Gone.

[Byron]

It was one of those usual evenings again, which Elena was recently using to spend time in her own apartment on Glendalough. A pretty large one in fact, with one commodious living room together with a kitchen, a bedroom and the obligatory bathroom. The lights she had already been switch off – the clock at the wall indicated it was already one in the morning. The only source of light was the TV which flaringly illuminated the couch in front of it and Elena who was sitting on it. Ever since the beef between her and her boyfriend had happened approximately one week ago, in which he had clearly stated seeing each other was of no relief for him at all, she had preferred to not peeve him any more by her presence and instead reside in her own apartment. There was not much to do for her there either though, which made her lounging about most of the time, being bored beyond belief. He was right to a certain degree though, she kept thinking to herself, as it indeed hadn’t helped much to look into his angered eyes and instantly get reminded of what she had been responsible for. Elena had arranged that meeting in hopes that they would sort the problems out that way; except that it hadn’t worked out. Both had seemed to be too hardheaded and impaired to deal with it in an objective manner. Which none of them could be blamed for, still it had opened just another can of worms. Back then, as though in a burst of anger and lust for confrontation, she had asked him to throw everything in her face he could think of, any kind of insult or whatever else crossed his mind, wishing to listen to his thoughts about her. She had known what would be in store for her there and still believed she could abide it. Truth be told, she couldn’t.

His words were still frequently weaving through her mind – irresponsibility, egoism, recklessness, bitch -, and there was nothing she could do about it. As much as she would have loved to lock them away, like highwaymen did they stray through her cogitations. They were hitting her hard, as they came from the most positively biased person she could have thought of, the one who probably knew her the best and loved her the most, she thought. That could only mean his words were closest to the actual truth, she thought. The consequence: The bitter self-hatred she was nourishing grew only further day by day. It was almost a miracle she had not yet attempted suicide over it; however she could exert enough willpower to not fall prey to the suggestions the demons on her shoulder gave her. While she had spoken about them in a plainly jocular way a few months ago, more as a metaphor than anything else to make fun of herself, most recently she couldn’t gainsay their existence anymore. Or she was just exaggerating in that matter.

There she perched, hanging around on the couch, her chin sunk on her chest, staring at the flatscreen – expensive model - with vacant expressions. No matter how costly the TV had been however, it wouldn’t help with the programme, utter crap as usual, and it visibly bored her to death. Yet, for lack of anything better to do, she kept zapping through the channels, grunting disgustedly every now and then when she had found something particularly whack. The sitcoms couldn’t hold her attention for long, and she strayed from the TV over and over. As she looked over at the KSR in the corner, for once resting instead of making obnoxious noises or jokes. There were bullet holes right next to it at the wall for a reason. Inspecting her fingernails, she briefly pondered painting them again as it had been some time, but scrapped the idea shortly after. She would have to search for the paint first anyways, and she felt too indolent for that right now. Placing her hands foldedly on her stomach, she began to fiddle about with her thumbs, whistling a melody piano that was faintly reminiscent of a lullaby. It were mostly crooked tones though, and so she ended the melody with a ho-hum sigh. Weighing her head to the right, she would eyeball her best friend that had pompously taken their seat on the couch right next to her – a bottle of the finest Whiskey she could lay her hands on. To be honest with herself, she had imagined her reunification with alcohol to be more glorious and less excessive, but it had turned out to be less glorious and more excessive instead.

At first, the local barkeeper on Glendalough had looked fairly surprised when Elena had moseyed in the bar, ordering good old booze. With days passing by however, he was questioning her alcohol consumption less and less, and instead was giving her more and more of the booze. Since the accident, she had become a regular, almost daily acquaintance of his again. Though she couldn’t even tell for sure whether he knew about her reasoning, he was definitely nobody’s fool, and he could have guessed it with ease, she believed. Else he would have probably intervened in her boozing in no time anyways. booze had become her regular form of liquid again, after multiple months of abstinating could she finally savor alcohol again. While she had always viewed it as some sort of ‘friend’, so to say, lately it had actually become one. No questions asked, and it just simply helped her. Neither did it have a mouth to blame anyone, which was convenient to her as well. Evasion was the name of Elena’s game. However soon the realization followed that her whole drinking could drift in an alcohol problem again. The fly in the ointment: In the beginning, the booze had helped her quite dramatically to suppress the bad thoughts, but the more she drank, the less the alcohol affected her mind. By now, unimpressed by the alcohol, the thoughts had been loitering around again.

