Clancy's Simulacrum

Clancy licked her lips, sweat rolling down her face. She had only once chance to get this right, but her concentration kept slipping, wincing as the banging on the door grew more flurried and the growls and calls became more frenetic. Grimly, she strengthened her resolve and placed her hands out over the pool of water again.

The knife rose from where it had dropped at the edge of the pool and floated in front of her once more. Clancy flinched again at particularly large bang, but instantly sharpened her concentration even more, in time that the knife did not do more than dip threateningly before stilling again. Clancy willed it into the place that she wanted it to be, watching agonizingly as it inched little by little out over the pool. The metal naturally resisted coming into contact with water, even in midair—

It dropped, steadied and lifted, and dropped again. Clancy watched as red, bright red, streamed from her palms into the dark opaque face of the pool, as it stained both the depths of the water and the bright glint of the floating blade. Another bang snapped her to herself; with a sharp breath, she quickly squeezed her fingers and unclenched them, forcing more blood out of her hands and onto the surface of the slowly reddening lake. At the same time she opened her mouth and sung out several sharp notes, notes that echoed and danced in the tall, damp, and dank—yet lit by the several candles she'd brought along—chamber she occupied.

The knife, still floating in front of her, began to spin leisurely. Clancy, heartened by the progress, raised her voice higher and projected the notes of the next meter as much as she could—and as steadily, despite the horrendous din behind her which sent her heart racing, her stomach flopping, and her knees knocking. The knife spun faster, drifted away from her a little bit—then as she paused to take a breath, it suddenly shot out to the middle of the pool of water, gyrating furiously, and spattered the blood on it everywhere. Where the blood landed, the pool hissed and steamed, frothing with the force of reaction until it was entirely unrecognizable as the deep, still, stagnant pool of moments earlier.

Hurriedly, Clancy took up the next bits of her song , realizing she had stopped in her shock. Wind picked up suddenly and swept by her hair, then swirled again to brush the fingers of wispy white fog along. The froth of the lake began congregating, migrating towards the center like some single-minded sea-creature intent upon its prey…Clancy noticed that the redness previously scattered and sunken to the depths of the pool followed the froth's path, withdrawing from the farther recesses to form a drifting column directly under the twisting knife—also the assembly point for the froth.

Clancy's hands and arms were beginning to tremble, held out so long above the pool, but she ignored them and continued to sing, though her breath drew short and she often had to lick her lips. Time ticked by, and still she sung, still the door banged, the voices called pleadingly, and still the knife twirled, glinting brightly in the candlelight as it spun—

Until with a sudden roar, the red-stained froth reared up. It shot past the knife, past Clancy's upraised hands, past the candlelight's sphere of influence, so that Clancy could not see where the froth ended its glorious spurt upward—

The wind blew then, bellowing by and making the candles flicker violently. Clancy's hair whipped across her face, stinging her eyes and her open mouth, but she would not give up, she wouldn't allow anything to stop her—

The froth spiraled then, diagonal ridges appearing as it followed the force of the wind and whirled. It tottered wildly back and forth as it fought to remain upright. Clancy suddenly realized that the fog, which she'd seen before, had joined the cyclone of froth and was even then flowing up the sides of it, mercifully concealing the streams of red that flecked it. A shape suddenly started in it, appearing before Clancy's startled eyes as from thin air. The figure grew more pronounced, taking on the properties of a human being, before it stopped there and began coloring in. white turned to a pale flesh color, then dark brown, then tan, olive, blue-black, sunburned red, yellow, light brown—

Clancy watched as the colors slowly diverged and formed into different clumps. On the top of the figure flashed red, brown, auburn, yellow, flaxen, white, grey, black, and blue, while below it shifted the colors she'd perceived originally. As she looked closer, the shape became clearer, until Clancy saw that not only the colors were cycling through each other at high speeds, but so was the figure! It, too, was shifting, but through different parts of the body, heads, arms, torsos (Clancy blushed as a man's chest changed to a prepubescent girl's), stomachs, legs, feet—everything. Even the hair was changing, lengthening and shortening, styling itself back or rushing forward in random patterns. The only thing that remained constant was that the eyes stayed closed—though Clancy did not doubt that they changed too. It was then that Clancy noticed the dead silence emanating from behind her. No banging followed the desperately calling voices and the growls—Clancy couldn't even hear the stomping footsteps of people shuffling back and forth. All she could hear, in fact, was the burbling of the pool as it seethed and writhed under the effects of her song.

Heart racing, Clancy turned widened eyes upon the twister, spoke a single word.

Instantly the cyclone froze. The figure within the depths looked like it had been caught in a state of transition—half of it was different from the other half, except for the skin, which was a lovely light brown color, and the hair color, a darker brown. Everything else did not match.

