Dreams That Never Fail [NARRATIVE]
Characters: Aya Brea.
Content: Cut off from the outside by the blast and barely managing to escape with her life, Aya struggles through the Manhattan sewers to the surface of the city, until she is rescued by a certain demon.
Location: Sewers of Manhattan.
Time of day: Daybreak, exactly right after this.
Warnings: Burn victim and injuries, unsanitary conditions, pain-induced hallucinations, and the usual melancholy.
Soundtrack Start.
They say the world works in threes. You can survive three months without food, three weeks without sleep, three days without water. Three minutes without air before eventually drowning.
Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice.
Everything had happened too fast. Blurred moments, one minute after another. One moment she was standing at the bottom of the ladder, helping a boy up it. Whatever he had said, what had been said, was swallowed by the blazing Hell that swept the stone-bricked path of the Manhattan underground. Frantically she moved to help him up. Help him escape. Except that he’d already been grabbed. Pulled up from the manhole. He was gone, and there was someone. Someone had been there. And she wasn’t.
Aya Brea hadn’t been as fortunate.
What had been everything had gone to nothing in such a brief instant.
Fire swept. Eliminating her sight of the manhole above and Aya Brea was gone. And from how it looked, Aya Brea was also no more.
From the blast to the violent current the water had taken her, she had only two options: Burn to death, or drown. In the end she might as well have taken both. She felt like death the moment she hit the water. She had no option to think about it now. A mist of pain clouded her mind, as it only got worse.
One minute. After the explosion had violently blasted her forward, a sharp sting exploded in her back. It didn’t matter. Long as she had air to breathe, it just didn’t. She was still alive now. Somehow. By the laws of three, she was still alive. The current carried her violently down the watered path. Something akin to an undertow nearly taking her and pulling her under. Fire blazed down the watery surface from above. Could not come up for air. Two minutes. The stream beat her against the walls of the sewer. She lost at least another thirty seconds opening her mouth, letting out a bubbly scream, muffled by thick substance. Two minutes and twenty seconds. Flung against the opposite wall this time. Her back hitting something sharp. Her hand came up above water. Tried to grab for something but to no avail. Three minutes. Silence. Three minutes. Silence. Three minutes...
Limp and weak. While the body lies floating down the empty, quiet path of sewage water, there is no pain. Not in this place, not anymore. Here only remained the dizzying though almost blissful sensation of nothing. Floating. Drifting. And in that sudden bliss there is nothing. There is nothing left for her to do now. He is safe. Her daughter is safe. So it’s fine for her to go now, isn’t it?
She would. Be all right. It was going to work out in the end. People got along fine without her, didn’t they? They got along fine. Sorry, it was just improper timing. There’s no reason to think about it anymore. There is no reason to breathe anymore. No reason to worry or be afraid or angry or hate anyone anymore now that the world was cleansed with fire and some in ice. Least, it had done so in her world. Her small little suffocated world.
No reason to cry over spilt milk.
Then resounds the soft piano keys of a song. Something of a song. Playing. From up and down and all around the acoustics that carries a tune so beautifully down the stone-bricked and dampened walls. The piano plays. A deathlike melody of smoke and fire and burnt flesh and bone. A song that had at one point been the melody behind the incited screaming and terror.
Se Il Mio Amore Sta Vincino.
If My Love Is...
End of the Final Act. The song reverbs into a quiet, soft, fadeout. The singer holds her arms out upon that last concord, the hollow note. Red curtains fall. They are on fire. And there is no more screaming.
With an agonizing breath, Aya Brea flung herself from the surface of the water. Her body arched, arms frantically flailing to keep her head above as hands searched for the dry catwalk that bordered the sewer river. Much effort and agony that shattered within her, focused solely on her back in particular. As though her skin were ready to peek right off. Then she reached forward with her elbows, for the back of her arms themselves looked to be charred from the blast. Her elbows resting over the dry surface. And pulled. Drawing her closer to the edge.
