AN: Fuck ANs. Go read my xanga. All you get is that this is the story of Altair Calebson, another character from my slowly-going novel, the Thyrdling.
Rating: R for, umm, language (that should just stop being a warning), sexual references, shonen ai (later on), abusive stuff...

Review Request: Pretty please? _; I'll give you a new chapter... *waves it despite its unfinished state* And cake. Who doesn't like cake?
Fly Wings
by TalentlessMoo

Chapter One
"Lydia!" the bartender clucked from far above my head. "Always bringing that kid in here... You're lucky you're my friend, or I'd have banned you a long time ago."

"You're funny, Brise," my mother laughed softly. I flew through the air for a second as she picked me up and sat me on the barstool next to her. She ruffled my light mouse-brown hair, disorienting me for a second. Brise the bartender had already slid a beer in front of her.

"So, Lydia," Gina, my mother's best friend, began slyly as she (my mother, not Gina) began chugging the beer heartily. "Tell us."

"Tell you what?" my mother wanted to know as she hit the bar with her fingertips a few times in a demand for another beer. She was a fast drinker, my mother was. She was pretty, too, with the same color hair as I had but highlighted, and grey-blue eyes that were crystalline and sharp when she wasn't drinking. She often wore long, sleeveless and fullskirted dresses, as she did tonight.

"About..." Gina giggled, "...him."

"Him?" my mother said dully, taking another long swig.

"Oh, for chrissakes, Lyddie! The little sprog's dad!" Sven, my mother's token gay friend, cried exhasperatedly.

"Ohhhh!" my mother exclaimed as it dawned on her. "Haven't I ever? You guys never met him?"

"Just me," Brise rumbled from down the bar a couple stools. "Don't mind me, Lyd, go ahead."

My mother laughed schoolgirlishly, and nodded. "Well.... He had this long, beautiful white-blond hair, usually left it in a kinda loose braid. Went past his ass," she added, as Brise slid her a fresh beer.

"And and and and he had the wierdest long, pointy ears," she hiccupped happily. "And a nose like a knife. Thin and pointed, but not like Michael Jackson. At least HIS nose looked normal; Michael Jackson's a freak." She cracked up on her own joke, pounding the bar with a fist. After she'd calmed down some, she continued.

"His skin... oh man, soft as a baby's ass all over and paler than... than... than the palest thing there is," she finished dumbly.

"Altair," Gina said.

"A computer nerd," Brise supplied from underneath the bar.

"A goth in full makeup," Sven offered.

"Yeah, that," Lydia said, staring into the empty beer can vacantly. Brise sighed, and gave her her fourth can before she could even slap the counter. Brise knew her drinking habits and seemed to pity me more than her for it. He also knew, I think, that she'd never be able to pay him off, but she'd go into withdrawal without the alcohol.

"He... he ha'these... beau'ful ice-green eyes," she slurred reverently, staring where wall met ceiling. "Jus' like m'li'l Altair here..." She reached out toward me to pick me up, and Gina scrambled to help me onto her lap, knowing Lydia couldn't be trusted not to drop me in the state she was in. "Looka me, Altair, sweetie-baby," she cooed lovingly, albeit drunkenly. I complied, and she made a soft, sad swooning noise.

"Hith name... his name was... Aegis... Oh go', he loved me so mush un'il he foun' out I was pregs... Then 'e was so mad, an' I didn' even know why... somefin' abou' no' wan'in' a 'bastar' child'..."

"Maybe he was married," Sven muttered.

"No, no, he didn' havva ring..."

"Then maybe he was divorced. Or maybe he just didn't believe in kids outside of wedlock, Lyd," Gina said.

"Maybe," Lydia said unhappily, fiddling with her fifth (empty) can. "Oh, Altair," she sobbed, "I don' ev'r wan' you t'go -- t'go 'way -- doncha ev'r d'that t'me!" She wailed as she hugged me tightly against her busom, and I put up with it. I knew wriggling away to do what I wanted would make her sadder, and therefore it was selfish, though how I was aware of such things at the age of three I couldn't know.

"Such a good kid," Brise murmured, leaning an elbow on the bar and his face on the upturned palm. "Puts up with all of Lyd's shit and more."

"Yeah," Gina agreed.