One half of the figure's hair was made up of a fizzy nap of curls, while the other half was pulled back into two large cornrow braids close to the head. The shape of the head was relatively uniform, as was the nose, but the outline of the eyes were different and the eyebrows on two sides did not match. The mouth and the chin did not immediately contrast with themselves upon first glance, but the teeth did, and attention on them brought the faults of the former to the front. The torso was uniform—Clancy averted her eyes from the rounded breasts adorning the front—though the stomach was too thick for it, in contrast to the waist which was too slender for the thick legs that supported it. The feet matched the hands in that they were too long for the limbs that they were attached to—and one arm was thinner than the other. All in all, the figure was not a perfect one, but Clancy had never seen anything more beautiful.

And this was before she saw the eyes.

At Clancy's word that had stopped the transition, the froth and fog and wind had fallen abruptly away. Now it was only the figure—the simulacrum—that remained, standing on the water's surface as calmly as if on solid land, though its feet hung loose in midair. For a second the simulacrum stayed as frozen as the pool whence it came, then opened its eyes and looked around.

When those eyes met Clancy's own gaze, she was caught. Tiger-orange and grey, the eyes were fixed in a half-and-half transition like most of the body, the right tiger-orange, the left grey. In them were fathomless nadirs of impenetrable obscurity; but then they warmed, and the simulacrum inclined its, her, head, a smile upon the misshapen lips.

"What can I do for you, mistress?" it, she, asked in a clear, if husky, voice. Clancy snapped out of her reverie and glanced back at the silent door. Meeting the odd-colored eyes squarely, Clancy said in a voice firm and no-nonsense,

"Kill me."

She glanced over her shoulder again as suddenly the door boomed anew. Her words came quickly now, as the wood of the door beat more and more outward with the force exerted upon it. "Freeze me, flood me, stab me, however you want," she insisted, facing her creation again, "just do it. Kill me," she hesitated, then decided, "and take my place. Do it quickly!" she added as the door splintered and a beefy hand waved wildly about.

The simulacrum wavered, her instincts struggling between obeying and keeping her mistress alive, then fell forward. The door banged open, admitting the crowd of people and black skulking skin-covered skeletons in, but it was too late. The wall of water was already rushing towards the resolute girl of eighteen years standing in front of them. It smashed into her and smacked her against the wall next to the shattered door, but it did not recede with that initial attack. Instead it poured onto her for an endless stream of brine and stagnant pool water, until several of the people ran towards it, tried to deflect it with anything at hand—stones, the rifles they had brought, their own bodies. Then the surge lessened, but did not stop. It only ceased when the skeletons—necromantic Starving Hands raised for this very purpose—joined the living in their efforts, and then only very reluctantly.

Even then, the surge did not give the group of people what the latter wanted, for there was no trace of the young woman who had so desperately begged to die—not even the academy uniform she had been wearing. Only the memory of her facing into the keening roar of water lingered in the human mind—but it was faint compared to the reality of the event. The people, varied from policemen to matronly schoolteachers to one very nervous girl student—muttered among themselves, while the Starving Hands stood gracelessly where they had stopped.

They stared mindlessly about, taking in details that the living, their masters, did not, but unable to register them or point them out to the lively babble of humanity scarcely meters away. They for instance could not have told of the tiger eye gleam that glinted from a nearby corner of the ceiling, not even if directly questioned—the only reason they saw it in the first place. Still, the gleam disappeared in the next second, just as the muttering from the living grew louder—

"All right, lads, let's go!" shouted out a burly New Zealand accent. The skeletons jerked and turned to the source and to the hand that beckoned towards them. Slowly, there being no urgency in the command, the skeletons ambled over, arriving in time to hear, but not register, one person saying, "Sheesh, Nate, you gonna get rid of dese dings?" The New Zealand accent did not answer, and very soon they were all out of the destroyed door…

…leaving behind nothing but a water-spattered bathing chamber, wet candles, a still-again pool of water, and a body floating to the top of said pool, clad in an academy uniform with a knife clutched in its dead hand. Another figure dropped to the ground, glanced around then stepped gracefully into the pool. Bending, the figure scooped the body into its misshapen arms and cradled it, the oddly-styled head bowing over the body as if in mourning. Suddenly they both—the figure and the body—sunk into the pool, gliding through the glassy depths as silently and as smoothly as an image through a mirror—an image that did not come out on the other side. The figure raised its head for a single moment as the body it held first touched the water; two odd-colored eyes gleamed glinted weirdly in the lights streaming in from the corridor. Then they turned away, and both the simulacrum and the body of its mistress disappeared into the pool.

No other movement stirred the bathing chamber; it was a still tomb. The pool, the source of so much activity in the last half-hour, was as opaque as a stone, and nearly as unfathomable. No one would discover its secrets if it did not wish to divulge them—and it was very unwilling to reveal this one.

The chamber had been abandoned for many years before Clancy Allbright stumbled upon it. It was abandoned for many years afterward.

:-:-:-:

And no, there is not supposed to be a sequel to this. If there are enough pitchforks, there will be. Heh.

As this is my first piece of original fiction since the Great Purging of the other fics, please leave a review, even if it is a pitchfork. :D

-SP