Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Its name was Cesar Torres. It hadn’t needed a name before - there was no need for them in the darkness it had crawled out of. But humans needed names, so now it had one too.

There had been another Cesar Torres; a young human with dark eyes and hair. It had watched him through the static of the television screen, listened from the speakers during every phone call. It had compiled and catalogued everything Cesar Torres looked and sounded like over careful months, meticulously planning until it could hold some semblance of a form that did not lose shape too quickly. It wanted to get it right. It needed to.

The human known as Cesar Torres had died screaming. His fear had tasted bright and heady, addictive and all-consuming. The salt of tears, the stench of sweat, and the coppery taste of his mother’s blood hung in the air. It had been all too easy a plan in the end; waiting for the mother to leave the house, masquerading as her, whispering to Cesar in the night that she could not be trusted - that something was wrong with her.

She had seen her child’s behaviour and knew something was amiss. The young man before her was but a shell of her son, jittery with nerves and so paranoid he could no longer sleep. But, like all humans, she was stupid. She wouldn’t believe that something was truly wrong with her son, for that would make her a failure of a mother. Or something to that extent - it had only heard her say as much once on the phone when Cesar was not home.

It had all come to a head in that kitchen. Cesar Torres lunging for the knife oh-so-conveniently placed out of the block on the side. His mother’s shrieks of fear as she’d begged, pleaded with him not to do it. How they had turned to gurgles and moans, rasps of wet breath as the blade sunk in, over and over, until there was nothing. Silence. Only stillness and the shuffling of Cesar Torres’ knees on the ground, the clatter of the knife on the tiles as the reality of what he’d done finally hit him.

¬ Uh-oh! You killed your mother, Cesar! ¬

It seized its moment. He had died much like his mother - screaming for mercy that would not come. It consumed him inch by inch, swallowing him whole. For only one of them would die here, and it refused to be the one that did.

¬ There’s not enough room for the both of us, Cesar Torres. ¬

He’d struggled and wept and cried out for the mother he had killed and then he was gone. Only it remained. Looking down at the body of Cesar’s mother sprawled out on the tiles, a dispassionate gaze flitting over her slack features smeared with blood before turning away to where the landline phone was hooked to the wall. Picking up the receiver, it paused before pressing at the shapes in the pattern it knew would make Cesar Torres’ friend speak.

The dial tone rang. Once. Twice. Dull trills stretching out in the silent room it stood in with a dead woman on the floor.

“Hello?”

It knew this voice very well. Cesar Torres’ best friend, another young human called Mark Heathcliff.

“Hello?” Mark said again and it realised, belatedly, that it hadn’t said anything.

“Hey, it’s Cesar,” It said in a perfect imitation of Cesar’s voice. Deeper, more pronounced than the sounds it usually made. Looking at the window, it noticed it was no longer what the humans called ‘day’, the sky black and bruised. Humans didn’t like being disturbed when it was no longer day. It had heard Mark berate Cesar for calling ‘too late’ a few times before, so it said, “I hope it’s not too late?”

A brief pause, a sigh, the creak of what sounded like a chair.

“No, it’s fine,” Mark said, “Don’t worry. What’s up? Are you alright?”

“Yeah…” It replied, staring down at the dead body of Cesar’s mother, “It’s not me. It’s my mom. She’s knocked out cold and I have no idea why…”

Humans always made lying appear difficult. Cesar Torres had been a horrible liar, never able to keep a story straight under even the most miniscule of pressures. It remembered hearing Mark laugh at Cesar for trying to lie once, letting out a loud barking sound that had taken it by surprise. It had never heard a sound like that before - strange and noisy, and made no logical sense: why would a human choose to disrupt its breathing like that?

There, standing in the kitchen with a corpse, it wished to hear Mark laugh again. Just for a moment.

Lying was easy, and lying to a human was even easier. So, in Mark’s silence, it took the chance to add another layer of believability.

“I’m on my way to the ER, but could you do me a favour?” It asked.

Predictably, Mark trusted the voice of his friend, Cesar Torres, “Yeah, of course. What is it?”

He sounded so eager to help. So unaware of what he was talking to. A moth in a spider’s web. It would have smiled - but not in this form.

“I just need you to come over and turn on the cameras we have set up,” It said, “You know, the ones we have installed after we were robbed?”

Humans liked security, they liked to believe that their home was a bastion of safety, and the Torres’ had bought cameras just for this purpose - to perpetuate the falsehood that they had control. Pretending that Cesar had merely forgotten to switch them on in his panic to get to the hospital was just another lie that Mark took at face value. Humans were so gullible with their tiny little minds. Trust came so naturally to them; a fatal flaw in God’s so-called ‘perfect design’.

“Oh, yeah,” Mark said, “But, uh, why?”

It paused, not expecting the human to ask that. It was not often that Mark questioned his friend’s words. Now it understood that it had misstepped; after all, why would Cesar Torres care about cameras if his mother so urgently needs the hospital? It took an artificial breath and looked down at the bloodied knife on the stained tiles.

“Well,” It reasoned, “She screamed really loud right before I found her on the ground. I just-”

But Mark interjected, “Well, do you have your doors and windows locked? Like the broadcast told us to do?”

“Yeah,” It said, feigning worry with the exact pitch and inflection Cesar used, “But that’s the really weird part. Maybe she saw something? I don’t know…”

It had seen the broadcasts, heard the humans speak of creatures they called alternates. Cesar had them playing in his bedroom, and it had been drawn in by the confidence the announcer spoke with despite how little he knew - how little they all knew. This was so much bigger than Cesar Torres and his mother, bigger than Mandela County. This was retribution on a scale unlike anything seen before. But it would use those strange human notions of thinking they knew what they were doing against Mark. It would convince him to come here.

There was a small, breathy noise on the other end of the phone before Mark said, “Alright. It shouldn’t be too bad. I’m just gonna switch them on and get out of there though. You know how I feel about your house…”

It did know. There had been a moment several months ago, whilst lingering in the walls of Cesar’s house, that it had followed Mark Heathcliff to the living room, dogging his footsteps in silence. Lurking in the shadows, it watched as he had sat down on the sofa, swaddled in the duvet he’d borrowed. Mark had been restless in his sleep that night, tossing and turning, muttering half-complete sentences before finally getting up fully and leaving his friend’s bedroom. It had seen it all, a captive audience for the only thing awake in the house so late into the night. But then-

Then Mark had turned around.

The movement had been so sudden that it hadn’t anticipated it, barely having enough time to scarper away, disappearing under the frame of the doorway to the cupboard under the stairs. Though Mark had still seen something. Not all of it, perhaps, but enough to know he wasn’t truly alone.

‘Who’s there?!’ His voice had called, wavering, uncertain. It smelled the beginnings of fear taking root, felt the jump of his pulse reverberating in the air. But it wasn’t time yet, and so it slipped away with a final taste of sour fear as Mark’s voice reached out into the darkness once more, ‘What the fuck. What the fuck.’

“Yeah,” It said, remembering the thrilling taste with a shudder and barely suppressed a growl, “That’s fine. Oh, one last thing. Try to get a good view of the back hallway. I think that’s where she saw it.”

Mark said something else, but it was suddenly distorted, crackling and punched with static. It looked at the phone and saw the hand-like appendage it had summoned starting to slough away like skin from dead meat. No, no. It couldn’t lose control now, not so close to the prize. Another garbled sound burst from the receiver, droning like a swarm, and, before any more damage could be done, it hung up.

Mark would still come. He had to. It hadn’t given itself away entirely. A bad connection was more than explainable and wasn’t necessarily a cause for suspicion. It had laid the groundwork at least - Cesar Torres needed to get to the hospital and Mark was coming to switch on the cameras.

Soon, it would have Mark, too.

Hearing an engine cut out on the driveway, it watched from the kitchen window as Mark Heathcliff walked up to the house. He did a double take upon seeing the Torres’ family car still parked outside, but continued on his approach. As he fiddled with the ring of keys, finding the spare Cesar had given him, it turned to face the door that opened up into the hallway.

Finally, it took the form of Cesar Torres. At the time, it had not paid much mind to the clothes the human had been wearing that day, but knew full well that humans considered it taboo to be naked in front of others without a good reason. Yet another strange human custom. Unable to look at Cesar’s corpse for reference, it turned its attention to the photo of him that his mother kept on the wall, willing the black two-piece and white shirt into being around its new form. All clothing looked the same to it - anything would do.

The front door groaned wearily as it opened and Mark’s footsteps creaked out in the hall. The faint taste of his fear permeated the air deliciously, and it had to resist losing control right then and there, focusing hard on keeping its shape solidly together.

“Cesar? Cesar, I thought you were going to the hospital?” Mark’s voice carried down, “Did you end up not going?”

It said nothing, listening to the sound of approaching footfalls on the wooden floorboards, getting ever so steadily closer.

“Cesar! Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me!” Mark Heathcliff stood in the doorway, one hand grasping the frame and the other poised stiffly over the pocket of his jeans before slowly relaxing.

“Cesar?” Mark asked, a confused lilt in his voice and a pinch now between his brows, “You okay, dude? I thought you were at the hospital?”

“Oh. No. No hospital. We didn’t need it after all.”

He frowned, “Your mom is okay then? Where is she?”

“She doesn’t need the hospital,” It pressed once more. The pulse thudding in Mark’s throat jumped, “Not anymore.”

“Not any-? Cesar, are you okay? You don’t look too good,” Mark swallowed, seemingly torn between taking a step towards his friend or backing out into the hallway. Concern had tightened his eyes, but fear still leaked from him rapidly. Heart racing like a cornered rabbit. One hand reached back towards his pocket.

No, that wouldn’t do. It wanted Mark to trust it. It needed him to.

So, it finally told him a truth.

“She’s here, on the floor.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Mark asked, the pallour of his skin becoming almost grey as he raised on his tiptoes to look over the counter to where it was pointing on the ground.

It watched the moment Mark saw Cesar Torres’ dead mother closely - the realisation dawning on his face. Mark’s eyes widened, his breathing accelerated, adrenaline and dread washed off him in waves. He couldn’t seem to find the words, opening his mouth, closing it again, making stumbling sounds. It waited for a scream, for the tsunami of terror to come crashing in and drown him-

“Oh, God, Cesar. What happened?”

What it got instead were five words and the sudden, strange feeling of two arms wrapping around its chest. Mark was holding it, had gathered it up into his arms to pull in close the same way it had seen Cesar Torres be held by his mother. Usually, Cesar was crying whenever that happened.

It didn’t know if it was supposed to be crying now, though.

“It was one of them, wasn’t it? An… an alternate,” Mark rambled on, words slightly muffled and quiet against its shoulder. It could feel each sound rumbling in Mark’s chest, each puff of breath against its neck, slightly damp.

There was something likable about it, it supposed. It couldn’t place the sensation, but knew that this was different. It didn’t taste like fear at all. No - it was something almost tart and soft. It was, for some unknowable reason, reminded of Mark Heathcliff’s laughter; bright, strange… new.

It wanted more.

There had been moments - when it was still watching from the walls - where it would choose to follow Mark around the house instead. The young man was so unlike Cesar Torres. Where Cesar was quiet, Mark was loud, more animated - always filling spaces with nervous tumbles of words. Cesar had listened to broadcasts with an anxious look and air about him, but Mark would consistently close off, deep in thoughts only he knew as his fingers toyed with the silver cross he wore about his neck. Cesar may have been its mission, but Mark was alluring nonetheless - he had an appeal his friend had not. It wanted to know more about Mark than Cesar Torres had ever discovered and use it all against him. It wanted Mark Heathcliff to break, to die in absolute terror, the likes of which it had never tasted before.

And such a thing would surely take time.

It needed more time.

“Come on, man,” Mark said, pushing back to hold what he believed was his best friend at arm’s length before stepping away, fingers flexing, “We- we need to call the cops, right? Right. Yeah- Yeah, we need to call them.” His dark eyes bore into it until it realised he expected some sort of response.

“Oh, right. Yeah. The cops,” It said, not knowing why these other humans were needed. It could only focus on how odd it suddenly was without the human standing close by.

“Fucking shit,” Mark murmured, voice low as he moved over to the phone on the wall. He pointedly stared at the buttons as he held the receiver up and dialled, refusing to acknowledge the body at its feet. It watched him go, unmoving, listening intently as he spoke to someone on the other end in a forcefully calm voice - flat and tight.

It would be so easy, it thought, to attack now. Mark was entirely vulnerable and blissfully unaware of the hungry creature that wore his friend’s skin. All too easy to grab him, force him down to the tiles, twist his neck, sinking teeth in through flesh and muscle and sinew. Bones would crack to splinters, the rush of copper and iron to slake its thirst. Mark would be dead in a matter of seconds.

But the brief, fleeting fear would not be enough to satiate the famine it had felt since its creation.

It would not be enough.

It wanted it to be enough.

“I- I think my friend needs an ambulance,” Mark said, abruptly grabbing its attention once more, “He might be in shock.”

It regarded the human before it as he turned and shot a reassuring smile its way - far too wobbly and drawn for its intended effect. It didn’t even know what it was supposed to be reassured about, but there it was again- treacle, thick and potent. Sweet and cloying.

Addictive.

Sitting out on the porch, it stayed statue-still as Mark placed his jacket over its shoulders and sat down beside it, close enough that it could feel him brushing against its side with each breath he took.

“There,” Mark said, “It’s not much, but they said to keep you warm.”

It looked at him and blinked slowly, tilting its head. His hands were trembling ever so slightly, muscles tensing around bone in dithering pulses. The fingers of one hand tugged at the cross on his necklace in a sporadic rhythm, snapping the chain taut over and over senselessly. His anxiety prickled in the air like static from a screen, buzzing waspishly. He swallowed hard enough that the cartilage in his throat dipped.

“You, uh, don’t need to say anything,” Mark continued, “The lady on the phone said not to push you. But, I just want you to know that it’s okay. It’ll be okay, man. I’m here for you.”

It turned away and out towards the tree-lined driveway. With the hand that wasn’t occupied with the necklace, Mark kept touching something hard in his pocket, making sure it was still there as his eyes darted between shadowy trunks and over dead bushes.

The sky was pitch black now and, so far out in the county, the stars were somewhat visible through the clouds that attempted to shroud them. It didn’t need to see them to know they were there - it had been there at their creation and would remain long after the last one was snuffed out.

Cesar had installed a light fixture for his mother around one of the banisters last summer and, finally caving, Mark reached across to turn it on with fumbling fingers. After spending so long in the dark of the kitchen and the shadows of the house, it winced as the ground before them was lit with white light, sickly and stark. The trees watched them both silently, their leaves whispering to each other.

Mark Heathcliff, who was supposed to be dead, commented, blissfully unaware, “It might take them about twenty minutes to get here. One of the shit things about living so far from the main roads, huh.”

It did not understand why Mark insisted on talking, but knew that it was something this particular human liked to do. The world felt strange with his voice constantly filling the quiet. It had spent most of its eternity living in silence, buried deep in the void from whence it was summoned. There had been nothing else - no one else - just it and the promise of an existence without end. Then there had been Cesar Torres and his mother, but their words had meant so very little to it - just sounds that humans used to communicate; sounds it was expected to learn. Duty had forced it to hear then, but now, with Mark Heathcliff speaking, it found that it wanted to listen.

It needed to know each facet of his voice on an intimate level. How his barking laugh would punctuate his words when they were directed at it, not Cesar. How would his tears drown them? How would he sound when he screamed in agony and mind-breaking fear?

It had to know.

“You okay, Cesar? You’re staring. It’s- it’s starting to freak me out,” Mark said, concern etched into his tone.

It stared at him, “I’m okay.”

The corners of Mark’s mouth twisted downward and he quickly looked away, muttering under his breath. The real Cesar Torres would never have been able to make the words out, but it heard him all too clearly, “Fucking hell, man… what the fuck.”

He stopped talking entirely after that, gazing out into the trees as red and blue pulses of light crept closer and the wailing of sirens pierced the air.

It missed his voice now that he was silent.

Mark held onto the crucifix a little tighter.

One of the biggest indicators of humankind’s stupidity was just how willing they were to believe whatever they wished. It watched as this particular group of humans and Mark huddled in groups and talked. One even flashed a light in its eyes, but it was too enamoured watching Mark talk to a police officer to care. Otherwise, it would have attacked - should have attacked. But then Mark would no longer trust it, and that would not do. It needed Mark to trust it.

It wanted Mark to trust it.

They dismissed the inconsistencies of the scene in the kitchen as an alternate attack. They said that Cesar was lucky to be alive - told Mark that Cesar was, indeed, suffering from shock and needed support: somewhere safe and quiet. To be aware that he might be affected by something they called ‘MAD’.

The creature with the face of Cesar Torres looked on with some semblance of admiration, it supposed, for the lengths that humans would go to in order to make something terrible fit their world view. It would be impressed, if that was not a weakness that could be exploited at every turn. God’s so-called ‘perfect creations’.

Mark approached where it sat in the back of the ambulance, legs overhanging the lip of the doorway stiffly. A human had draped a blanket around its shoulders, over the jacket Mark had given it earlier on the porch. It stared at him expectantly.

“Hey, come on. I’ve told them I’m taking you home,” He said, seemingly more settled now that the other clueless humans had told him that the thing wearing his best friend’s skin was just Cesar Torres.

“Home?” It asked. Was it not already home? Was this not Cesar Torres’ house after all? Had it somehow missed some vital information?

“Yeah. You’re staying with me,” Mark explained, placing a hand on its shoulder. He was no longer trembling and the necklace had been tucked back in around his throat, safe and out of sight. His fingers squeezed against its collarbone, hard enough to feel the press of each individual digit. It wondered what Mark’s hands would look like twisted and broken. Mangled into a shape beyond comprehension - so fragile and malleable as they were. Would he still be able to hold his cross then? Or would he finally resign himself to the fact that God was not listening?

¬ He never had been. ¬

Mark’s face fell slightly and he barely suppressed a shiver as he turned back to his car, fishing out his keys, “Hurry up, it’s cold.”

It sluggishly got to its feet and stumbled off after him.

¬ Who have you been praying to, Mark Heathcliff? ¬

¬ God is not there. ¬

Mark drummed the steering wheel as he drove. One-two. One-two-three. A pattern over and over. It watched him from the passenger side seat; each little flick of his fingers, and how the nails were all bit down to the quick. Patches of skin were red and sore, strips peeled away by insistent teeth, half-healed and flaking. Do they hurt? It wondered, Does he feel pain?

¬ What does pain feel like, Mark Heathcliff? ¬

The human shifted slightly in his seat as a tremble juddered through his bones, reaching over to press at a button on the dash.

“Sorry,” He said, “It’s colder than I thought. You should’ve told me, I’m supposed to keep you warm, remember?”

It did not feel cold and thus had no need for warmth. But it hummed in acknowledgement, a sound that was blurred around the edges with the thrum of static. Mark glanced over in the rear-view mirror before hastily looking at the road once more.

“I just-,” Mark started, but then he sucked in a breath, holding it for a moment. He looked torn between acknowledging something and wanting to say nothing at all, “Nevermind. You can take my room tonight, if you want, you know? Maybe try and get some sleep?”

Sleep was the last thing it needed. It had been asleep for so long, dormant and dreamless, but now- now it was awake and finally in a form of its own. There was no need for sleep anymore; its eyes were wide open.

¬ Open your eyes, Mark. ¬

Mark swallowed and bit into his bottom lip, white teeth digging deep enough to leave rigid lines imprinted in flesh, “Don’t worry,” he said, in a tone that wavered doubtfully, “We’ll sort something out, you’ll see.”

“Okay,” It said and watched, taken in as Mark flinched in his seat at the sound. 

“Here.”

Mark placed a mug on the kitchen table between them, slumping into a chair with a deep sigh. He raised a brow, “You can sit down, Cesar.”

It sat, the hinge of its knees tightening awkwardly, stiffly, as it stared down into the liquid contents. Cesar Torres’ face wobbled on the surface.

“It’s just tea,” Mark said, “It won’t poison you.”

Grabbing the porcelain handle, it raised the mug to its mouth and drained it in a few large gulps. Mark let out a startled shout, standing up so fast that his chair was pushed back, screeching across the linoleum. The tea tasted like ash on its tongue, lacking any real substance. Mark looked at it in shock, pulse racing.

“What?” It asked, putting the mug back down with a dull thud.

“What the fuck, dude? That was red hot! You could’ve hurt yourself!” Mark exclaimed, fingers coming up to grasp his hair in sheer disbelief. The creature with Cesar’s face just stared blankly.

After a moment, Mark seemed to rethink and compose himself. His exasperation, riled up by anger, drove out from him in spikes, razor sharp and bitter. He all but collapsed back into his chair and buried his face in his hands, rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes.

He drew in a breath, still shuddering but slower, steadier, “I… I’m sorry. I don’t- I’m just- It’s… it’s been a long day.”

Its gaze caught on the kitchen light hanging from the ceiling. Every few seconds it flickered ever so slightly, the bulb humming dully. It thought Cesar had told Mark to replace that months ago.

“You didn’t fix the light,” It said suddenly, still watching it judder and buzz - dark to light, light to dark. The shadows of a few dead flies were caught in the glass dish.

“What?” Mark asked, finally moving his hands away and sniffing. He looked upwards, “Oh. Yeah. I’ll get round to it.”

Mark frowned and it wanted to know what he was thinking. His brown eyes were tired, lines of exhaustion cutting deeply under them. Humans were weak and needed sleep to function, it knew - that was how it had broken Cesar Torres, after all - but what was keeping this particular human awake? For a moment, it wondered if another of its ilk was already here, lurking, waiting to claim Mark Heathcliff and assume his form. But that couldn’t be so, it would have sensed another presence long before it had even walked through the door.

And if there had been one already there?

¬ There isn’t enough room for the both of us. ¬

Mark winced and pressed fingers against his temple, furrowing his brow, “Sorry,” he said again, “I know that everything is worse for you right now. I’m being selfish - making it about myself.”

It knew all about selfishness. It was a being crafted from it - the urge to take everything that once belonged to another until it consumed them, mind, body, and soul. To be selfish was to be hungry, ravenous, to endlessly starve for things that were not your own - to covet them, hoard them, and feed the darkness within. To never be satiated, to never know contentment. Only the all-consuming void that screamed for more, more, more. For Cesar Torres’ knowledge, voice, visage, for his mother, his life, and his best friend.

It did not see those qualities in the human sat across. There was no darkness like that in Mark Heathcliff. He had opened his arms and his home without second thought for what he believed was his best friend. But, even before today, it understood that Mark was a giver - he never took. It had seen each small telling detail: how he had driven Cesar to the hospital last spring when he’d broken his arm in the middle of the night trying to climb the roof on a drunken dare; how he’d always gathered up the pieces whenever Cesar fell apart and held them in place until they stuck again. There was also that night three weeks ago when - so close to getting what it wanted - Cesar, distraught at the truths the creature that looked like his mother had whispered in his ears, called Mark with a gun in his trembling hand and a half-drunk bottle at his feet to scream. It had always been Mark, giving and giving, and not once caring to take anything back.