"Poor little guy. Look, Lyd's asleep..." Sven said, as the arms around me loosened. He picked me out of my mother's embrace, and I buried my face in his shoulder. "You're a brave man, Altair Calebson," Sven told me, and a I could hear a faint smile in his voice.
Huddled in my corner of the dark basement, I couldn't agree less with those words. I barely remembered the people in the memory except as blurs with names attached; only my mother held any detail, and even she too had faded into nothing but those few details over the years.

My mother had died not long after that memory, of alcohol poisoning, falling dead into a snowdrift one night walking home with me. No one had been surprised. Aggrieved, yes, but never surprised. Even I, three years old, had had a sort of half-understanding as to why Mommy would never wake up.

I vaguely remembered, as well, Sven cursing my mother's inability to leave a will. Without a will, I couldn't be placed in his, Gina's or Brise's care. Instead, the authorities took over and handed me over to her next of kin—my aunt Catharyn.

My aunt Catharyn had not been happy, but there seemed to be little choice. Once the authorites were gone, Catharyn locked me in the basement with screams of

Whore's whelp!

Freak born of a freak!

Little virus!

and I was never to be allowed out. The police never came back. There were times when I escaped in the beginning, but I learned that this earned me nothing. This was Catharyn's house, Catharyn's territory, and there was nowhere I could hide she couldn't get into. I would be left with the basement as my only option, and that would only begin

Who gave you permission to drink from that cup?

Who gave you permission to thirst?

Who gave you permission to want?

Who gave you permission to breathe?

the punishment. Catharyn favored the bullwhip, though sometimes she would misplace it and use a frying pan, a meterstick, any implement around that would cause stinging or bruising pain, as long as it didn't have an edge. At the sight of my blood being drawn, she would curl her lip in disgust and leave me there

Sick little monster, I won't be stained with your foul blood

to tend my wounds as best I could.

My vision deteriorated badly, and I stopped wanting to step out of the basement. Most basement captives, I'm sure, would have found companionship in the rats, except Catharyn's mansion had no rats. And I didn't talk to myself, because I knew I had nothing interesting to say.

My breathing became shallower in the absence of need, and gradually my lungs deteriorated, too, in the stifling, unchanging air of the basement. I refused to move, feeling safer in this corner than in that one, and my muscles became numb. Catharyn fed me when she remembered that my corpse would stink up the basement badly, and the smell might get into the ventilation; I quickly grew skeletal, belly distended from malnutrition.

Then, when I was about twelve, Catharyn started paying slightly more attention to me. I was fed more regularly and somewhat better, and she gave me bigger clothes, though they weren't much better than what I'd had before. By the time I was thirteen and beginning to hit puberty, I'd filled out some and my protruding belly had mostly disappeared. That was when Catharyn first let me into the sight of someone from the outside world.

I hadn't been thirteen very long. I lay catnapping near the bottom of the stairs when they began to vibrate and clang with the footsteps of someone approaching.

“...Is that him down there?” a new voice asked, faraway at the top of the steps.

“Right, that's him, yes,” Catharyn's voice trilled. “I've been priming him for some time...”

“Not enough, it seems,” the other woman whined as she minced her way downward. “He looks so small.”

“Well, he's only just turned thirteen, you see––” Catharyn tried.

I rolled away from the bottom of the steps in a disarray of newly adolescent limbs that barely fit into the clothes I'd been given. I had just managed to untangle myself and put myself in some sembleance of order in time to miss being stepped on by the stranger's high heeled shoe.

“Let's see him, then,” the woman said airily. “Isn't there a single light down here? Oh, and it smells so badly... That's not him, is it?”

“I'm afraid it is,” Catharyn said, looking nervous. “I don't keep many lights down here... Ah! Look. A light, over here...” She pulled the cord to a decrepit lampshade that hung precariously from the ceiling. I'd never noticed it on my own.

“Over here!” she snapped harshly at me, fingers clicking impatiently. Knowing better than to go any slower than the fingers timed, I scrambled into the light, and sat down. “No, stand!” Catharyn corrected before I could settle myself; I obeyed quickly.

“Well...” the woman said, sounding doubtful as she looked me up and down. “He may clean up nicely, but we'll have to see to the cleaning up first. What color's his hair? The light isn't good enough and it looks dirty...” She reached out to finger it.

“I wouldn't touch him quite yet, if I were you, Mrs. Slater,” Catharyn warned quickly. Mrs. Slater, as Catharyn called her, snatched her hand back hurriedly.

