Casket of Lights

Chapter 6 : Dread in Shadows

Rossé Lilybeth's POV

Hours have passed when the afternoon sun sat down into a beautiful twilight. I could see the solitary moon surrounded by stars. I sighed. I straightened my back as a cool shudder trickled down into my spine. I glanced around as I walked from the back door.

All guards were down as planned. I looked back and saw Redhair dressed like a barbie in his two piece. He surely looks good, probably more feminine than me. Little wimps just drank all those mixed pills after seeing Redhair. I mean who would fall for such beauty in disguise?

I continued walking, furrowing my brows as I have seen somber portraits starting at me from behind layers of dust as if penetrating my very being. I stopped for a bit, studying the portrait. It was a young Clinfort, smiling sheepishly at the camera, tucking the hem of Churchill. Why is Clinfort in that orphanage that day when he has in fact has a cousin?

The whole setup confused me for a moment, making me feel like I am trapped in a dream...a nightmare. My brows furrowed, the gears in my head slowly rumbling to life as I scrambled to make sense of the situation.

I walked forward, I could not help but wrapped myself with my arms, slowly walking towards the door. Cold, hesitant lights screamed in through the cracked window, casting eerie shadows on the walls.

I could see papers and documents scattered in his table, and a gray door in the left wing. I decided to check it up, surprise that it was full of laboratory equipment. I walked ahead, searching towards the surroundings. My eyes caught the clock, striking eleven in the evening.

I walked towards the huge refrigerator and almost gagged when I saw different species preserved inside as well as its blood scattered in the corner. Horrible, this is insane!

"Redhair, you gotta check this out. I'm outta here."

"Copy that," Redhair said, followed by a signal noise on his background. "Hawk six patched in."

I was about to walk away when I saw a pair of leg at the lower back of the refrigerator. I blinked. It wasn't a pig's legs, it wasn't a cow's leg neither. It was a brownish colored leg of a child, fresh, and was still dripping blood. Tragic!

"Tell me you're in you way." I sighed.

"I'm on the move."

"Roger." Whirling around, I could see nothing but an empty hallway and the faces in the portraits staring at me. I swallowed a nervous whimper and continued towards the dark bowels of the house.

I entered a dark room in the center of their house. I took a grip to the small cordless chainsaw as I tilted my head. It remained immersed in darkness. I gawked as something brushed my back.

I turned around but there was nothing. For a bit of moment, fear settled in and deep down I knew I was not alone in the dark. But there was nothing. I place the chainsaw on the black marble floor momentarily, snatching my swiss knife using my free hand.

"Ocean." I almost stumble on my place. I shut my eyes closed momentarily as I have heard Redhair on the other line. I adjusted my earpieces, tucking the strands of my hair. Outside I could hear the autumn wind howling, almost sounding like laughter to my panicked mind. A low chuckle broke my thought process, from my ear.

"Where is he?" I asked, walking towards the metal stairs, trying to walk without leaving noises. I scrutinized the area, tucking my black gloves.

"Third floor at the right wing," Redhair mumbled. I glanced at the room that was a luxurious designed, over-the-top, and opulent. The style could incorporate some features of Victorian design, including plush, velvet furnishings, tufting and antiques.

"Is cost clear?" I asked in a soft voice almost mumbling, looking back and fort.

I heard Redhair laughed before he answered, "Positive. Rabbit's still in circle."

"Copy." The color palettes were particularly bold-think purples, reds and turquoise. It was a dramatic design style, perfect for a homeowner who enjoyed making a statement... a statement that killed innocent child.

"Keep your focus, Ocean," he added. I nodded as a respond.

I found myself in a large room. The floors were made of colored tiles arranged in jagged patterns, and the walls were made of glass, revealing additional views of the city and the mountains to the east.

A frosted glass partition separated the lobby from a private office. Silk banners hung from the ceiling. Polished stone pedestals held golden and silver statues portraying nude men and women.

Everything in the room was rich and lavish. Instead of statues and banners there were holograms and display screens. Contrasting with the bright floors and the bright exterior view, there was a black desk on one end of the room, made of a rare dark organic wood.

My eyes caught him on his bed without his shirt. The corner of my lips turned up, giving him a lopsided grin. Who would have thought that I would kill someone like you? A murderer who would also kill a murderer.

I stopped the moment his body shifted. His arms moved upwards towards his bed, making the sheet fell from his body, sleeping peacefully as his earplugs were still in his ears. I looked away as I saw his naked body, nude and bold.

I slowly shifted towards him, snatching two handcuffs from my bag. I instantly lock his hands into the edge of his bed, making him pinned and paralyzed into his place. Twenty-seconds before his response, I gotta make it quick.

I instantly grabbed the chainsaw, slicing his torso, splattering bloods all over my shirt and hands. His eyes widened, blinking several times. "Who are you?" I heard his screams in excruciating pains, but I heard nothing in the overwhelming blackness. I was being drawn in, drowned in slumbering evil, there was no escape.

Bummer flew toward me, arms outstretched, ready to claw out my throat. His fist slammed into my jaw and I tasted a surge of coppery blood. "What do you think your doing? Do you know who I am?" He asked.