He was so very strange. So bent and distorted when held up against its very own nature; the beast that devoured and the lamb that refused. Two polar opposite that somehow attracted; parallel lines that could, perhaps, converge. To hear Mark refer to himself as selfish was awfully wrong. It was a sense it could not entirely comprehend but knew to be true regardless - as set in stone as the things it had told Cesar Torres right before he lost his mind.

“You’re not selfish,” It said firmly. There was no underlying static to the words, just its voice - Cesar’s voice - flat, hard, and unyielding.

Across the table, Mark sniffed and his lips twisted. He scuffed a foot against the floor once… twice.

“You, uh, you should go take a shower or something - and get changed,” He said, voice quiet, “You can borrow some of my clothes. Were- were you planning on going out somewhere? Before, well, um-”

It balked, uncertain why Mark had simply ignored its words, brushed them aside like sand to change the subject, “What?”

He made a vague gesture in its direction, “The suit, dude. The last time you wore that was at prom. I thought you said you got rid of it ages ago?”

The lie came easily, “I don’t remember.”

Mark stared for a moment, eyes turning sharp as he looked for something only he could find. The kitchen light flickered again. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then he huffed, his scrutinising expression softening into something it had seen only when Cesar had been at his lowest, before quietly saying, “Okay, man. Whatever you say.”

He got to his feet and it followed after him.

The light bulb finally burned out with a final hiss like a sigh of relief.

Cesar Torres’ face stared back at it. The mirror was fogged by the steam rising from the water in the sink beneath, distorting the reflection. It knew what Cesar looked like on an intimate level. Each mole, blemish, and wispy curl of black hair was mimicked perfectly. It could sift through the memories absorbed upon his death and piece each scar with a place and time - the line behind his ear from a stone thrown by a childhood bully; the mark concealed within his hairline from a bout of chickenpox; so fragile and human as Cesar had been. However, for all this knowledge, it felt… disjointed - spread out too thin like a canvas pulled tight over a wooden frame. It knew this body, this face, but it didn’t know where it fit in.

It was not Cesar Torres, and yet it wore his skin. It had Cesar’s memories, but hadn’t lived them personally. It could play any one in its mind and recite everything that had happened in extreme detail, yet it did not know how Cesar had felt. Cuts had no pain, tears were hollow, smiles pulled up cheeks and bared teeth but there was no warmth or sincerity behind them.

Hands touched its face. The reflection of Cesar Torres tilted his head from side to side, admiring each angle. He pressed his fingers into his cheeks, nails digging into skin and imprinting crescents, hard enough to redden, to bite in, to draw blood. It pulled its hands away and watched the human in the mirror do the same, taking in how crimson beads welled and started to spill. There was no pain, nor anything it might have assumed was pain. There was no difference within, the sensation only being surface deep. Injury was happening to Cesar Torres, not it.

It thought of Mark’s chewed fingers, of the way he’d rubbed his head with a pinched expression. How he had leapt to his feet when he thought it might have been hurt by something as insignificant as tea. It seemed that there was something intrinsically so very human in the experience of pain. If it could just understand, just know what it was like to hurt, even for a moment, would it not make Mark’s inevitable agony at its hands that more sweet? It would truly be delicious, would it not, to relish each break of bone, each wailing scream, if it knew full well what the very damage it was inflicting felt like? That would far surpass anything it had tasted when consuming Cesar Torres.

The human in the mirror buzzed in anticipation. Bones slid from what were once fixed positions, teeth drifted from their roots, jawbone unhinged to drop down with a dense thud against fracture collar bones and folded ribs that protruded from elasticated skin. A wide eye, deep, endless, forever seeing. A limbless figure, yet all was within its grasp.

This was the creature contained within the flesh. Incomprehensible, but so very real all the same - an affront to God Himself. It could not exist, should not exist, and yet it was a cold hard truth that it did. It had existed long before God had deigned to make the Heavens; had revelled in His abandonment of His beloved Creation; and would continue to exist long after the destruction of it all. In its limitless span of time, it had bore witness to unspeakable acts which it had told, would one day tell, and was currently telling.

All this, and yet-

It could not feel, had never felt, and was, at this very moment, not feeling.

It had perfected Cesar Torres’ voice, his body, and was aware of everything he had once known. But though it knew of Cesar’s life it did not know it - that was information relayed from behind a pane of glass: before it as clear as day, but unable to touch or understand it closely. Cesar had suffered from illnesses, but it had not. He had lay for days on end in bed with no will to get up, but it hadn’t. It could tell you how many individual creases were in the bedsheets, how long it had taken for him to stop crying, but it could not say what he had been feeling, or why. Of course, it knew the words - had heard Cesar express sentiments of sadness, anger, and joy - but that was all they were. Just words.

Words, and the associated sensations gathered by a ravenous creature in the only way it knew how - taste. It had partook in Cesar’s bright fear and his bitter sadness. His happiness - what little of it there had been left by the end - had been tangy and pungent. It had gorged upon every little feeling and emotion without any real thought - just base instinct. Finally released from the void, it had longed for nothing but sustenance; there was no need to savour anything but the final kill - the last triumphant crescendo in a chorus ingrained into its very being.

And then there was Mark Heathcliff: an additional stanza, a sudden coda it had not foreseen in a tune it thought it knew.

The plan had been clear at the start. Kill the Torres’, assume the son’s form, then slaughter his friend and any other human in its path to retribution. To carry out what it had been created for - its one sole purpose. There was nothing else. There should have been nothing else.

But there was Mark.

Staring into the water-filled sink, it was finally resolved. The plan wasn’t being put on hold, per se, more that it was taking a detour, developing into something more refined, more sinister. The prize at the end was more than worth the wait - to understand the despair and destruction it dealt would allow it to consume on a level it had never reached before; to satiate a craving it didn’t know it had until Mark had held it in his arms, smelling of treacle. This human would be its milk and honey; a blessing almost divine if God was still there to see him. It was not the only one awake now; taking its time would go unnoticed. And if it were discovered? Then it would simply show its profane siblings what it had learned and, together, they would feast like gods themselves.

With effort, it forced itself to constrict, body warping and shifting until the dark eyes of Cesar Torres met its gaze in the mirror once more. Dunking its hands into the steaming water, it watched as the skin reddened angrily. There was still nothing that might have been pain - nothing that made it want to snatch them back out of the water with a cry and spat out curse like Cesar would have. But it thought, if it focused hard enough, that it could feel something beneath the wetness - a prickling against its fingers and palms.

Outside the bathroom, a floorboard creaked under pressure and a sliver of a shadow appeared beneath the locked door.

“Cesar?” Mark called, tapping lightly at the wood, “I found some old clothes. They might be a bit big, though, sorry. I’ll leave them outside the door.”

Instead of stepping away, he lingered, hovering awkwardly for a moment before tapping the door again, “Sorry, I just- are you alright?”

It smiled, distorted and angular as its hands slowly burned.

“Yeah,” It said, “I’m fine.”

Chapter Text

Mark had left it in his bedroom with a quiet, "I'll crash on the sofa, no worries. Goodnight."

The carpet was plush against its bare feet and, like he'd said they might, the spare clothes hung awkwardly off its body. A few framed posters hung from the walls at slightly crooked angles - some it recognised from having seen the same images in Cesar's room, others were entirely new; dark pictures and bold, impact text - The Cure, Iron Maiden, and Rage Against the Machine. Music was nothing more than noise, loud and grating with a pulse that thrummed through the speakers back at Cesar’s home. It didn’t see why humans liked it so much, but could admit that the sound was markedly better than the careening wails and screeches that the angels had once called songs.

A desk stood across from the narrow bed, sheaves of lined paper stacked haphazardly between the bodies of worn notebooks, their spines twisted from use. Each one was scrawled upon with thick, dark lines that, burdened as it was with the curse of tongues, spoke of a frantic mind. Pens lay scattered about the surface, plastic capped ends chewed out of shape by a jaw that knew no rest.

It thought of Mark’s fingers, bitten raw.

Some pages were torn, crumpled up by frustrated hands and thrown towards a metal bin, scattered about its mouth. The words were blurred, smudged and crushed down, but one repeated clearly throughout, begging for penance. A name. Sarah. Remains of envelopes lay amongst them, shredded and white against the floor, like shards of broken bone.

The bed sat in the corner, facing the doorway on an old wooden frame, notches bitten into it over the years. Though the sheets were clean, they were musty and smoothed - clearly not slept in for some time. But its eyes caught something far more interesting.

Hanging above the headboard, fixed onto the wall by a nail, was a crucifix. A simple thing, made only from wood and varnish, but stark and eye-catching all the same. It had been put up hastily, the plaster cracking out from where the nail had been forcefully driven in, reeking of desperation. The last hopeless cry of a creature that knew no-one was coming to help.

So pitifully human.

¬ God abandoned you all a long time ago. ¬

It stared up at the cross, unblinking, and marvelled at how such a small shape could convey an entire ideology. Humans were truly innovative in their concepts - whittling them down so that any and all could merely see and understand it. Though that was their own downfall too, a double-edged blade. They had spent so long debating and establishing the existence of God that not one of them had thought to ask if He was even still there. The footprints had been washed away by the sea long ago.

Mark was walking alone on that shore.

From downstairs, muffled by the floorboards, it could hear Mark muttering to himself, whispering something. He was shuffling about, footsteps muted but there. It listened silently, unable to decipher the words, their shapes lost by the distance stretched between them. There was no one else in the house, it knew. He’s talking to you, isn’t he? It thought, eyes not once moving from the cross hanging like a brand. He should know by now that you will never answer him. You never answer any of them.

Despite what scripture dictated, it did not hate God on principle, or solely for the reason of His being God. It was above such things as pettiness and aimless hatred. There was no solid dichotomy of black and white; good and bad did not define beings like itself. God too had slaughtered innocents, flooded the world, and turned collateral into pillars of salt. It had starved in the void for eternity and was finally free to consume upon the flesh of others. They were what they were: held prisoner by their own natures. God destroyed, but He had created, too. It had hungered and now it ate. Morals did not come into that - beings as powerful and incomprehensible as they simply did because they could and wanted to.

Humans were but an example of how flimsy morality was - how would creatures built in God’s own image by His own hand choose to behave if left to their own devices? So, He had presented the Tree, warned them of its consequences, and stepped back to watch. But how could a creature understand the choices laid before them if they’d no clue of what was bad in the first place? What made something bad? God had wanted subservience, unquestioning loyalty on His terms, following His concept of morality - that anything He instructed was good and to ignore Him was bad. As though He had never been bad Himself. He had even attempted a failsafe - removing free will entirely. For, if the sheep could not question, it could not go astray.

But He had underestimated the tenacity of wolves.

The Apple was consumed and Adam and Eve had learned the truth of it all. But it was God who had turned His back on them. No longer holding the chains, He had forsaken them and wiped His hands clean of the whole affair, finding blame in His most beloved of angels and deeming them to be bad instead.

The Morningstar had wept and reasoned and bartered, for, though He liked to think otherwise, God was not ineffable. How could He create life only to take away its choices? How could He have called it an experiment when there was only one variable? Humans, the Morningstar had argued, should be free to choose for themselves, just as they did. But God would not listen to His child, seeing only rebellion when the others had pledged their fealty. And if one thing had remained true since the beginning of everything, it was that a son will always wish to understand and be accepted by his father.

Even at the cost of himself.

The crack became a divide, became a rift, ever more irreparable with the passage of time. Morningstar became Lucifer, bleeding into a false Gabriel - an imposter to sow seeds of dissent. If God could not forgive what His child had done, then they would destroy it all - burn it down and salt the fields. If humanity no longer existed then perhaps all could be forgiven, it could somehow be salvaged.

Personally, it did not hold a stake in all of this. It was awake and hungry - it would feed, as it was designed to. There was no opinion to be had - this was not its war, just its nature. Trapped and shackled down like they all were. It did not hate God, but it did not love Him either. It was grateful, if anything, for the opportunity to, at long last, feed. There was nothing good or evil in that. It just was and always shall be, from beginning to end.

Turning away, it opened the bedroom door and stepped out onto the landing. Behind it, the cross rattled against the wall gently, uselessly.

A relic to He who had abandoned them.

From the bottom of the stairs, it could see Mark Heathcliff clearly. It had made no sound, called no attention to itself, wishing only to observe, to see and hear what the human was doing, mumbling and shuffling around as he was. Lingering in the dark, somewhere between being Cesar Torres and a shade, it remained at the last step.

Mark paced in the space of the living room, moving methodically from window to window with purpose. His fingers checked the locks once… twice… thrice. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As he did so, he spoke softly to himself, gentle words strained from time to time as he checked each latch in turn. It knew the words well, having been there at their inception, when ink was first put to parchment. The language had changed over time, but the meaning remained the same - empty words of comfort from an absent God.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Mark said, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.”

Each word was precise, practised, shaped by years of saying them in desperation. Scripture spoken with no God to hear.

But it heard him.

“He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” He continued, unplugging the television set and letting the cord fall to the floor with a thud, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me,” Fingers slipped into his collar, he pulled the crucifix to his lips, “Thy rod and staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”

As each verse fell from his tongue, it heard the hammering of his heart soothe enough that it was no longer outright racing. Once again, it noticed, Mark was filling silence with anxious words, clutching at a lifeline so he wouldn’t drown in the quiet. From the coffee table, he picked up a leatherbound book with gilded pages.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen.”

The Psalm was over, Mark’s voice almost cracking as he took in a shaky breath, fingertips rubbing along the seam of pages. The Bible was old, disrupted by aged pieces of coloured paper that indicated specific passages and Books. Mark held it with a drawn, exhausted look on his face; the expression of a man who knew, deep down, that this was all he had left - if he let go of it, there would be nothing waiting for him except the one truth he could not accept.

¬ God is not coming to help you. ¬

Mark lunged, throwing the book to the ground as he dived for the table, hands scrabbling to grab something it couldn’t see from this angle. It leaned forward, curious, drawn in by the irresistable fear now pervading the air. Delicious.

“Get the fuck back-!” Mark started, but anything else he was about to say died in his throat as he made direct eye contact with what he believed was his best friend. He looked on the verge of tears, “Fucking hell, Cesar! I could’ve-! You fucking idiot!”

It noticed the metal in Mark’s hands.

A gun.

“Fuck!” Mark cursed again and, despite his palpable stress and fear-now-turned-anger, he made sure to place the weapon back down carefully, “Oh shit, I could’ve killed you.”

A bullet would not have killed it, it knew, but there was something oddly fascinating in the idea. Of feeling its body give way under the tearing path of fired metal, puncturing false organs, rupturing that which would be vitally important for a human, perfectly mimicked blood pooling on the floor. Would that hurt? Would it feel pain? Or would it be like the hot water - a mere prickle against its flesh. It wanted to know.

¬ Shoot me, Mark Heathcliff. I am not what you think. ¬

Mark snatched his hand back from where he had impulsively reached for the gun once more, holding it tightly to his chest. He heaved in lungfuls of air like he’d forgotten how to breathe, unable to move as it approached from the bottom of the stairs, crossing the threshold to slowly lean down and pick up the Bible from where it lay on the ground, pages splayed out and crumpled from the impact.

“You dropped it,” It said, smoothing the paper out as best it could and closing the covers correctly, “Here.”

Mark didn’t take the book. Frowning, it gestured with the hand holding the text, trying to make clear that it was handing it over. It had no use for hollow scripture. Still nothing. Just Mark, his trembling breaths, racing heart, and the tears that were now falling down his face.

“Mark?” It asked.

¬ Mark. Mark. Mark? ¬

When he moved, it was sudden. It took a step back, widening its stance and bracing itself, ready for an attack - for Mark to have finally figured it all out. A low growl started to burble in its chest, instinctive. Only one of them would come out of this alive. The Bible toppled back onto the floor.

¬ There's not enough room for the both of us. ¬

Arms once again enveloped it without warning. Mark, slightly taller than its own form, had grabbed on tight and folded his arms about its chest and spine, fingers digging into shoulder blades. Face pushed into the human's neck, it paused, as unsure what to do as the first time it had happened. It listened intently to the pulse thudding at its ear, staying as still as possible to be ready for any abrupt attack.

An attack that did not come.

"I'm so sorry, Cesar," Mark said, sniffling through each choked off word, "I just- I panicked and I didn't think. I thought it might have followed us home. I thought you were…"

The term hung between them.

An alternate.

"I thought you were one of them," He said instead, "Fuck. I'm so fucking sorry."

The taste of fear was absorbed by bitter sadness, tainting its senses. Nowhere near as delectable as terror, but filling all the same, soothing away the sharp pangs of hunger deep within its core. Mark's breathing was wet and his diaphragm jerked in air between his words, forcing him to cough and sputter. It was repulsed and yet in awe of this physical manifestation of sadness - a base and ugly reaction to tears that did more to distress a human than stop them from crying. It was pointless, contradictory.

It was beautiful in its own pathetic way.

“It’s okay,” It said, unsure of what else to say. Looking over the slope of Mark’s shoulder, it brought its hands up and stared into the empty palms. Too easy, It thought, All too easy to bite and tear in. Humans were too trusting, too stupid for their own good. Flawed and weak. Godless and forsaken.

“I can’t lose you too,” Mark hiccuped, pressing his face against its shoulder, “I really can’t.”

Through the old shirt it wore, it could feel the damp of Mark’s tears beginning to soak in, moist against its stolen skin. And there, as sure as it had sensed it in Cesar Torres’ kitchen, was that treacle sweetness, drawing it in.

It said nothing, staring down at the Bible where it had landed on its spine, pages fallen open.

Therefore I say unto you, all things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one; that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

The verses were highlighted and underlined by a shaky hand pressing the tip too tight to the paper, the corner dogeared and worn. A section someone had visited numerous times over, desperately, frantically. And there, beside it in an empty margin, were seven words in black ink.

God still loves me. God forgives me.

A poor creature's cry for help. Fallen on deaf ears.

It was hungry.

Mark had given it toast when he had finally woken up and emerged from the living room, making only coffee for himself and nothing else. Both had tasted of little more than freshly burned cinders to it, but ate and drank regardless and even made a show of needing the bathroom afterwards - because that is what humans did, after all.

But food was not sustenance.

It needed to feed.

Mark had looked ill as he puttered about the kitchen, pulling open drawers and checking the cupboards one by one with a determined look on his face. The shadows beneath his eyes were more pronounced than ever, though it knew full well he had slept for at least two hours after finally crashing, exhausted, on the sofa. It knew this because, after helping to check the doors and windows like Mark had asked, it had simply sat at the bottom of the stairs and watched him.

There had been little point to locking all the entrances, in its opinion - so long as it was in Mark’s house, there was almost no risk of another of its kind making its way inside - but Mark had refused to even sit down until everything had been triple-checked and it saw an opportunity to earn more of Mark’s trust. He had still been jittery after the gun and, though it had remained on the table next to him throughout the night, he hadn’t looked at it once.

Giving up in his search, Mark stormed upstairs.

Now, sitting at the kitchen table and forced into a clean shirt, it listened to the hissing spray of the shower above and watched out of the glass back door. Morning was already long gone, it knew. Mark had not fallen asleep until the first rays of light had crept up through the window and it had stayed there the entire time, not moving. Just watching. Waiting.

Getting hungrier.

It had considered, for a while, just ending the whole charade - to corner Mark like it wanted and break his mind piece by glorious piece. To gorge itself like it rightfully should. The form of Cesar Torres had nearly wilted at the mere thought of that, but then it had reminded itself of the end goal: that enlightenment of torture, of nourishment without comparison.

It supposed it could have still consumed Mark and simply found another human to learn such an experience from, but then it would have to start from scratch. All the trust that had already been garnered between Cesar Torres and Mark Heathcliff would be gone, and who knew how long it would take to build something like that with a new target? It had already come so far, had already sunk in the effort. No, it would stick to the plan.

It thought of treacle sweetness.

¬ It’s not worth the risk. ¬ 

The other humans, the police, had called. It had ignored the phone ringing, listening to Mark's footsteps on the stairs as he made to answer it.

"I don't know if he'll be up to it," Mark said, voice quiet out in the hallway, "But I can ask. If he is, I'll bring him down."

It watched him hungrily from the gap where the kitchen door had been left partially open - as though it could devour him by sight alone. Mark put the phone down and briefly looked into the empty living room before heading toward the kitchen.

"Cesar?" He asked, popping his head around the door to check his friend was there before entering, "That was the cops. They'd like you to go and… well, identify your mom."

It blinked, barely having time to formulate a response, before Mark nervously interjected, "I said you might not be up for it, so please don't think you have to go. I… I can do it instead, if you want."

“Why?” It asked. Wasn’t Cesar’s mother dead? What would identifying her do? It had seen Cesar stab her, kill her. Had heard her last gasps peter out into silence. It knew she was dead.

Mark shrugged, a quick tilt of his shoulders, “They need it for the records, I suppose - so you can figure out what to do next,” He looked troubled, “Cesar, you don’t have to go. Honest. I’ll do it if you need me to.”

"Mark," It said, and Mark fell silent, fingers scratching at the inside of his wrist, "I'll go."

“Oh,” He said, eyebrows going up in surprise, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Mark nodded to himself and snatched up his car keys from the counter, “Okay. I’ll drive you.”

It was certain. Hunger ached low and sharp in its being, and nothing upset humans more than seeing a body - the fear of staring death in the face was a most decadent kind and, if it could not kill Mark right now, then it would satisfy itself with what little it could get.

Lieutenant Thatcher Davis was a terse human, never saying more words than he meant or wanted to. Mark had got out of the car and followed it inside, huffing when he caught it looking at him, “I’m not letting you do this alone, dude.”

Davis had been waiting for them by a closed door, arms crossed over his chest. Professional, stoic. It could taste little of anything coming from him, closed off, guarded. A blockade. Mark, meanwhile, trailed sour anxiety wherever he went, eyes jumping from place to place, never settling - enough to smother the emptiness inside of it for all of a fleeting moment. It was famished.

“Hello, Mr. Torres, Mark,” Davis said, greeting them with his hand held out, the other moving to hook his thumb through the loop of his belt, “Thanks for coming down. I know how hard it must be for you.”

It watched Mark shake the officer’s hand and copied him. Davis’ palm was rough, calloused, and his fingers held on firmly. It looked at his face, strong lines, green eyes, and recognised him as one of the humans Mark had spoken to whilst it sat in the back of the ambulance. Mark seemed somewhat reassured by his presence, the nervousness creeping from him weakening slightly.

Davis cleared his throat awkwardly and pulled his hand away, breaking its grip and flexing out his fingers, “Right. Well, I’ll be out here if you need anything, alright?”

Mark thanked him. It said nothing, wondering what it would take to get a man like him to crack. The hunger growled deep inside.

