The Second Floor
(Each tip had etched into it a savage memory.)
Penny slammed into the door to the second floor. For a moment she thought it would not budge, but she tried again. It moved, but it took all her strength to pull it open. Its almost ceased hinges made a screech of utter anguish.
The fight had already moved on. She could hear noises Ryan and the other man had made, but the sound came from everywhere. It was muted and she could not tell the source of the sound from the echo is produced.
The corridor was identical in design to the one below but was in considerably worse repair. The door to the apartment in front of Penny was completely off its hinges, and through the gap it left she could see that a kitchen countertop had been twisted out of place. The sink it supported was torn free hanging suspended in midair by the still-fastened pipes.
Penny didn’t know that she could only see a part of the world that moved around her, she was an unusually intuitive person but even she could not have guessed at what she was about to experience. The second floor was a shattered mess of scarred walls and bare floorboards. Few of the lights worked, and those that did blinked like searchlights in the gloom.
Most of what she saw was shrouded in darkness, but there was much that she didn’t see because of the veil of reality that hid the world beneath our own. She saw the sink raised on its brass pipes, but she didn’t see the thing that sat upon it, it watched her hungrily, imagining the soft flesh of her shoulder clenched in its claws. Its shape was indefinable as if it subtly fluctuated from moment to moment. It had arms and legs, a head and a torso, but not in a configuration Penny would have recognised. The arms were too long, and the legs too short. The torso was nothing more than a knot of tissue to tie it all together, and the head… The head was both eyes and teeth while looking like neither.
There was no mouth, the teeth quivered around what served the creature for eyes, but it could still whisper things to her that would make her shudder. It suspected that one of its kind had once done such a thing in the past, which would make re-acquiring her far easier.
A once-defiled soul was easier to procure. Unlike the world in which the girl thought she lived secondhand goods were far more attractive to the creature and its kind. Its claws would sink deeper, and if the girl had been well seasoned the fight would be easily won. The previous pains would leave channels open, places through it could burrow.
She may even welcome it.
It climbed the wall, its claws holding it fast. The claws were not real claws, they did not affect the wall’s structure and did not leave anything the girl would see. The claws hung to the wall of the thing’s realm, the phantom wall that served as a conduit between the physical world and the Other Place.
The Other Place, Tartarus, the realm of the Watchers, the place of the fallen. From there they had found a crack through which the smallest could slip. Even their kind existed by natural laws, and force would meet force if the stronger of them attempted to traverse the barrier.
The creature was small and survived on little more than suggestion and corruption, it needed little energy to breach the barrier, so the barrier spared little energy to contain it.
It had escaped using the stealth of a pickpocket.
It moved to the ceiling of the hallway, below it the girl moved slowly. She was trying to find the men. It had seen them, but both had already been spoken for. One had given himself readily, and the other had been stolen away, but both were barred from the creature. Their owner would eat it without even being aware of it.
But though the girl held great possession of herself, her sense of self-identity was flimsy. She had raw wounds, and it would not take much effort to make them bleed, but if it wanted her it had to take her now. The further she wandered from the relative safety of below, the more likely another beast would claim her.
If it wanted to take her, it needed to do it now.
She heard noises to her left. The noise of conflict was from the door to the far end of the corridor. Penny approached it, but she did not move fast. Something had made the skin of her arms tingle, and the back of her neck felt suddenly exposed.
She knew the feeling. She was being watched.
She glanced into each open doorway as she passed, casting an eye over her shoulder, careful not to draw attention to the action, but she caught no one hiding along the corridor. Not seeing who was looking at her did not alleviate the feeling of being observed.
Whoever it was, they were well hidden.
Penny wondered whether there were hidden cameras. Perhaps the people in the mansion’s basement were observing her at this very moment.
She threw up an obscene gesture. It was aimed in no specific direction, but it was more for her sense of rebellion than for anyone who might be watching. It was the equivalent of whistling past a graveyard in the dead of night, it was a useless gesture, but it made her feel a little stronger.
She reached up and brushed something on her shoulder. It was a nervous reaction. An automatic response to something touching her so gently it could have been no more than her imagination.
She had probably walked through a spider’s web.
But she would not have felt a spider’s web through the leather of her jacket.