It wasn’t a matter of depth. The water was fairly shallow, just deep enough that if she didn’t keep her head above, she would die. Also didn’t help the fact that she couldn’t work her legs in a way that she could get up and stand on her own feet. She realized this soon as she bumped into the edge, trying to roll herself onto the dry and flat surface.
The stench. It was so bad that it hadn’t even occurred to her until just now, and she wished she hadn’t brought it to intimately to mind. The smell was nauseatingly rancid. So much that she covered her mouth, dry heaved as she collapsed onto her side over the frozen surface. Hand over her blue lips, tips of her blonde hair frozen in the subzero water and air.
Cold. How cold she was, all the way down here, in this forsaken place. Her entire body shaking uncontrollably. She moved, only allowing herself to do so by hauling her weak body by the elbows. She breathed. Coughed out murky water. Gagged. Out came more brown fluids. She coiled into fetal position, gagging and coughing and wheezing out of sickness and nausea and pain. There was enough of that pain to go around. So much that she could die.
She didn’t, though. She was still here. Her thoughts functioning only to serve her the remaining instincts necessary for survival. Slowly, she began to clumsily peel off her tattered, burnt jacket, the entire back of it fringed by scorch marks as she threw it off her. The thick piece of clothing hit the ground with a sopping noise, ringing out that which drenched it. The entire back of the jacket had been burnt off entirely. If not for her act in diving straight into the water itself, at the time she did...
It wasn’t until then, when Aya rolled onto her stomach and began to move herself forward by throwing her arms out, and dragging the rest of her, just how badly hurt she was. Most of her backside, from the neck down to her waist, including her upper arms and some of her forearms-so charred they were completely cauterized.
Logically, one would presume cauterization to be the one saving grace, since the infection of the sewer water in inner wounds would have invited more dilemmas than they were worth. However, her thought process wasn’t thinking so logically, so much as the matter that nearly her entire back had been very well burnt off. All that was left were charred remains of scarred muscle tissue, which burned in so deep that it was a surprise that the wounds didn’t just burst open again.
Movements only earned her more burning anguish and a world of hurt.
Screams again. Only this time it was Aya’s. Agonized from the utter loss of control no thanks to the cauterized burning of a good percentage of her body. She didn’t take the time to assess the damage she had endured, but she could feel it. The explosion had done quite a number on her.
The blaze singed off my clothes. Hey, come on over for a free show!
Breathing harsh, almost hyperventilating... Aya pulled herself forward. Her arms slapped the cement while hauling the rest of her across the barely dry, frozen concrete beside the battering water surface. She tried to move her legs, but they wouldn’t comply. Once glance over her shoulder, over the slick and horrific field of charred flesh that now made up her entire back, she also noted that her legs didn’t look all that right, either. One ankle had been snapped, bone sticking out of it, and the other seemed to be fractured. She winced. Holding in another scream. This one of horror. Her own condition, and this one, she was not used to seeing herself on... Not like this.
Not like this. Of all the things she had done in her life, of all the missions and hunting spent on the field, she didn’t expect it to end this way. Looking back on things, she’d had a good run, but if anyone had told her that she would die in the sewers... so far below the city that no one would hear her, or know she even existed, considering how far isolated her screams would be... Hopelessness weighing down on her until her head slammed against the concrete, spinning again, and then blackness.
Whether it be a dream, hallucination, she isn’t all too sure, but there is a song again. Sung by a child’s rhyme. Playing tic-tack-toe with a piece of shock over the cement. When she lifts her head, she sees a little girl in the blue dress, dragging the piece of chalk down the ground in order to create a three-by-three board. She sings that same song as she looks to her, pulling back her blonde bangs with a smile as she looks to the battered woman and laughs. And then the woman catches a glimpse of her, the little girl’s face, such a recognizable face, a kindred face, and then she knows.
It’s Maya.
The sister. The one who died in the car accident, almost thirty-one years ago. The sister who’s eye had salvaged her vision in her own right eye, at the cost of her life. The things that you do for family, for the ones you love.
And now the little girl in the light blue dress is laughing. Why is she laughing? It seems like such a strange thing to be doing now, considering the circumstances in which she saw her older sister in.