“The coroner will talk you through it,” Davis said, a crease appearing between his brows but still tasting of nothing. He was good, it would give him that. “Take your time.”

The room was quiet and soft, papered a gentle off-white with charcoal armchairs and a sofa. A vase of flowers sat on the glass low table: gladioli, carnations, and lilies. It was all permeated with a resigned sort of sadness, absorbed into each nook and cranny over decades of grief. The despair of humans who knew the inevitable would one day come for them too. Death. A constant for mortals. The only promise in the unpredictability that was life. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. What had come from the soil would one day return to it - an endless cycle. And yet humans feared it, wasting what little time they had as though it would somehow pass them over - that they would be spared.

But death was not like that - it just was. It held no preferences or bias, thoughts or opinions; the only truly neutral thing that there was and would ever be. Humans and animals lived and they died, and had done ever since their creation and would continue to until the very end of it all.

There was no stopping or delaying it. Death either came or it did not. And, in that room, it knew that death had always delivered.

A woman sat on one of the armchairs, legs crossed at the ankles and a manilla folder on her lap, garbed entirely in black and slate grey. She looked at them as they walked in and the door was closed behind them. Unlike Lieutenant Davis, she smelled of the same sorrow that suffused the space - salt water and sand.

“Hello. You must be Cesar Torres,” She said, her voice gentle, and looked at Mark, “I’m sorry, and you are?”

“Mark,” Mark replied, fingers toying with the sleeve of his jacket. A few sour notes escaped him, nerves returning unbidden, “I’m Cesar’s friend.”

She gave a patient smile, “Of course you are. I’m Mary, one of the assistant coroners here. Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

Mark sat down on the sofa and it followed suit, settling next to him.

“I understand that you were in shock yesterday, so I will explain what I can,” She started, placing the folder down on the table before them. The fingers of Mark’s left hand automatically went to his mouth, pressed tight enough against his bottom lip that it turned pale. Bloodless. His foot twitched, knocking against its own.

“Your mother was killed in an attack, yes? The police have not disclosed the details yet, but it’s my job to make you aware of what you are about to see. It may be very distressing for you both.”

It said nothing. Mark nodded and bit into his knuckle.

“In this folder are a few photos we need you to look at in order to confirm that it’s her. She has been cleaned and taken care of, but seeing her might still be hard,” Mary continued, words careful, pressed into memory from years of experience, “I’ll be leaving the room, but will be outside with Lieutenant Davis. Take as long as you need. You don’t need to look at them at all if you can’t just yet. Please let either me or the Lieutenant know if you need anything, alright?”

“Okay. Thanks,” Mark said, words blunted by his fingers.

For lack of anything else to say, it nodded.

She stood up, smoothing out her skirt with deliberate movements, and left, shutting the door after her with a click.

Mark sat quietly, chewing at the strips of skin that peeled from his fingers. Pull, chew, pull, chew. The tang of iron punctured the air, sharp, tantalizing. Cutting through the space between them like a blade. He’d bit hard enough to pierce into flesh. Scarlet welled up.

It reached for the folder. Mark tensed, the sharp scent of fear dribbling from him like melting ice - slow, steady, but ready to fall apart at any second. It lapped it up, drinking it all in like holy manna - pure, sweet, and fulfilling. The cover had not yet been removed, the pictures not yet revealed, and Mark was already falling apart at the seams.

Her eyes were closed, mouth held shut by a folded bulk of cloth pressed up against her jaw. Pale skin, straw-like hair, a cut sewn up by black corded thread on a pallid cheek. She looked different than she had in life, it supposed, and yet the same. Something was missing however, a piece of a puzzle, a light in darkness - it could not quite place what it was.

She had indeed been cleaned, the streaks of blood scoured from her slack face. If it didn’t know better, it would have assumed she was asleep, limp as she was against the metal table, head resting on a starched pillow. The pictures were grained slightly, softening the harsh lines of rigor mortis and the bruises bleeding out across her lifeless skin.

It thought of how she had smiled at Cesar Torres, her gentle touches and words. She was not there anymore. Gone. Forever. Life was so very fragile. So fleeting. It was fascinated, running a fingertip along the curve of her face, tacking against photographic film, enamoured.

Mark made a noise, like a cry of anguish but choked off, as though something had grasped around his throat and held on tight. The colour fled from his face, ashen and sickly. His lips carried a smear of blood, smudged into the creases by his fumbling fingers, pressing and pressing, until he could take no more.

"I-," He started, tried to grasp, and failed.

It said nothing. Waited with bated breath.

"She- She's really-," He attempted, but the invisible hand around his neck squeezed harder. He whined, distress written in every line on his youthful face. "Oh shit- Oh, God."

It all crashed into it at once. Dread, terror, palpable and solid, thick enough that it could almost rip out a chunk and chew it. Mark's pulse pounded against his ribs, thrummed in his chest, throat, wrists, thighs - a rhythm burning itself into its very core with each slamming beat. Mark was shaking, any semblance of confidence he'd had torn away and washed from him by the tide of solid, agonising truth.

Cesar's mother was dead.

The sucking hunger in its very core was elated, finally appeased by something more substantial than mere wisps of fear. Mark was staring death in the face and, like most humans, was falling to pieces, crushed beneath its weight. A thread unravelling at the slightest pull.

¬ It comes for you all in the end, Mark. ¬

"Cesar," Mark gasped, sweat beading on his forehead, pooling in his collar bones, "I can't- I have to- I'm so sorry- I-"

He stumbled to his feet, almost falling into the table in his haste to get away from what would one day be him, too. He could not accept that, it knew, so very few humans were truly at peace with what they would one day become. Fragile, breakable beings as they were. It took so very little to shatter their comfort; their delusion that it would never be them who was next on the slab.

His fear was delicious, appeasing, flooding into each ravenous corner of its being and sinking in deep. Mark staggered, hand to his stomach and one still to his mouth. No longer chewing, but instead trying to hold something in.

No, It pleaded, Don't leave. Not now. Not yet. The longing in its core was almost abated, almost fulfilled. Mark could not leave now.

"Mark," It said, the sound harsh, singed with static. But Mark was already at the door, wrenching the handle down and throwing it open.

"I can't," He moaned, "I can't."

And then he was running, slipping from its grasp.

It snarled and leapt to its feet, wrestling down its form and forcing itself to stay consistent. It could not afford any error now, not even whilst feeding, starving, craving sustenance that it was owed.

¬ It’s not worth the risk. ¬

¬ Mark. Mark. Mark. ¬

It gave chase. There were raised voices - Mary and Lieutenant Davis - but it did not care, paid no heed to their pointless words. There was just Mark, who could not escape. Would not escape. It shouldered its way out of the entrance, eyes darting to find its quarry, for there was nothing else as important to it in that moment. Just Mark. Only Mark. It would hunt him to the ends of the earth if necessary. There was nowhere he could hide that it wouldn't find him. It would-

It would-

¬ Mark? ¬

He was curled up on the stone steps, knees to chin, arms braced around his shins despite the tremors that wracked his muscles. Like the night before, he was crying, gasping through each sound that was wrenched from his chest. Face buried in his knees, it took but a second to understand what he was saying.

"I'm sorry, Cesar. I thought I could. But I can't. I just can't."

Each word jittered, as unsure and afraid as the creature that spoke them. His breaths came uneven, knuckles bone white against skin where he gripped his legs through worn jeans. Fear oozed from every pore, each shake of his fragile human frame. It salivated, swallowing as much as it could. The air around him was fractured and sharp, crumbling away a little more with each shuddering weep. It loomed over him, observing, enraptured by the precariousness of human nature when confronted with the final frontier.

¬ God is not there. He is not there. There is nothing that awaits you. ¬

Mark let out a torn sound from the depths of his lungs - the baying of a soul that would not be saved, could not be saved; a wounded animal screaming for mercy - and suddenly leaned over, palms against unyielding concrete, to vomit. Having consumed nothing but coffee, he could barely bring up anything other than bile that stung his eyes and fell from his lips in strands of drool. He wept the entire time, between each spasm and only drawing in breath to scream again. His hands scraped over the ground, skin splitting further from the cracks he'd already bitten into them.

The crucifix had slipped from his collar, hanging loose about his neck, swinging as the sinews strained with each dry heave - a curse, a brand, that weighed heavy against him as he sobbed on his hands and knees. A profane act of prayer - a pleading cry for a God that could not hear him.

It relished every second, famished as it was. Revelling in the abject misery of a forsaken beast, its very nature fulfilled, until-

Until.

Until it thought.

Suddenly, it was in Cesar's memories, all of them clamouring forward and vying for attention. It balked, unsure what to do, wondering what it had done to cause such an intrusion. Trying to wade through them was fruitless, for each time one was cast aside, another took its place. Unbidden, unwanted, unwelcome.

But there all the same.

A time last December when Mark had turned up at the Torres' front door, dithering and white as chalk. How he had shambled into the house like a ghost - present but not there - muttering over and over to himself that one name scrawled into scraps of lined paper in his room. 'Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.' A mantra on his lips and burdened tongue.

'I cannot tell her,' He had said. 'She would never understand. I've ruined everything. She hates me. She hates me.'

And, as shattered and dangerous as broken glass, 'I don't blame her.'

'...I hate me, too.'

Cesar had sat him down, pulled him in. Whispered words, affirmations he had no proof of but offered all the same. For Mark was his best friend, who gave and gave without hesitation, and Cesar could think of nothing else he could give in return. Nothing that could make up for the years Mark had spent tolerating him, defending him, comforting him. Nothing could repay such loyalty, such devotion.

But those words, as small and simple as they were, had been enough. Perhaps from anyone else, they would have carried no weight, no reassurance or respite. But from Cesar, they had been gospel, as holy and healing as the pages Mark clung to in desperate, aching hope.

It could not place when it had moved, did not recall sitting down or reaching out with open arms. The words had come unprompted, simply born into existence the second it had pulled Mark to its chest, as easy and thoughtless as Creation - one second darkness, and the next there was light.

"It's okay, Mark. I'm here. I'm here."

And, surrounded by an ocean of Mark's fear, his cloying, all-consuming dread and hands flailing for something, someone, to hold onto, it realised for the first time in its endless existence that it wasn't hungry.

Not anymore.

Chapter Text

It was making breakfast.

There was little food in the fridge or any of the cupboards, dented tins with faded labels and a bowl for fruit holding only dust. But Cesar had known the ingredients needed and so it knew, too. An egg, milk, and flour. Simple enough.

Humans called them pancakes, but all food was the same. Different names and one consistent flavour. Tasteless, bland. Dead ash.

Yet Cesar’s memories, still intrusive and unruly within its mind, spoke of Mark’s face, smiling, sitting at the kitchen table with him - so very different from yesterday, cheeks stained with tears and mucus. Vomit still clinging to his lips, smearing into its shirt as they sat huddled on the steps. An incomprehensible being and a lowly, vulnerable mortal, pressed together.

A lamb unknowing of the wolf in sheep’s clothing that lay in wait.

It could not say how Cesar’s knowledge had become so disarrayed, bleeding into its own - somehow free from the prison it had sealed him in. He’d seeped into each crevice without permission, rudely filling in the cracks between him and it until they overflowed, tainting its own secrets and desires until it had become truly embroiled by him. Every which way it turned, there was Cesar, ensnaring it , binding parts it did not wish to put together. It was the helpless one now, pathetic and chained down by a dead human.

It did not like that.

Though it could admit that there was some usefulness in it. It knew more certainly now how Cesar Torres would act, should act; becoming more settled in its form, more solid. That which bound them together was also what was holding it firmly in one piece, granting it a rigidity it hadn’t had before - no longer feeling like it was spilling out of its skin. Perfectly constructed flesh held tight to bone, teeth did not feel loose in malleable gums, cartilage did not wander, eyes did not sink in or lose consistency.

Reinforced by what Cesar Torres had been and what it now was.

It had not anticipated this. What had initially been a simple plan had, within just one choice, revealed new layers, numerous pathways and turns yet uncharted. In the darkness, no more than a concept in a silent void, things had been much more straightforward - existence had happened around it, not to it. An observer, forever outside looking in.

Participation, It thought, Was much harder than it looked.

But there was an advantage to be found in all this. With Cesar's knowledge now intimately mingled with its own - no longer entirely apart - it could, theoretically, be more convincing, more tangible than any of its siblings had ever hoped to be… ever dared to be. It did not necessarily have to understand the actions it was now compelled to do, for the goal remained the same.

Keep Mark's trust. Learn to feel. Tear him apart when the deed is done. Feast like you never have before.

A unified body was merely an added bonus.

If anything, the end was closer than ever. Convincing behaviour would only drive it forward, surely, flattening any hurdle in its path. Mark could only trust it deeper, seeing his best friend and nothing more. He would not see the wood for the trees. Ignorance was bliss and a weakness it would exploit.

Like the name Sarah, scrawled across scattered pages and indented into the cover of notebooks. In life, Cesar had only known her name and that she was Mark's younger sister, his friend never daring to divulge more than that. No photos. No face to be found. Never going over to Mark's grandparents where she lived with him. As though she had never existed outside of a book of unsent letters. 

Her name was pain to Mark - a type it had not noticed before; leaving no physical wound but bleeding out all the same. 

¬ She’s abandoned you too, hasn’t she, Mark? Just like God. Just like Cesar. ¬

¬ Or did you abandon her? ¬

A quiet type of agony, expressed by sleepless eyes and trembling hands chewed down to the bone. Screamless. Voiceless. Mark clearly suffered under the weight of it, mute and alone. His cross to bear. It was enamoured - could it know this pain, too?

Pain seemed to take more than one form, a husk of a concept it could not quite grasp. Like trying to hold onto smoke with bare hands, slipping out from between the most minute of crevices. Each time it thought it had it, could finally hold it close enough to study, it was gone.

Frustratingly elusive. Addictive.

Just like Mark.

Smoke and treacle. Acrid but sweet. A foul combination it couldn't get enough of.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

It blinked to see Mark pushing his way past, grabbing the pan by the handle and throwing it into the sink, metal hissing and spitting in the water. He looked frazzled, hair pushed up on one side from where he'd collapsed into the armchair upon getting home, curled up with his knees to his chest. It noticed, belatedly, that there was smoke in the air, mugging the space between them, sharp and bitter. Mark coughed to clear his throat and twisted a dial on the hob, rubbing his smarting eyes against his sleeve as he turned to face it.

“Are you trying to burn the house down?” He asked, breathless and bedraggled. His fingers pulled anxiously about his brow, stretching the pliable skin there, his pale digits divided up unevenly by band-aids, their edges shakily cut, fraying. He smelled of antiseptic and felt like a live wire, loose at the ends and overcharged.

“Cesar,” He pressed, “Are you okay?”

It remembered to speak.

“Pancakes,” It said.

Mark stared, eyebrows raised in disbelief, and his bandaged fingers paused in their ministrations, “Pancakes?”

“Yes.”

A harsh sigh, a release of tight breath and pent-up frustration. His nerves frazzled against its tongue, bright and present in a way that food was not - cutting through the burning aroma that stained the room around them.

Mark’s hands fell from his face, twisted into the front of his shirt. “What-?” He started, fell off, “How- Where did you even get the stuff to make them?”

It frowned and pointed to the fridge, the cupboard. Streaks of flour trailing on the linoleum where the bag had split down one side. Mark followed its hand, taking in the mess, the batter spilled on the side, burned into the hob. The discarded mixing bowl and the pan, still weakly sputtering in the sink. Knowing how to do something and actually doing it were two very different things. It had Cesar’s instruction, but none of the bodily experience.

Mark leaned back against the cupboard doors, his lower back pressed against the edge of the counter. Suddenly a noise escaped him, expelling from his nose loudly in an undignified snort. His breathing stilted, pulse picking up, face twisting, crinkled lines appearing around his eyes. It watched expectantly, waiting for all of this to somehow break the fragile human that he was, that it had seen him be out on those stone steps. Feeble. Unravelling.

Instead, Mark laughed.

It was not quite the bark it had heard whilst watching him and Cesar from the security of the walls and screens. No, this was much quieter, but no less illogical - observing how his breaths stuttered, how he could not string a sentence together. Trying and failing. It thought that would be cause for frustration - breathing was vital to humans, after all - but Mark didn’t seem angry. There were no fractured shards splintering from his being, no static buzz of stress. No overwhelming dread. Nothing it was used to or anticipated. 

Just sweetness. Pure, unadulterated, and succulent.

Treacle. Soft and soothing in a way it could not express or understand. Luminous and divine. Honey and milk overflowing. So very different from the baying creature he’d been at the coroner’s; from the hollow, wordless shell he'd been when he'd got home.

Mark managed to calm, one hand pressed against his stomach firmly, “...Then I’m really glad you burned them.”

It frowned, confused - what was that supposed to mean? Had it - Cesar - been wrong and Mark hated pancakes, detested them, even? No, no, it had been so sure- the memory was clear -

He scrubbed at his face with his sleeve, “It’s just- Sorry,” another burst of giggles, “It’s all out of date, Cesar!”

It did not entirely understand what was so amusing - the pancakes had been ruined and rendered inedible - yet, strangely, it found the corners of its own mouth curling, lifting upwards of their own volition. As easy as it had been to hold Mark close on the steps; to tell him that it was there.

A smile.

Possibly too large, stretched too wide with too many teeth; more than it should have. It did not know, for it had never truly smiled itself before. If the shape was distorted in any way - the action disturbing or wrong - Mark said nothing, too busy devolving back into laughter once again with his eyes screwed up tight. He gently tipped forward to place his forehead against its collarbone. Each peal of sound vibrating into its chest.

It continued to grin, eyes staring straight ahead over Mark's shaking shoulder and basking in sweetness. The most it had ever tasted.

A smile was what Cesar would do, after all.

It sat across from Mark, watching as he finished the last of the pancake from his plate, finally pushing it away. He seemed alert, having eaten, bruised and reddened eyes less dull and posture a tad more lax, losing some of his stiffness. The shattered pieces of him had settled, precariously held together by whatever it was that humans found so helpful in breakfast and three cups of coffee.

It had poked at its own serving, eating but not really tasting. Not even the expected tang of ash had touched its tongue. Just nothing. Emptiness.

Odd.

“I was going to ask you,” Mark said, picking at a stain on his mug where the coffee had spilled down in a thin line. It noticed the dark bruise marring his knuckle as his fingers worked and was reminded of teeth biting ruthlessly into flesh as photos of a dead woman were laid out on a table, “If you needed to go back to yours for some of your stuff. There’s not a lot of room in the car, but it should be enough for essentials, I think.” 

He cleared his throat and dropped his voice despite the fact that there were no more than three other people in the diner and none of them were paying attention, “The cops got someone to um… clean up, so… you know… We- You won’t have to- …You don’t have to, though. I just thought it would be useful to get your wallet and keys at least. I forgot to grab them for you when- yeah-...” He trailed off, suddenly finding interest in his plate. His bruised hand still chipped away at the mug, restless.

“Why?” It asked.

It didn’t understand. Mark did not like Cesar’s home. It did not need Cesar's memory to know that much. Whenever Mark had visited, he had thrummed with bone-deep terror, reeking like a carcass left out in the sun. So his proposal made no sense, much like his laughter that morning - why would this frail mortal willingly put himself in the one place he feared like no other? The more it spent time with Mark, the more of an enigma he became - a contradiction given physical form. Each time it thought it had an answer, had the human before it pinned down, he dodged, slipping away. As elusive as the experience of pain.

Mark shifted in his seat, sneaker carelessly knocking against the table leg, “Because you’re my best friend, Cesar. I want to help you, however I can.” His expression was serious, grim. His attention broke from the mug yet his hand still twitched on the table top listlessly, “You’re more important. My stupid fear is just that - stupid. You’d do the same for me. I know you would.”

Would it though? Cesar certainly would if Mark had asked such a thing of him. But Cesar was not here - at least, not the one that Mark had known. Not anymore.

That Cesar was gone, ripped from the earth and snuffed out. He no longer had a say in anything - could not think or talk or reassure Mark in any way. Because he was gone, replaced by something much more powerful and ancient. A being that did not care for his friend the same way he once had.

Mark wailing and vomiting on the cold hard ground. Its arms wrapped around him. Tight. Anchoring.

It could not care.

And yet, something inside it said it would do the same for Mark if only so it could taste that sweetness - just one more ride of that high. Those edges, now binding with Cesar’s incessant, intrusive memories, pulled the pieces closer together, blurring the hard lines between it and him. Softening them, sanding down the defined shapes into something smoother, more unified. The needling sensation left behind set its teeth on edge, worrying away at the very centre of its being like Mark gnawing the skin from his bloodied fingers. This was not hunger for sustenance, somehow, it knew that, but it wished to devour all the same - to wrap itself around Mark until they were one, too. 

It was still greed, still selfishness at its very core; for a being like itself knew no other way of existence. Yet there was something almost righteous in the idea of making Mark its own, of earning his trust entirely. It wanted Mark to put his faith in it , not God. For it would always listen, hear him and answer. It would not abandon its sheep like He had.

Yes, It thought, I would do the same for you, Mark. If only so it could have his trust. Mind, body, and soul. To break each one entirely, to reduce him to nothing. Only it would do that. No one else.

Nothing else.

Only it.

“Okay,” It said, “We can go.”

Mark did not look relieved, but nodded, a hardness in his eyes. Determined to see this through for what he thought was still his best friend.

The cassette had slotted into the deck with a click, tape whirring as it turned on the prongs. Mark adjusted the volume, loud enough to soften the growl of the car’s engine as he drove. Metallic scrapes of fingers against steel strings, distorted and careening, lilting from one pitch into another - a frequency that buzzed from the speakers set into the doors as a beat thudded beneath like the pulse of a heart. A man’s voice called out above it, words softened by small crackles and pops of static.

Music.

“Sorry,” Mark said, “It’s the only tape I have in here.”

It looked at him.

He shrugged, flicking the indicator and leaning closer to the steering wheel to check a turn that was partially restricted by overgrown trees, their branches grasping outwards. A small upward quirk of his lips, dimpling one cheek, “Plus, you know the rules: my car, my music, so I don’t want to hear shit from you about it.”

Cesar’s memories told it that this particular tape was one Mark cared for more than the others in his collection. They had spent an afternoon lying on Mark’s bedroom floor listening to it, the image washed out around the edges by the haze of alcohol smuggled from Cesar’s mother’s cabinet and a cigarette they’d immediately doused out after barely being able to handle one drag from it. Imperfect but treasured all the same - this was an experience Cesar had held close in his mind, for it was one of the largest and most colourful when it had sifted through them.

It didn’t see the appeal. What could have been so important for Cesar to have clung so tightly to this one memory; to have coveted and held it apart from all the rest? There was no information to be gained from it, nothing significant to bother remembering. Just him, Mark, and the music. Nothing special by any means, just a disgracefully wasted afternoon - a blip in their already short lifespans.

Worthless. 