Making some not further classifiable sounds with her mouth, she turned her attention to the left of her, where another acquaintance of her had taken its seat, dovishly resting on the couch – her gun. It was of rather fair quality, but couldn’t boast with innovation since it was a rather old model, relying on the kinetic energy of a bullet. Elena had never been forced to use it in real combat, which she was grateful for. Sheer brutality and savagery had always grossed her out a great deal, neither had she ever been fond of imagining how a possible foe of hers would collapse in his death throes after being shot. To her, it appeared to be such an almighty weapon. However, keeping it next to her while being in such homely surroundings was far from usual for her, and for an outsider it would have likely seemed irrational. And that is exactly what it was. However, the gun was lying there in her reach for a reason. Only recently, coincidentally soon after her hospital stay, had she begun realizing how dangerous she was living, as the head of a band of mercenaries earning a living through pissing off a bunch of people. Not to mention that the world itself housed so many dangers, she fancied, that it was only logic to have a gun next to her in case things went from worst to god-awful. Which, in her opinion, could happen any second, and she shall be damned if she couldn’t shoot whatever down with a precision shot this time.

Every now and then she had lost herself in umpteen of freaky delusions, in what-if questions. For instance, what if a guy managed to burgle her, creep up on her from behind and try to strangulate her? Or what if a snub suddenly showed up before her panorama window, blowing a gaping hole into it with a precisely aimed Sidewinder shot?
For her, those were all valid considerations. It however didn’t exactly encourage relaxation, since she was on her guard the whole time as a result. From time to time, when she lowered her breathing on purpose, she could listen to her steadily hammer-pounding heartbeat, which happened to be the most obvious evidence of her stress level that for the life of hers wouldn’t alleviate. Falling asleep had become a difficult thing to do, no matter how much she tossed about in bed. Elena was already used to sleep deprivation to some extent though, and thus she didn’t ascribe too much importance to it. Where she was left was an incessant state of deeply rooted discomfort and unease, one which was, from a psychological point of view, verging on morbid paranoia at times. Too great was her fear that something could throw her off course again. Wherever she went would she not feel safe as long as her gun was not with her, and even then, the uncertainty she felt in almost every day-to-day setting wouldn’t ever leave her side. Whoever or whatever wished to fuck with her again shall be riddled with bullets this time, she encouraged herself. What she however didn’t come to realize was that most of her fears, or at least her true ones and not the ones with which she deceived herself, were not to be solved with a gun. Her instincts played her for a fool with a simple fight-or-flight dilemma. She couldn’t fight them with a gun, and neither could she escape them for a long time, just as a pendulum that would always come back after you pushed it away.

What goes around, comes around; yet another proverb that characterized the circumstances laconicly.

Her mind was too full with ballast for her to conceit this was not healthy at all, though. And so, the zest for life was slowly, but surely melting away. Bye-bye.

And then, not forgetting there was also the matter with Kiara that had consorted with the other cogitations in her mind, and if anything, it just had hardished Elena even more to try and drink all her sorrows away. As though it hadn’t been already enough that she was assigning guilt to herself for the death of her child – which was actually entitled in every single way -, fortune had apparently had yet another card up its sleeve to knock her flat out entirely. From her perspective, the odds were long that they could find Kiara, whom she had considered one of, if not the closest friends of hers, ever again. Either had she been killed by a bunch of criminals, or she had been taken hostage. Neither possibility gladdened Elena all too much, and the reflection that it could be very well her fault again that had made Kiara end up in such a hazardous situation had a suffocating effect on her.