The wind had been knocked clean out of me; as I lay gasping on the floor, it felt like I would never breathe again. Good thing I already locked the handcuffs.

"Of course, I know you." Immediately I changed the focus of my attacks, alternating head shots with attacks to the stomach. "Jail breaker."

"I was living my life." His feet and his remaining good arm moved almost too fast to follow, leaving trails of grayish light behind them that almost seemed to weave a complex web. "If you kill me, you're nothing just like me." He smirked.

Instead of counting three I headbutted him full in the face. "When do you think you achieve happiness?" I laughed.

Came off the back foot with a thrust up the legs and whipped my head forward and smashed it into his nose. It was beautifully done... It must have caved his whole face in.

The color drained from his face. "After being happy when you're being emptied out," he said in between his breathe. He tried to rose from his bed, but a loud creek, breaking of bones muffled into the air, making him yelled once again.

I left out mirthless laughs. I could see his tears flowing from his eyed down to his face. His blood and flesh splashing at the area around his bed.

"I am a killer, a spirit, and an angel from the hottest hell," I mumbled. I heard a complete silence on the other line. I gazed at Churchill once again, wiping his tears away from his face. "I succumb those who sinned," I added. I studied him for a brief of moment, letting the soft chainsaw lingered into the four corners of the room. "Adieu."

Bummer was left frozen face petrified and ashen as the blood still poured down the parallel cuts. His eyes bulged wide, full of horror and pain. It was glorious. If you like that kind of thing. In distress, in dismay, I understood that far from killing him I was injecting spurts of energy into the poor fellow, as if the bullets had been capsules wherein a heady elixir danced.

Everything went silent as the chainsaw the ran out of battery. I gazed at his torso while his blood gushed out from his body. His chest rose for a bit of seconds, gasping for air, splitting several bloods. But the moment it, he exhaled his heart stopped. I could see his eyes almost popping out of its socket.

I whistled, wiping his blood on my face. With my trembling hands, I closed his eyes as I left a pair of handcuffs on his torso. I instantly wiped off the evidences as I turned away from him.

Deep within the stony walls, trapped within the lair of time, I walked away from their house. I walked towards the back door once again.

"That was exhilarating!" Amusement was plastered in Redhair's voice, laughing like a lunatic.

"What?" I raised my brows. "What are you saying?" I added.

He stopped, lowering his voice. The tone changed, "Nothing. You just gave me a lot of work. Try to clean up your own mess, Ocean."

"I'm just doing my job," I mumbled. I could feel broken promises hanging from a line, latched to pegs grasping at the corners of a forgotten thought, there were many...negatives.

"Meet you at twenty minutes," Redhair mumbled.

I turned off the earpiece as soft laughs turned into sobs.

The problem being a murderer could sometimes be obvious, but sometimes hidden, and sometimes misunderstood, often used to process thoughts that one's eyes simply cannot see, but only the darkness could unravel the truth.

With my trembling hands, I cried and cried. I killed someone with my own hands... after several years. Memories could be distorted, images could be changed, dreams could be erased, and laughter turned to sadness...all within the confined of a lonely, dark room along with murder. I could no longer think more.

I rose, changing my clothes while placing them inside my black backpack. I never had imagined that for too long I found myself in a dark room, staring at forgotten memories, unfamiliar faces, dreaming up things that simply never happened, trapped within the mind distorting darkness of a cold and minute space.

With only the random thoughts hanging from a time line that I thought I understood, only to find myself trapped in all the pictures, staring at a forgotten thought, a distant memory, a completely unfamiliar, unrecognizable me...a murderer.

I sniffled, almost making me gag because of the pungent smell. The wind was gently blowing the sickly smell of rotted garbage from the pitch-black alleys that even the junkies and animals were afraid to go into. There was no silence, and the occasional shadow of a person leaked across the roadway.

I could hear the faint, tiny sounds of a nightclub up at the end of the dimly-lit block, under halloween-orange streetlights, and the hissed of the music faded into a kind of grainy wash that filled the street, seeping into the darkness between the pools of light on the dirty sidewalk.

Silence would be too frightening. But this place has a music all its own.

"Ouch," I yelled, scrunching my face as I massage my arm.

She halted for a while, plastering an apologetic face, and in a low tone, she mumbled, "May God bless your soul." I blinked, making me shiver in my place.

"Excuse me?" I asked, furrowing my brows. My eyes darted at her. I saw her grays eyes beamed with calmness. I averted my gaze at her nun costume with a rosary on her hands. I pivoted my feet and looked how her shadow engulfed by the darkness as she walked away from me.

I could hear the metal shutters, strapped like plastered over the reinforced windows as they muffled into my ears. My business here was already done. The only things that stood sentinel were the poles and posts carrying electricity, like the skeletons of trees.

I gazed towards the old bars that still have their neon signs flickering and buzzing, a few letters burnt out for good measure, stating 'Le Meurtre, Le Monde'.

Some ragged flyers were posted to the peeling paint of sickly-yellow walls, but not many. There were not that many attractions on this side of the town.