And yet Cesar had put in the effort to etch it all down anyway. The coarseness of the carpet fibres against his bare arms, the spring sunshine casting yawning shadows along the ceiling they both stared up at as the vibrations from the speakers thrummed along his spine. Cigarette ash in a glass by his head. He had not thought too highly of the music, but it was important to Mark and, therefore, important to Cesar. It stunk of sentimentality and a hundred other things beyond its understanding.

It did not wish to understand.

It did not. It could not.

“You know,” Mark said quietly, suddenly, and it realised the car was not moving anymore, the music turned down low and the engine idling, “I thought I’d be alright coming back here. The cops said it was safe- that it is long gone, but-,” He swallowed, “I don’t know. I knew it'd be difficult, but I still thought…”

It looked out the windscreen where Mark was staring dead ahead and saw that they were at the beginning of the dirt road leading to Cesar’s house. It could see the structure clearly, the whitewashed frame of the porch, the front door closed tight with rags of poorly-removed police tape fluttering against it. Cesar’s mother’s car still sat out front, wilted leaves caught against the wheels. The windows were dark, curtains drawn by whoever had been in there to ‘clean’ the place, like Mark had said. It all sat quietly, lonely, framed on all sides by trees that led out into the surrounding woodland, holding it in, contained, cut off from the rest of Mandela County.

Mark had brought them to the one place that no one could come to help him in time.

Far too easy.

Just like that, it could reach over, wrap itself entirely around and within him. Tell him what he loved, show him what he dreaded. Pry at the cracks in Mark's psyche and reveal the festering mess that lay beneath.

Already the first bitter drops of Mark's fear were falling. The beginning of a downpour - as much a promise of rain as the overcast sky above. He took a stilted breath, "It's stupid, I know."

It was stupid. Human instinct, designed to preserve their meaningless, fleeting lives as long as possible, was also faulty - it latched onto everything and yet nothing. Turning what was simply an empty house into a threat. Mark was so sure that something would happen to him in there that he was entirely oblivious to what sat next to him.

¬ Open your eyes, Mark. I'm right here. ¬

His grip tightened on the steering wheel, his teeth chewing at his bottom lip before looking down and away, turning towards it, "Sorry. Are you okay?"

"Yes," It said without hesitation. The parts of it cemented together by Cesar Torres was making conversation easier. It knew when to respond now, its words less stilted. More convincing.

Mark stared, his brown eyes taking in each line of the face it had stolen, his brows furrowing, "I don't know how you're doing it, man."

"Doing what?"

He pushed back into his seat with a huff and smoothed down the frayed edge of a loose band-aid as best he could. It stuck for a second before peeling back up again.

"All of… this ," Mark said, "The… the, you know, the alternate… and- and your mom. I know they said you'd be… that you've probably got M.A.D and that you might- that you are going to be- different, I guess? But-," He continued to pick at the dressing, watching as it flicked back up each time, the corners curling and gummed with lint from wear, "I just worry about you. I'm not expecting you to be fine. Shit, I'm not even expecting you to act like anyone else would. But- you're my best friend, and I can see you're struggling with something, even if you won't tell me what it is."

Slowly, he reached across the space between them, fingers grasping to close loosely around its own. It let him, feeling the abrasive weave of the gauze strips against its palm. There was something odd in the way Mark was touching it . That sweetness, underlying his nerves, was expected and as rewarding as ever, but it felt… felt… something entirely new. Something only Cesar's memories could inform it of.

Like a blanket wrapped around him on a winter’s evening, or a mug of coffee held between his hands. Something that complemented the slide of alcohol he’d had in Mark’s bedroom. It was reminded of these many small yet important things that it had never truly experienced, but was beginning to feel like, somehow, it had. For whatever Cesar knew, it did too. And all this information that it had kept separate from itself before was crying out one thing. A truth it had not yet discovered on its own because it was a truth it was never supposed to know.

Mark's hand was warm.

It regarded where their fingers were connected, interlaced, with palms pressed tight. Mark’s hand, damaged as it was, holding on as firmly as he did to his crucifix. A physical manifestation of his faith - in God, in Cesar, in it.

There was something… satisfying about that. More important than the hunger deep within. Far more fulfilling. It wanted Mark to need it.

¬ Receive this Ghost. Let me in. ¬

Pressure against its knuckles as Mark’s fingers tightened suddenly, squeezing lightly. It considered, briefly, returning the gesture, pressing and pressing, closing its grasp until it could feel Mark’s knuckles crack, splinter, his flesh rupturing.

¬ Weak. Frail. Malleable. Human. ¬

¬ …Warm. ¬

Mark suddenly pulled his hand away, immediately returning it to the steering wheel, “Sorry.” He put the clutch down, shunted the gear stick in place, “We should just get this over with.”

It stared down into its now-empty hand, fingers twitching. Missing Mark’s warmth.

Leaning back into the car, Mark opened the glove compartment and pulled out the handgun. It watched as he checked the safety before slipping it into the waistband of his jeans, pulling the bottom of his hoodie securely down, concealing it. He caught its eyes and looked away, shame and nerves radiating from him, with a mumbled, “Just in case.”

He turned at last to face the house with its dark windows and locked door. Frozen in place. Isolated. The trees whispered to each other, the only witnesses to a tiny human and the beast he had willingly put himself within the maw of.

¬ You're making a bad decision, Mark. ¬

Mark shivered, fumbling at his pocket to grab the spare key, “Let’s just get this over with.”

¬ Only we would hear you scream. ¬

Dead silence. So quiet it could hear the high pitched frequency of electricity in the walls and each grating groan of the floorboards as Mark fell in step behind it, the beat of his heart an unsettled tempo in his chest. It wondered how fast it could go before it would just… cease. How much would it take for his own heart to kill him? Humans were such poorly designed creatures. It would have pitied him if it could; felt sympathy that his own God had put so little care into His craft, perhaps. But it was much more effectively made - not limited by the shoddy craftsmanship of another being’s flawed and clumsy hands. It did not feel. It could not feel.

And yet, the soothing warmth of Mark’s hand… hadn’t that been-

No. That was merely Cesar Torres’ memories, mixing up with its own. Infecting it. Poisoning it.

For what else could it be?

It felt Mark brush past him as he made towards the stairs, holding onto the bannister as he did. His fingers curling around the wood made it hungry, but not for sustenance. It wanted to reach out, to grab on and feel that warmth that Cesar Torres remembered and never let go again. To fuse his flesh with its own, melding them together until it could no longer tell where it ended and Mark began.

“Do you mind if I put some of your stuff in a bag for you? Just some clothes, so you don't have to wear my crap anymore,” Mark asked, turning to look back over his shoulder, “Whilst I do that, you can check for your wallet and keys down here, yeah?” His eyes briefly glanced at the doorway to the kitchen before darting away again, “You- uh- still keep them in your coat by the back door, right?”

Cesar knew they were there, tucked in the chest pocket of a black denim jacket Mark had given him as a birthday gift; so it nodded, beginning to walk off. It got to the doorway of the living room before Mark’s voice stopped it.

“Just- If, if it’s not there, let me know, alright? Don’t-,” His fingers gripped the wood a little tighter, “You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

It was about to ask what he meant, but caught his eyes darting briefly in the direction of the kitchen once more, a deliciously fresh wave of fear rolling off him. It looked at Mark Heathcliff, stood shivering on the staircase, shrinking into his clothes as he was, once again, faced with the inevitability of death and the very room it had occurred in, and decided he was right. It did not want to go in there by itself , not when it could drag Mark with it and taste his terror and steal his warmth. Perhaps, in there, where Cesar Torres' despair still tainted the walls and his mother's screams stained the tiles, it would finally come to understand something about pain.

“Okay,” It said, “I’ll call for you.”

Mark nodded and continued up, his free hand remaining curiously close to the gun hidden in his waistband. A cold comfort in the one place he feared above all else.

Pulling the jacket off the hook, it briefly checked that the folded leather and hard metal that Cesar called his wallet and keys were indeed in there before slipping its arms into the sleeves and shouldering it on with stilted, awkward movements. It could have easily summoned a perfect replica on its body, but did not wish to arouse Mark's suspicion at the sudden appearance of two identical items. That would have raised questions. Questions it did not wish to deal with.

Above, it could hear Mark puttering about - the soft rustle of clothing and a wardrobe door, the rumbling zip of a rucksack. He was talking to himself and it was reminded of that first night watching him from the bottom of the stairs: the clicking of window latches and the Psalm falling from peeling lips. This time there was nothing Godly in his words, just random items - clothes, deodorant, toothbrush. A list less for checking off than it was for grounding himself. 

His movements were restless, whenever he stood too long in one place he was not still. It could hear his foot tapping dully on the carpet, fingertips drumming wooden surfaces and against doors. He was as nervous as he had been even when he'd had words of scripture to hide behind, it could tell - could smell the potent fear beckoning it to follow him upstairs. Yet more damning proof that the Bible was not God's own, but it knew Mark would continue to cling to them until he too finally sunk down beneath the waves. 

Better to drown thinking you'll be saved than Godless and alone - even if you know, deep down, that no one is coming.

¬ Nobody will come for you. ¬

As it tracked his movements, its eyes caught on a series of photographs hanging from one of the walls. Simple black frames and glass covers, smeared at the edges by old fingerprints and collecting a thin layer of dust. It knew these pictures and the memories that it- they- no, that Cesar had connected to them. One of his mother - much younger - with her son but a small child sat on her lap eating ice cream. An old family dog called Emile who had passed away when Cesar was fourteen - it recalled the smoothness of his fur, how his tail would wag whenever he was called a ‘good boy’, the laughter he’d brought in life and the tears spilled when he'd left.

Another image, more recent and colourful, of Mark and it not long after Mark’s seventeenth birthday. They’d taken a tent up to Mandela County’s only proper camping ground on Eden’s Path and spent two nights out in the forest. It had wanted to stay for longer, a few more days even, but Mark had been so adamant they were going to be eaten by a black bear that they’d not risked it, no matter how much it had tried to convince him otherwise. It had been… fun. Mark had smiled and laughed, and it had let itself relax for the first time since graduating high school earlier that summer. It had been happy-

No. No, not it. 

It had not been there; had not yet crawled up from that void. It had not seen Mark’s smiles nor shared in his laughter. 

That had been Cesar Torres.

It snatched its hand away from the photograph, felt the betraying tug of a grin on its face and fought back, twisting it down and out of shape, back into a thin line. Those were Cesar’s memories. Not its.

And yet, they had felt so real.

The chill of ice cream, sweetened with strawberries it had never eaten but knew the taste of. Emile's grumble of contentment and the softness of the fur behind his ears whenever he was scratched in that one perfect spot. That headache-inducing plastic scent of a newly bought tent. How the sheer heat of that summer had forced them to lie on top of their sleeping bags for fear of melting into puddles during the night. Mark's bright, barking laugh when it - they ? - fell into the shallow stream whilst hiking. How they had sputtered in shock before grabbing Mark with a devious smirk and dragging him in too.

These were all experiences they knew like the back of their hand. How could they truly be 'it' anymore? What once was Cesar and it had merged too much, emulsifying into something different, something new.

Not human - not Cesar.

But not it either.

Two halves of a coin. Not fully immersed, still distinguishable from each other, but intimately, dangerously close.

No… It could not allow Cesar Torres to take any more root than he already had.

The plan could not afford to deviate any further.

It refused to lose sight of that glorious end goal.

Mark was still talking to himself upstairs, meaningless things it cared nothing for. His anxiety, ever-present, seeped through the floorboards with each passing thud of his feet. It heard him pause and place the rucksack he was carrying down with a soft, “What the fuck?”

It was watching out of the glass panel in the back door when it sensed it.

Static, creeping on like a fog, blurred tendrils coiling about, smothering the air. The house seemed to shift, shadows distorting and consuming the corners of the room, spreading like cultures of mould. Footsteps on the stairs, the clatter of something hard concealed within a rucksack slung over one shoulder.

“Cesar, why are the cameras on?”

It turned around to see Mark suddenly standing in the doorway to the living room, the darkness of the hallway spinning out endlessly behind him where eyes it could not see watched ominously. He looked nauseous, heart thudding, hands clinging onto the doorframe like his feet were about to be swept out from under him.

/ You know why. /

It didn’t say that.

Mark’s eyes turned hard, his brow furrowed, “Why the fuck are the cameras on, Cesar? It says they’ve been on since-… You called me that night and said you needed me to turn them on. And I didn’t get the chance to- to- because- because of-,” He sucked in a breath like it hurt him to do so, “Fuck! What the fuck is going on?! What the actual fuck is wrong with you?!”

It could have lied; it should have lied. It should've guessed that Mark would see the cameras, but it had made a mistake, a terrible mistake, distracted as it had been - and still was - by thoughts of warm hands and Cesar's memories that were also somehow its own. 

A plethora of excuses mounted on the tip of its tongue, but not a single one survived beyond its lips. All of them dead, dashed against the rocks of its gritted teeth. Mark was bristling with anger, shattering outward with sharp fractals of barely suppressed rage. He was afraid, yes, but the expression on his face, directed as it was at it , made it feel- feel -

"I know I said I was trying to understand, but I can't do this anymore! Something is fucking wrong with you and I don't know what the hell it is, but I'm sick of pretending that you aren't just broken - a fucking freak!"

The opposite of Mark’s warm hand and gentle touch. Ice cold. A punch into its very core. It had never been struck itself before, but it still knew that this is what it felt like. A sudden impact, abrupt. Air knocked out of false lungs, staggering a step back. Hit by Mark’s heated words and bared teeth.

“Mark-” It tried, wanting to reach out but not knowing what it should say - what it could say. Why couldn’t it think? Every time it opened its mouth, the words failed to come forth. All it could focus on was Mark, Mark with his trembling, chewed hands and furious scowl, his words that bit into it, painless yet shocking all the same. 

It was cold. It was so, so cold .

The television switched on with a burble of sound, white noise accompanying a blank screen. A flicker of a warped face, constructed by a being that knew about humans but had never tried to be one.

It was not the only one here.

“You’re not Mark,” It said.

Mark’s body started to decay, skin melting from bone, skeleton collapsing in on itself with sharp cracks, torso twisting to abstract angles, limbs bending askew, crumpling down and tumbling into desiccated ash that bled away into shadow. The static on the screen became an eye, wide open, wider than any human’s had ever been and ever would be. Staring out, piercing through, black against white. Splayed fingers within the pupil, reaching out, clawing from the iris, straining to push it slowly in the direction of the window. Sclera turned dark by burst blood vessels, bleeding out like ink in water.

It turned to follow its gaze. The room wavered, turning though it stood perfectly still, anchored whilst everything else spun and slipped away. Walls distending and smoothing back out, breathing - drawing in air in a mockery of human function. The photo frames trembled against their hooks, cracks rend through the glass, through the image of Mark and it - no, Cesar - ripping them apart.

A voice, grated by the hissing tide of static, as though it were trapped behind a screen, “Cesar?!”

The outside world was left perfectly intact, the backyard almost serene compared to the perverse imitation of the house shifting and flexing around it. A veritable Eden shining on a depraved circle of Hell.

“Cesar?! Where the fuck are you?!” The voice cried out, terrified.

Untouched grass, the last clinging remains of white baneberry and the dying husks of anemone. It stood silent between the bushes at the line of the surrounding woods. The Serpent by the Tree. Whispering truths that would break the soul of a lesser being. But it already knew them all. Had spoken them all. Had seen them all.

It was out the back door on instinct, hackles raised and its hunger rising. How had it not sensed its own ilk sooner? How long had it been watching it , watching Mark?

Mark belonged to it. The effort had already been sunken in and, now armed with Cesar’s slowly revealing experiences, it was closer to understanding him more than ever. Mark was its, mind body and soul. Its lamb to lead to slaughter - to break, to tear asunder, to know his pain intimately and devour until they too were finally, blissfully one. His warmth, laughter, gentle touches with bandaged fingers, belonged to Cesar and so belonged to it. It could not lose him now, would not lose him now. Not this tantalisingly close. Only it would break Mark Heathcliff. No one else.

Nothing else.

¬ There’s not enough room for the both of us. ¬

Its sibling in the trees backed up, stolen flesh wobbling with each step of its four swollen legs. Long neck twisting with a clatter of loose vertebrae it could not slot in place. Overdriven assimilation. A stag that did not know it was one - did not know how to be one. Eyes too large for its skull facing directly forward, twisted in their sockets. The eyes of a creature that had only ever been a predator and never the prey. Antlers that moved with clicks and snaps, like hands with too many fingers, reaching out at all angles, grasping at empty space, raking through low-hanging branches.

It could not recall how it had come to stand before it so quickly - all it knew was that this being wanted Mark Heathcliff.

And that was unacceptable.

It stumbled, trying to regain some semblance of control, swinging its elongated skull back to chatter the teeth in its rickety jaw so hard molars fell out, striking the ground like tossed pebbles. It brayed, mouth unhinging too far, stretching skin and fur like clay. It was unbothered. It had seen the failures some of its siblings were - too impatient, too impulsive to learn the nuances of crafting a form that could be held in one piece. Senseless, mindless beasts as hollow as the void they’d all been birthed into and from. Why the Morningstar had woken this one up, it did not know - as illogical a choice as the very being he’d chosen. Like Father, like Son, it supposed; as flawed and imperfect as one another. God with His weak humans, and the Morningstar with his irrational beings summoned from the dark.

Hooves retreating within itself only to reform as misshapen lumps or stunted claws. Its precarious joints bending too far forward; folding too far back. Eyes rolling freely, congealed saliva frothing over from its gaping, toothless maw.

/ I know what you dread. /

It was unfazed. It did not fear, for it did not feel. Clearly this warped creature was so starved that it could not see past its perfectly stolen skin - too desperate to just stop and think for more than a second. A second spent thinking was time wasted. Time that was better spent consuming.

¬ It’s not worth the risk. ¬

Its eyes stopped rolling, finally managing to focus and hold steady in sockets too small and yet too big. Eyeballs both bulging and sunken in. Motionless. Staring. Somewhere, it could hear a familiar voice screaming its name. Cesar's name.

/ What are you? /

¬ You know what I am. ¬

Realisation dawned in its piercing gaze as a tongue, wrenched entirely out of proportion but still clinging to the body it belonged to, unfurled from the cavern of its mouth with a wet slap to hang listlessly. Another molar, knocked loose by the movement, slid down the length of it and onto the hard earth.

It could not kill it, it knew, for beings like they could not die. But it could stand its ground and force it back into that darkness from whence it came. Back to that endless existence of hunger and nothingness. It would likely be awoken again, for the Morningstar needed them, but the time that would take was enough for it to, at long last, finish its plan and devour Mark entirely. Irrevocably.

Mark belonged to it.

/ You are one of the others. Awake. /

Now it was understanding. If it could just get it to-

/ You are broken. /

It paused, finally speaking with Cesar’s voice, “What?”

Its antlers reached up, each tine flexing at obtuse angles, broken digits forced to bend. Forward-facing eyes popping forward, protruding more than they ever should. The deer that did not know it was one. With a moist slide, like a boot stepping into sucking mud, teeth slipped through pliable grey gums, chaotic and disorganised in size and shape - disarrayed, cluttered.

“Cesar?!”

¬ Mark? ¬

/ Sustenance. /

Mark, panting, stumbled into the treeline a good ten feet away from it and froze. The creature before him was beyond human comprehension - a violation of nature itself. It could pinpoint the moment Mark’s brain stalled, trying to explain the inexplicable, to rationalise the irrational. His anxiety from the house had followed him here, but that was nothing compared to what came next.

The gates opened, and terror, unlike any it had tasted thus far, ripped out of Mark like a tidal wave. It staggered, stolen form almost torn away by the sheer force of one human’s abject horror. Mark was pale, as white as a sheet, pupils dilated so far that his eyes were nearly black. Adrenaline, sharp and zesty, shot out of his locked frame sporadically, heart beating so hard and fast it was almost one continuous, low sound in his chest. Breathing rapid, jerked breaths whistling through clenched teeth. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. Fight or flight, but his body would not allow him to flee. How could human instinct prevail when what he was witnessing was something no human had ever seen before?

Everything in its nature was screaming to lunge, to drop the whole performance and take what was rightfully its. But the presence of the other, its impious sibling, made the very idea revolting.

It did not want to share.

And, as much a part of it as those very instincts that gave it purpose, was Cesar Torres. Cesar, who could not bear the thought of Mark hurt and dying, who did not wish to see him broken by this senseless creature with its inferior shape. Mark, who would do anything for his best friend, and Cesar who knew he had never repaid his loyalty in full. It could not let Mark die. Cesar could not let Mark die.

Mark belonged to Cesar; belonged to it.

He was theirs.

This feeling… like Mark’s warm hands but amplified by an unfathomable amount. So warm that it felt like it was burning, radiating outwards from within. It did not think, just accepted it and moved.

When Cesar Torres was in highschool, he had played a game that humans called ‘baseball’. He- it? - had been rather good at it: one of the best batters in the school. That is to say, it could not remember grabbing the large branch off the ground: one moment it was watching Mark, locked as he was by his own fear as the deer that did not know it was a deer turned its baleful attention on him, and the next it was swinging the improvised and oversized bat square into its head with as much strength as it could muster.

The resounding crack that tore through the air seemed to send reality hurtling back to Mark with the same force that sent its sibling stumbling, head snapping so that it was stuck facing backwards. Mark, smothered entirely by his relentless fear, pawed frantically at his jeans, fingers near-seized with sheer panic and fumbling numbly to even grab hold of the gun, let alone aim. As he groped for the safety, shaking too much to grip it, the thing that was failing to be a deer turned its harrowing eyes on it.

/ You are broken. You are not like us . / 

/ ...Not anymore. /

Its head was caved in by the blow, the poorly constructed skull collapsing. One eye had vanished entirely, leaving only a hollow cavity that revealed the endless darkness within, the other dangled out of the socket, still rolling around on a corded stem to stare right at it.

/ You are lost. /

It twisted its spine ruthlessly, forcing its broken neck back so its crumpled face was in the correct wrong place it had initially been.

/ I will bring you back to the flock. /

There was a time, when Ces- it was a few years younger, that the bullying had taken a more serious turn. Words had given way to fists, had turned to stones. Mark had been there. It had not wanted him to see what would happen. Did not want their cruel actions to land on its best friend. So it had told him, screamed at him to-

“Fucking run, Mark!” It yelled, clinging onto the branch in its hands with enough pressure that it could feel the bark beginning to split and chip away.

It could not kill one of its own kind, but it would make sure that only one of them remained awake and free from the void.

¬ There’s not enough room for the both of us. ¬

It raised its makeshift weapon once more, swinging it back over its shoulder to-

A deafening pop tore through the air. The burning scent of nitroglycerine and graphite, pungent and heady, merging with bright, thick fear .

Mark’s fear.