Any mere thought about the subject rattled her a great deal and encouraged her to reach for the Vodka bottle again, and so she did. Boot-facedly, she raised the bottle, clutching it on the neck and having a look at it. It was empty, unfortunately. Again, she thought, as this particular bottle hadn’t lasted very long. Only a few drops of booze were still coming out of it, but otherwise all of its contents were already rushing through her veins. She couldn’t yet feel the effect very well, though that would surely be to change as soon as she stood up. Right now, it just made her feel heavy, accompanied by a pinch of dizzy, but nothing more. It wasn’t brightening her night up whatsoever, for booze had quasi already forfeited this effect for her. It didn’t make her feel better, but at least it broke the wheel of constant, self-hating bethinking.

For now, she knew that she needed more, and the only place where she would get more of what she needed was the bar. Glendalough, as it was a former civilian facility, had quite a variety of bars, though all except one were absolutely good for nothing, at least in her own humble opinion. Rising up from her couch, although it was an ordeal in itself as she had laid on the couch for hours already without moving a single inch, she nutated slightly. The alcohol hadn’t hit her as hard as that her head would immediately start spinning like crazy, but the dizziness was enough to force her to concentrate on the next few steps she made. Holding her forehead with her right hand, she groaned, looking around her room, searching for the door to the hallway. Gross-motorly, she clutched at the gun that was still resting on the couch, and quickly stuck it into one of her backside trouser pockets. Still being in her right mind to not forget enough about her deep-rooted paranoia to leave without her safety’s guarantor.

Closing the door behind her, she would start tramping through the corridors, hands stuck in her trouser pockets while her glimpse rested on the floor before her as she watched every of her steps. Deep in the night as it was, she wouldn’t expect any other people coming her way, and if she was lucky, she would have the bar all for herself as well. Elena had always been a people’s person, but recently, and especially during her inglorious hours of getting royally drunk, she didn’t wish many people around. Or rather, people’s careworn or even pejorative looks. It was some kind of U-turn when she thought about it, since she remembered the times when she could enjoy clubbing around like a madwoman. But for now, she was enough of an enemy to nobody but herself to not really want any kind of person acting as judge around her. Just as imagined, nobody on her way to the bar crossed her path, only occasionally a security droid passed her, uttering an electronically distorted “Greetings” which partook of something pesky. She downright ignored them, except that at one point she almost crashed into one accidentally. With some bad luck she might had triggered the self-defense mechanism that way, but the robot didn’t seem bothered about it one bit, and just resumed with his patrol. With a now hurting shoulder she palpated carefully, she turn right and walked the last few meters to the bar.

---

Alec MarMurdoch copped a brief look at the clock that hang on the wall, right above a big sign of metal letters saying “Welcome to 96 Slide”. Half past one in the morning already. A sigh slipped out of his mouth, then his gaze wandered down at what lot he still had to do this night. A set of glasses still had to be washed and dried by hand. Granted, he could have left them to the dishwasher to take care of, but as vintage as he, the old geezer he simply was, preferred to keep the bar, he favored to wash them one after another on his own. It was what he wanted 96 Slide to work like, carrying off its visitors into another, maybe easier world. For him, it definitely was an easier world. Here, he was just the barkeeper, serving his guests, having some smalltalk, but nothing serious. The serious part of his life was kept behind the entrance to the bar, and it was good this way. Grasping at the next glass in wait for some groping, he looked up at the metal letters once again, which triggered his melancholia each and every time he did so.

He had seen many people come and go over the years, decades. Many different adminstrators under whose thumb he was. To word it nicely, he had never been the kind of guy caring for his bosses. Being one’s own boss on the other hand was more repugnant to him just as much. As long as he had a boss, one that would make sure his business would run smoothly, the old man was satisfied. What he couldn’t stand however were others who poached on his territory day in day out as if they knew everything better. He had had such kind of bosses already too, but his reaction to such smartypants always had to be a sycophantic “Yes, Sir, you are so absolutely right. I’ll do my best”. He couldn’t be arsed to do his best, if ‘best’ meant to rejig his whole pub to the wishes of a random somebody.