“I think I shall require of him a good bathing, and something finer to wear, Lady Catharyn,” the woman said slowly, “before we begin discussing a price.”

“Agreed,” Catharyn nodded, fighting back a grin.

~*~

Three hours later, Catharyn and Mrs. Slater (who preferred to be called Laura) had me in a room I'd never been in, sitting in a couch of feather-filled cushions and red velvet I'd never sat in. My skin felt warm, and for once not greasy. My usual smell, which must have been so horrendous my nose had gotten used to it, was gone, replaced by chemically-produced scents of coconuts and mint. I thought it smelled more like snow, or at least how I remembered snow smelling so long ago.

My hair had been shampooed, conditioned and rinsed at least three times, and then combed and brushed until I felt I'd lost half of my hair. What was left, though, wisped around my face as if made of clouds; it was rather a new sensation. I was used to having my hair whip me in the face, if I turned around too quickly, with a greasy slap.

My clothes, or rags, as Laura had dubbed them, had been replaced with what the pair of women deemed to be decent garb, most of it red and black silks. My feet remained bare, but that only meant I could enjoy the feeling of the plush carpeting between my toes. I almost felt like falling asleep––

––save for the intense pain the light gave my failing eyes. I screwed my eyes shut against it, squeezing unintentional tears out, but this Laura would only slap the back of my head, forcing them to reopen again and again until I did start to cry, if softly.

“What's wrong with his eyes?” Laura demanded exhasperatedly. “He keeps closing them, no matter how many times I hit him!”

“Well, he has been living in a basement for ten years of his life,” Catharyn mused. “That's bound to have affected his vision.” She walked across the room to the other wall, where she became a blur. “How many fingers, boy?”

“O-one...?” I guessed, making myself open my eyes to the agonizing light. My voice was thick and clumsy, alien to me after being in disuse for so long. Laura's palm cracked against my head again.

“Laura, it's not his fault, for once,” Catharyn clucked. “I suspected as much. Look, if you open his eyes all the way––” and she pushed back the eyelids of my left eye with her thumb and forefinger “––his pupils are nothing but pinpricks. Like a drug addict, but not.”

“Well...” Laura said contemplatively, “where I'm taking him, he won't need light... He won't need anything at all.” She smirked. “What's the asking price, Catharyn?”

“Seven thou, and not a penny less.”

“Six thousand.”

“Seven thousand or you just gave a thirteen-year-old boy a bath for nothing.”

“Six five hundred.”

“Six seventy-five and no more haggling.”

“Done.”

“Done.”

I sat in complete ignorance until Laura took me delicately by my forlorn wrist, and took me into the hall. “May I used a room here?” Laura wanted to know.

“Cost you an extra thou,” Catharyn smirked, folding her arms and leaning against the doorway in a most un-Catharyn-like way.

“I suppose so,” Laura sighed. “Don't want Mr. Slater to find out about this little affair, do we?”

“Let me remind you that an affair with him will cost you per job, Mrs. Slater.”

“Right. For now, a simple fiasco, then, good Lady.”

And, led by my wrist, I tottered after Laura into a dark room.

~*~

Catharyn would sell me for the night several more times afterward, almost every customer a wealthy married woman dissatisfied with her husband's costant absence. Twice the customer was a well-to-do man, the first an old man complaining of being harraunged by a nagging wife and growing tired of his mistress, the second a nervous young newlywed needing to work off the stress given him by his new life.

After a time, I wasn't even in the room when I was bargained over, instead being made to wait in a lavishly-adorned bedroom until either the customer or Catharyn came. The few nights Catharyn had no business, she would grow frustrated and take a crop to me. Then, finally, she took her ire out on me in a new manner.

I lay on the bed I had grown accustomed to, dozing on the side where the sheets were not stained by blood or any other bodily fluid. My nose was so close to uselessness, whatever stench there might be didn't bother me. I had twiddled earlier with the wires of the lights so they stopped functioning; even soft lights with shades pained me.

“Altair,” Catharyn's voice suddenly called. My ear twitched, and my eyes snapped open in alarm––Catharyn had never used my name. It had gotten to the point where I'd nearly forgotten it myself.

“Altair,” she repeated softly. The door opened, light streaming in onto the bed. Without realizing how far off on the edge I was, I raised my hand to shield my eyes and consequentially fell to the carpeting.

Catharyn grinned at me as she closed the door, though leaving it a crack open so she could still see. “I'm not here to hurt you, Altair,” she said, holding up her hands. She knew I could see best in the dark that there was no crop in her grip now.