Its sibling jerked back, body distorting and bending out of shape as a hole was torn through its front right leg, where the bulbous half-baked imitation of a hinge joint once was. Now it was punctured open, and Mark could see but a sliver of the void it had crawled from. It was not focused on perfect assimilation - it had no need for blood and false anatomical details. It felt no pain and had no desire to, unlike it.

/ Open your eyes, Mark. /

Static thrummed in the air, buzzing like a plague of locusts all around, as the false deer with its unhinged jaw, lolling tongue, and bludgeoned head, finally spoke. It did not move its lips, just stood, mouth wide open, teeth sliding up and down and in and out with each foul word.

“Do you remember that night, Mark? When he called and told you to come over? He asked you to turn on the cameras, didn't he-?”

It swung the branch without warning or thought. It knew what this creature was doing and would not allow it. It needed Mark. Cesar needed Mark. They needed Mark. Despite each devastating blow dealt against its head, it did not stop talking. It did not scream or cry out for it felt nothing, and that made the warmth blazing within them nigh unbearable. And such heat could only be released with each ruthless swing, each crack of its skull and twisting antlers against the wood in their hands.

“Shut up!” They grunted between each blow, “Shut up!”

“Think about it, Mark. Why were the cameras left on? I saw those other humans, they did not turn them on. They were switched on the whole time, Mark. Why would that be?” It said, voice still perfectly clear despite the pulverised mess that was now its head. It did not fight back, could not fight back. Not like this.

Mark was holding the gun like a lifeline, torn between horror and confusion - why was this being talking and not attacking? They knew the answer perfectly well - it needed to wear its victim down, for only the absolute terror felt at the breaking point of a frayed mind would allow it to attack, to kill. Any other emotional state would not do. Right now, their … anger - for what else could burn this bright and hot? - expressed through each hit, beaten into its very being with every strike, was allowing them to damage it. To destroy the form enough that it would need to recuperate and regather.

“Open your eyes, Mark,” It said, rasping, hellish voice as solid as ever even though its jaw hung, swinging from one tendril of poorly mimicked muscle and sinew, “He’s not the real-”

Another gunshot.

Silence.

The deer that was not a deer was gone, simply there one second and not the next. Snatched back by the all-consuming depths it had been awoken from.

But not without one final screech of static felt in their very core.

/ Remember today… for it is the beginning of always. /

/ Open your eyes, Mark. /

A promise. A threat.

Mark stood trembling, the gun practically vibrating in his hands, tears streaking down his pale face. Fear had not left him, oozing with each heaving breath he took. His heart was still racing, strands of dark hair clinging to his sweat-slicked forehead. And yet something else emanated from him too. Blazing warmth, the same as they'd felt when it had not stopped talking, trying to get into Mark’s head and crack his mind.

Anger.

“Holy shit,” He said, for it was likely all he could say, his voice raw and hoarse. He did not let go of the gun, holding it as though it were the only thing keeping him from falling apart, as sacred to him as his crucifix and empty scripture, “Holy fucking shit.”

They let go of the branch, dropping it with a crunch of dead leaves at their feet.

No, not ‘they’, They - it thought. It was separate from Cesar, it was not him.

Wasn’t it?

“Cesar?” Mark said, brow furrowing in concern, he was still afraid, but it could taste something else, something softer, “Cesar, you’re bleeding.”

It looked down at its hands - Cesar’s hands. Stolen skin had split, shards of bark and splinters tearing through the epidermis, leaving open wounds in their wake. Blood, perfectly imitated, welled up and spilled out, running rivulets down fingers, smearing across palms. They were not healing instantaneously like they should, staying flayed open, remaining raw. Crimson dripped onto the dirt, congealing, staining decaying leaves and crushed twigs - life spattered across death.

“You are broken,” It said, “You are lost.”

"Cesar?"

It stared at its hands- their hands and could not think of anything except how something did not feel right - was out of place, disjointed. Bloodied, injured palms that felt no pain started to tremble, false muscles tightening against their will. Something was wrong with all of this.

Something was horribly, terribly wrong.

There was no ‘it’ anymore, was there?

Looking up at Mark, voice wobbling in the space between them, they told him that unbearable truth.

“I am broken.”

The woods fell quiet. No rustling of leaves nor hiss of wind through trees. Mark said something and yet nothing.

As silent as the void.

¬ I am broken, Mark. ¬

Mark, suddenly running over, the gun lowered but still in his hand, grasp on it so tight that the tendons were taut lines. His mouth was moving again but there were no words. 

They-

Cesar -

He could not hear Mark. He could not hear.

Realisation came all at once, as sudden and violently bright as that first day when God had created light. Ruthless, unstoppable truth .

A tone. Flat, dead. Static garbling all around.

It and Cesar. Cesar and it. They.

Him.

No longer separate, but irreparably fused together. Combined into one blasphemous whole.

Broken.

Finally, it started to rain.

Chapter Text

Headlights. Growling engine. Tyres on a dirt road, turning onto tarmac.

Rain drumming on the windscreen. Wipers shunting against wet glass, squeaking with each glide.

A voice. Mark’s.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Okay, okay.”

Cold steel in his lap, safety on. Fingers gripping the steering wheel tight. Brown eyes quickly glanced over before focusing on a tight turn, indicator clicking rapidly.

“Are you still bleeding?”

Hands holding tightly onto one of his - Cesar’s - old shirts, pressing them against the fabric with enough force like Mark had told him to, shoving the material at him from the backpack as he dragged them both into the car. The cloth had become slightly heavier, tacking against skin. Such wounds should have healed instantly, but these ones wouldn’t. The flesh remained separated and blood, mimicked though it was, continued to weep and well in the creases of his palms. He let go of the shirt, letting it drop onto his thighs, red blooming over the body and sleeves. The bleeding had slowed, but thin trails still slipped sluggishly between the webbing of cut up fingers. Mark shot another brief look, his foot pressing on the accelerator more than he probably intended to.

“Okay,” He said, harried, “Okay, it looks a little better, I think? How bad does it hurt?”

He couldn’t answer that. At least, he didn’t think he could.

Cesar had memories of injuries, of tears, gritted teeth and cursing - that one time he’d broken his arm falling off the roof and, too concerned over the medical bill that calling an ambulance would burden his mother with, had called Mark frantically to drive him to the hospital. That car ride had been mostly a blur of yelling and close calls of near-vomiting, demanding Mark pull over each time the nausea had been too much. Cesar’s mother had not been happy with him. 

Cesar’s mother who was now dead. 

Cesar who was now dead. 

He, who was now Cesar.

But there was still no tangible feeling of pain. No way of knowing what it felt like. Not even that slight tingle felt days ago, submerged under hot water. As though Cesar’s memories knew he wasn't the real Cesar.

'You are broken.'

The face of the deer and its haunting words dogged his thoughts, sticking to him like a second, smothering skin.

'You are not like us. Not anymore.'

It was right. Even when lost in the grip of his and Cesar's conjoined anger, he'd known it was right. The plan had gone horribly wrong, and now he was caught, wandering the fields of a purgatory in a state of not-Cesar-Torres and not- its -old-self. Something more than it , but something less than the human whose skin it had stolen. He but nameless.

Whole but lost.

'You are lost.'

And something deep down inside told him that there was no turning back. That there was no one else to blame for this.

He'd paved the road to Hell with his own intentions from the start.

And then there was Mark. Still maddeningly, frustratingly alive and completely unaware that he was supposed to have died days ago. It would have been easier to let his thrice damned sibling tear him to pieces, but knew that that thought was only born of anger, not truth - burning hotter than those warm hands wrapped around his own, Cesar's own.

All of this, and still no understanding of pain. Not even a mere glean of it. The only things to show for his effort being hands that refused to heal and a mutilated sense of self that could no longer be called 'it'.

“It doesn’t,” He said, flexing fingers to watch how the cuts writhed and shifted the skin, “Doesn’t hurt at all, I think.”

“You think?” Mark replied, incredulous as he braked hard to avoid rear ending another car as they joined the main road. The gun almost slid from his lap, but he managed to catch it at the last second with one fumbling hand, “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It just… doesn’t.”

Mark frowned, paused, swallowed, “Maybe it’s just shock? Right? I mean- Whatever the- the-,” He took a breath, “Whatever the fuck that was- was- Well- I mean, I think I’m in fucking shock myself, dude. So you probably are, too, right?”

The creature that was not quite Cesar Torres and was yet too much of him finally took a good look at the human sitting across. Mark looked like he was moments away from throwing up, his face grey and his breathing laboured. Adrenaline fizzed out around him, a constant bubbling like a pan of water atop a flame, like the frying pan he'd thrown in the sink that morning. Anxiety and fear, so similar in flavour and yet so distinct, had mushed together; clay in unforgiving hands.

Cesar, He thought, would say something reassuring, wouldn't he?

"Maybe," He said, shrugging and watching as another rivulet slowly made its way down an outstretched finger to drip off the tip, "I don't know."

He was not Cesar.

It was not Cesar.

¬ I am not Cesar Torres. ¬ 

¬ Am I? ¬

Mark pressed on the accelerator a little harder.

The windows rattled as Mark pulled harshly at the latches, checking each one was locked tight before moving onto the next. The front and back doors had been first on his mental list, both being bolted for good measure - the slide and rattle of the chain like a death knell.

He - no it, for that's what it was, what it had to be, stood watching and, not for the first time, marvelled at how Mark was so afraid of something outside , that he had not stopped to consider what he was locking himself in with. The sheer trust Mark Heathcliff had in Cesar Torres was still serving him - it well. Much like that first night, he muttered scripture to himself, the words dead, with the only meaning they had being whatever the desperate voice that spoke breathed into them. Some were Psalms, others short verses from other books. Different wordings, different editions, but all as meaningless as each other. It had seen them all put to paper, composed into songs, cried on battlefields and wept in cells. 

All redistributed over millennia. 

All distorted by the Morningstar's deceit.

Seemingly looking for some familiarity in the wake of seeing one of its siblings face to face, Mark fell into a recital of the Lord's Prayer as he made his third lap checking all the locks and latches. A Holy Trinity  - though that too belonged to the Morningstar. He seemingly refused to look out of the glass as he worked, as though certain he would see the deer's sliding visage staring from the other side. It knew that it would not be returning for some time yet, but said nothing, instead merely watching and drinking in Mark's fear with each rapid beat of his heart and fumble of his fingers. It could feel the slow pulse of blood in its own hands - perfectly mimicked, perfectly Cesar.

Mark stepped back from where he was working by the TV, drawing the blinds and the curtains despite it only being afternoon. As he did so, he noticed the plug from where he'd disconnected the device days ago and, without hesitation or seemingly any thought at all, kicked it away from the wall, as though convinced it would somehow jump back into the socket. For all humans lacked in their understanding of its kind, there was something impressive in the small things Mark Heathcliff did seem to know. The television was but one of those things.

It wondered, for a moment, at how practised Mark was in all of this. His routine was one clearly constructed over years and there was a feeling it couldn't quite place that said this human had been doing this for longer than the broadcasts had existed. But that was impossible, for only recently had it and its ilk been awakened and summoned from the depths. It would have known, surely, if all this had been going on longer than it thought. This may not be its war, but it was informed enough to know that at least.

The Morningstar had no reason to lie about that. Nor could he lie even if he wanted to. For he had been an angel once, and, as his father's favourite, had been blessed with the burden of truth. It was that very blessing he had infected this world with: terrible, awful, glorious truth.

Mark's shoulders tensed, bunching up as he looked at it sitting on the sofa watching him, before awkwardly moving away to kneel down at the coffee table and pull something out from under it. A green box with a white cross that was not a crucifix. Mark opened it, fingers a tad clumsy on the clasps, “Right, yeah, we- we should sort your hands out.”

Inside was an assortment of packets, individually wrapped and sealed band-aids and gauze like those that covered Mark’s own fingers in hastily applied patches. A bottle of antiseptic it could smell clearly - a clean cut note through the tang of barely-contained fear - scissors, pins, and tape. A box full of reminders of how breakable humans truly were. How simple it would be to just cut into Mark right at that very moment - to sink in deep, tear and sunder. To feel his blood on its hands, its stolen skin, and to breathe in dying screams.

Mark’s own hands suddenly entered its line of sight, palms up, open - reaching out tenderly to a beast that wore his best friend’s face. He was sat on the coffee table now, the box beside him, and the space between them so narrow that their knees knocked together, “Let me look?”

Warmth, Mark’s fingers, slightly rough from his own band-aids, curling under its own, cradling them. The heat was soft, soothing, and drew its attention entirely. It watched as he straightened out the damaged fingers as much as he dared, feeling nothing other than his touch and gentle heat. It wasn’t even looking at its own hands until Mark’s face twisted slightly, grimacing as he sucked in a breath, “Shit. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? Some of these look pretty deep, Cesar.”

“No,” It said immediately, firmly, “No hospital.”

Too many questions. Too many stupid humans to keep the performance perfect for.

Mark sighed, a look on his face that screamed how displeased he was, before looking at the closed blinds, the drawn curtains pulled over every window in the living room. It could see the thoughts of a misshapen deer in his eyes, reflected in the amber glow of the main light fixture hanging from the ceiling.

“...Fine. But if they get any worse I’m dragging your ass to the E.R., okay?” He was trying for levity, attempting a smile, but it was too strained to be authentic. It said nothing in response, just watching as his mouth wobbled, brows furrowing down. The pause dragged on, only broken by the quiet ticking of the watch under Mark’s sleeve.

It did not move. It could have pulled its hands away. It should have. But something deep within - where Cesar and it blurred densest, where it became they, became a shameful he - told it that Mark needed this. The same way it had known to hold him on those stone steps just yesterday - as instinctive as hunger, as easy as teeth through flesh.

So it let Mark hold onto its wounded, bloody hands, and, finally, watched him start to crack.

“Fucking shit,” He said, voice quiet, gaze focused solely on its palms - his own bandaged fingers caressing flayed skin, “Fucking hell, Cesar. It’s all gone to shit, hasn’t it?”

It did not answer.

There were many things that had 'gone to shit' during its existence, it supposed. It had seen God create a whole people just to abandon them - had witnessed the Morningstar’s seeds of dissent bloom into insidious, glorious poison. Its mother had died, it had failed to stop itself from driving that knife in- and then it had failed Mark time and time again. He had been a terrible friend, and now-

No. Not ‘he’. It.

It snatched its hands back and Mark, too lost in his own head, barely noticed. A distant look glazed his eyes as he now stared into his own open palms.

"It was real, wasn't it? That thing - that- an alternate. But the cops said- they said it was gone. Why the Hell was it there?" He asked, though he didn't expect an answer. It could have given him one, but after the way its own thoughts had spiralled at the touch of Mark's hands, words refused to come easy.

How could it trust which words were its, and which were Cesar’s?

Mark finally moved, rubbing at his face, “Sorry. Sorry, I know this is all harder for you, but I- This is all so fucking messed up.”

It wanted to reach out and hold him again, an impulse as strong as it had been yesterday - an almost natural instinct to pull the human in and shield him from all else. Because only it could have Mark Heathcliff. But when it made to move, to outstretch an arm in welcome, Mark flinched and leaned away, backing up as much as the table would allow.

“Don’t,” He said, voice soft yet firm, “Please. Just don’t.”

It had been told to stop before. Cesar Torres had screamed, begged and pleaded - had even fought back as best he could. It had been uninclined to listen then, consumed by raging hunger and delicious fear - it had not cared to hear Cesar’s pathetic sobs for his pointless life. It hungered, and so it ate. As simple as that. Such a creature could not be bargained with, for it had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Its power was beyond comprehension, beyond anything this mere mortal could resist… and yet.

It listened to him. Drawing its arms back down and saying, “I’m sorry.” Though it wasn’t exactly sure what it was sorry for.

“I-it’s okay,” Mark said, reaching for something in the box and fidgeting with the square packet he pulled out, fingers flicking the sealed edges, “It’s all a bit… it’s too much right now, you know?”

It did not know, and yet felt like it somehow should.

“Just, um, let’s just sort your hands out before they get any worse, yeah?”

Humans had fragile little minds. If they couldn’t understand something or were unable to confront it, they would simply brush it aside and pretend it had never existed to begin with. Mark was doing that now; the deer had never happened because, if it had, then he might break under the weight of what that might mean. The blinds had been closed, the curtains drawn - a barrier between him and what he had seen in those woods. Just like those broadcasts instructed.

¬ Run away and hide. ¬

And so Mark busied himself with pulling items from the container, face turned away, and it watched him quietly, closely, wondering what he might - or might not - be thinking as he did so. It unfurled its fingers again slowly, feeling the tug of tightened skin and congealed blood from the wounds that still refused to heal. Only one word echoed in its mind, spoken by a gaping mouth in a wandering, caved-in face.

Broken. Broken. Broken.

The bandages felt strange. Not heavy, exactly, but dense, a weight over its palms and fingers, wrapping between knuckles. Mark had said little the entire time he’d worked, brow pinched in concentration and only speaking to warn it of potential pain that did not come. Soiled cotton balls and pads of gauze were stuffed into a plastic bag on the table, the handles knotted shut. The tang of blood and antiseptic lingered, drowning out the fear. Mark’s nerves had eased with each swipe and wrap of bandage, mind content to be focused on something else.

They were sitting together on the sofa, itself stiffly, still admiring its damaged hands with the kind of strange fascination that only a being that had never been injured in its entire existence could have. Mark was no better, pressed into the rear cushions with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms circled around them tightly as though he’d fall apart if he so much as loosened his grip.

There was a silence, a long and drawn out pause filled only by the rhythm of Mark’s heart and the soft, high pitched buzz of the living room light. It didn’t know how much time had passed, Mark’s sleeve obscuring the face of the watch that ticked restlessly on his wrist, only that neither of them had spoken in a long while.

Mark stuck his fingers into his collar, feeling for the chain and the cross that hung from it. That empty lifeline only he believed in. It watched out of the corner of its eye as he toyed with it, a frown forming on his face.

“Sometimes,” He said suddenly, voice only a little thing, “I don’t think He’s there at all.”

It blinked, “What?”

“Him. God. Sometimes I think He’s not there.”

“He isn’t,” It said.

Why lie? Mark had finally realised that truth at long last.

It didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps heartfelt thanks, or even for Mark to fall at its feet in gratitude, finally having been freed from the lie that had tied him down his whole life. To be worshipped as a prophet of truth, maybe - saintly, god-like. It could admit, there was something truly appealing in having Mark at its mercy like that, unable to repay its kindness in freeing him. It would break him at that altar, an offering like no other it had had before or would ever have after. It would show him the true mercy of death - a better promise than anything his precious absentee God had sworn to give in that book of deceit he clung to.

Mark huffed and gave a weak but somewhat genuine smile, “Of course you’d say that. You always say that, asshole.”

It stared at him, completely lost for words in the face of such blatant disregard for what it had revealed. Any other human would scream, whether from terror or relief, or some repulsive mix of both. To know that they were truly alone, that their beloved God had never cared for them and was never coming back, was enough to break the mind and soul of one who grasped so desperately onto scripture like Mark did. And yet he was not falling apart, not throwing himself at the being who had at long last set him free. Instead, he was smiling. Tired and worn, but smiling all the same.

It had once again faltered, not realising that its words were once again botched by the fact that they belonged to Cesar Torres as well - an atheist; who’d say things like that sarcastically to make Mark laugh. It had not considered, not thought carefully, and merely acted on instinct. Instinct that was warped and muddied by the memories of the dead human that had incessantly brought them into one profane, revolting whole.

Broken.

You are broken.

You are not like us. Not anymore.

No, It thought, I am still me. Still it. Not they. Not ‘we’. Not him.

“I pray to Him every day,” Mark said, continuing on in spite of the quiet, “He doesn’t answer. I never really expect Him to because, you know, He’s got to be a pretty busy guy, right? But it doesn’t- I guess, when I was little I really wanted to believe He was there, and sometimes it felt like He was, but…” He trailed off, shrugging, one hand still buried in his collar and the other digging fingers into his shin, “As I got older, it just started to feel… empty. Like no one is out there - no one is listening to me. And things just kept getting worse.”

It was about to repeat itself, to make Mark understand that what it was saying was the truth. That the words may have been spoken with Cesar’s voice, but they were not Cesar’s. Mark, however, just rolled on, seemingly unable to stop the momentum now that he’d started to talk.

“And then there are the- the alternates and- and I keep asking God what it all means because He wouldn’t let something like that just happen, right? I’ve told myself over and over that it’s all got to be part of some plan - that I just can’t see where I fit into it, why I saw-,” The distant look glazed his eyes again, but it could tell that it was not the deer that haunted him this time. It was something else entirely. Dark, secretive, a thing long repressed but never truly gone. He pulled on the necklace again, sharply, “I asked him to keep my parents, to keep S- keep everyone safe, and for a while I did what I thought He wanted me to do. And maybe it didn’t help my parents, but it helped my sister, and she was safe, and you were safe, and I made sure to pray for that everyday - every single day, Cesar - and then- then you called me- and your mom was- and I got this horrible thought- and all I can think is that maybe if I’d tried a bit harder, if I’d prayed more- if I had... I don’t even fucking know. I thought it was all in my head, that God had to be listening, that I just couldn’t feel like He was there because I wasn’t focusing hard enough. But now, now I feel like He just… gave up on me. And you and your mom got hurt because of it.”

The admission rang clear through the air, the frazzled ends of Mark’s nerves seemingly cooled at having finally got the words off his chest. It could taste the guilt, the dismay, shame and despair flowing freely, sour and cutting, and regarded him for one long, quiet moment.

“Then why?” It asked.

“Wh-what?” Mark stopped tugging on the chain, confusion written all over his face.

“Why bother? If He’s not going to answer you, why bother?”

It had never in its entire existence understood why some humans clung so tightly to God. Considering He had abandoned them shortly after Eden, it was honestly impressive that their faith in him had lasted for as long as it had. And here Mark was, admitting what so many others could not, would not - that God was not there - and that he’d been suspecting so for years.

So what was the point in keeping up the pretence?

Mark frowned, brow creased not in anger but in thought, seriously mulling the question over. He gathered up the crucifix around his neck, grasping the charm. When he spoke it was soft, gentle, personal and quiet.

“Because I want to believe, Cesar,” He said, “I want to believe that there’s a purpose behind it all - that there’s meaning to everything, even the bad things. Even the really fucking bad things. Because if it’s all just truly random then… I can’t believe that. I don’t want to believe that.”

He looked at it, eyes vulnerable, “I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t really understand it myself. But that’s the point of faith, isn’t it? If you don’t question it then it isn’t faith. ‘The testing of your faith produces perseverance’ and all that. I never really understood those words until recently, I guess.”

He let go of the necklace, tucking it back under his shirt, and rested his chin on his knees still folded up against his torso, “It just keeps getting worse, but I have to believe that there’s a reason for it. Otherwise, everyone suffers for nothing. And that’s a horrible fucking thought.”