At first, when he was seeing those mercenaries calling themselves Forlorn Hope take over Glendalough all of the sudden, he wasn’t all too pleasantly anticipated. His usual cookie-cutter approach when faced with a new boss, following the tenet of “If you don’t expect much, you can’t be disappointed”. The people he would encounter weren’t all that bad, in his opinion. Even when this opinion only derived from the fact that those mercenaries let him do his work without any interferences at all. Maybe they were savvy enough to understand MacMurdoch knew his stuff better than they. So far, it had bidden fair.

Absorbed by giving this well-curved glass a pleasant treating with his caring hands, there was no mistaking of footsteps out on the hallway, at so late an hour. Raising his head again, he double-checked the clock. Still half past one. Those mercenaries weren’t very nocturnal, which he was gladdened about, as he preferred silence during the night over deafening boozy sessions until late in the night. That being said, he usually had the nights to call solely his own. The footsteps were definitely the ones of a human, as the stamping of the security droids was usually far more louder. Only one option was left in the basket then, he deduced. Elementary, my dear Watson, he knew who or what was heading his way. A boozehound.

He straightened himself after stooping over the washbasin, quickly brushing away gutter from his apron. High-ranking clientele was about to enter the bar.

It turned out just as he had expected from days and weeks of the same old story as the bluehead entered the bar, looking as miserable as sin with her zombie-like pale skin and sleep-deprived eyes – or, looking as miserable as always. It was a well-trodden face to MacMurdoch by now, though he could not be called ecstatic to see her again. She paid OK, no doubt, but the less cadavers he had to see, the better. And if anything, this girl in front of him looked exactly that way. Like a cadaver.

He sighed. Greeting her with a nod, while still treating the glass in his hands, he wouldn’t show any smile. “Caipt’n”, he mumbled his words. He didn’t know all their names, and even though he knew this one’s well enough by now, he preferred keeping the relationship to his bosses a more or less distant one. Not to mention, they were virtually all one to him. Captains, Knights, whatsoever, he knew the titles, but the persons behind the titles he wasn’t too interested in. What however had caught his eye for the whole time was her slim figure. Not only that he was just a man and couldn’t do much about it, but also that he knew there was more about it. The gossip factory is always working overtime in his line of work, and thus he was informed about one thing or another. The whole station was aware of the pregnancy on board. How could one not know, with the visual signs so obvious? Except that they weren’t anymore. Combined with her nasty habit of drinking herself under the table recently, it only supported one conclusion. And only when he thought about it, he could only too well understand her reasoning.

She looked at him for a very brief moment, stoop-shouldered. Her eyes however glazed over soon. “Alec”, she gave back, striding over to the bar, and plunked down on one of the stools, laying her hands on the counter. “The usual, as always. Vodka, in case you got some. I need something that burns”, she mussitated and looked down at the table and her fingers on it, which she soon ran over her face, obscuring it and her mien.

“Who would I be to not have one”, Alec countered, bending down behind the counter to reach for a bottle of the desired alcohol. While cracking it open, he would start conversing a little, just as he had learnt to do over the past couple of decades. Making guests feel like they had a bud behind the bar always helped with perquisities, not to mention that one chinwag or another usually never hurt. “You see, by now I actually proceeded to keep one bottle of it ready all the time, under my counter. Just in case you show up”, he wittered on while pouring some of the Vodka in a small glass. A lopsided smile appeared on his face. It all too much reminded him of Groundhog Day, except that it wasn’t the groundhog that was greeting him day in, day out, but a drunkard instead. As though he was trapped in a time loop like Phil Connors. And if so, how would he get out again? On the other hand, the woman was a good source of income, examined from a business point of view. So why would he want to end this loop in the first place?

His guest was watching his hand as he put the shot down on the table with dash. “You’re my resort, Alec”, she told him, focusing her gaze on the small glass of Vodka as it stood lonely on the counter. One second after and she poured it into her throat in one whack. She let out a groan shortly after and began coughing.

“If I didn’t know better, Captain”, Alec chimed in, holding the bottle in his right hand as he was certain he would be ordered to refill the glass soon enough. Besides his business considerations, it was a sorry sight every time. “I’d say I bring about your ruin, but who am I to judge anyways.”

“Next one.”