I studied the area. This place was complete in its incompleteness. There was a gap in the row of the buildings on one side that felt like a hole on my gum after a tooth came out.

I tugged my jacket as the wind blew colder and the creak of a shutter rapped back and forth on an empty window like an invasive sound.

There were no trees, a complete open field. Scrubby plants poked from the cracked of the concrete in people's yards and weeds oozed around the slabs in the sidewalk.

My heart was pounding fast as I glanced at the road itself that was as black as a ribbon of slick asphalt, reflecting only the nighttime cast of the streetlights. I am indeed a murderer.

I simply could not muster the courage to press the picture against the clear pool of solution, waiting for the taint of life to peel away the darkness that all this time blinded myself from myself, simply waiting for my whole life to be torn apart by the real memories of a forgotten me.

I furrowed my brows. Just above my own breath, barely heard above the pounding of my own pulse, was a set of footsteps...right behind me. I was taken aback when someone placed is hand behind my back.

I shifted my position, feet crossed, left in front of right. I spun on his left foot, the right coming up and out, catching my opponent squarely in the jaw. I blinked.

"Would ya cut it, prisoner?" Stan said, arms in a fighting position, right in front of left.

"Stan?" I laughed. "My bad, you didn't tell me that it was you." I shook my head as the corner of my lips turned up.

"My 800 hundred dollar boots, ya swing ya feet in mine." A line appeared between his brows. "Why did ya leave ya partner?" Stan added.

"Who? Redhair?" I observed his reaction. "He told me he was the one to clean it up."

He just looked at me straight at my face then he dialed his radio. "Roger you clear?"

"I really don't know what to report," I heard a voice from the other line. "But I got it covered."

I bet it was Redhair. I shudder. The air was getting cold. Time flew by slowly oozing like a predator circling its prey. It was especially slow and stealthy now that I have nothing to do, nothing to hear, and nothing to see. It was like in this nothingness, things wind down to a halt.

"Hit me up when ya done."

"Alright, stand by," Redhair said.

I sighed looking at Stan who was busy cleaning his shoes.

"That look in the eyes, look pain in the ass." A muscle in his jaw twitched.

My body grew hot. Once I've managed to slipped through, my breath caught it as it seemed like a rabbit had led me to a clearing. I vaguely remember the happy memories anymore.

"Why'd ya look at me like that?" I heard Stan asked.

"Nothing." I shrugged my shoulder as I gazed towards the sky. It has a monochrome color hues of dark blue and black plastered above like a ceiling. I got this feeling there was something they're not telling me.

"Just let it go, that's the ticket," his voice broke. "Make up your mind."

"Would it really be a guarantee to kill them all?"

Stan gave a half-smile. "Ya gotta do what's right." Then he patted my back before walking towards the nearest vending machine.

"Not according to my views," I replied.

There was a short pause, a loud thug of coin was inserted at the machine. "I'm afraid you'll end up seeing the way I see myself."

Something was different. All around, there was an absolute silence. No wind to rustle the leaves above, no creaking of wood or calls of birds nor insects. The silence was more frightening than ourselves.

I laughed as I recall my memories after that incident.

As the police car sped down the muddy road, the rain was pouring hard, whipping against the window shields in a one-fourth rhythm. I listened to the radio on full volume but I could still hear the outside wind howling like a wolf under a full moon.

"What's new with you?" A cop asked, his voice sounded like it got stuck in a kitchen sink.. "What's interesting about where you grew up?" He added.

"What does that place means to you?" Another cop with a deep voice asked. "It may be against the clock but the ball is in your court."

Their questions were on the loop but I remained silent all through out.

As soon as we went at the police station, my cold fingers were trembling as they wrapped themselves around the door's knob. I glanced over my shoulders, scanning the left to right just to make sure that no one is following me. Seeing that the coast is clear, I burst open the door and made a run for it, tripping over small boxes down the corridor. When I got in front of another door, I banged into it with my right shoulder and fell flat on the other side with a heavy thud.

I shut my eyes closed but after several hours, my chest was tight and heavy as if a vacuum cleaned had suck all the air out of my lungs. The air inside was like the metal box, hot and fetid that my skin felt like it was being cooked under a desert sun. I was running out of breathe.

I was awoken by the cold breeze coming from the open window, revealing the sight of tall trees and foggy atmosphere that almost covered the entire forest. I landed on my feet on the cold polished porcelain tiles and slowly stride through my way near the window.

Mr. sun shone through the curtain's gap, its shimmering ray splitting in several times as the morning breeze gently rocked the curtains. The curtains danced in soft motion that coincides to the lullaby of early birds chirping in harmony.

I went back to my senses as I heard rushing of footsteps. "Redhair?" I lifted my gaze to see Redwood's in stooped posture.

His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. He pinched the bridge of his nose before he uttered, "You're zoning out."

Such that I begin to feel a sense of calm and complacency and equilibrium, there was nothing to strive for here. It was as if I could die or live as it would make no difference.

How do you destroy a monster without becoming one? If not for my own, I might become a vessel for their existence. Or so I thought.