Dropping the piece of chalk, she gets up and runs away. She thinks she is talking, and she certainly does hear her own voice speak. But she is not sure she can talk, or that she talks right now.
Maya, no.
Hauling herself weakly, she calls out for her sister in such a weak, sad, and pathetic voice. It sounds rasp. A sharp and painful stone caught in her throat and she wants to cry but unable to summon the tears, she can only utter in a quiet murmur.
Maya, please. Please, come back.
The sister she had lost. The sister who she had put to rest so many years ago, after that night on Christmas Eve that resulted in such a domino effect of travesties... Many which have led Aya down the path of question: Am I human?
Come back. Don’t run. Come back, please. Please, Maya. Don’t go. Don’t run away from me. Don’t leave me again-!
The sister she had let down, and she was running away again. She was always running. Smiling, laughing, or crying, for whatever reason. There was no need to cry now. Oh no, not anymore. Not here, in this place. There was no more need to cry. They could be together again. Her and Maya.
It became clear to her now. Why her sister was running this time. Where she was taking her now. Leading her into a light, even if she could only follow by crawling pathetically on her belly. The little sister, still running, waiting just enough for Aya as she dragged herself, just enough, only enough for her to be able to lead her away.
Her escort. Her once-upon-a-time a winged ghost, the afterimage of her childhood bringing her closer and closer to the warmth of the light. And beneath it she flinches, her body shivering nonstop. Her breathing frantic. Gasping. Deprived of air while waiting underneath that light, hoping. For her sister to come and pull her out.
You’ve been through a lot, my sister. Let’s go home together.
Blinking slowly, hard, her head turns up. Neck cranes, like trying to move stone. The charred woman moves to look directly up into the light. To find the silhouette of someone on the other side of that morning glow. Not her sister. Not her mother. Someone else. But even then, it was one of them. As Aya shifted her weight just enough for her to hold itself out, limbs strained as her fingers stretched out to that silhouette standing above the perfect circle overhead, glazed in the inviting radiance.
This was not heaven. No one can save you, but he can.
Content: Cut off from the outside by the blast and barely managing to escape with her life, Aya struggles through the Manhattan sewers to the surface of the city, until she is rescued by a certain demon.
Location: Sewers of Manhattan.
Time of day: Daybreak, exactly right after this.
Warnings: Burn victim and injuries, unsanitary conditions, pain-induced hallucinations, and the usual melancholy.
Soundtrack Start.
They say the world works in threes. You can survive three months without food, three weeks without sleep, three days without water. Three minutes without air before eventually drowning.
Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice.
Everything had happened too fast. Blurred moments, one minute after another. One moment she was standing at the bottom of the ladder, helping a boy up it. Whatever he had said, what had been said, was swallowed by the blazing Hell that swept the stone-bricked path of the Manhattan underground. Frantically she moved to help him up. Help him escape. Except that he’d already been grabbed. Pulled up from the manhole. He was gone, and there was someone. Someone had been there. And she wasn’t.
Aya Brea hadn’t been as fortunate.
What had been everything had gone to nothing in such a brief instant.
Fire swept. Eliminating her sight of the manhole above and Aya Brea was gone. And from how it looked, Aya Brea was also no more.
From the blast to the violent current the water had taken her, she had only two options: Burn to death, or drown. In the end she might as well have taken both. She felt like death the moment she hit the water. She had no option to think about it now. A mist of pain clouded her mind, as it only got worse.
One minute. After the explosion had violently blasted her forward, a sharp sting exploded in her back. It didn’t matter. Long as she had air to breathe, it just didn’t. She was still alive now. Somehow. By the laws of three, she was still alive. The current carried her violently down the watered path. Something akin to an undertow nearly taking her and pulling her under. Fire blazed down the watery surface from above. Could not come up for air. Two minutes. The stream beat her against the walls of the sewer. She lost at least another thirty seconds opening her mouth, letting out a bubbly scream, muffled by thick substance. Two minutes and twenty seconds. Flung against the opposite wall this time. Her back hitting something sharp. Her hand came up above water. Tried to grab for something but to no avail. Three minutes. Silence. Three minutes. Silence. Three minutes...
