(Rose)
When I wake up, I can see some early sunlight coming into the room through the curtains.
I'm on the bed.
The man is gone. So is the deceased body, though the floor still is stained beyond repair.
I stand up and go back into the house. It's still dark inside. I find him in the kitchen, gathering food in a bag.
I scare him again.
We need to talk, but I know little of his language.
We're both tired and weakened.
We go back into the room to talk.
I don't get his name, but I get that something was happening here yesterday.
His family has been slaughtered by a monster...
But there's more to it., much more.
It's more complicated than that, but I can't see it all yet.
As we eat, I try to explain to him that I'm looking for Blume.
When I describe to him her appearance of a fleshy fruit, he seems to catch on something. He flinches, but he doesn't say why.
He has seen her. He can't show me where, he doesn't want to go outside, because it's too dangerous he says.
We can't fight he says, scared to death. The young man has such terror and bereavement in his eyes, it's genuine.
I get his idea that we'd better wait for a while for now. I'm probably reckless but I can't follow his advice however.
I need to find Blume.
I need to find her...
From what I understood, he saw Blume around a lake, yesterday morning.
She fell from the sky in a strange manner.
I don't get what happened afterward.
But by evening, hell broke free apparently...
What have they done to her? Or worse, what has she done?
I know what beings-like-her are capable of...
I step outside. The sky is still as dark as night, but the sun brings still more light in there than the moon would.
The shipwreck that I am physically, shuts the door behind me, and heads unsteady toward the lake.
It's the second road away on the right. Third if I count where I came from.
The weather is weird. It's cold and there is some mist, but mostly the sky is almost dark.
I distinguish the small mountain aside, and probably the sea in the distance below and behind. The road climbs. It's all quiet.
My back keeps hurting me, but so is the rest of my skinny body.
I reach the lake. There are a few empty buildings. Fishing lines are set. There's nothing else, nothing worth looking at.
The end of the lake is a concrete wall. I'm curious and look at it closer.
It's actually a small dam. This lake is for a small dam that follows the cliffs on the shore side. The sea is quite far below that level. I see a small port on the side and below. With floating boats.
I'll go take a look at them later.
On the other side of the lake is the small mountain. There are paths going up there, and some building on top, maybe an hour away walking from here. I follow the main track.
As I climb the path, I hear ominous noises again. I hide, and wait. A ghost passes by. An old ape it seems. A tall skinny man, old, stooped figure, and bleeding from everywhere.
I let that shadow go on its blind walk and disappear below. I keep climbing, my heart beating rather fast.
I reach the top, and climb the ladder of a small lighthouse of some sort. It's just a tower of surveillance for coastguards, maybe.
I see the sea. The night light that looms permanently like clouds over this land is weaker up there, as if I was getting above a very black screen of smoke that lingered there. I can see farther and slightly clearer. I see the sea beyond the lake, the village, the crops and the woods behind. I slowly turn around clockwise.
I see the sea behind the woods. There is another village further on the side I think. The sea is still visible in the distance. Then there's another taller mountain, then the sea, the sea, and I'm back at the lake and the dam.
I have a cold sweat as I realise where I am. This isn't the northern coast of the sea I'm on. I must be much further.
How did this happen?
There seem to be ruins of an old medieval castle atop the other mountain. That could have interested me but right now I'd rather go to the port and check the boats I could see. I may need one very soon...
I climb down the mountain and dawn turned to dusk in a matter of seconds, it's dark again.
I hear screams again, as if they were part of the normal climate on this island.
They're atrocious screams. I think they belonged to the old man I saw.
I'm on the shore of the lake. I distinguish silhouette further away. One of them ripping apart the other one. The ape died. The teenager looking one is ripping apart and shredding what's left of the tall ape.
This is the monster so... I have no way of facing it right now, beside a poor kitchen knife. I'll go around the lake to avoid meeting it head on, and see if I can reach the port first.
As I walk that way, I hear the thing sobbing in the distance at times.
Maybe it's not fully a monster but I don't want to get closer to check that just yet.
My stomach hurts a lot. I think I ate something spoiled.
~
I'm sweating a lot despite the rather cold temperature. I'm burning my energy at a higher speed than usual. I'm out of breath as I finish the detour from the lake. I reach the road. On the right, somewhere lies another decomposing corpse now...
I return to the village and head for the port.
The road dives in pitch darkness somehow. It's ominous. I feel nauseous. I tremble as I try to go further.
A terror rises in me. My heartbeat rises without control and I'm soon panicking and stepping back, drenched in cold sweat.
I fall on my bottom aside the road, right next to the darkness stopping the road there. I'm not sure about what this thing is, but I cannot reach the boats this way... My head is as numb as if I had been beaten senseless, just walking a few steps inside this shade.
I can't escape this way. There's the rustic boat in the boat house otherwise.
It was just a small boat with an oar, but it probably could float too. Was he thinking the same thing?
I hear the flow from the dam on a side and from the small stream on the other side.
As I begin to step back onto the road to the village, I see someone coming my way. I'm cornered and begin to panic as I hear her sobbing.
Then, it sees me, screams, and falls unconscious. It didn't attack me, it passed out right as it was about to bump into me, more shocked into meeting me than I was. (Am I that scary looking? It's becoming insulting)
I managed to catch her head before it hit the solid ground.
She's a young child really.
Scrawny. Even worse than I. Covered in mud and awfully dirty like the others I saw here.
However, given the putrid smell she has, this may be the guts of the others that she has stained herself with.
I may be incredibly lucky she didn't try to murder me...