I know who you are, the alien voice that was and wasn't me whispered. Your foul intentions.

“I only want to speak with you on a certain matter,” Catharyn said in her winding, bourgeois manner of speech. She inched closer.

This matter, the voice that both embodied me and was my opposite whispered, is not one we wish to discuss. I wondered what the matter was, and scurried into a corner.

Suddenly Catharyn's hand, stronger than I remembered, slammed my shoulder into the plaster of the wall painfully, and I cried out faintly. “There are matters we must attend to,” Catharyn gritted out, face twisted and disfigured with anger. She was straddling my knees and moving up. Suddenly the realization of what she planned flooded me, and my muscles turned to wax as I closed my eyes against what I knew to be coming.

No! No, no! No! the voice cried. I was never sure if it was me. It will not be allowed! No! No––no! No, no, no!

The voice didn't get its way, after all.

Afterward, perhaps stemming from Catharyn's feelings of distaste toward me and what she'd done, I was consigned to the basement once again, and I crawled into my familiar corner to curl up and do my best to forget. A rather large rat, an oddity in property like Catharyn's, snarled at me, swiping its claws out at me.

Ours, the voice hissed back. The rat convulsed and suddenly flew through the air to hit the wall with a sickening smack. It fell to the floor in an unnatural heap, a single paw twitching the last of its life away.

I decided I'd find a new corner.

I found no more rats; perhaps those that remained had watched and learned from the punishment the voice had dealt the first. I coiled myself in a new corner, and the voice pressed into my personal thoughts.

Gone, gone, gone, it babbled. I mentally cuffed it lazily, though it easily evaded. Its form, in my mind's eye, kept shifting, never staying the same long enough for me to even vaguely identify it. I finally decided to ignore it and buried my face further into my sleeve to sleep.

Stupid! An acute pain lanced through my temple, and my eyes snapped open, body jerking into a more open position with the surprise.

Do you think sleeping it all away will do you any good? The voice was cold, cruel, and for once its speech wasn't a nonsensical jargon.

No, I responded to it miserably. But there's nothing I can do, is there?

The pain returned, sharper than the first instance. Moron, idiot, fool! the voice cursed at me. I refuse to lie dormant in this––this cage you call a mind! Nothing but self-pity and sorrow, and that barely makes a meal!

What––?

Shut up! Silence, speak no more, let your tongue lie still! the voice roared. What I desire is anger, and much of it! That will be a feast!

Look for it somewhere else, I told it morosely. I'm not one to anger quickly.

Is ten years too fast, then? the voice retorted. I didn't reply to that one, instead choosing to try ignoring it again.

The voice lashed me with its invisible malice once more, and I reared my head back with the pangs given me. I will get what I want!

Images began to flicker through my head, frustrating me as I tried to see each one and in trying, failed to grasp the next.

You are too slow! the voice shrieked, and I arched my back in pain as it punished me.

And you're not even welcome! I snarled back, not realizing I had spoken as the voice did. It seemed taken aback, and its anger abated in favor of seeming pleased.

You see that? Anger.

I won't accept it, I said thickly.

You will.

I won't!

You will or––

I anticipated the attack, and suddenly the voice screeched in pain.

Little trai–– And it shrieked again.

“Get out!” I howled, fingers clamped over my ears in a death grip. “Out out out!”

Angry?!

“No!”

Yes!

“I won't!”

The voice calmed significantly, seeming subdued. I breathed a sigh of relief, and began the descent into sleep––only to be interrupted by it again.

Are you sure?

“Very sure.”

Even after all these years? All those scars spidering across your back? All the cruel words, the selling of your body?

I couldn't help it. Tear after tear escaped the corners of my eyes, leading into my curling up into a weak ball and sobbing.

Are you so sure now? the voice taunted.

“No,” I whimpered.

And will you return her favors?

“Yes...”

Then you will kill her, as only we can.

“How...?” I asked through the gasping of my lungs.

The door at the top of the stairs flew open.

“No, no, no,” I told it numbly, shaking my head in almost a violent twitching.

Go on.

“No.”

“Altair?” I suddenly heard, and my entire body tensed. “What was that noise?” Heels clicking as they approached the entrance to the basement. Catharyn appeared in the doorframe above me, foot descending daintily toward the first rung-like step.