Limp and weak. While the body lies floating down the empty, quiet path of sewage water, there is no pain. Not in this place, not anymore. Here only remained the dizzying though almost blissful sensation of nothing. Floating. Drifting. And in that sudden bliss there is nothing. There is nothing left for her to do now. He is safe. Her daughter is safe. So it’s fine for her to go now, isn’t it?
She would. Be all right. It was going to work out in the end. People got along fine without her, didn’t they? They got along fine. Sorry, it was just improper timing. There’s no reason to think about it anymore. There is no reason to breathe anymore. No reason to worry or be afraid or angry or hate anyone anymore now that the world was cleansed with fire and some in ice. Least, it had done so in her world. Her small little suffocated world.
No reason to cry over spilt milk.
Then resounds the soft piano keys of a song. Something of a song. Playing. From up and down and all around the acoustics that carries a tune so beautifully down the stone-bricked and dampened walls. The piano plays. A deathlike melody of smoke and fire and burnt flesh and bone. A song that had at one point been the melody behind the incited screaming and terror.
Se Il Mio Amore Sta Vincino.
If My Love Is...
End of the Final Act. The song reverbs into a quiet, soft, fadeout. The singer holds her arms out upon that last concord, the hollow note. Red curtains fall. They are on fire. And there is no more screaming.
With an agonizing breath, Aya Brea flung herself from the surface of the water. Her body arched, arms frantically flailing to keep her head above as hands searched for the dry catwalk that bordered the sewer river. Much effort and agony that shattered within her, focused solely on her back in particular. As though her skin were ready to peek right off. Then she reached forward with her elbows, for the back of her arms themselves looked to be charred from the blast. Her elbows resting over the dry surface. And pulled. Drawing her closer to the edge.
It wasn’t a matter of depth. The water was fairly shallow, just deep enough that if she didn’t keep her head above, she would die. Also didn’t help the fact that she couldn’t work her legs in a way that she could get up and stand on her own feet. She realized this soon as she bumped into the edge, trying to roll herself onto the dry and flat surface.
The stench. It was so bad that it hadn’t even occurred to her until just now, and she wished she hadn’t brought it to intimately to mind. The smell was nauseatingly rancid. So much that she covered her mouth, dry heaved as she collapsed onto her side over the frozen surface. Hand over her blue lips, tips of her blonde hair frozen in the subzero water and air.
Cold. How cold she was, all the way down here, in this forsaken place. Her entire body shaking uncontrollably. She moved, only allowing herself to do so by hauling her weak body by the elbows. She breathed. Coughed out murky water. Gagged. Out came more brown fluids. She coiled into fetal position, gagging and coughing and wheezing out of sickness and nausea and pain. There was enough of that pain to go around. So much that she could die.
She didn’t, though. She was still here. Her thoughts functioning only to serve her the remaining instincts necessary for survival. Slowly, she began to clumsily peel off her tattered, burnt jacket, the entire back of it fringed by scorch marks as she threw it off her. The thick piece of clothing hit the ground with a sopping noise, ringing out that which drenched it. The entire back of the jacket had been burnt off entirely. If not for her act in diving straight into the water itself, at the time she did...
It wasn’t until then, when Aya rolled onto her stomach and began to move herself forward by throwing her arms out, and dragging the rest of her, just how badly hurt she was. Most of her backside, from the neck down to her waist, including her upper arms and some of her forearms-so charred they were completely cauterized.
Logically, one would presume cauterization to be the one saving grace, since the infection of the sewer water in inner wounds would have invited more dilemmas than they were worth. However, her thought process wasn’t thinking so logically, so much as the matter that nearly her entire back had been very well burnt off. All that was left were charred remains of scarred muscle tissue, which burned in so deep that it was a surprise that the wounds didn’t just burst open again.
Movements only earned her more burning anguish and a world of hurt.
