Broken Sky 2:3

Island hadn't changed much, I guess. Still a city boy, so it all looked the same to me. Figured the rock paths were going to be ruined, but they looked just like they had back then, as far as I could remember.

The house was in better shape than I expected, but then, nobody'd been left here and who was crazy enough to sail out to a little island in the middle of nowhere? Besides us. Dusty, some storm damage, nothing bad. Bastard looked sick as hell walking through it, and maybe that wasn't the house, and the place still smelled musty and shut up and like something - like something had died in it, or under it.

I almost tried to get them to call this crazy shit off, because she just got quieter and paler and he got sicker-looking and stiff, and maybe I was buying into it, because I didn't. Maybe I was as crazy as they were.

Don't much like thinking about her walking up those stairs ahead of us, her dress rustling and her bare feet slapping against the wood. Or the way she looked, leaning out that big window, right before she came back to him.

Or that knife. I should have killed that bastard with it instead of just giving it up. Damn thing shows up in my dreams, not the nightmares (usually), just the ordinary ones. It'll be sitting on a table and I wake up in a cold sweat. No more sleep for me those nights.

Bastard stabbed her in the back. Had to use both hands to do it.

I just stared at them, him holding her and her blood soaking them both, and I don't think I even registered that damned sound at first, like her dying took up everything I had. It got ... fuck. It was bad. Should have asked him if fading was like that, but he wouldn't have said anyway.

That stuff twisted and writhed and got sucked back up into the rip in the sky, sometimes it was like snakes and sometimes it was like flames and mostly it wasn't like anything. Color came back, I remembered it, and the first color that hit me was blood, all over them, dripping on the floor.

The sky shuddered and groaned and twisted. The cracks healed first, and then that damn rip started to close up, sealing up from the ends inward, that damned sound again, only - fuck. It wasn't running backward, and it was even worse, somewhere in it there were all those damned voices. The edges burned like hot metal, and the crack got smaller and smaller, and then it was gone. Just like nothing ever happened.

Fucking ripoff.

He lives there now. I've never been back. All I think of is her bleeding, and him walking out into the sea. Don't know why he came back. Don't think he does either.