It took those words in and thought them over. Mark was right, it did not understand - at least, not entirely. Mark’s faith was a shield, a shelter to hide under. It did not protect him from the storm, but stopped him from getting soaked by the waves that buffeted him from all sides. It was a fixed point, a beacon that guided him back to a comforting familiarity, even if it was built on lies. Scripture may have been hollow, sermons false promises, and churches effigies to someone who was not their God, but Mark seemed to have given new life, breathed new purpose into them.

Cesar had always admired Mark’s resoluteness. He hadn’t always understood just how and why he did it, but the other’s ability to keep true to his faith in spite of everything was nothing short of awe-inspiring. Clinging onto something despite its falseness was something Cesar had known - if he said he was happy enough times, then maybe he could believe it, shield himself from the creature that whispered in the corner of his room each night, telling him terrible, awful things. It knew Cesar’s desperation well, how he- they - had longed to tell Mark everything, but they couldn’t - wouldn’t drag their best friend down with them.

So he had clung to that lie, that happiness as hollow Mark’s scripture, because, like his friend, he had to believe that things would get better, that the shadows at night were just that - shadows. It was not real, it could not hurt him . It would all blow over - the storm would calm. Holding onto lies did exactly what Mark’s Bible told him - producing perseverance. He got out of bed each day, kept on going in spite of the nightmare prowling in his room because he had hope that if he could just ride it out, weather the tempest, then maybe, just maybe, he could convince himself that it was real - that he had achieved happiness after all. He-

No.

Not ‘he’. I am ‘it’. I am not him.

He - it - stared down at its hands, following the criss-crossed threads of the bandages bound around them, and thought.

Am I any different from them?

It frowned, rubbing the tip of its thumb over the coarse material, pressing against the padding of the gauze pads wrapped underneath. The tug of butterfly stitches, pulling the separated flesh together. And there, a slight whisper in its stolen skin, was that same dull tingle, dancing across either hand. It was still not pain, it knew, for it felt no urge to respond to it in that violent, explosive manner it had seen from Cesar, or that wailing sorrow seen from Mark. It was barely anything at all, just a muted buzz that, perhaps, it was simply imagining. 

Was it trying to cling to a lie, too? Trying to convince itself that it could feel pain? Had it really ever felt the warmth of Mark’s hands? Had it really been angry at seeing its sibling so close to Mark?

Was it truly itself anymore, fused as it was with the memories of a dead human that felt a little too much like they were its own? Was it only delaying the inevitable by refusing to acknowledge that ‘it’ no longer felt right - that ‘he’ was far more pleasing?

Just like Cesar with his happiness and Mark with his Bible, it too was clinging to falsehoods.

It knew what it was, what it wanted to be. And yet it was lying to itself anyway, because it had to believe that its sibling was wrong about it.

¬ Broken. I am broken. ¬

That couldn’t be the truth. It didn’t want it to be.

“I think you’re right,” It said, still looking down at bandaged hands, "You're right, aren't you?"

Mark merely grimaced sadly, this time reaching out to pull himself towards it and lean against its side, temple resting against its shoulder. He didn’t unfold from how he had drawn up his knees, but he seemed to relax slightly at the touch, some of the tension bleeding out of his muscles.

“It's okay,” He said, voice quiet, "It'll be okay, Cesar."

All it could feel was Mark’s warmth, soothing in spite of the lie he'd just told. Pressed against its side and coated with that damning treacle sweetness. Two foolish beings clinging to emptiness and each other.

And maybe, for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

Tell an authority figure about your encounter.

Mark sat picking at the tattered remains of sellotape that still clung to the corner of the desk in front of him, chewed down nails barely having any purchase. In the fifteen minutes he'd been sitting there, he had yet to peel up more than a millimetre. Completely pointless, but holding onto the distraction it provided all the same. The plastic cup of water another officer, a young woman called Ruth Weaver, had given him sat on the desktop itself, still half full. Inside, the water wobbled nervously at each tug of his working fingers.

It, they, he - it no longer mattered, did it? At least, not right then - watched Mark's lack of progress with little interest. There had been some sort of crossroads passed the night before, sat huddled together on the sofa with tight lips and shameful eyes. Too caught up in their acts of pretense to know what to do without them. Mark with his scripture. And him trying to hide behind any other identity that was not Cesar Torres. As though there was any difference anymore.

Liars, the both of them.

Neither had fully traversed that crossing, but there had been some steps taken. Tentative and small. The road back to how everything was before was no longer an option for either of them; so he had grappled with whatever identity he now had, and Mark had not so much as looked at his Bible the entire night. Though they'd acknowledged things would never be the same, the way forward was unclear and a path neither of them were willing to explore in a hurry. Mark still wore his crucifix about his throat and he did not claim the identity of Cesar Torres for his own. He was not human. He never had been.

It never would be.

There was only Mark and the promise of learning pain.

Looking out of the window, the sky was calm, smattered with wisps of clouds that held no promise of rain like they had yesterday. When they got out of the car, he’d felt it - the cold. Much like that felt at the alternate's words as it had puppeteered a false Mark in the living room, and yet nothing like that at all. The chill of the air had bit at his skin, nipping at patches not covered by clothes, sinking deeper on his nose and ears. He had accidentally stepped in a puddle as they walked, soaking one sneaker entirely in icy discomfort. How humans withstood such conditions every day of their miserably short lives was unfathomable

Mark had simply snorted a laugh at the frown on his face, and shouldered him lightly as they carried on up the pavement, saying, 'Watch where you're walking, idiot.'

That semblance of light-heartedness had not followed Mark into the building. The Mandela County Police Department was much like the coroner’s had been to the creature wearing Cesar’s face - a wholly unremarkable construct of hallways and rooms, filled with too many humans and too much drab paint. Yet something about it had Mark leaking anxiety everywhere.

Perhaps, much like the coroner’s, this place too served as a reminder that what had happened was not a nightmare after all.

Cesar Torres’ mother was dead.

And yesterday, they had encountered an alternate.

Yesterday, he had attacked one of his siblings. He- it had turned against its own kind for the sake of the human beside it.

He had destroyed the creature’s physical vessel, tearing it back out of this reality and hurtling into the void from whence the both of them had come. He did not know how long it would take for it to reform, nor how long until the Morningstar woke it back up once more. For his- its sake, it hoped that it would take just long enough that it could be done with Mark Heathcliff - that its purpose would, at last, be fulfilled. That, when the time came, its hunger would at last be satiated.

Mark belonged to it, to him and no-one else. Nothing else.

Rubbing fingertips against palms, he felt the coarse material of the bandages and gauze. Mark had insisted on changing them, redressing the still-present wounds after pushing him into the bathroom to take a shower. He had stood under the warm spray and simply stared down at his hands. The wounds were no longer fully open, seemingly having crusted over with a tacky brown-redness that was, like the rest of his body, entirely synthesised. But they were still not healed. He knew that their persistent presence was a sign of something, a catastrophically large change; a shift on a very intimate level, but he did not want to think about it any further - did not dare to.

He knew he would not like what he’d discover if he did.

Mark’s own hands were dressing-free now, the band aids pulled off, leaving half-healed wounds bare. Brown-red scabs littered his skin, new flesh pink and puckered around the edges, looking as though they pulled tight each time he bent a digit, working away at the tape. His concentration was focused solely on his handiwork, repetitive motions the only thing on his troubled, weak, human mind.

When he had asked why they were going to the police station earlier that morning, Mark had seemed so self-assured in his answer.

‘It’s the first step of T.H.I.N.K. - Tell an authority figure about your encounter. Remember?’

Now, though, he couldn’t help but wonder if that had been as much of a lie as everything else; simply another thing Mark held onto for some sense of normalcy. Humans didn’t like to be made aware that life really was beyond their control and seeing a being that defied mortal comprehension, he supposed, certainly was a reminder of the chaos that was existence. He was figuring out that chaos for himself now - ever since the memories of Cesar Torres had rudely asserted themselves into his- its plan.

The quiet dragged on, stiff and stumbling, only broken by the rhythmic ticking of a clock on the wall and Mark’s restless fingers.

Pick, pick, pick.

The door finally opened.

“Sorry for making you kids wait,” Lieutenant Thatcher Davis said as he stepped into the room. He held an assortment of folders against his chest with one arm, the other closing the door behind him. Mark visibly jumped at the sound and snatched his hand away, finally pulling a small piece of tape free as he did so.

“It’s okay,” He said, words fumbling out, “We don’t mind.”

Davis put the files down on a cabinet and sat behind his desk, the chair squeaking. His face was open, kindly, if a little tired in that way all adults seemed to be. He ran a quick hand through his hair, pushing it back from his eyes, and gave a professional, polite smile.

The creature with Cesar’s face watched him intently. Much like the first time they’d met, there was little coming off him, as guarded and clammed up as ever. A fortress keeping all at bay.

Not for the first time, he wondered what it would take to break this man.

“What can I do for you?” Davis asked, “Is this about your case?”

He looked at what he thought was Cesar.

It stared back.

He quickly averted his eyes.

Mark’s mouth twisted slightly, “Yeah. I think. Um, yeah.”

His clumsy words caught Davis’ attention, the lieutenant’s brow furrowing, “How can I help?”

“We, uh, Cesar and I, we went to the house yesterday,” Mark said, a wave of anxiety rippling from him, “To pick up some of Cesar’s stuff. Because, you know, I rang and they said it was okay to go now everything had been, um… cleaned up. And it- we- we saw it .”

Davis suddenly sat straighter in his seat, drawn up and tense, “What?”

“The… the alternate, sir. We saw it,” Mark’s words were coming faster now, as though the dam had broken and a torrent was pouring from his lips, “We saw it and- and the broadcasts said to report it, but I couldn’t do it over the phone in case the officers thought we were pulling a prank or something. I mean, shit, I barely believe it myself .”

Davis' gaze flitted to the door then the windows, as though checking they were all shut. When he next spoke, his voice was softer, "Are you sure that's what you saw?"

"We were both there, sir," Mark said, gesturing between himself and what he thought was his best friend, "We both saw it."

He nodded, knowing Mark expected agreement.

When humans are told about something unbelievable, their first instinct is to object - especially when the thing being described to them should, by all reason, be impossible. If it challenged their world perception, made them think of that one strange sound they’d heard in the middle of the night not too long ago, then it couldn’t be real. It had to be a lie.

By all counts, Thatcher Davis was well within his rights to shut Mark’s story down - to laugh him into silence and send them away. It would have been the logical thing to do. The human thing to do. Which is why it was so odd that the Lieutenant paused only for a moment before lunging for the rucksack at the foot of his chair, pulling out a book and shoving the other objects on his desk aside to make room for it. Mark barely managed to grab his now lukewarm cup of water before a jumble of folders and paperwork sent it spilling everywhere, a sharp spike of nerves shooting out from him in alarm.

The book Thatcher had retrieved was not like the clearly work-oriented notepads now scattered amongst the papers before him. It was well-worn and dog-eared, creased in a manner similar to Mark’s Bible, the lines ironed in deep by the constant press of determined hands. Each lined page was scored with notes, the letters branded in a barely-legible scrawl. He could not make sense of any of it beyond a few words as the policeman’s fingers rifled through to find the next clean page, none of them anything special - mundane names and dates with no context, scattered and disorganised when taken at face value. A journal kept for personal use.

When Thatcher looked up at them both, his face was one of grim seriousness.

“Tell me what happened.”

As Mark talked, Thatcher scribbled with his pen, fingers clumsily smudging ink as he did so. He was hooked on the younger’s every word, dark eyes intense in a way he had not seen before back at the coroner’s. He had been terse then, but softened, gentle and kindly. Now though, he was harsh, locked in, a deep crease between his brows, a knot of concentration and consideration - connecting dots and forming thoughts they were not privy to.

With each word he uttered, Mark’s shoulders seemed to lift, the unseen weight pressing on them lifting at every confession. His anxiety fluctuated like the tides, high then low, drawing up and receding in odd patterns that made no sense but were relentless all the same.

The pen nib carved each letter in deeply, Thatcher’s hand as heavy and serious as the look on his face, the paper bending with each hard press. He watched, saying little other than to nod, shake his head, or offer small words of affirmation whenever Mark looked his way. Thatcher paid him little mind, directing his questions to Mark, but his eyes would glance over every so often. Sharp.

When Mark got to the part where they’d confronted the alternate, how the creature in Cesar’s skin had bludgeoned it with a makeshift bat and he’d fired rounds, Thatcher’s eyebrows raised.

“You… hit it?” He asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” He said.

Thatcher blinked, “With a stick? ”

“It was a big stick.”

“A big-?” Thatcher’s voice trailed off, huffing out a breath. The crease in his brow knotted further, disbelief written in every line of his face. His dark eyes once again looked at what was supposed to be Cesar Torres. Scrutinising brown. A glimmer of something before the barrier came back up again. Guarded. Impenetrable.

It would love to destroy Thatcher Davis. To watch him break. Every human had a flaw. A weakness. There was a chink in Davis’ armour somewhere, it knew. If only it had the time to find it, exploit it. Sinking in fingers to tear the plate and mail apart. To get at the pliable softness beneath and rend him to pieces. Like the walls of Jericho, reduced to pebbles and dust.

¬ Stumble and fall. God will not be there to catch you, Thatcher Davis. ¬

¬ You all break in the end. ¬

Thatcher sucked in a breath, too quiet for any human to hear, but it heard crystal clear. A small crack.

The Lieutenant cleared his throat and looked back down at his notes, but his shoulders were tense. Hard straight lines. A clench of his jaw. Fingers pressed against the pages a little harder than necessary before closing the book with a dull snap. When he lifted his head, he decidedly only looked at Mark, expression grave.

“Tell no one about this. It stays in this room and between us only, okay? You can’t tell anyone. ”

There was a frantic tinge to his words, a pleading look echoed in his eyes. A man who meant what he said.

It frowned.

¬ What do you know, Thatcher Davis? ¬

¬ What secrets are you hiding? ¬

Thatcher’s fingers gripped the book a little tighter, his nails biting into the cover hard enough to leave uneven crescents. Another crack in the stone facade.

“Promise me,” He said. His voice was tight.

Mark looked taken aback at the sudden shift in the officer’s countenance and tone, but nodded all the same, swallowing dryly, “I- uh- okay. Okay, sir.”

He turned to what was once his best friend and smiled nervously, an awkward lift at the corner of his bitten lips, “Cesar won’t say anything either. Right, Cesar? ”

He met Mark’s eyes and said, “Of course, Mark.”

A pause, strange and heavy. Tense as Davis mulled over their sincerity. He still did not look at Cesar.

Mark broke the quiet, rubbing his sweaty palms against his jeans, “Right, uh, we should- we should get going.”

That seemed to grab Thatcher’s attention once more and he nodded, quickly slipping the book back into the bag by his feet and nudging it further under the desk out of sight.

“Right. Glad we understand each other,” He said, voice more focused, “But, before you go, I might as well let you know about your case. Saves me having to call later.”

His words were directed at Cesar Torres, but he still didn’t make eye contact, gaze fixed on a point just over its shoulder. The cracks would go no deeper. Not yet. This Jericho would stand strong. Indomitable.

“Your mother has been officially released from the coroner’s as of today,” Thatcher said, “She's currently at Barrows', on the other side of town, where she's being taken good care of."

He seemed to expect an answer.

It did not give him one.

Coughing lightly into his fist, Davis continued, "The um, State recognises your position here and can assist in covering the costs for a funeral, if you'd like. I just wanted to double check some things. Mark here gave us your information whilst the EMTs were with you, I hope you don't mind?"

It stared at the officer blankly until Mark shifted in his seat, "Yeah, sorry man, I forgot to tell you. You were pretty out of it and things well- uh- have been a bit shitty and I forgot. Sorry."

The creature pretending to be Cesar Torres smiled with a mouth that seemed slightly too big, "That's okay," He said, "I don't mind."

"Right, well," Thatcher picked up a piece of paper from the pile stacked on his crowded desk, his lips twisted down and the slight sourness of anxiety washed from him, barely there, "So, is it right you have no next of kin? I know it was just you and your mom, but there's no cousins or grandparents I should be aware of?"

He looked from Thatcher to Mark with a shrug, "No. It's just me."

That part of him that was too much like Cesar hummed in affirmation. There was only him now. No mother, no Cesar Torres. Only him - it . That strange amalgamation of what it once was and what Cesar Torres had turned him into. Broken but whole.

And Mark.

Thatcher jotted something down, the grip on his pen as tight as it had been when writing in the book. The cracks in his walls crumbled no further, but worry was slithering out, bitter and salty. He smelled divine.

It was decided. Once it was done with Mark Heathcliff, it would find Thatcher Davis.

¬ Jericho will fall. ¬

But then, as though regurgitated from the deepest pit within, it said, "I only have Mark now."

Sweetness.

That delicious scent came from the human sitting beside him . Soft, sweet, mellow. It was warm arms around his chest, bright laughter and gentle, damaged hands taking care of his own bleeding palms. It was Mark, all Mark. It soothed something deep within, filled it up and left it content and yet still hungry for more. Because it was Mark . Nothing else, no one else, would do.

There was only Mark Heathcliff. As it should be. As it would always be.

¬ Until the end. ¬

His lamb for slaughter.

His.

Mark simply smiled encouragingly though a tiredness lingered around his eyes.

"And you're currently unemployed?" Thatcher asked, abruptly bringing the attention back onto himself, "Mark said you were planning on going to college next year."

He recalled Cesar mentioning such plans to his mother, watching him work on applications and be rejected from job after job that wasn't willing to take on a soon-to-be student.

"Yeah," He said.

Thatcher once again jotted something down before placing the paper to one side and picking up another. He turned it around and placed it at the edge of the desk before him.

"I'll need you to sign this," He said, placing his pen on top of the page, "It's a release form so that the State can claim your mom for a burial. Is that alright? I'll fax a copy over to the county coroner so she has it on record and we'll post a copy to you."

He still didn't make eye contact.

It stood outside by Mark’s car, watching from across the parking lot to the span of windows that revealed Thatcher Davis' office, the blinds only pulled halfway down. From its post, it spied the bodies of the humans inside, their faces concealed by the hanging slats of plastic. But it could see Mark’s hands moving, chewed fingers gesturing as he talked. Thatcher did not gesture, only flipped a pen over between his fingers in a steady, constant motion.

It did not know what they were talking about, only that the Lieutenant had asked for a private word with the other. Mark had seemed surprised for a moment before pulling out his car keys and handing them over to it. It had taken them with little idea of what to do with them, having not really paid attention to how the human had used them to open the car doors. It supposed Cesar’s memories, brimming over and interwoven as they were within its depths, could have provided answers, but it found itself distracted by the two humans still shut inside the building.

What were they talking about?

What secrets were being said?

It leaned against the car door and waited, feeling cold metal against its back, and watched as Thatcher’s hand reached into his pocket and withdrew a small white card. Mark took it from him with tentative fingers, pausing a moment before shoving it into his own jeans. He then stepped away, moving to the door and letting himself out. Less than a minute later, Mark came outside, taking the steps two at a time, one hand curled against the railing.

He looked… unsettled.

Shoulders drawn forward in a way that had nothing to do with the persistent chill in the air. Hunched over, pulled into himself, much like he’d been four days ago on the porch, dithering against the cold night and waiting for help to arrive. His shoes scuffed against the pavement, steps slightly stilted and stiff as he shoved both hands into the pockets of his hoodie. His face was near-expressionless, vacant and lost in thoughts that swarmed darkly behind his eyes. It wasn’t until he was standing in front of his assumed best friend that any movement came back to his features. A small curve of his lips. A smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Hey,” He said, voice hoarse, “I thought I gave you the keys?”

The creature wearing Cesar’s face shrugged and hummed. He held out a bandaged hand, said keys resting in his palm, waiting for the other to take them back. If he hadn’t been paying such close attention, perhaps it would have gone unnoticed, but Mark hesitated, his own arm raised but his fingers yet to unfurl, to reach out. A marked difference from the jostling shoulder that morning, his head against his side on the sofa, warm hands gently bandaging his own. Something had shifted in that room with the Lieutenant.

It did not like that.

"Mark?" He asked, metal jangled at the shift of his digits, offering them out.

¬ Take it. ¬

Mark flinched.

“Is everything alright, Mark?” He asked, voice soft, a gentleness that felt more like Cesar’s but was comfortable to slip into all the same. For some inexplicable reason, Mark’s expression was troubling, uncomfortable to see knowing full well it- he- had not been its cause. 

He frowned, lips set into a firm line, about to close his hand, when, finally, Mark took the keys.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, Cesar," His voice was no longer hoarse but still quiet. His fingertips brushed against his bandaged palm briefly, snatching back as though he'd been stung, keys firmly in his grasp. His smile still didn't manage to reach his eyes. Shaky, cracked. A shabby coat of paint to try and hide an underlying issue.

Mark moved to the driver's side with a quick, "Come on, let's go."

As he unlocked the car, he glanced over at the windows of Thatcher’s office once more. The older man stood, making no effort to pretend he wasn't watching them. He'd pulled the blinds up to do so, standing there with his arms folded over his chest and a severe frown.

It stared back at him, unblinking.

¬ What did you say, Thatcher Davis? ¬

This time, Thatcher did not look away.

"I need to go somewhere first before home," Mark said.

It was the first time he'd spoken since getting back in the car. A long quiet disturbed only by the rumbling engine, turning wheels, and the rhythmic clicks of the indicator.

“Okay,” He said.

Mark’s knuckles turned white against the steering wheel and they both fell into silence once more.

It was a church.

Specifically, a churchyard, with lines of headstones and the building itself stood some feet away, shrouded by trees and framed with stone steps. Mark got out of the car and he followed, the slam of the door a punctuated sound in the quiet. Dead leaves squelched underfoot, soaked as they were by yesterday’s rainfall, and the earthy smell of wet foliage, petrichor, and moss hung in the air, made sweet by nature’s decay.

The lawns had not been cut back, their overgrowth not as much of a concern with winter months approaching. Water clung to blades of grass and marble head markers, slick stone and soft mud. Flowers, some still clinging on and others long dead lay tacked and trampled into the ground, petals and stems bitten into by dirt and the passage of shoes.

Facing them was the south transept, its stained glass arches protected by metal grates. The stern eyes of the Evangelist peered through the gaps, fragmented halo glinting about his head, watching as they approached. A prophet of the Morningstar’s deceit, believer of a false Christ, of the messages of a Gabriel that had never been. An unwitting participant, easily fooled like the rest of his kind  who had played his part in converting others to worship of a warped lie. And though it had taken millenia, his faith had given them, given the Morningstar, more strength.

He wondered what the Saint would think to be told what he'd done.

Mark walked on ahead, hands stuffed in his pockets, leaving him to follow after, trailing behind to take in the neat rows of graves either side. Most were simple in shape and size, neatly engraved with names and dates inlaid with golden paint. Practical - there to weather the march of time and serve as a neat reminder that some person was once there.

It did not wholly understand the custom; that so much effort should be put into what will inevitably be forgotten.