I launched myself up the stairs, surprising myself as I hurtled toward my keeper with more anger than fear. Catharyn looked surprised as well; surprised enough that I was able to make it all the way to the top and tackle her to the cushionlike carpeting of the first floor. I found myself growling and with my upper lip curled as I pinned my so-called aunt.

“Get off me, you mangy—!” Catharyn snapped, trying to push me off to no avail. “Get off!”

The voice was a definite form in my mind, now. It looked like a dark purple ball of pulsating, raw energy with a sharktoothed maw taking up half of it, encircled by crisscrossing Saturn rings.

And what are we going to do? the Voice said, its inflections that of a grinning demon. I knew it was pleased and I grimaced inside.

We're going to return her favors. Strike me down, strike me down...

In my lost moments with the Voice, I'd forgotten my body had relaxed, and Catharyn managed to heave me off her waist, if a bit forcefully. My shoulder thudded into the carpet, and Catharyn got to her feet, rump-first in the ungainly fashion of a toddler.

She glared at me. “I think, Altair, I might let this go. If you get back in that basement right now. I'll let you have some air in five days if I don't hear even a whimper.” She pointed down the stairs. “March.”

I flung myself at Catharyn again, not knowing what else to do. This time I made sure to press my full weight, however much it was, into her and keep sure she wouldn't push me off again.

“What is it you're after, anyway?” Catharyn hissed, neck straining as she lifted her head off the floor. “It's not like you can function in the outside world. And what are you trying to do right now? Kill me? You don't have the chutzpah or the means.”

She was right, at least, about the means. What was I going to do? Keep throwing myself at her in the hopes my body weight would knock her unconscious?

I'm the means.

“What are you talking about?” I grumbled at the Voice irritably. Catharyn looked around, trying to find whoever or whatever I was talking to.

How much do you want her dead?

“Even more than how much I want you to go away,” I muttered. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you touched?” Catharyn demanded, trying again to hoist me off, in vain this time.

Think about how much you want her dead.

“You sound like a fucking evil Peter Pan,” I told it. “You make it sound like I'm psychic or something.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Think of how she'll look when she's dead; I promise you that's the way it'll happen.

“Shut up. I'll find a knife or something.”

No! You have to listen to me!

“Why?”

How do you expect to keep her down while you're looking for a knife, anyway?

“Umm...”

Um is right. Envision her death or—

My head cracked back a lá whiplash, and as I lost my balance, Catharyn pulled herself out from underneath me, causing me to fall back completely.

She stood over me, Disney's dream of an evil female with her face contorted in anger, wearing one of her ballgown-like dresses, long, manicured nails like claws as she tensed her whole body with rage. “I don't know who you think you're talking to or what you think you're doing up here, but it's going to stop! If you don't get yourself back in there right now, I don't care about the money, I swear I will slit your filthy little throat myself—”

–– her neck burst, baptizing me in arterial blood, her head blowing clear off and landing near my hand; her face was striped with tearlines, her mouth open in a silenced cry—

–– she screamed as visible, lavender-tinted energy surged in a whirlwind around her, my palms growing unbearably hot until I thought my skin would melt off—

–– the Voice was a neckless, headless burst of purple energy, vaguely in the shape of a wolf, or maybe a fox, a wide toothy hole in its chest screaming indefinitely—

–– and Catharyn really was enveloped in a whirring, crackling ball of purple-white light, her mouth open grotesquely in a devoiced scream. My hands burned painfully, making me feel as though someone had cooked the flesh off the bones, leaving me with charred, smoldering skeletons of hands.

The ball rose, and I looked up at my aunt, conflicted between feeling pitiless and sorrowful.

“I wish, Catharyn,” I whispered, “that you'd tell me why you hated me so much.” I lay my fevered hands upon what could be the surface of the ball of light, finding it to feel almost solid under my fingers. It tingled as I touched it, but it caused me no more harm than touching a warm body. “Am I so repulsive? Or is it where I came from?”

She couldn't answer me, writhing inside her spherical prison. I let her drop, though I wasn't sure how I was controlling all this.

She lay gasping on the carpet, tears rolling unchecked down her torn cheeks. As I approached her, smoothing my facial expression, she struggled to push herself back against the wall, each jerk of her body worth a cry of agony.

