Of Tearing Flesh and Singing Screams

Cold. Dark.

Agony that burns like fire. Consciousness dissolving into...
pain life death agony screams screams that sing like birds and fly into the sun with bleeding strips and tearing flesh with misty wrackings wracking coughs and cancer in the soul shredding soul of darkness black and singing with the joy of pain the joy of death the joy of battle microbes melting joy and pain forests dying trees in agony beasts in agony karia in agony joy of pain and flicker flicker flicker flicker
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"How is she?"
Cold. Dark. Damp earth and corrugated metal.

'IHATEYOUHATEYOUIHATEYOUHATEYOUHATEYOU'
'A twitching brain can dance within...'
'How did you know I was looking at you if you weren't looking at me?'
'It's the thing you hate the most.'
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It was different this time. Different because there was an I, and therefore a context. Thoughts. Feelings. Memories. Pain. She screamed her voice away, tears flowing from her eyes, and still the thoughts flowed through the empty void. The empty void. The hollow girl. Zero. The null state.

'Sing the wisdom of the dusk sages, sing the joy of their work, sing the rightness of their guidance. Sing the dusk sages.'
'It's the thing you hate the most.'
'Sing, goddess, of the ruination of all our dreams...'
'Wrath, ruinous wrath that brought woes innumerable, and hurled down into Hades many strong souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all winged fowls...'
'Pin my ear to the wisdom post, hang me up and drain me dry'
'I want...'

Smooth acrylic surfaces. Memory or reality? Simulation or simulated? The pain of all of Karia.
Flesh tearing, flesh ripping, screams singing, joy and satisfaction: Schadenfreude. Power humming beneath the surface. Power like eyes rotting and bursting and screams, so many screams. Pain. Voice hurts. The pain we caused. We. We. We. We.
We.
We.
We.

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She looked up into the luminous eyes of a TeeShee.
'You're right. I do hate you.'

'The same.'
'No progress?'
'I don't know if you'd call it progress.'
So many voices. So many. Voices beyond count. It had always been so. She couldn't remember a time when she wasn't all of those voices.
... No. That wasn't right. She was distinct. There was an I.
The I was drowning in suffering and death. Like always.
Like always.

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May your sun be blown out like a candle
May your sea burn like tar
May your sky be rolled up like a scroll
May your blue moon drip with blood

Why had she agreed to this? Kiyoshi.
PAIN. DUTY. HONOUR. DISAPPROVAL.
Moses.
PAIN. FREEDOM. SYMBOL. HORROR.
Mokuzai.
PAIN. SILENT MIND. WAYWARD CHILD. DISAPPOINTMENT.

The suffering of Karia: the joy of Rei. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the silence. The Silence of the World. The blessed, joyful silence as the target finally slipped away and its last thoughts, its last agonies, hung like a perfume in the air before...
Before what?

Except.
Except.
Except.
Except... "Except... it isn't right, is it?" Rei whispered aloud.

A TeeShee cocked its incorporeal head sideways, looking at the young Biomade curiously. She wasn't responding to this the way she should. Was something wrong? Had they been mistaken?

The Vorax died. The Gogajin died. The Zipsum died. Eyeless. Horror.
Joy.
Giga-gilgamesh
Gigagigagigagiga
'But it's so easy for you...'
BITE
CRY
CRUSH
'Here's how to order...'
‘Looks like you gained a few pounds, you cow.’
‘Do you often sing or whistle just for fun? What does that mean?’
‘I wonder if the test type has the same problems as the prototype?’
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Smooth, clear acrylic surface. Damp soil, damp earth. Misty forest air.
Power humming beneath the surface.
Voices. Her voices, all of them. Her voices, none of them.

'I DON'T WANT TO BE OLD'
Do you want to be young?
Do you want to be big, small, fat-skinny tall-short nobody-somebody?
'How would you feel if I dug you up and made a soup of your bones?'
'I want...'

As suddenly as it began, it was over. Rei came back to herself, and it was dawn. A mist curled around the trees in the forest, and the faint glow of the Tee-Shee glimmered here and there in the distance. Tears flowed down her face, and she was haggard.

A pool of roiling water. The pain of Karia passed over her and through her. She had been well trained, and contrary to her instinct on the matter, she knew that it wasn't her pain, wasn't her suffering. She had always known. She was not Karia, no matter how much that here, kneeling in the mud, she felt as though she was.

The calmness descended again. The suffering of Karia faded into the corner of her mind where she kept the suffering of all of her victims. And yet...

The suffering of others.
The suffering of Karia.
Rei's lips twisted into a sick smile, and her fingers clenched into fists, squelching into the mud beneath her. When she spoke, her voice came out as a hoarse, scream-shattered whisper.
I want... (it's not right!)
I want... (there's something...)
I want... (there's something wrong with me)

"...More..."