded eye, with the stinging pain absent. Or at least, numbed. He wanted to thank her, but there was no point if she was just a hollow shell at the moment.
"Would you like a bath?" She began. Avery figured it was the most polite way a human doll could suggest he smelled awful, but he knew he needed to.
"Yes…"
"Well, a bath is typically to be avoided until after the first two days or so, but I can wash you manually."
Avery looked the woman up and down. While his body still hurt from basic movement and he wanted help, he wasn't sure how to follow the offer. Avery knew he shouldn't feel uncomfortable since she was essentially an android, but her age was impossible to tell. He figured it would be best to do it himself. It was one thing to ask for civil services like food and healthcare, but the idea of forcing a woman of unknown age to unknowingly bathe him felt like a crossed line. Even if she was old enough, it still felt like a disrespect to both of them.
"I'll do it myself, thanks."
"Wonderful. When you are ready, our manager would like to discuss the details of your stay."
"Ah, so there is a caveat."
"Oh no, Mr. Anansi would simply like to discuss what your plans are."
"Mr. Anansi?"
"Our boss, though you may know the colloquial term as the Media Spirit."
Media. It was pretty spot-on, although Avery knew the name had only been given because the screen-faced spirit had such influence that classing it as one particular thing was difficult.
"Is… Mr. Anansi a New Witch God, by chance? He seems to be on-par with if not stronger than Heressa from what I've seen so far."
"He doesn't like the title but yes, he is technically on the same level as her in a sense of capabilities."
Avery's first question was bullseyed, but his second was still pointed directly at him. His plans? His plans had always been to help Xanthe, but he wasn't sure how to from here.
"I guess we'll have to talk about it. But—can we get a translator or something? He can be a little hard to follow. I'm not really good at placing what he's talking about."
"Certainly. I'll act as a medium for him then, it'll be much easier to communicate that way."
"Thank you. Do you think I could sleep and let the stitches settle?"
"Of course. Mr. Anansi has nothing but time, especially for our golden client."
Avery was able to dismiss the kindly attendant woman back to complete absence. He checked to make sure she didn't just run around the corner of the hall to wait for his next word, but she was simply gone as soon as she left the doorway.
Returning to the bathroom, he stripped fully and entered the shower. Avery knew not to let the water onto his stitches, but he desperately wanted to clean his hair before getting into bed. Plus, the controlled flow was easier to scrub himself down with than the bath's small lake of water, as nice as it sounded.
The shower began to trickle and then spray with steady power. Avery leaned and stared down at the smooth marble flooring, watching blood, dust, grime, and even what appeared to be a few insects wash away. Dirty was an understatement, Avery had been downright unapproachable.
No. He was always unapproachable. He liked to be. The kids at school had always been so much of a hassle. He was short, weak, and not attractive or charismatic enough to play off either of those. He'd seen the other kids who turned to becoming pranksters or clowns just to get by in the eye of public opinion, but Avery hadn't believed in that. Why bother trying to appease the people who'd toss you away if you were anything but entertaining? He wasn't a jester, and he certainly wouldn't be a fad.
Rumors had spread about Avery being anything but natural after the first few weeks, and people eventually learned to stay away. That was how he wanted it though, and he had never been averse to giving people nightmares to teach them harsh lessons.
The first had been rightful, your run of the mill bully who the teachers didn't really care to stop. Avery had given him a chronic fear of spiders after some well-crafted scenes he was especially proud of. The boy couldn't look at one without imagining them crawling from out of his eyes and under his fingernails.
The next had been a girl. Avery never knew if she had just singled him out because he was a loner, or if she saw something in him that was her own imagination at play. She made her friends tease him, cornered him in the hall, and never, ever shut up when he just wanted peace and quiet. She wasn't especially antagonizing, but Avery had grown tired when she never took his constant refusal at face value. How complicated was a 'no, I don't like you.'? He had been trying not to overdo it back then, but after an especially complicated dream he realized he could supplant thoughts and ideas with enough craftiness. It took a while, but the girl eventually left him alone when she 'realized' there was nothing to him under the bleak exterior.
