Chapter Eight

The White King Enters

Start Chapter 8:

Elizabeth stared. It was all she could do. Her body couldn't move, it wouldn't move, she wanted to sprint away but she felt too weak, she wanted to run into the building and save everyone but she was too weak, too scared. She was shaking, and felt sick once more. But in the midst of all the angst, the fear for Dana, lay nestled like a viper amongst the eggs memories of the awfulness that had been her life at the "Greasy Fork." She felt relief. She felt relief as the world burned around her, relief as the dank and dark and sick place was destroyed. It was terrible, but she felt happy; she had wanted that place to fall, she had wished those people dead, and she had her wish. She began to laugh hysterically, a choking, mad thing that bubbled out of her lips like thick black poison. She laughed until the tears, unbidden, returned to her eyes, tumbling out and mixing with her snotty nose. She laughed and sobbed as the police and the firemen and the ambulances came; she laughed as they put a blanket around her shoulders and she was prodded into the back of a police car; she laughed all the way to protective custody. 

The police were questioning her and she was answering each time entirely automatically, occasionally letting loose a new uncontrollable giggle. She hated herself for it, really. But she was free. She felt free from her work and free from the earth, spiraling out of control and burning herself, soon to be dead, soon to be dead. Elizabeth was discovered to be the woman who had complained of a stalker days earlier. Suddenly the stalker became the biggest priority for the police. Elizabeth was kept in the police station for her protection, and a few hours into the morning she finally stopped her hysterics. She was shakily let out of the police station.

She walked home in a daze as the sun rose above the buildings, illuminating the streets. She was tired and shaking as she walked home, and utterly unprepared for what she would find there. She opened the door to the apartment, to find blood smeared all over the walls, all over the ceiling and the floor, as her son merrily painted pictures in the blood and organs of Rebecca. Her head was on a plate, dripping down to the floor. Her organs were strung up like Christmas decorations, her heart placed neatly in the fruit bowl, her eyes in the toybox. There were words painted in the blood.

"We gave him a name."

And Michael continued to play happily in Rebecca's organs, as Elizabeth screamed.

End Chapter Eight

The White King Exits.