The Wretched Rite - Round Three - DSRS Darwin

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Thanks for that, narrator.

Not that narrator. That narrator.

This really wasn’t what I was intending to do you know; use fate as a tool to place Alice in life threatening situations with the sure and certain knowledge that she will succeed or escape or somehow prevail. You know I love you and this hasn’t been easy on any of us, but look at her. She’s lying in a puddle of her own silver blood. I do have to say nice touch on the silver blood by the way, but still, this kind of thing is just not done. Any minute now she’ll be dead and then I’ll be left with that bitch Vera with no hope of making her a more sympathetic character, why don’t I just bow out now? At least I think Alice’ll die. I have to confess I don’t really know for sure how much of a hold fate has upon the Tsote after they have been removed from their home world, and if you don’t mind I’d rather not find out right at this moment. Now I have to handwave it away; come up with some bullshit reason why this ain’t gonna happen.

But hey there doesn’t seem to be any rush. As the flames burn higher and the end approaches we all just kind of sit around complaining. There’s accusations and acrimony and a regime change and while a couple of narrators offer narration on their character’s exploits, nobody seems very keen to do so. To be expected I suppose. It seems like we’re all waiting for the flames to finally burn the library to ashes and a conclusion to appear of its own volition. It’s as though we’re entrusting it to fate to plot our paths as well. Eventually I bite the bullet. I bullshit some narration about myself, make my feelings clear and then it’s all about the ink.

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For a fleeting moment as she awakes, Alice thinks she can see a circle of eight figures, but they are gone in an instant, perhaps never were there at all. She has more pressing things on her mind at any rate. The narrator stands there, her mouth agape as the woman who should be dead climbs to her feet and pulls the long black fountain pen from her heart.

“What?!” The narrator’s voice rang with incredulity. “How are you still alive?”

“You,” Alice replied. “You are fucking pathetic. Sat up here on your own, playing with people’s lives as though they’re yer fucking toys. You don’t even really understand people. I bet that’s why you made me get into bed with that fucking mermaid yer sick fuckin’ pervert.”

“I…” The narrator wanted to say that she did no such thing, but Alice cut her off again.

“Yer have no idea who I am, what I am.” Alice replied. “I’m a fucking Tsote, and I’m not about to get killed by some fuckin’ ten year old. I know who kills me, and it ain’t you girly. You might have some cool powers over the rest of these fuckers, but you can’t do shit to me.”

“Just…” The narrator struggled for words. “Just get out. Just leave me alone. Let me play with my town in peace.” Moment by moment, second by fuckin’ second, the stringy black shadows that had long ago enveloped the narrator seemed to ebb away. They receded or they vanished or whatever the fuck terminology you want to use, the point is that each second that passed her features were clearer and clearer. Her hair was long and black and done up in pigtails, her skin was pale as ash and she wore a ragged as fuck old cape.

“You think I fuckin’ want to be here?” Alice asked. “I got dragged here, I did think it was you who had brought me here, but it’s kind of become apparent that that ain’t what happened.” There was an awkward pause as the pair looked at one another. The narrator stared at Alice, before incredulously staring at her own hands. “If it were up to me I’d be all about leaving you to your own devices. Kill people; make them kill one another or fuck or whatever the fuck you want, but you don’t get to fuck around with me. I’m not your fuckin’ toy. I choose my own fate.”

The narrator wasn’t paying any fuckin’ attention. What the fuck was she staring at anyway? Was there something on her shirt or something? Alice looked down and was somewhat surprised to find her hand moving busily, scrawling words onto a battered old notebook which she couldn’t even remember picking up. She wrote about how she looked down and how she was surprised to find her hand moving busily, scrawling words onto a battered old notebook which she couldn’t even remember picking up and then she wrote it again. This was fuckin’ ridiculous.

“Give it back!” yelled the narrator. “That’s not yours! Give it me back!”

“What the fuck?” Alice said. “What the fuck, how am I doing this?”

“It’s the pen.” The narrator explained. “Give it me back and you can just leave. I’ll write you a way home, I promise.”

There was a long moment of silence. A moment of nothing more than contemplation and the burning of a town; so dim and distant as to be taking place in another world altogether.

“I wonder if I can...” The narrator said, her mouth moving involuntarily as Alice wrote her dialogue for her. “Oh fuck yes. Fuck you I am never giving this back. Stop! Stop that please… just please give it back to me. You don’t want to be stuck here forever do you?”

“I can do what I want.” Alice said. “I could write my own way home if I wanted…” she trailed off for a second. “I… I can write my own fate. I can finally do what I want to do, choose my own path in life.” She stared back at the former narrator with her tear stained eyes. “I’ll never give this back.” The shadows crept along her body, engulfing every last part of the Tsote, the last part being her dim bronze eyes.

Suddenly out of nowhere there was a blast of lightning striking down from the clear skies, smashing through the old wooden roof of the library and finally striking the former narrator. She was dead before the debris from the broken roof had even hit the floor. Her charred body slumped to the floor. It was okay Alice reasoned. She was evil. She’d done awful things to the people of this town. She deserved to die. It did not make her a bad person, and if it did, maybe that was fine because for once in her life she was her own bad person, free to choose her own fate and with no worries that some well-fated bitch was going to stroll in and take it all away from her. Alice walked across to the window and looked out across the town. It’s previous owner had left it in a dreadful mess… It was time to clean it up.