Her hand moved to brush whatever it was aside again.
She could feel it now. It felt as though she was wearing something with an insecure spaghetti strap that kept slipping from her shoulder.
The memory came in a rush.
Greta had clutched the nightdress to her chest. It was a flimsy shield, but it was all she had. His hands were stronger than she’d realised they would be. Her illusion of him was of a gentleman. The illusion had been shattered. The shards of it had pierced her. The shield she should have relied on had become a weapon with which to strike her.
He was speaking, but she could not hear the words. She focused on his hands and what he was doing with them.
The realisation of his intentions struck home, and Greta started to scream. His hand slapped into her mouth hard enough to make her lip swell. Her tongue brushed the palm of his hand. It tasted bitterly of aftershave.
Penny felt her legs give out, and she crumpled to her knees. Where there was still carpet, it was rough against her bare skin, and where there was none, she felt tiny splinters of wood draw blood. The memory was overwhelming, and for a moment she forgot everything that had happened in the years since. She was there, body and soul, and the life she had led since was nothing more than a cruel fantasy.
It pressed down on her. She could still feel his hand clutching her shoulder. The fingers left deep impressions. Knife-like they pressed into the flesh and she could feel the weight on her increase. Her palms slammed into the floor. The threadbare carpet felt damp. Still, the pressure increased. It formed shards of pain that forced into her shoulder. They slipped deeper. One… Two… Three… Four… Then a fifth one drove in on the opposite side and she recognised it.
It was a hand clutching her. A tiny hand with five sharp claws that anchored themselves into her flesh. Each tip had etched into it a savage memory. Penny was riddled with such memories, but those that now flooded her thoughts were the most barbed. Along with the pain, they brought with them certainty that this was all she would ever feel. The memories pressed against her. She could feel them as though they had never ended. One overlapped with the next until there was no distinction. Penny became no more than a memory of herself, a memory of her anguish reflected into her. Her hand moved to her shoulder. Her fingers dug in. They raked across the leather of her jacket as if trying to rip something free. The memories fell, gathering like an avalanche, overwhelming her. There were no discernible memories now, there was just one. It was of degradation. It was of pain.
Penny no longer knew herself as Penny. She was not Peggy, Valerie, Charlotte or any of the names she had adopted over the years. She was not even Greta. She was nothing more than an object to which others would inflict their needs. The assault, on some level she knew what it was, was so unrelenting that there was no defence against it.
She sprawled across the hallway floor. Her face pressed against the floor. The exposed backing of the carpet scoured lines into the delicate skin of her cheek. She did not move and almost appeared as though she had lost consciousness, but she hadn’t. There had been no defence but the creature that had invaded her had been wrong.
She was already spoken for.
The knowledge unfolded like the strands of a spider’s web. Each connects with precision and grace. There were no accidents. The spider had walked one way on the web when she woke up that dewy morning. She had followed its course, leading her to the road and the car that had stopped for her. The driver had been hungry and had stopped at a diner, then she had looked across it to see Ryan at the counter.
She was spoken for.
She knew it with more certainty than anything she had ever known.
There were no coincidences, not for her, each encounter had led her to where she needed to be, and though she loathed each of them she would not change her destination. Memories were just memories and though they weighed and threatened to gnaw at her, her future was still not set.
The claw tightened, the creature sensing unexpected resistance.
Penny knew that having a purpose meant being spoken for. Valerie knew it. Peggy knew it. Charlotte knew it, and even Greta knew it. To discard her past was to discard her journey. It was to pass her fate on to little more than chance, or something worse. Perhaps she had been used as nothing more than an object to affect Ryan’s journey. It may have been the cult she had seen who had orchestrated it, or it may have been something more.
Whatever had put her on the journey had sparked the fire, but she had tended it of her own accord.
“Who does Ryan serve?” She heard the words. They were harsh.
“He serves himself.” She heard the words. They were gentle.
But she had been wrong. Ryan had also been set on a path. He had been consumed.
He had been spoken for.
The pain lessened. Her cheek was pressed painfully against the course carpet. The wood beneath it was rough. She felt the weight on her shoulder blade. It felt as though a small child was sitting there. Her arm was folded under her. The blood had drained from it.