“Get back!” she spat, panting. Blood dribbled down her chin as she spoke. “Get back, get back, get back! I... You... I knew what you were, ever since you were born. I saw that disgusting thing she'd been hanging around, that whore. I knew she was bedding him, and why wouldn't she? I admit he was a beautiful thing to look at, but he wasn't any more than a pretty face in terms of any goodness in him. She deserved it when he left her!”

“What are you talking about?” I breathed, guessing at what it might be.

“Your stupid cunt of a mother!” Catharyn yelled, immediately bursting into a round of bloody, burbling coughs. The precious red liquid dripped out of her as she shook with the coughs. “And then she went ahead and had you, and I saw him in you! I saw that arrogance, I saw that demonic influence! I knew you'd be just like him!” She weakly crossed herself, mouth still set in a dour, angry line.

“Lydia always was stupid,” she sighed. “She was always prettier, too, but always dumber. Sometimes... sometimes I'd actually feel sorry for you when you were a little—little boy,” she faltered, set upon by another helping of coughs. “Being stuck with her for a mother, probably playing second fiddle to all that alcohol she loved so much.

“But I knew what you would be, and I knew better than to pity you. Filthy little thing.”

Catharyn was slammed against the wall like a brat's ill-favored toy, the blood fountaining from her mouth. She spluttered more of it when she hit the floor again, glaring at me. “Are you angry, you devil?” she snarled. “Whatsamatter, are you feeling a little defensive about the mother who barely loved you?”

Grimly, I pushed my hands down violently through the air, and Catharyn was flattened, gravity unnaturally heavy on her.

“At least you have her trait of being too cowardly to finish what you've started!” Catharyn shrieked at me, words a bit garbled from the effort of moving her jaw.

The world grew brighter, suddenly, and not in the metaphorical sense at all. I brought my burning hands up, a ball of crackling lavender energy in physical form growing rapidly between them, spinning as it came into being. Everything seemed at some bizarre angle now, and if I stared at anything too long, it began to buzz, sort of, as if I were inside a snowless snowglobe being shaken too hard.

I knelt down before my aunt, balancing the globe of light in one hand as I held her chin delicately with the other. “Dear aunt Catharyn,” I murmured, “I don't want to cause you physical pain.”

Her eyes were cloudy and sick as she looked up at me, tears leaking from them.

“I only want to you to feel the psychological side of all the pain and anguish you've given me in the past.” Smiling. Smiling. Making her feel a little more hopeful. Hope showing in her watery blue orbs.

Shoving the sphere of energy into her head.

Screaming, screaming, but not me, it's her.

No blood except inside her mind.

I held up her face to mine with both hands, still smiling, and saw flickering in her eyes flashes of not only my life, but apparently hers—a little girl in a dirty but beautiful miniature ballgown, hugging a stuffed parrot as she sat on a bed crying. Half of her face consisted of a massive green bruise, and a smaller one on her calf matched it. No sooner had she looked up than she became me, running screaming from Catharyn after one of my first escapes into the upstairs world beyond the basement.

The smaller me looked down, and he was Catharyn, age twelve or so, holding back tears as a large hairy arm rummaged beneath her beautiful lacy skirts. From beyond the arm a voice cooed softly, an attempt to soothe her injured pride. Catharyn's face whipped up, and she was me, age eleven, fighting off the sobs as I collapsed into a corner, trying not to let my bloody back touch anything.

Catharyn, Catharyn older but younger, screaming in a black void, naked, overdressed, weightless as iron, heavy as air. So dainty as she falls.

Blood was drooling from her ear.

I let go of her, and she slumped to the floor, mouth agape. The only blood came from her mouth and ears, natural parts of death without wounding.

Calmly, I walked toward the front of the house, Voice padding along next to me in its hideous, neckless wolflike form.

“Go away, Voice,” I said aloud, not looking at it.

It was doing its best impression of a grin.

She's dead, she's dead, it chanted, dancing an awkward four-legged jig beside me.

“I know that, Voice.”

But it was so calm, it complained, its tone more disgruntled.

“You don't know that, Voice. Go away.” I sped up.

No! Listen to me—

I spun to face Voice, and it tore into shreds, howling before it dissipated entirely. The ground shook as it absorbed the power used in the attack.

I quickened my pace toward the front door, but it wasn't till a chunk of plaster fell in front of me that I began to run.

Bits of house followed me in my wake as I sprinted the remaining distance, the floor feeding on the energy that overrode me.

I need to get away from here—

All so saturated—

Overexposed—

I barrelled, finally, though the door, barely seeing it as I did.