He sighed. Just as he had expected. And so he poured more Vodka into the glass again, until it was almost full to the brim. While she was busy downing it, Alec decided to spend a few seconds to have a closer look at his guest’s facial play. It was a convulsed face, but he ascribed that to the burning Vodka in her throat. God thanks he was over this already. According to his own believes, only a former alcoholic would make a good barkeeper in the end, and he could proudly count himself among this number of souls. It had been in his early thirties when he had lost himself to the alcohol like so many had done before. Back then, the divorce from the love of his life had been his cause to chum up with the rum bottles.

It was almost a ritual they were holding here, and it was already definite what his next words would be, because they would always be the same. With a headshake, he looked at her, then looked behind himself at the shelves with other bottles standing there. “Captain, I could try and tell you once again that alcohol won’t be your savior, but I doubt I’m telling you anything new. Since I say that every single time.” A frown appeared on his face as he said that. He knew well enough that it was easy to say that as a non-alcoholic. He had been told the same back in the days again and again, and he could still remember what kind of dismissal he had returned every time.

When she was done with coughing and forcing the Vodka down her throat, she would gasp a little, then look up at Alec. No expressions. It was as though he looked into the eyes of a dead corpse, he thought. A vacant stare. It was dead silent for a few moments as she fiddled around with the glass, not letting her stare wander away from his eyes though. “Do we really have to make conversation about this every time, even though you know the outcome isn’t gonna change?”, she returned, watching the Vodka resting in her hands. “Next.” And with that, she put the glass down on the table, shoving it towards Alec for him to refill it again. A provocative look whooshed over her visage as she looked up, jutting her chin forward.

Apparently she was in the “I’m not here to talk” mood today, Alec imagined. He shrugged. He would force the conversation down her throat together with the Vodka if he had to, no matter if she liked it or not. He wasn’t there to be liked. But seeing that wreckage of a person before him, and knowing alcohol was full of hidden pitfalls, he was feeling the obligation to step in and remind her where this could lead her. Not that she would listen, he knew. But it was worth the try. While filling the glass up with Vodka yet once again, he would smirk upon her words, reluctant to deviate from his light-hearted appearance. People don’t listen to you when you start griping.

“I believe at least somebody should remind you of what you’re getting into though”, he said, offering the glass to her which she eagerly accepted and emptied in one shot.

After she was done coughing, she would look at him, with an obstinate play on her face. “My friends are telling me often enough, don’t worry.”

“What are they saying?”

“That I should stop drinking.”

His grin grew a bit wider as she said that. “Why don’t you listen to your friends? They seem to be quite savvy.”

“Because I shouldn’t” was her surly answer.

“Why not?”

A sigh. “They can’t put themselves in my shoes. Not really. It’s sickening hypocrisy.”

It was a perfect screenplay the two of them were rat-tatting at this moment, as each and every line was sticking perfectly by now. This conversation they had conducted so often by now, both of them knew perfectly what they were retort to each other. It almost was a ritual. Both knew nothing would come out of it, but they just got over it because they had been getting used to saying those words far too much. However at this point, the conversation would take a different turn than usually, only if it was because Alec was sick from the self-pity this woman was wallowing in.

“Would you rather want them to suffer the same, just so they can understand what you feel?”, he asked in a provocative tone of voice before reaching for the empty glass. “I guess you want another one.”

Raking her fingers through her messy, uncombed hair, she would vent a profound sigh, shifting around on her stool. Leaning onto the counter with her elbows, she would break off the eye contact, while instead staring at the wooden bar. “No, of course I wouldn’t want that…”, she purled.

“I dunno what you’ve gone through, Captain”, he replied while filling up the glass to the brim once more. It was a lie, but he affected pretending to know less. Would be better if she didn’t know what kind of rumors were doing the rounds recently. “But it seems like life’s played a bad joke on you. Friends might ain’t in your skin, but they just wanna help you. Listen to them.” His words were almost akin to coaxing.

“Pfft”, came the immediate rebuff. “Don’t act as if you had a heiligenschein.”