She thought about the pain. This was the pain of the now. She dragged her dead arm from under her. It erupted in a wave of pins and needles as it trembled uselessly. She fought against the nausea the feeling usually caused in her as she twisted to release her other arm from under their combined weight.
There was something on her shoulder. Something she could feel but not see. It was the weight of all those sins she had witnessed. All those that had been perpetrated against her, and all those she had committed against others. They drifted into each other – as the memories had before – until no individual acts presented themselves.
It was the underside of the tapestry of humanity. Easily torn threads that did not connect but harried the movement of everything around them. Few saw them, and those who did could not see the connection between their darker desires and those of their neighbour. Everyone shared them. Some were seeped in such degradation that they no longer appeared like human desires, others were petty and would raise a smile to those who knew of them. They all coexisted, and all were held in secret places that spoiled the soul that had them.
Penny had satiated hers, as others had with her as their tool. Her sins were of a more petty variety, but they had still left their scars.
She pushed to her feet. Her knees were unsteady, but they held.
Ryan didn’t serve himself. These were not his actions. She didn’t serve herself either, because these were not her actions. Life was a series of threads, and Penny saw that those she thought she was pulling were in reality pulling her.
She was not just an innocent running from the pain of her childhood. She was that, but she was a great deal more. She had wandered far from any purpose, and in it, she had fallen into service of something greater than herself.
Though she didn’t know in service of what.
She had thought she was in service of herself, chasing her desires, but why had she wandered so far from anything that made her happy?
The weight fell away, but the pain remained. Five points of pain that clamped into her flesh. An anchor for something that no longer sat on her shoulder with confidence. She could imagine that it now hung by its fingernails, clutching at her for dear life, and she knew that if she could touch the thing she could brush it away with little effort.
A point of pain eased, and four remained.
She looked around her. She was still in the corridor. This fact amazed her more than anything. She should be somewhere else. Some when else. She had felt as if she had been on a journey, and she wondered briefly if that was true.
Another point of pain receded, and three remained.
With each trauma, she discarded her name, creating a new one only to create another trauma alongside it. The new name was not an attempt to discard the pain but was instead an attempt to create a fresh tapestry for the next. Her adult life may have begun with something done to her, and she felt sorrow for the girl who had started the journey, but the woman she became had not been sinless either.
Three points of pain became two.
Who did Ryan serve?
Who did Penny serve?
Ryan served something wicked, and Penny served no one because Penny did not exist.
“But Greta serves someone,” she said. Her voice was ragged with exhaustion, “Greta serves something good.” She took a step and felt another point of pain ease, then almost immediately the last faded. Her legs carried her forward, but she swayed and ran her hand along the wall to steady herself.
“I don’t know what that good thing is,” she muttered, “but I’m going to find it.”
Greta moved towards the end of the corridor, her progress slow.
The creature hit the dusty floor. The pain was exquisite. It didn’t know what fireworks were, but if it saw them it would recognise them as the feeling it felt when the girl rejected it. The rejection had been a resounding one. She had all but trod its flesh into the earth as she had brushed it away.
The wounds were deep and bled invisible blood. The creature lay across the phantom carpet which separated it from the phantom floor. The lesser demons spilt from the gate were waiting in the shadows. It knew they were watching it. It only hoped that it would die before they got to it.
The girl had discarded it and then walked away. She had not looked back. It was as if the creature had never existed. What should have been a simple task had been its end, and now it felt terror at what was sure to come.
The world grew dim. The shadows grew and in them, things stirred. The girl walked away oblivious to the change around her. She stumbled towards where the creature had seen the two men disappear. Even as she did the creature saw its brethren move in closer. They avoided the girl, parting like the proverbial sea as she passed. Some creatures saw their wounded brother lay helpless and grinned joyously. They moved closer, their mouth-less leers wide. It felt something tug at it and then bite. Razor teeth slipped through its phantom flesh and the creature wished it could scream.
The girl slipped through the doorway to the stairs that led above. The creature watched her. It felt more of its kind begin to feast on its dying flesh. Something was torn from it and a wave of pain cascaded through its remaining phantom flesh. Slowly it was torn apart. Each creature took a share and then another took its place as it moved on.
The door swung closed behind the girl, and the creature hoped that one of the greater beasts above would eat their fill.