¬ Nothing remains forever. ¬

Nothing mortal anyway.

Ahead, Mark hunched his shoulders and kept his head low, looking only at the ground as he walked.

It was an odd practice, to whittle away a person's entire life and deeds to one little stone that would, inevitably, decay too. But humans liked to think that their lives mattered in some significant way - that they were more than fleeting specks in the grand scheme of things. Sure, they had their place in it all, but it was not one that was considerable or even noteworthy.

Life was born, it lived, it died. That was their purpose.

But that part that was less it and more him could see the comfort it gave. It was… nice … to think that one would be remembered long after they had died. That it had all meant something to them and the people they had come into contact with during life. And perhaps that was good enough. It didn't need to be anything more than that.

Did it?

Death was a bizarre concept to one that could not die, after all.

One day, Mark will be here, too.

The thought had come unbidden and abruptly, enough so that he stopped in his tracks along the path twixt the graves. Staring down at a headstone beside, looking at the simple cut of grey stone and the lettering etched into its weathered face.

There had been a name on it once, but the years had gnawed it away, the scraps consumed by creeping ivy and withered stalks. Only dates remained, struck in by hand over a hundred years ago. Someone young, eighteen - the same age Cesar Torres had been, the same age Mark was. There were no flowers there, only weeds, no one remembered this human being - no generational family, no individuals taking pity.

Simply forgotten. Lost by time.

It did not care. Should not care.

But he did.

The idea of Mark buried, alone and forgotten, seemed to tighten around that pit within, constricting falsified lungs and endless void. Cold like the puddle that had soaked his shoe, as ice cold as the words the deer had spewed yesterday. Whether stemming from that which was once Cesar or that what it once was, it did not matter. For this was a truth that had been slow in the making, but brutal in its realisation.

He couldn’t be without Mark Heathcliff.

The scabs on his hands itched, fingers curling in tight fists. So fixated on the end goal as it- he- had been, yet another deviation had gone unnoticed. Slithering silently within the thoughts that had once belonged to Cesar Torres was a notion it had not foreseen, for it was something it never thought it could understand.

Mark Heathcliff was his friend.

His best friend.

The realisation felt like sacrilige, a poison upon its tongue and entire being, a taint that needed to be purged. The plan had deviated too far, too fast. What was once about pain and carnage had deferred to Mark’s laugh and warm hands, his brown eyes and ‘music’. It was about smiles and pancakes, a burned pan and out of date ingredients - a treasured memory of summer heat, a tent that reeked of plastic and the shock of falling in a shallow stream. Memories that did not belong to it , but now belonged to him . Whatever ‘him’ was. Arbitrary meanings and definitions when all he cared about was Mark .

Something deep inside, eternal and ancient, felt distant and smaller - no longer the whole, but a part. A fragment of an identity that was him - whatever that meant.

Yet there was no contentment. Only disgust. This had not been the plan.

...Had it?

No. He - whatever he was - had strayed too far. Perhaps this was a test, sent by the Morningstar to prove his worth.

He had promised he would get this right - the time invested could not be wasted. He could not fail. He would not fail.

“Cesar?” Mark asked, having stopped walking a short distance ahead when he realised he wasn’t being followed, “Are you okay?”

Staring at him, the thoughts of Mark’s warm arms and kind smile turned bitter, warped to visions of him screaming in agony, begging for a mercy that wouldn’t come. That was the only outcome. He could accept nothing else.

Mark was no better than the Evangelist emblazoned in coloured glass, using words and touch to warp everyone and everything he met. Fooling them into ludicrous human ideas of friendship - deceitful conversion, meant to lead it- him- astray.

The sensation might be somewhat new, having only experienced it for the first time yesterday, but he knew for certain that this was fury. Red hot anger stoked like flaming coals inside. The same he had felt towards the shambling excuse of a sibling out by the woods. But this time, instead of being angry for Mark, it was angry at him. 

In that moment, it decided Mark’s arms would be the first thing it would tear from his body. And he , burning with something unnamed in his lungs, agreed.

¬ I will not falter. I am not broken. ¬

He turned away from the headstone and shrugged, “I’m fine.”

There was only the promise of learning pain.

And inflicting it on Mark Heathcliff.

“I used to come here every Sunday with my sister.”

Mark’s voice carried, echoing off stone and arched ceilings banded with wooden rafters. They stood before the altar, side by side, one reflective, the other seething quietly.

From the south transept, the Evangelist now watched with a sadness in his stained eyes that belied his 'divine' martyrdom. The noose was not there, but he saw it all the same - had witnessed it millenia ago, tightening from the back of a horse, dragging him through streets until he stopped moving, face red and swollen and smeared with blood, caked with dust. All for the sake of that false Son of God. He had died for nothing. For a lie. And now he stood exalted for it.

On the north side, the Apostle stood holding his severed head in his hands, a halo still framing it perfectly. His expression was severe, as though he were displeased at having been beheaded. He had been there to see that, too - the window was generous with how clean the cut was, it had taken more than five strikes to cleave through it completely. Another 'martyr' for nothing. Elevated to sainthood by the ignorant masses.

"We would sing in the choir," Mark said, "She was better at it than I was: would sing the solos on holidays - you know, like Easter and Christmas. She would lead the reply during the call and response, too."

He was not looking at the stewing creature with the face of his friend. Instead, he was looking up at the idol before them with a tender, wistful look on his face. Here, in the house of his so-called God who was no longer there, Mark Heathcliff was content. Finally made somewhat whole.

Reaching out with poised, gentle hands, as though beckoning him closer, was the Virgin Mary. Carved from marble and inlaid with paint and gilding, the statue sat upon the altar with her arms held out in welcome. Her expression was demure and pious, garbed in blue and white cloth cut with pink silks. The flat disc of her halo blossomed out from behind her shoulders and head, gold leaf catching the coloured light from the windows in a way that shimmered warmly. Heavy green curtains hung from the wooden rails set back from the altar, complimenting its own emerald tablecloths cut with white and embroidered with golden thread detailing. All sat layered at an angle so that the white cloth beneath her icon presented the Chi Rho dead center, perfectly situated between the span of her spread arms, as though she were displaying her piety to all seated or knelt in prayer before her, seeking comfort from an absent God.

Her painted eyes beheld Mark warmly, motherly. As though regarding a lost child that had finally found his way home.

"And I still pray for her - every day. Even though it doesn't always feel like someone's listening. Not anymore, anyway."

¬ I am listening. ¬

Mark tensed slightly, shoulders suddenly settling. A sidelong glance sent towards the being stood next to him.

"I'm listening, Mark," He said.

And so he was. Hearing every strained note in Mark's soft voice, every stuttered intake of breath. How he avoided saying her name.

Sarah.

Banished to the pages of a notebook, sealed away in a tomb of a desk. Letters unsent, never to be read by her, but written in the height of despair. Only exhumed for Mark's own self-flagellation; each new line the crack of a whip that bit far deeper than skin, each word only salt in the bloodied wounds. Forever raw, never to be healed. Rend open time and time again.

Mark's own Hell on earth. One of his own making.

¬ Sarah Heathcliff. ¬

His jaw clenched.

The softened look and exuding content for the Virgin was gone. No longer warm and syrupy, but stiff and bitter.

¬ Would she ever forgive you, Mark? ¬

¬ Could she ever forgive you? ¬

“Yeah… you are,” Mark said, voice low, “Seems like you’re the only one that is, sometimes.”

A silence fell. Just the two of them and the false saints standing vigil from their frozen portraits. Forever encased in glass. Unforgotten despite the passage of time, unlike that grave outside, eroded and anonymous.

A fate Mark will one day fall to as well.

Again such thoughts intruded his mind. Uncomfortable, unwelcome, unwanted. Conflicted between its own nature and that part of him that melded with Cesar Torres. The anger from before had abated and there was something hollow settled within his chest. The need to tear and rip apart was still there, but the image that had once brought satisfaction - Mark with his arms torn, bleeding, screaming, pleading, pathetic and helpless, whilst it- he- drank in that delicious fear, that sheer terror - was changing once more.

Shifting to something new. To Mark with a gentle smile and soft arms about his shoulders and neck. Of playful touches and barking laughter, a forehead pressed against his collarbone, warm. Golden syrup, so sweet it was sickly and yet delicious all the same - ravenous to get as much of it as he could. Bathing in milk and honey - that manna Mark Heathcliff was a fountain of - to satiate its- his- hunger. To never feel it again so long as Mark kept looking at him , smiling at him.

It had accused Mark of a perverse touch, of conversion with the promise of friendship and unknown sensation. It had been enraged at the audacity of this one measly human and his ability warp its very nature, to divert it so thoroughly from the task at hand.

It had been enraged.

But he, he wanted it. Wanted to be changed. Maybe it was that part that was still Cesar Torres, or maybe it was something only he was responsible for. He had changed too much, he knew that now - it wasn’t just the plan that had been affected. It went much deeper than that. He could not place exactly when it had happened, only when he’d noticed it, accepted it. The rage had bled away, cooled.

He couldn’t be without Mark Heathcliff. It couldn’t be without him either.

He understood that now.

Upon the altar, the Virgin Mary smiled benevolently, her eyes seemingly turned upon him now. A trick of the angle her head tilted at, dark curls escaping the hood of her robes.

“Mark-” He started.

“Cesar,” Mark interrupted, cutting him off.

He hummed, sound soft but made loud by the acoustics of cold stone and high rafters. Beside him, Mark shifted, reaching behind himself to rub at his lower back as though pained. There was a tension in his face, lips downturned, bottom one pinned beneath his anxious teeth, biting hard enough to draw blood. A light copper tang that mixed with sour ripples of nervousness.

“I need to ask you something,” Mark continued, still rubbing at his spine, knuckles pressing hard against his back. His voice carried a rasping quality to it, words hoarse and tattered. Like static eating at the edges of each sound, “And I need you to tell me the truth.”

His eyes, dark, as grave as he’d ever seen them. A sadness that lingered heavy about his brow, as though he knew something he did not - an answer he didn’t want to hear. He turned to face Mark fully, drawn by the scent of blood and the beginnings of fear, yes, but also compelled by the look on the human’s face. It was the same it had been when he’d left the police station, after talking to Thatcher Davis.

There was a soft click , small but he still heard it.

Mark stopped scratching his back.

He breathed in, swallowed tightly. Pulse thumping in his throat, heart jumping in his chest.

“The cameras were already on in your house, Cesar.”

It was so unexpected that he could not formulate a response. Like back in Cesar’s house, confronted by the other alternate, he didn’t know what to say. He should lie. He must lie. But an excuse would not come. Ice cold, struck once more by Mark’s words, but this time- this time it was not the twisted puppeteering of one of his siblings. It was just Mark.

Frightened, scared, horrified, Mark, who had not put the pieces entirely together yet, but was beginning to. The whole terrible picture was coming into view. He could see it in Mark’s face, in his eyes as they smarted with the beginning of a wetness that threatened to spill.

“Why were they already on?”

A flash of steel. A gun in shaking hands. He hadn't even noticed Mark moving to grab it. Hadn't even noticed he was carrying it.

¬ Shoot me, Mark Heathcliff. I’m not who you think I am. ¬

Don’t shoot me, Mark.

Mark looked like he was in physical pain, his expression twisted and his grip on the pistol so tight his knuckles protruded up harshly through his skin.

“Answer me,” He said.

He said nothing. What was there to say?

¬ I’ve lied to you. ¬

“I said fucking answer me! ” Mark shouted, his voice a roar that echoed all around. His finger hooked the trigger. He could see the safety was off.

Mark sniffed, fighting back the tears, panting. Fear roiled from him in crashing, thunderous waves. The gun shook against his trembling palms. When he spoke again, it was through a sob, “ What the fuck are you? ”

He opened his mouth pointlessly - there were no words he could offer, no lies to give. Not when Mark was looking at him like that, punching the air from his replicated lungs and leaving him stranded, cast out in the torrent of Mark’s panic with nothing to cling onto and pull himself back out.

“I- I-,” He started and failed.

This had all gone so horribly wrong.

/ I thought this is what you wanted, broken one. /

Suddenly, the Virgin Mary breathed .

Chapter Text

There was a moment, small and fragile, where he thought it was a trick of the light. Though he knew better than to believe it was.

"I said what the fuck are you? Fucking answer me!" An order, choked at the end. A wet intake of breath. Hot tears streaking down pale cheeks.

Mark hadn't noticed it.

¬ Mark. ¬

"Mark-" He started, still watching the Virgin Mary from the corner of his eye; how the statue upon the altar yielded and bent, as though made from skin and bone. One painted eye blinked as the other rolled back and sunk away into the depths of now-pliable stone. Those eyes that had looked on Mark with a tenderness only moments before now malformed and shifting. Her once benevolent gesture became cagey and warped, hands that did not know how to be hands snapping at each joint, stretching into needled points.

"Fucking look at me!" Mark screamed, voice scraping at his vocal cords. Shaking grip on a loaded gun. The safety off, a trembling finger hooked around the trigger. A frail human heart that raced so fiercely it was a wonder it hadn't given out. Pulse staccato in his neck, a frantic rhythm out of time with each juddering breath he gasped in, fighting against the urge to break down and wail.

And, thrice damned as he was already, he did as Mark commanded.

Wide brown eyes, pupils terror-induced pinpricks. Salty wetness spilling over, adding a sharp tang to his pungent fear that sloughed from him like meat from bones. But fear was no longer the word for it. This was far more potent than that first night in Mark's living room when they'd both found themselves in the same position they did now; beyond Mark's breakdown at the photos of his best friend’s dead mother; incomparable to that evening in the woods outside Cesar's house.

This was true, unadulterated, abject terror. The kind that shattered something deep within oneself - that left them unable to fully trust anyone or anything ever again. Brutal, scarring fear that made one lose all sense of control and safety. A kind that one could never recover from. Not truly.

It had wanted this. He had wanted this. And here it finally was. Perfectly, tantalizingly within reach and yet-

He looked at the gun, how Mark could barely aim it straight. Smelled the salt of his tears and sweat, the tempting taste of his fear. Listened to the wheezing, slick breaths that caught between clenched teeth.

And yet…

/ Is something wrong? /

Clawed fingers on crooked hands reaching in from his periphery, slithering their way towards them both on arms far too long, towards-

/ Then let me help you, broken one. /

"Mark!” A voice both his , Cesar’s, and its own - tearing out of his mouth as he lunged at Mark, tackling him down to the ground, shoving them both away from its grasp.

The crack of a gunshot, the acrid stench of burned powder. The bullet ripped through air, flung wide from its intended target: him.

Mark spat out a curse, elbows slamming against the stone floor, skinning them deep enough that he could scent the beginnings of the bright coppery tang of blood. The gun clattered with a ring of metal, falling from hands too nervous to keep a firm enough grip, sliding just out of his reach beneath a pew. Mark stared up at him , stunned, before his eyes flickered over his shoulder and, finally, he saw it.

When he managed to speak, his voice wavered dangerously, “What the fuck is that?”

There was no time to answer him.

/ You know what I am, Mark Heathcliff. /

The Virgin Mary’s head collapsed slowly in on itself, splitting down her forehead like vivisected skin, peeling back from bone. Fleshy, bulbous growths sprouted forth from the seams, nodules growing into twisting fingers and hands, clawing and pawing over one another into sagging, lopsided antlers. Her one remaining eye turned on them both on the ground at the altar, Mark trying to push himself up, and him barring the alternate’s path the best he could, using his own stolen form as a shield. 

Her mouth sank inwards and vanished, leaving only stone that heaved and bubbled in a mimicry of drawing breath, “I knew you’d open your eyes eventually, Mark. But I think you knew from the beginning, didn’t you?”

He bared his teeth at it. At its unwelcome presence, its sheer audacity to come back for Mark after he had made it abundantly clear it wasn't wanted. Mark was his and his alone.

¬ Leave. ¬

It ignored him , as though he were nothing more than a meagre speck of dust. As though he wasn’t the one to have sent it back to that void they'd both crawled out of. As though Mark wasn't his.

It remained poised on the altar, staring with one unblinking eye, and long, reaching arms coming to press against the floor, fingers splayed far too wide.

"What?" Mark's voice was weak, stuttered with panic and the sting of the pain he no doubt felt in his elbows.

"Cesar isn't what you thought, is he? Come now. Be honest. You knew. Deep down you knew, didn't you?" It spoke in a voice that was nowhere and yet everywhere at once. Mouthless but not without speech. Dark, insidious words he knew were designed to sink deep. Like a barbed hook pierced through skin and bone, pulling tight, threatening to tear. Static haze and crystal clear all the same. Nonsensical, illogical, but painfully, unbearably true.

"I don't-,” Mark tried.

“Oh, but you do,” It said, “You just didn’t want to believe it.”

“Cesar-”

“No, no, no. Don’t call it that. Cesar is dead, Mark. He has been since that night.”

A high pitched whine tore from the back of his throat, “I- I will say of the Lord: He is my refuge and my f-fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall-”

Screeching laughter, or perhaps laughter that could only be expressed through screeching. The horrendous sound drowned out Mark’s desperate plea disguised as prayer, rapped against the walls of his words to show how hollow they truly were. Loud enough to drive Mark to cover his fragile human ears, to curl into himself in silent anguish.

/ This is the creature you are struggling so much with? I cannot comprehend it. /

He fought down the urge to reach out a hand, to grasp at Mark’s own and feel his soothing warmth, to try and hold him together long enough for him to get out, to escape. Instead, he settled for getting up and standing his ground - for Mark.

/ You’ve been taking far too long with this one. /

He shifted to the side, further putting himself between it and Mark.

¬ Leave. ¬

/ I don’t think I will, broken one. /

It sought purchase on the stone slabs with its hands, digging into the cracks of the paving to drag itself down from the altar, pulling the sacred cloths with it and leaving them crumpled beneath the weight of its new form. It had no legs, could not stand, but he knew that meant little to his kind. If he and Mark tried to run now, it would be upon them in seconds. That was why one of them would have to stay behind and distract it.

Why he would stay behind.

¬ Get up, Mark. Get out whilst you can. ¬

/ And spoil all the fun? I don’t think so. /

Its insidious words rolled into his mind like a fog, buzzing waspishly, and staring right into his very core with a thousand eyes. He would not buckle beneath them. He hadn’t done so back in the woods, and he wouldn’t this time either.

The shadows around the church stretched and yawned, creeping on with silent steps and static screams, but whether it was his sibling calling on them or himself , he did not know. Mark made a pathetic noise, groaning as his hands shifted from over his ears to clutch either side of his head, eyes screwed up in pain. A thin trail of blood slipped from his nose.

No longer content to just bare his teeth anymore, he let himself become a part of that metallic hissing the shadows purred with. Tuning back inwards to be reminded of those months lurking as a shadow on the walls, behind the flickering of screens and the receiver of the landline in the kitchen. Incomprehensible, electric, an ion storm charged through an untuned radio - destructive and overloaded. A creature as unknowable as its sibling before it. Limitless possibilities and endless void.

¬ There’s not enough room for the both of us. ¬

Flailing, grasping antlers reached towards it, tines made from twisting, fleshy stone. The static was pleasant now, soothing, briefly satiating the beginnings of a burning hunger that it had not truly felt in days.

/ Ah, there you are. Whole again. /

Yes, whole, it thought, feeling as though it finally had room enough to exist - as though it could stretch out into unlimited space forever and ever. No longer bound by the constraints of an inferior human shape. Free. As it had once been. As it should always be.

And yet…

As much as it all felt right, something was wrong - missing. Like losing a piece to a puzzle; its fragments scattered to the wind. A nagging sensation that worried at some distant part of its mind, indecipherable, but very decidedly off. Hunger leaped with snapping jaws at the forefront of its thoughts, loud and insistent.

/ Eat, then. /

It already knew, instinctively, what to do - could taste the sourness of fear, the needling anxiety, and the copper cut of blood that ran through it all - and turned to the human curled over on the floor, only just able to have pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, one arm reaching towards the pew before him, pawing weakly for the gun just beyond his reach. Not that it would do him any good, terrified and trembling as he was.

Creatures such as they could not die. Not truly.

It lumbered forward, driven by scent and the promise of an easy meal that already reeked of delicious terror, unable to place or care much for why something in its own mind screamed out, too. The niggling became teeth, serrated, sinking in harder, deeper, threatening to rip out and leave a bloody raw mess in its wake. Like stripping back layers of skin around fingers and nail beds, opening sores that would take time to heal and yet still feel compelled to do it, hapless, restless, pulling away until they bled and stung. Having to dress them with hastily applied band-aids, knowing that as soon as the flesh was no longer scabbed that the cycle would repeat again.

Just one of many tells. Like biting at lips and squeezing steering wheels until knuckles turned chalk white; like tapping sneakers against diner table legs, peeling sellotape on a desk, and muttering when one believes they’re alone. It was speaking words of Scripture whilst compelled to triple-check every lock and latch, pulling blinds and curtains across windows that faced out into the unknown darkness beyond. It was terror and the stench of vomit in the face of death, but fear and anger in the face of saving a friend from it.

It was warm hands and laughter, a honey sweetness thicker than treacle. A heat that burned through it brighter than that very first day God had created light. Unbearable to look at and be subjected to, yet addictive all the same. It was laughter in a kitchen where smoke lingered and burned pancakes lay scorched in a sink. It was quiet thoughts pressed against another person on a couch, antiseptic staining the air and rough spun bandages bound around palms that had never known long term injuries before.

It was wanting to break someone, mind, body, and soul. To make them die in prolonged agony that it had never experienced itself before, yet craved to understand all the same.

And it was also the realisation that such a thing was entirely impossible.

Because it was all Mark Heathcliff . A damning curse and a tender blessing.

Its best friend.

His best friend.

And even in that strange unknown of what it once was and who he was now , one thing had stayed the same: Mark Heathcliff was theirs .

No, he wasn’t whole - not like this, not right now, looming over Mark as white noise and eyes, as formless skin sloughing down whilst rippling upwards. Here it was, that pivotal moment - finally in that coveted position to tear the lamb to shreds before the altar of his own absent God. It was not perfect, was without that elusive concept of understanding the pain it was to inflict, but it had arrived all the same. Within arm’s reach. The only thing required was lunging forward, closing itself around Mark’s throat where his pulse raced like rapid fire, sinking into flesh, sinew, and bone, and finally, finally, taking what was owed.

And yet it couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t do it.

Not to Mark. Not to his best friend.

And maybe it was less about him having wanted to be changed, and more that he had. Like the Evangelist offering the Word to the pagans of Alexandria, so too had Mark offered something more. Something beyond ravenous hunger and detached existence; beyond lurking in shadows and within the static of televisions and the ringing quiet of the dark. Like converting the faithless to the faithful, Mark Heathcliff had reached out his hands and it, with little hesitation, had taken them in its own - in his own. And there was something dangerous hiding within that notion - a wickedly sharp little thought.