He shoved the filled glass over the counter back into her direction, as some of the Vodka slopped over. “Last one for today”, he said with resolute, hard vox. Leaning over the counter a little, steadying himself with his arms, he would add while she was instantly leaping at the shot, slugging it down as though it was a matter of life and death: “I’m no saint, but I’m still in my right senses to see where this is gonna lead to. I know that you think your life’s been smashed to smithers. But that’s no reason to throw it all away now.”

She had already guided the glass to her lips when she halted and meanmugged him for a second. He could notice her strained muscles at this moment. He smirked. Bravo, you hit something there, old geezer, he thought to himself as a smile flickered across his face. Angry reactions ever so often were a sign of repugnance, but also of slow realization.

“Just shut the hell up, old fart”, she groused back and quaffed off the Vodka. After she was done with the obligatory gulping and choking and coughing, an excruciated expression flashed over her face as she gritted her teeth; apparently she was trying to keep the whole Vodka she had just drunk in one go in her stomach. It only made Alec shake his head at her, while he was crossing his arms before his chest and breathed out wearily.

“Well, from what I see, this amount of Vodka will surely be enough to make you busy for a while. Happy puking your lungs out, Captain”, he commented on her unsavory behavior while reaching for a wiping cloth to wipe the counter clean from the drops of Vodka on it. To some degree, it actually disgusted him. Maybe it was the reason why he didn’t drink much alcohol anymore, beside one pitcher Scotch every now and then with his widely scattered buds. It was almost ironical that he, as a barkeeper, didn’t insist on regular guzzling himself, but he thought it a very advantageous circumstance. No guest could use a drunken barkeeper behind the counter. And instead, he used his time to natter with the people he entertained, and could easily make them stop whenever he saw fit to do so.

Since she was already holding her stomach frantically as she rose from the barstool, Alec guessed it was really time for her to stop. Now it was just important to get her out of his bar before she would start heaving the gorge on his property. He had no cleaner, so every piss or barf that would end up on the floor he had to clean up himself willy-nilly. For now though, he just wanted to finish the glasses that still needed a washing and go to bed afterwards, cleaning up a pool of sick was not scheduled in his timetable.

Mopping her brow after a slight attack of sweating, the only thing she seemed capable of doing was groaning, and stumbling as she stepped on the ground. Apparently she had once again overestimated herself to a fatal degree, Alec figured. For a brief moment he considered whether he should usher her back to her room, but then opted against it. She would surely find her way back without his help. Not to mention that his own slothfulness would have gotten in the way anyways.

Weaving to the exit as though she was slipping on black ice, she made a brief sweeping gesture to wave goodbye to Alec, accompanied by groan after groan. “Fine, alright. I got enough for today. I know”, she mumbled her words, not looking back at him. “Got my share for today. Good … good night.” The last words were only stuttered as she leaned against the wall of the bar for a second, mopping her brow again before she walked through the door with dash, veering to the right and thus out of Alec’s sight. He put the wiping cloth back neatly on the bracket. With a shake of the head, he would reach for the bottle of Vodka and stow it back under the counter; tomorrow, or overmorrow it would surely find use again. The idea of giving in to a shot himself flashed through his mind, but that would get him into hot water, so he casted the idea away and instead devoted himself to the next glass in line. His hopes were high those few shots would make her busy for a while, at least for this night. There had already been times when she had come around multiple times during one night, though. Yet she seemed disheveled enough for now to be self-absorbed until the other day.

Humming a deep tone, not altering it over the course of minutes, he would quickly sink in his task. Him and the glasses.

---

Elena felt dizzy. The world around her was wobbling in a way which made it difficult for her to focus on her steps, and thus she proceeded with one hand propped against the wall palpatingly. It was by no means an ecstatic vertigo she was suffering from, but rather a sickening one. She had to fight back the Vodka in her stomach that was pushing for being released again. To be frank, alcohol didn’t do her good in any way, no matter how much she claimed it to. In the end, drinking was always tantamount to feeling like a miserable insect dying a wretched death. The entire boozing never pumped her up as much as she would have liked it to, but at least it forced the gnawing demons out of her head for a while, and replaced it with a whole lot of brackishness. Elena knew that was drifting into alcoholism at its best, but she was at her wits’ end how to deal with herself. She just made do and mend.