Screams again. Only this time it was Aya’s. Agonized from the utter loss of control no thanks to the cauterized burning of a good percentage of her body. She didn’t take the time to assess the damage she had endured, but she could feel it. The explosion had done quite a number on her.
The blaze singed off my clothes. Hey, come on over for a free show!
Breathing harsh, almost hyperventilating... Aya pulled herself forward. Her arms slapped the cement while hauling the rest of her across the barely dry, frozen concrete beside the battering water surface. She tried to move her legs, but they wouldn’t comply. Once glance over her shoulder, over the slick and horrific field of charred flesh that now made up her entire back, she also noted that her legs didn’t look all that right, either. One ankle had been snapped, bone sticking out of it, and the other seemed to be fractured. She winced. Holding in another scream. This one of horror. Her own condition, and this one, she was not used to seeing herself on... Not like this.
Not like this. Of all the things she had done in her life, of all the missions and hunting spent on the field, she didn’t expect it to end this way. Looking back on things, she’d had a good run, but if anyone had told her that she would die in the sewers... so far below the city that no one would hear her, or know she even existed, considering how far isolated her screams would be... Hopelessness weighing down on her until her head slammed against the concrete, spinning again, and then blackness.
Whether it be a dream, hallucination, she isn’t all too sure, but there is a song again. Sung by a child’s rhyme. Playing tic-tack-toe with a piece of shock over the cement. When she lifts her head, she sees a little girl in the blue dress, dragging the piece of chalk down the ground in order to create a three-by-three board. She sings that same song as she looks to her, pulling back her blonde bangs with a smile as she looks to the battered woman and laughs. And then the woman catches a glimpse of her, the little girl’s face, such a recognizable face, a kindred face, and then she knows.
It’s Maya.
The sister. The one who died in the car accident, almost thirty-one years ago. The sister who’s eye had salvaged her vision in her own right eye, at the cost of her life. The things that you do for family, for the ones you love.
And now the little girl in the light blue dress is laughing. Why is she laughing? It seems like such a strange thing to be doing now, considering the circumstances in which she saw her older sister in.
Dropping the piece of chalk, she gets up and runs away. She thinks she is talking, and she certainly does hear her own voice speak. But she is not sure she can talk, or that she talks right now.
Maya, no.
Hauling herself weakly, she calls out for her sister in such a weak, sad, and pathetic voice. It sounds rasp. A sharp and painful stone caught in her throat and she wants to cry but unable to summon the tears, she can only utter in a quiet murmur.
Maya, please. Please, come back.
The sister she had lost. The sister who she had put to rest so many years ago, after that night on Christmas Eve that resulted in such a domino effect of travesties... Many which have led Aya down the path of question: Am I human?
Come back. Don’t run. Come back, please. Please, Maya. Don’t go. Don’t run away from me. Don’t leave me again-!
The sister she had let down, and she was running away again. She was always running. Smiling, laughing, or crying, for whatever reason. There was no need to cry now. Oh no, not anymore. Not here, in this place. There was no more need to cry. They could be together again. Her and Maya.
It became clear to her now. Why her sister was running this time. Where she was taking her now. Leading her into a light, even if she could only follow by crawling pathetically on her belly. The little sister, still running, waiting just enough for Aya as she dragged herself, just enough, only enough for her to be able to lead her away.
Her escort. Her once-upon-a-time a winged ghost, the afterimage of her childhood bringing her closer and closer to the warmth of the light. And beneath it she flinches, her body shivering nonstop. Her breathing frantic. Gasping. Deprived of air while waiting underneath that light, hoping. For her sister to come and pull her out.
You’ve been through a lot, my sister. Let’s go home together.
Blinking slowly, hard, her head turns up. Neck cranes, like trying to move stone. The charred woman moves to look directly up into the light. To find the silhouette of someone on the other side of that morning glow. Not her sister. Not her mother. Someone else. But even then, it was one of them. As Aya shifted her weight just enough for her to hold itself out, limbs strained as her fingers stretched out to that silhouette standing above the perfect circle overhead, glazed in the inviting radiance.
This was not heaven. No one can save you, but he can.