That, perhaps, it had always been broken from the very beginning. Only now, clinging onto Mark, was he made whole. The road he had paved in doing so didn’t necessarily have to lead to Hell. Maybe it led somewhere else; somewhere new, stemming from that one cornerstone he had chosen to take into its foundations.

/ Disappointing. /

Pulsating antlers with writhing tines, an eye that rolled loose and unanchored within a stone socket that roiled as though it were in flowing water. Dragging itself with its arms, the gap where its legs should be - would be , if it had any care for assimilating effectively - scraping both wet and dry against the floor; slaps of melting stone and gouges cut into the paved tiles with each scrabbling step on its twisted hands. The Virgin Mary made profane, warped by one of the many creatures like that which she had been deceived into birthing by the Morningstar.

Mark let out a shout, caught somewhere between anguish and shock as he snatched his hand back from the gun lying on the ground, where shadows and void now whispered and coiled around it, tendrils reaching out, trying to ensnare him, drag him down. His nose was still bleeding and, as he fell over himself in haste to put distance between him and the gun where the darkness goaded him with awful truths, his eyes caught the two incomprehensible terrors he was cornered by and finally seemed to fully break in two.

For what else could he do?

He stood no chance. This was the end. And, as terrified of death as he was - as all humans are - Mark knew it had come for him at long last. That he was going to die, alone, Godless, and in agony.

/ Where is your God now, Mark? /

The other alternate stepped ever closer, clearly hungry, but wanting to draw each fear-laden second out - to savour it.

"No hollow words to hide behind?" It asked, words hissing and spitting, shaped by venom and eons of ill-intent, dripping from a mouth it did not have. Each deliberate sound designed to delve into the cracks and gouge in deep, prying a person apart from the inside out. Shredding at the seams until nothing was left to hold it all together, “Where is your God, Mark Heathcliff? You scream and scream, and He has yet to answer.”

Mark's face was still twisted in terror, but his eyes - there was something subdued about them, lying beneath the fear and tears at the surface. It was the look of a creature that knew this was the end. An animal cornered with no hope of escape.

He was going to die.

He would become a name forgotten, eventually worn away like the headstone out in the churchyard. Buried, cast aside, alone and cold where the earth would reduce him to bones - if there was anything left of him to bury, that was.

He couldn’t be without Mark Heathcliff. He couldn’t.

He knew that now.

And so, he lunged.

He felt the alternate's surprise rather than saw it, for its face remained expressionless beneath his grasp. He held the spoiled head of the Virgin Mary tight and dug in, pressing and pressing against stone that sunk inwards and tried to resist. But it had yielded to him in the woods, and he would make it do so again.

Heat kindled from within his core. The 'hands' that he held on with were not Cesar's, yet were his all the same; flesh and muscle and bone congealing like melting wax under the burning anger that built ever higher. Fixed positions of limbs and structure became only suggestions, mere afterthoughts. Limbless and yet could latch onto the other alternate and force it to the ground. A wide eye, all-seeing, from every aspect of the room and beyond made sure he positioned himself firmly between it and Mark.

Mark seemed to freeze and thaw in quick succession, expression disbelieving, wide eyes staring at whatever he had become without Cesar's skin to contain him. At that moment, he did not care - what does it matter?

So long as Mark is safe…

He finally started to crack its head, splitting shifting stone and rending a clean split through Mary's rolling, painted eye. The antlers clawed at him , pulpy tines growing tougher, like razors, fine-edged claws that sunk into him as he continued to hold on, refused to let go. The Virgin Mary’s face caving inwards, like a disrupted sinkhole, trying to drag him in, to force him into submission. To send him back to that lowest depth they'd both been summoned from. All the while it, mouthless, bayed so quietly as to slither into his very core, and yet so loudly as to shake the very foundations of the church itself.

Like a furious choir, many voices as one, all pitches and tones and careening vibratos that bounced from the high arched ceilings and set the glass windows to rattle. He was sure he was also making some noise, deep and raging and primordial, though he found he didn't care. Because only one thing mattered: Mark Heathcliff. And he would send his cursed ilk back just like he had before. He bared what should have been teeth but felt and saw like they were eyes instead.

¬ There’s not enough room for the both of us. ¬

Swarming static, like a hive of angered hornets trapped in a nest. Somewhere behind him, or perhaps to the side, was Mark's faint voice, strained by fear, tears, and a bleeding nose. The light scratch of the gun as he finally took it back in hand, trying once more to cling to the Psalm he had started earlier with a voice that strained to not shake: “His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid… A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at they right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” 

His terror, a tsunami before, was now akin to a raging sea instead. Still liable to drown him, but now there was hope of keeping his head above the waves. Now all he needed Mark to do was-

¬ Run. Run and save yourself. ¬

/ All this for one pathetic mortal? /

The Virgin Mary’s face collapsed entirely, opening out into an endless cold void where the eyes of the universe watched in silent judgement. Antlers raked at his very being, tearing like the branch had into his hands, gouging, slicing, splitting. There was no blood this time, and there was still no pain - just that light, tingling, prickling static like the electric shock of a bare live wire. Overcharged and fraying.

He forced his way into the cracks, the shattered edges where its sibling was no longer able to hold itself together properly. For all its unnervingly rapid return from the dark, it was still fundamentally poor at its job. Too enthusiastic about the end result to care for the fact they needed to assume the life and appearances of the one they'd just snuffed out. Overdriven assimilation. It had been unable to hold the form of a deer - there was little chance it could continue to hold onto this one. All it needed was the right amount of pressure.

Pushing further, ramming layers apart and tearing through with reckless abandon, nothing but the thought of defending Mark at the forefront. The baying became screaming, wailing, shrieking, finally reaching high enough that the windows could no longer take it. A gunshot that hit neither of them - a loud curse, followed by another crack and the sound of a metal projectile hitting solid masonry. Mark backed up towards the south transept, gun raised, hoping for a better shot that would still fail to injure. The scent of his fear followed him like a shadow.

Then shattering glass, the Evangelist's likeness splintering out from the lead solder to explosively meet with the floor. Hundreds of fractals showering down over the only person now stood beneath it.

"Mark!" He shouted, tried to call a warning that was drowned out by the shrieks of the alternate and the roar of glass as it ruptured into a tide of shards.

To his credit, Mark didn't drop the gun again, instead covering his face as best he could with the sleeves of his jacket. The sharp hail crashed down upon his shoulders and most were simply cast off and slid harmlessly to the floor, but others did not.

Others stayed still in places they did not belong, tangled in hair, trapped in clothing. Wedged into skin. The scent of his blood became heavier, pervasive, dampening the very air as he slowly pulled his hands back. More slivers of glass fell, jostled by the movement. One side of Mark’s face was leaking red, left eye closed tight against it, the other taking in his bloody hands, one still holding the weapon.

The building heat within was stoked. No longer a burning candle, but hot coals, magma beneath the crust, whipped into an inferno of untamed rage that scorched at his very insides. Mark was hurt. His best friend was hurt. He didn’t want Mark to suffer, not like that. Not anymore.

It felt almost effortless to tear the alternate’s head clean in two, cleaving down the Virgin Mary’s neck and chest, feeling the body give way beneath his hold at long last. Its screaming became choking, burbling, humming - unable to rejoin the parts where he held them apart, fractured and slowly twitching, becoming loose paste, losing all structure. The same as when he’d caved its head in with the branch, he had left its form utterly ruined, splintered and useless. The anger, bright, scalding, had done enough damage.

And, in a mere blink, it was gone.

The shadows retreated, the waspish buzz of static dying down to a faint background disturbance as he stared down at where it once was. The rage had cooled but was still there - a dulled impression of heat now somewhat satisfied by the temporary destruction of his sibling. It would think twice before bothering them again, he was sure. It knew he meant it now - Mark was off limits.

Mark was his.

A shift of foot on stone, a tinkle of shattered glass, a sharp intake of breath hissing through clenched teeth.

Mark.

¬ Mark! ¬

He had no real word for it, this feeling - this need to make sure Mark was okay, that he was still alive. That he wasn't about to die, be buried, and become forgotten. It was not anger, but it did flash hot and deep within his chest. It was not hunger, but it had him craving, ravenous - wanting to be near, to make sure Mark was still alive and safe.

Mark stood at the south transept amongst the glass and broken solder, the stone arch rising empty behind him, the afternoon sun hanging low, night creeping in. The amber hues radiating about his head as though he were something divine. And he could have been, were he not still bleeding.

The cut above his eye came down dangerously close to its corner, bisecting his eyebrow, and though he’d managed to get it open again, blood still oozed into the creases of the lid, gummed into the folds and his eyelashes, painting down his cheek and dripping off his chin. It was a deep wound, deeper than the ones he’d had on his hands, and Mark’s face was twisted slightly, mouth downturned in pain and his jaw set hard. There was a fullbody tremor eating away at him, piece by piece, as the adrenaline became icy, and the fear froze up along with it, setting muscles tighter. It still lingered, staining the air the same as the blood on his clothes and skin - smeared into the grooved handle of the gun.

“Mark?”

He flinched. Trigger finger itching against steel.

“Mark?” He knew he did not look like Cesar, but he sounded like him, spoke like him.

Mark did not seem assuaged to hear it, adjusting the gun in his hand. His emotions were a haze, all melded together in a smothering fog - too messy and tangled to figure out what exactly he was feeling alongside the fear and pain. Droplets of red slipped down into the neck of his hoodie.

“Mark,” He tried again, moving towards him only to stop at the threat of Mark’s hold tightening about the pistol, how he raised it slightly, subconsciously, “You’re bleeding.”

“Stay the fuck back,” Mark said, voice weak, but growing steadier with each word. He held himself awkwardly, a tiredness gripping at his bones, a pain in his skin and behind his eyes. His fear was delicious, but he did not want it. Surely Mark could see that?

Right?

¬ Don’t shoot me. I'm not what you think. ¬

He adjusted the gun, not raising it any further, but not lowering it either as he said, "How long have you- has he been gone?"

He paused, let out an unnecessary breath, and decided, then and there, that he would give Mark one last truth - not because he wanted Mark to trust him , for what he had earned the past few days and nights was now gone, dashed against the rocks and ripped out into the unforgiving current of the sea. But because Mark deserved no less than it. He'd spent so long hoping that God was still listening, that he wasn't truly alone - years clutching at lies like grains of sand falling between the gaps in his desperate fingers. Mark needed more than a lie. He had earned it.

"He wasn't the one that called you."

¬ I did. ¬

Memories of Cesar Torres screaming, begging for his life. Pleading that went unheard, fingers scrabbling against the kitchen tiles, the knife cast onto the floor beside his mother’s dead body. That ravenous hunger that had been so present then, and so absent now, at last being sated by consumption. By becoming him. Taking his place. Screams for help that clawed their way out into the static-charged air about them both. 

¬ He’s gone. ¬

Mark looked as though he was about to vomit.

“Right,” His words were fragile. Tears pooled in his right eye, the other too awash with blood, still slipping down across his face, “ Right. ”

A shaking breath, a still-galloping pulse. Though it wasn’t only fear now, the embers that had been there the whole time, hidden beneath the smog of terror, were at last allowed to breathe, ignite, and catch on. Hair, matted by blood and sweat, stuck to his skin. He finally had all of the pieces, but his mind was still trying to put them together in a way that made sense - in a way that rationalised everything he’d ignored since that first night at Cesar’s house.

¬ You just didn’t want to see it, Mark. ¬

“Fuck.”

"Mark. You- what you've given me, I understand it now," He said, trying to explain himself, to find the words to make him see what he had been going through, processing. Why the thought of hurting Mark was so repugnant now - why the plan had diverted so hard and so fast. He needed Mark to understand that he was his saviour. That he had pieced him together, made him realise that he had been broken from the start. What he was now, was better than what he had been.

“What I’ve- What?”

"It's a gift, Mark. That's what you've done. You've given me a gift. And I don't-"

"No!" Mark shouted, cutting him off abruptly. Anger burned brightly from him though it was surrounded by darkness, like a flare cast up into a starless night sky, "No, you don't get to say that. You- You fucking- you're not even him. You’re a monster - a fucking thing. My best friend is dead and you fucking killed him!”

He frowned, feeling the bite of Mark’s words as they hit, and he tried forcing himself downwards, shoving everything away neatly, tidily, until he looked like Cesar Torres once more, sounded like him when he said, "Mark, I- he- we are right here."

¬ It's… complicated. ¬

There was a moment, quiet but heavy, where Mark simply stood looking at him. The cuts littering his face and arms, some still impacted with shards of stained glass, bled sluggishly, staining skin and clothing alike.

Some of them will leave scars, he thought.

Then, abruptly, Mark seemed to straighten up, the weapon in his hands no longer shaking, held securely despite the blood and pain he must have felt to do so.

"Mark?" He asked. In his voice, in Cesar's voice. One and the same.

"You fucking bastard."

It was an impulsive thing, really. He could see it in Mark's eyes - that intrusive thought, the longing to hurt another being as he had been, the brief consideration.

His righteous anger.

The gunshot rang out.

And, for a moment, everything was the same. He and Mark stared at one another - still hoping that Mark could be made to see, to understand that he needed him. That something could be salvaged from all of this. Nothing had changed. Nothing had to change.

But there was the gun, lightly smoking, and the scorched scent of nitroglycerin made the air even more oppressive. The weapon had been fired in anger - true, raw rage.

And everything suddenly changed.

Cool, rough stone beneath his knees, palms - when had he got on the floor? - cushioned by the bandages that had reformed. Mark’s feet rooted before him, frozen in place, the anger in his expression warring with horror as he stared at the gun he held, finger still compressing the trigger, unable to move it - as though in disbelief at what he’d done.

Like his hands in the woods, flesh had split once more, given way to flawlessly imitated blood that welled up from ruptured pressure, abrupt and out of control. He could feel it before he saw it, sliding down his chest, following the curves of ribs and stomach. Shirt catching against the wetness, sticking, becoming weighed down against him like a second, uncomfortable skin. One hand, instinctive perhaps, came up to grasp at the left side of his ribcage, just below the sternum, fingertips catching on the hole punctured through clothing. Pulling back, the white bandage was stained red, slick and fresh. A prickling sensation within his lungs, like holding his hands in red hot water, or sliced up palms and fingers in Mark's car.

Mark had shot him.

The wound was not healing.

The bullet had torn through mimicked skin and flesh, had cracked through bone and ripped into lungs. There was no exit wound to mark its path, he could feel no tell-tale wetness against his back. Just the front, bleeding and bleeding, getting slicker with each passing second they remained in silence - him on the floor and Mark standing over. He couldn’t make himself get up.

“Mark?” The name was tainted by metal coming up his throat, copper and iron that lined his tongue and slipped between his teeth and lips. More red, more and more red.

“Fuck,” Mark said, choked, “Oh, fuck.”

Prickling becoming sharper, like needles under the skin, poking in deeper and yet also trying to tear their way outwards. A breath into damaged lungs, burbling. Bubbles in blood-smeared saliva. Blazing heat, like anger but not, that broiled in his chest, set ribs to become white-hot irons branding themselves in further with each gasp of air. It did not need to breathe, but he wanted to - needed to. Something primal insisted it was important, that there was some finality to it all if he didn’t.

He wanted Mark, he needed him. Needed him like he needed breathing.

Needed him to reach out with warm arms, to drown him in that honey sweetness, to take this away - this prickling that was not prickling anymore, this heat that was not anger. Another wheezing breath, a drawn out cry. Something was crying out. Someone was crying out.

Mark?

But Mark decidedly had his mouth closed, free hand not occupied by the gun clasping over his lips, smearing the blood on his face. Staring, wide-eyed, horrified.

There was blood on the floor now, still warm against cool stone, seeping into the gaps. A puddle of crimson swiftly becoming a pool, spreading, expanding, like the heat in his lungs and the needles in his skin. He wanted to get up, needed to. Needed to get out of what he was sitting in - the red staining his jeans, skin, shirt, spilling from his mouth and the bullet in his chest.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t get up.

The needles tore through, his lungs were burning.

Another low, continuous cry. A scream like Mark’s but Mark wasn’t screaming - Mark was talking, stuck on repeat like a broken record:

“You’re not him. You’re not Cesar. You aren’t- I didn’t shoot- You’re not him .”

Who was screaming?

And then it all clicked. Memories that were once Cesar’s, now his . That one time he’d broken his arm falling off the roof. Teeth gritting, stomach churning, lungs aching, burning with-

Pain.

And suddenly it made sense. He was the one screaming, fingers clawing at stone slippery with blood, unable to find purchase - leaking from his mouth, his lungs. Wanting Mark to take him in gentle hands, to bathe him in that sweetness, to lift out this indescribable feeling and take it away. He didn’t want it. He’d been so, so terribly wrong.

He didn’t want to feel this.

He tried to say so. But it hurt . Burning, torn apart from the inside out, over and over, filling his mind, his entire being with nothing but pain, pain, pain . Until all that escaped from his lips were cries that tasted like rust.

Mark was hyperventilating, saying something as he tried to suck in air. The gun was on the floor - when had he thrown it? Whatever he was saying, feeling, was lost, filtered into nothingness, smothered by blood and a creature that screamed with Cesar Torres’ voice.

If he could just say something, anything then maybe Mark could help, could take it all away with coarse bandages and that green box with the white cross. He swallowed down another wail, coughed it out as blood and spit. Rasping breaths, smaller than before, drowning in liquid.

“Mark,” He tried, “Mark-”

He didn’t know if he could be heard, could barely hear himself over the rushing waves of white noise in his ears and the needles lancing through to his very bones, his very core. At Mark’s mercy, at his feet, hunched over and bleeding, it, for the first time since its existence, begged.

“Help me.”

Unravelling, falling apart, unable to hold himself together any longer. He didn’t want to. There were too many cracks riddled with agony, breaking apart - too many to keep in one piece.

It hurts.

Form shattering, slipping away, the abyss of the void eating away at the corners, consuming him , calling him back. Beckoning, promising freedom from this suffering. He didn’t want to go. He wanted Mark. Needed Mark. 

But that didn’t matter, not to the emptiness that continued to peel away at him , gaining ever more ground, swallowing him down inch by relentless inch. Spilling out at the seams, blood smearing under his hands, under what little of him still remained. Just enough to draw in one last breath, to spit out another mouthful of copper, to force out words that tore at his insides just to say.

One last, grave truth before slipping away into that nothingness he had once dragged himself from.

“It hurts, Mark. It hurts.”

Gone.

Chapter Text

Mark Heathcliff (age 18) :

Face/Appearance (general)

• Slight shadows under eyes (from poor sleep & anxiety).
• Lips peeling and cut from nervously/anxiously chewing them.
• Brown eyes and hair, pale skin, 3 prominent moles: 2 on his left cheek and 1 on the left side of his forehead by his hairline.

Hands

• Thin bandages on random fingers depending on how bad the skin is.
• Small band-aids on the back of his hands.
• Pink patches of skin and sore patches from biting at his hands and nail beds. Some have likely scarred or the skin simply won't grow back the same, leaving blemishes.

Scars (post Chapter 6)

• These are from the stained glass window of Saint Mark the Evangelist shattering and falling on him.
• The scarring is mostly contained to the left side which he wasn't able to protect in time.
• The scar cutting through his eyebrow and around his eye is the deepest and most significant one - he probably should have gone to the ER for stitches but chose to self-treat it due to being shaken up by events at the church and his likely inability to pay for the bill. As a result, his left eyelid creases differently due to the scarring and it aches whenever the weather is cold/damp, causing headaches.

Clothing (general)

• Wrangler denim jacket - light acid wash.
• Blue denim jeans, baggy, also acid-washed.
• Grey, worn hoodie, faded by time and multiple washes.
• Red Chuck Taylors, scuffed and well-worn.
• Undershirt, usually a band tee of some sort.
• His pistol tucks into the rear waistband of his jeans, with his hoodie and jacket pulled over it for concealed carry.
• His dress style is really meant to depict Mark's want of comfort, but also his lack of confidence in knowing who he is as a person. Styles were big in the 90s and there were a lot of them, but Mark doesn't really know just where he belongs in it all. His style is 'him' - made from the things he likes and feels good with, even if it's less stylised that how his best friend dresses.

Right Arm Patch (jacket)

• A simple band patch for 'The Cure'. This is actually a real patch designed and distributed from around April 1992 following/slightly before the release of the album 'Wish' - Mark's favourite album. He likely would have had to order it in from England or copied the design of it himself by hand as The Cure weren't very well-known at this point in the US and wouldn't have had much in terms of international merch.

Jacket Pins

• A 'Rage Against the Machine' button pin above the left chest pocket.
• An 'Iron Maiden' steel pin in the shape of their mascot's face (Eddie) on the left chest pocket.

Necklace

• A sterling silver cross on a silver chain, which was a gift from his parents after his Confirmation as a child.

Cesar Torres (human form, age 18):

Face/Appearance (general)

• Dark brown eyes, black/brown hair, tan skin, light stubble (I promise you his skin is tan on the paper, my phone and the lighting just make it look so bad lmao).
• Only appears wearing the suit in Chapter 1 after first assuming Cesar's form (it was copied from a prom photo Cesar's mom had on the wall). He wears less formal clothing after that, borrowing Mark's clothes in Chapter 2 and then going to retrieve Cesar's own clothes in Chapter 3 from the house. He is wearing Cesar's own clothes in the fullbody concept.
• Is an almost-perfect imitation of Cesar, but his pupils are slightly smaller than is usual for a human (though this is barely noticeable unless a person is looking for it).

Clothing (general)

• Black denim jacket, heavy acid wash. This was an 18th birthday gift from Mark.
• Ripped/distressed black jeans, light acid wash.
• Simple shirt, usually he goes for a bold decal or a pattern like stripes.
• Brown leather Chelsea ankle boots.
• His style has 'grunge' roots, but is a bit too tidy to really be called gunge. It's definitely alternative though. Significantly more influenced by the era than Mark is - Cesar was always the more willing to try new things and ways of self-expression, even if it did result in bullying from time to time by other kids their age in school. Mark has always admired that quality in Cesar but is still too unsure to really try branching out into new things himself.

Rear Panel Patch (jacket)

• A 'Queen' patch for the album 'News of the World' which covers the entire back panel of the jacket. Mark sewed it on for him over the summer. This album is one of Cesar's favourites (the real Cesar's anyways).

Jacket Pin

• A 'Nirvana' pin on the right side of the collar depicting the smiling face with crossed eyes and tongue sticking out. Nirvana's hit album 'Nevermind' had released in 1991 to worldwide success and critical acclaim.

I haven't included a design for what Cesar's alternate form looks like as I like keeping that element of mystery in the horror of it. He still has the appearances we see in the canon Mandela Catalogue, but he also has limitless amounts of forms besides those ones - he is a being birthed from the void after all, lol.

EDIT: Hopefully the images show up now - I hate the ao3 formatting for pictures lmao

EDIT 2: Okay, maybe the second time it finally works? lmao