With a spinning head and a churning stomach, she made one step after another. For an occasional passer byer, she would have allegedly made a paramount bog mummy, the way she mugged. In a sudden spell of panic, she opened her eyes wide and pawed at her chest frantically. Blessedly, the gun was still where it was supposed to be. For a brief second had she thought she had lost it somewhere on the way, or in the bar. That would have been close to a veritable disaster to her. Something racketed about in the distance, or at least she believed to perceive clamor from somewhere on the base. As she tried to focus on the hallway before her, it began spinning like a maelstrom in her head. Alcohol was in play, surely. Oh jeesh Elena, she thought, you’re in the grog again. At that particular moment she could have denigrated herself for the binge, but those thoughts would be forgotten till the other day, when she would repeat the cycle anew.

For a few seconds, there was a nigh eerie silence flooding the floor and thus her head, she could only perceive her heart that was booming against her chest. Her head ailed as though some churl had smashed her brains in with a pickaxe. Thinking straight proved to be a physical impossibility. Exactly that was the good reason behind drowning her problems with alcohol, because she couldn’t concentrate on anything anymore; which was celestial blessing and hellish bane at the same time.

She paused with her steps when she suddenly perceived a noise from directly behind her, akin to a crack as though somebody was walking on parquet. Except that the floor was metal. Then another crack, as though this certain somebody was coming closer. Holding her breath, Elena felt her heart thumping like mad all of a sudden, and beads of sweat already began running down her front. With her trembling lip bitten, she closed her eyes for a moment to work up the nerve to look behind her. Slowly, she turned her head around with a raised eyebrow, eyeballing who was behind her. With one hand on her heart, or rather on her gun this time.

Not a soul to be seen on the hallway. The cracking sound was gone.

Her eyes narrowed to small slits. Was that some kind of delusion? A moment later she could perceive a voice, seemingly coming from the opposite direction, the one she had been walking to the whole time. It was a silver, clear voice Elena heard, one that resonated with the slightest hint of trembling anxiety, though one she had never heard before.

“Mommy.”

Inhaling sharply, Elena shot her head around with widened eyes, producing her gun out of the jacket in a rustle, leveling it at the corridor ahead of her in the teeth of dithering hands. With a face like thunder, she gazed at the figure that unfolded before her eyes. A deinty little girl it was, clothed in an atrociously pink dress, holding a stuffed animal jammed beneath her shoulder. Upon facing up to the gun only a few meters away, pointing at her, a terribly frightened expression showed on the girl’s face, and she clang to her teddy bear even more, all while her eyes turned bleary and her lips began jittering. “Mommy..?”, the little girl spoke with a stammer, for once avoiding eye contact with Elena.

Somebody or something was playing Elena for a fool, she knew that. But above all, she was equally frightened by the sight that presented itself to her. “Oh … oh God … oh God no”, she quethed, taking a step back, but keeping the gun pointed at what was in front of her. Her heart was ferally thumping away by now. The tremble in her hand became heavier as she examined the features of the figure. Her head, addled and free of any thoughts at this moment besides one: guilt. “Not you…”

“What are you doing?”, the girl asked full of fear, hugging and squeezing the teddy bear in her arms, as though to shield her from the gun with. She tucked in her chin.

While palpating her throbbing head carefully, Elena’s jaw dropped more and more, and she turned ashen-pale with horror. Was she going insane already? Was it the alcohol? Or her remorse? Whatever it was, she would have had to spend a great amount of willpower to keep face, willpower she didn’t have at the moment. Despite a vain attempt to do so, she was all of a dither, and well on the way to losing her poise. Flourishing her gun-holding hand, her face adopted a bewildered expression. This could under no circumstances be real. “Go away, you bloody abomination!”, she shouted gapingly, however her words sounded weirdly lulled and shaky, as the alcohol still had a massive bearing on her. “Whatever the fuck you are, you’re not real!” In an act of wimping out, she retrogressed with another step, almost stumbling over her own feet. She broke out in a cold, freezing sweat. Another sudden dizzy spell got the better of her again, forbidding her to zero in on aiming the gun right, and instead her arm began swaying all over the place.

