jamie
from the destruction, out of the flame
She speaks directly into the chamber of his chest.
The electric current of his thoughts.
Her mouth does not move, but he hears her all the same. It is her voice, certainly, but even it is something Other. Or perhaps the Otherness is in the tone in which she injects his name into his head. It conjures up a shark-tooth smile. Ink-black mouth, the points of his teeth catching the light.
He relaxes by degrees. Lets this natural fog touch him. It is not as sweet as his fog. It does not curl thick around his legs, climb tenderly down the ladder of his spine. (The spine that had splintered and cracked in the unhinged jaws of those to whom he belongs).
He draws in a wheezing breath and knows that the ribs that expand around it are real. He is real. Even if he does not belong here. He does not belong to them. She must know it, too.
He thinks of the fog and he does not know to what she is referring. His ability to trudge through it, perhaps. Despite how desperate it had been to devour him. How it had sunk its teeth and its claws into his skin and sinew and muscle and, as a result, his psyche.
She comes closer and he does not move away. There is nothing for her to save him from anymore. Magnificent, she says, and the shark-tooth smile deepens.
“You left me there,” he tells her. A statement more than it is an accusation. He does not blame her. Not when he had left her, too.
you need a villain, give me a name