The only other one Avery could recall besides his earliest encounters was an old friend of his at the time, though he'd never call them a friend now. They'd caught wind of the rumors, and they happened to be spiritually enough to accept that such things could be real. The problems arose when they began to exploit Avery, attempting to goad him into using his control over dreams to get them better grades or make girls like them. It was then that Avery had realized no matter how low you thought of yourself, someone was always digging deeper. There was always a parasite to feed off even rats, and another to feed off of them in turn.
Initially, Avery had thought himself a parasite too. The flaw to his logic was that he never really fed off of anyone more than he did simply cling to them as he went from place to place. He could make friends, but they were replaceable in the long run. He could evidently do the same with family, as the existence of his stepfather told. He didn't feed off of anyone in particular, and he knew realistically he could get by with just himself if things absolutely called for it. Avery wasn't sure what he was. Other boys could look at animals or celebrities and aspire to be like them, but Avery had never seen the point of aspirations in the first place.
Sure, his viewpoint was most definitely warped, but most of what people idolized always turned out as something they knew close to nothing about in actuality. Wolves were revered by naive men as lone stalkers of the night when they were socially reliant predators that worked together to hunt—the excluded ones dying off with no thought given to them. Lions were revered as excellent displays of ferocity and leadership when they spent little time doing anything besides lazing around or making the females do the work. He didn't even want to consider how many celebrities had been seen as admirable people only to be exposed as sex scandals, pedophiles, traffickers, and worse.
The only things Avery appreciated were snakes, spiders, and worms. He knew there were undoubtedly things he didn't know about them that could change his mind, but the simplicity of their existence reassured him in some strange way. Snakes simply bit prey, ate, and then lounged around. Spiders weren't too different, with an added skill for weaving that went unappreciated by most people. An annoyance to some, a scare to most. Worms just ate dirt as far as he knew, but they were important to the ecosystems of life.
Avery thought back to the girl who attacked him with a knife in town before he took away everything from her, remembering how she'd used such intricate patterns and webs to counter him. Maybe if things were different they could have gotten along, but he doubted it. Her supposed boyfriend was dead now, but he'd been an asshole once he locked eyes with Avery. Avery couldn't imagine her taste for relationships was very good if the discount greaser was what she chose.
He brushed it off as something she deserved, skulking in the shower until the water ran clear. Taking a sponge and soaping up the bruised and dirt-covered areas of his body before stepping out, Avery debated on covering himself with the towel or clothes. He was either going to be completely alone or seen by someone with no real eyes to consider, so he didn't.
Avery unpacked the revolver and set it on the top of the bed's headboard, sliding it to the very corner end. He carefully scooted on the bed after setting the preselected outfit on the floor next to it, rolling the covers up until he was almost immobile and cocooned by blankets. It was comfortable, but also so he didn't scratch his wounds too hard and bleed out in his sleep.
He wondered to himself as his eyes stared into the dark of the room. It was silent, for once. Xanthe's voice had calmed after his deed, and he no longer felt as mentally hurried. Avery had simply burned a tree. His lifelong mission felt a little underwhelming, and the lack of feedback was concerning. Was it because he had decided to take a break that he was being given a cold shoulder, or was Xanthe simply giving him a break by leaving his head for once? He didn't feel safe, but he knew this time that it was nothing lethal to be afraid of. If Xanthe had wanted him dead he could have killed him as soon as Avery left the cinders of the Kami Tree. He knew there was more, but was Xanthe truly just giving him a well-deserved break?
His thoughts stirred in all directions. Did this not just prove his point that Xanthe wasn't evil? He never liked the term evil anyway, everyone who used it liked to point fingers at villains so morally black it hardly served as a good example. Maybe it's what Avery was. He'd killed people, drawn them to suicide, given them nightmares, all in the name of a greater good and a justified end. He hadn't lied when he told the tree he expected to die within the month either. If his injuries didn't push him over the edge, he knew a few unfriendly faces who would leap at the opportunity instead.
Avery's mind was a broken dam. He couldn't sleep, so he took the same measures he always had. One cloud of his own soul's soporific fumes to the face was all he needed to still his heart and mind, falling into a deep slumber. He sank deeper and deeper past the confines of suppressed anxieties, a single tear rolling onto the bed from sources unknown.