She looks familiar to me. I'm not sure why. As I hold her in my arms, I can feel my blood pulsating through my veins strongly. I'm reacting somewhat instinctively to her.
There's something about her that makes my blood boil...
Already tired to walk from my own weight, I though manage to put that young one onto my back and carry her away.
And something is awakening within me. A fire. A wrath. It still is blind and young, but I can feel it within my chest. Below that wound I wear between my breasts.
My heart aches a lot.
This place is cursed...
~
I returned to the home where the man still hides. He hasn't left the room.
I let the girl in his care in the end, as he seems to recognise her and to care about her.
Had he recognised a monster instead of a close one, I'm not sure about what I would have done.
We talk a little. I don't understand who she is precisely, but I get that they're related.
I ask him about Blume again. And about beings-like-her. Demons or insidious monsters. About the port I couldn't reach.
He's scared and confused about all this, and I still understand very little of his language.
But I manage to understand a few clues he's repeating.
That a demon has blocked the access to the port for a long time now, I think. A demon in needs of something, and preventing his family from leaving this island, until they give it to it.
So it's not Blume... It's something else, and it's been haunting them for a longer time now. Years.
Every year, a few more of them in his large family die, or turn into those beasts...
They are its cattle. It's eating them slowly.
Where is the solution? What is the way out then? The smaller boat?
The small boat is for fishing I hear, it can't cross the sea. He tells me there is something that could help us survive, in the old base behind the village. It wasn't another village in the distance but a small camp of some sort.
There, I could find their stocks of food and medical supplies. He would never go out, not yet, but I might be able to go and recover something useful.
I wouldn't mind a few bandages myself, and they both need some medical attention too...
I set forth and go downstairs, quite resolute. I leave the house.
I pass by the mill. Another body shred into mush lies close by. If the girl was the only murderer, I should be safe for now. I never realised I should have asked more questions about them.
I keep my guard up, just in case, as I still feel a little oppressed under this artificially dark sky.
After a walk, atop the hill and behind, I reach the base.
~
Tents are in shreds. Vehicles piles of rust. There isn't much left to see outside. The buildings are mostly hollow except for the main one that I approach.
A shadow passes in the corridor right ahead. I stepped back. Something is there. A man I think? He didn't inspire much trust somehow.
Since I wasn't noticed, I take the time to spy on him from outside.
He is a man turned into monster. I've seen others before... However, he's not after me or my smell. He's... Patrolling? Like a guard. Along the same three corridors, endlessly. He wields an axe tightly at all times.
What am I looking for in here again? Medical supplies for now, but more importantly, anything that could lead me back to Blume, wherever she is...
When I return, I'll have to make the young man talk.
He knew something about it, more than where it might have landed, that piece of us...
I sneak in. I enter the rooms he never looks inside of. No footstep nor noise left behind me. I didn't know I could move around so discreetly myself.
I find their stocks. They have shelves with stockpiled goods gathered here. Food, flour, even some old sugar, wine and so on. I guess they keep their fishes elsewhere. The medical supplies too.
I wait to hear the guard pass his way behind the door before exiting. I reach another room. There I find a medical bay, or a slaughter house from the looks of it.
I grab a box and anything I can hold within, without making a noise. I do everything in utter darkness, but I'm used to it now. My sight is actually quite good.
I wait for him to pass by and go for the exit.
Then I hear a whisper. A moan of some sort, or a few words spoken into the wind outside. We can hear the sea also in the distance, beyond the cliffs. But that whispers covers everything.
My heartbeat suddenly hurts me. The sudden silence that follows freezes my blood. It's fear rising.
We both heard the whispers. But they meant something to him.
He's running straight at me. I jump outside and try to run.
My strength fails me so quickly that I trip and fall, scattering what I stole.
I fear for my life as I turn around on the ground. He's already there and about to strike me with the axe. I scream and barely avoid the attack I see coming straight to my torso.
My left arm is hurt, but my other hand manages to grab a hold on the weapon before he pulls it back to him.
Thus doing, he lifts me up while recovering his weapon.
Despite the pain of the open wound, my left hand goes furiously to his head and grabs onto it.
He tries to push me away as I try to embrace him tightly it could seem from a distance.
He's hurting my head, but my fingers reach him. He struggles, my muscles only obey to me however. They'll turn to dust if they have to, but I will win and survive.
He will die.
My left hand holds his head, and while his fists try to push me away, my right hand turns into talons. I claw his eyes out one after another. He screams and we fall. I manage to escape the struggle.
While he lies there, trying to fight off something surrounding him, I've grabbed the axe and stand up again.
I breath in. My heart hurts a lot. I feel the warm acid in my veins but I hesitate again.
He doesn't cry. He doesn't beg. He never spoke like a human.
He turns toward me and growls like a beast. I hold the weapon tight between my bloodied hands.
He jumps at me but the axe hits him in the torso and shoulder instead.
He grabs it like I did just a few seconds before.
I kick him with my heels even though I'm barefoot.
Something like a shade escapes from him through the wound. A fog, a mist of blood?
That thing escapes as the man dies. He's barely breathing now.
He whispers a word that I do understand.
Monsters... To him, I was the evil one...
He's waiting for the final blow.
We're both panting, at our limits. But he's looking human again now in how he behaves, I think...
Given what I just did to him, he probably won't live much longer...
Still...
I leave the axe aside, and help him as he lies there, now without strength and defenceless.
We're both part of each other worst nightmare. Me for what I did to him.
Him for what he then began to confess to me.
I dropped everything as I understood what he meant, and began running.
This place is hell.
~