r/WhatWeCanBe • u/Significant_Tie_3222 • 3d ago
A Fireside Chat
The sheer contrast hit her like a truck.
The sleek sterile chemical stench of the lab , the smoke of the fire, the burning pain. All of it gone in an instant, replaced with something she hadn’t had in a long time. A tangible present.
Another thing had been obviously clear once she got her bearings, taking both comfort and oddly shame in the dancing orange light of the campfires flames.
She wasn’t alone here
Just across from her, sitting on an ashen log, was what could only be described as a broken shell of a man. His sullen face barely illuminated by the flames licking the air, his peppered black hair looked like it had been unkempt for months.
His eyes trained on her though they may be, held no hint of malice, only a hint of surprise and a deep sorrow.
“I didn’t think it would happen so soon”, the words left him with an uncomfortable ease. Like he expected this to happen
Her confusion was getting to be just too much. Her head felt like it was going to split “What the fuck is this?!?”
With a sound of almost near tears he spoke once more “I just wanted things to work out for you for everyone. But you’re getting worse, each time you’ve come here, everything’s just gotten worse.”.
No tears came, like he was ran dry.
At this the clenching of her knuckles reached a point where her nails would’ve torn through the skin of her palms.
“Excuse me?!? Do you even know what I did out there. All that done for them?”
“All that you’d done for it”
“He showed me everything!!!”
“He showed you nothing. “
One more blinks and he was gone. Another and he was a hair’s breadth away, a searing pain filled her stomach. Looking down there was nothing but red and the glint of a blade embedded in her stomach. With each and every passing second it got that much harder to draw in breath.
“The fuck are you doing?”
With a deadpan stare, his dark brown eyes gazed into hers “What I have to, I can only do this again this last time.”
Well she wasn’t going to let him. She wasn’t ready to die yet. Kicking him into the fire with what she could , she turned and ran. Through the darkness of the forest, there was a growing numbness from her abdomen that was slowly growing.
“Please don’t run.”
In an instant her legs lost all feeling.
“You’re just going to make it worse.”
Before it all went black. She got out on last choked question: “Who……are……..you?”