148. The worst of night, 4

(Rose)

The Ogre is a giant and ominous human silhouette made of darkness.

A womanly I think, dark as night, shadow of a beastly human. More than four metres tall, but moving on all four. I can only distinguish what is stretched like a leg, a hand, or the top of its head. The head shows no feature, all is but black.

It mutters something as I try to step back, but I don't understand these words.

It claws my feet off. I fall, screaming. It bangs my head so hard against the ground that I pass out in pain.

I feel my body still moving soon after somehow.

~

I regain consciousness in the ruins of a high building. The walls are falling apart, missing, and there is no roof anymore. It's the summit of a rock.

It's a lair.

A fire, a large bonfire burns in the middle of the place open to the sights. What's left of the walls around are incomplete, crumbling away.

I see the silhouettes of bodies in the fire.

My head hurts. I feel dizzy. My feet are injured and bleeding.

I try to stand. My left hand is clutching onto the stone with a might I can't stop...

Blume is doing it. She's not letting it go. She managed to recover it when I couldn't, and held onto it with my arm. Our only chance.

The ogre suddenly falls softly from the sky, with very little sound, and crouches in front of us. Not even the large fire can light the features of its face.

Its speaks in a language I do not know, but all I can think about currently is more primal. Killing, and surviving.

Its hand suddenly grabs me and pushes me violently down. I'm stuck against the ground.

Its other hand plunges within my head. I scream in pain. I feel and hear my skull breaking in pieces like a shattering egg. It's entering my brain. One of my eyes is ripped away I can feel. They can't see the same things anymore in the penumbra. My voice goes mute from the screaming. I only hear and feel my skull breaking apart.

My left eye is crushed. My voice and throat are numb. My mind is lost elsewhere.

I hear its voice in my head. In my throat, in my lungs. It's learning my language through my thoughts.

It only repeats the word strange over and over, while I feel my chances of survival narrowing down too fast. How long could I survive without a proper skull on my head, my brain exposed to the air?

Its right hand pulls back and leave my head. The stains of blood on its fingers vanish in the dark almost instantly.

I cough up blood and tremble on the ground with my little remaining strength.

It keeps repeating aloud the word strange... My head is falling apart, but my left arm is still holding onto our only chance left. Blume seems gone.

O - Strange...

A raw, vibrant and loud voice, from a body taller than a house. So close to my remaining body unable to stand. I'm trying to breathe but have horrible difficulties.

O - Why haven't you eaten her already?

I then realise it's not me it's talking to, but to the cowardly flower on me. One of its kin it seems. Blume moves and glows again a pale white. She only makes a sound of violin again. The Ogre looking down on us, surrounding us, seems to wonder, puzzled.

O - Why are you so weak? Why are you living with a human? They're food... They're...

I can breathe as I lie down there, not trying to move at all. I hear the ogre speak. I'm dead scared and wonder still like it, what Blume has to say about it. She doesn't want to answer still...

B - We... We think very little of them when we come to. And yet look at you trying to mimicry them... We want to live like them. Deep down, we all want to be like them. So go find yourself a host who loves you for what you are. This one is mine!

Blume flashes some light that seems to startle the ogre.

Then its aura grows, as it's stepping forward toward us. It's growling. Blume made its unexpected curiosity turn into madness...

The pale light from Blume is darkened by the shadow approaching. The large bonfire of animals corpses behind still only enlightens very little of the surroundings.

My fingers are clutching so hard on what they hold that they're bleeding. She's telling me something inside my head meanwhile...

My heartbeat increased to a painful fast pace. It's the end I'm terrified. Blume is again playing violin now at all times...

I feel my left fingers break onto the stone. She's telling me something last.

B - I loved you Rose...

My left arm suddenly moves on its own and breaks the stone above me. I'm blinded by colours and glitter, and my back leaves the ground for a second as the ogre suddenly reached me.

It jumped at me, its head suddenly biting my left arm off.

The colours have fallen everywhere and the ogre turned mad. It's ripping my arm off and swallowing it. The remaining spots and bubbles of lights and colours are all over me but quickly vanishing while it's eating my arm.

My blood from the shoulder wound stains the ground in dark grey. I somehow see it. The pain is all over me but I'm not passing out. Because I want to see the end maybe.

The Ogre is insulting Blume. It's overcome with rage and perhaps jealousy. It's shredding me now. It's ripping my clothes and skin, opening my chest and what it hides inside.

It's grabbing onto the flowers and tearing them apart. It's pulling her out of me. It's ripping Blume away from me. I feel the roots stretched and ripped around my lungs, guts and heart. I see the main bouquet of flowers falling poorly a little further. They're withering...

She's taking Blume away from me...

I'm crying over a different pain now.

Night is set. The fire burning the remnants of humanity and life is right behind it.

Her gift is gone. Her flowers have been taken away from me... Her roots have been ripped away from my flesh within, mercilessly.

I feel unbearably empty. My body may still be alive for now but it won't last. My soul feels hollow.

I cannot hear the violin in my head anymore.

Something tumultuous is rapidly growing inside of me. It will explode in a few seconds.

I'm screaming my pain of having her taken away from me. A wrath is rising in my voice and in that explosion about to go off.

Had you been taken away from me by an ogre, years ago, what would have I become?

I valued my humanity as long as one was with me...

My yell now becomes something else. I'm giving all my suffering and resentment into that spark. I do not care what I become.

The remaining pieces of glowing rock are swallowed by the ogre along with the flesh and skin on my right hip.

I tilt. I unleash it all. My wrath, my wishes, my suffering. My dreams and nightmares. My little power and wider anger, I turn into a violent spark at the moment she's closer.

It all melts.

A flash of light blinds me as I yell like a monster.

She's taken Blume away from me! I'm crying and screaming louder than I thought possible, funnelling sounds and thoughts instantly into that burning light.

My body seems to disappear as I'm plunging my right arm inside the monster, aiming to rip its heart apart as it did mine...

Light and darkness, achromatism and colours, I cannot perceive the differences anymore. I'm probably dead now.

I lose consciousness in my yell and eruption of burning light, in my spark. I attacked the Ogre when I was able to reach it deep.

Blume gone from my chest and heart felt terrifyingly cold and hollow. Far more than I would ever have imagined.

The explosion building up inside of me suddenly blows.

Everything disappears in a flash that seems to erase everything that is.

The Ogre, me, the bonfire, the ruins, the city, the clouds in the sky.

It all dissolves into the blinding light burning my eye, before it starts flooding into the city below.

I felt so hollow this night.

~