The little girl recoiled almost immediately, and burying her face in the plush toy, lachrymose sobbing was audible. In between the sniveling, she managed to blubber out a few words, though with her mouth pressed against the teddy, her voice sounded quite muffle, making it actually hard to understand her. “Please … please don’t kill me, Mommy”, she begged for.

“I said go away!”, Elena screamed before her voice cracked. Her heart went head over heels, she felt the rapid, pumping pulse in her carotids. In the next second, a shot was audible, together with the sound of a recoiling bullet. It went right through the bear into the girl’s tummy. An actual wonder that she had managed to aim that precisely. To be fair though, it was a lucky shot. With widened eyes that slowly turned bleary, she stared at the sight before her. While Elena’s mind had been empty until now, dozens of emotions were now breezing in like a volatile storm approaching. Gasping for breath, she took another careful step back, and although the vertigo made the world spinning around her once more, she kept her balance notwithstanding. A malodorous smell stung her nose all of a sudden, a putrescent one.

The girl instantaneously began weeping, first only to herself, though the piano quickly crescendoed into a full-blown fortissimo. And before Elena knew what was happening, the weeping took another turn, fluidly transforming into snicker, then a twitting laughter. With her mouth wide opened, Elena kept staring at the little girl, gasping rapidly, yet she took a quick peek at the gun in her tremulous hand, then looked back at what was unfolding in front of her. The picture of the hallway in front of her slowly turned fuzzy, making her blink.

“Why did you kill me?”, the girl asked, throwing the teddy bear aside on the floor in a dash, flinging it on the ground, unveiling her face riven by blazing hatred. Wrathfully she looked straight into Elena’s eyes. It was only at that point that she realized this little girl had just the same heterochrome eyes as she did. Feeling unable to breath or to say anything, a reaction came in form of another few bullets riddling through the girl. To no avail. There was no blood streaming down her chest as it was supposed to after multiple projectiles had gone through her body, and her face was anything but contorted with pain. What kind of abominable creature was that, Elena pondered hectically. Feeling unable to move her eyes away from this little monster, she couldn’t help but stare at it as it made a step forward towards her with an almost threatening hand gesture. “You tried to kill me!”, the girl shouted at her in a nigh denouncing tone of voice.

The dizziness confused Elena a great deal, and as she was about to make another step back, a sudden feeling of faintness joint the vertigo that was sucking her in further and further. Miscalculating the step, her foot would touch the ground in an exceedingly bad angle. It tripped her up, and she let go of the gun in her hand which dropped on the floor with a clank, and already before she would even hit the ground would she begin suffering from tunnel vision. Hitting the ground, while her temple ungently hammered against the floor, was only a mere formality to knock her out completely. Black environed her from all sides, before she would be roughly forced into a state of unconsciousness. A last anguished groan slipped her mouth upon the sore blow against her head.

---

It was a weird dream she had, in no way like a usual dream during sleep or narcosis. What she was imagining to live through was far more torn to shreds, making the attempt to remember anything of it besides smithereens of abstruse, obscene scenes a well-nigh impossibility. She only could remember the little girl had played a major role in it, and that one or two grotesques, completely disconnected from reality, had happened.

Her wakey wakey was almost as rude as the way she had fallen asleep unintentionally. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but what she did know was that both her cheeks were hurting as though a whip had done its smarting work on them. The sound of a smack had woken her up, and as her squinting eyes, which had to adjust to the bright white light of the hallway, slowly opened she could see the figure of her barkeeper standing right beside her, bent over to slap her in the face. No smile whatsoever was painted on his face when Elena came around again, still having the dizziness filling up her mind, barring her from any kind of realization what had just happened. The last events only felt like a weird dream to her, which had nothing to do with reality. Her vicious headache however was nothing but cruel reality.

“God dammit, Captain”, Alec snarled, slapping her face yet again. It was just making the smart worse. Then however, he would reach one arm out for her, offering to pull her up. A gesture that suited her. “I’m telling you, you’re by God the most foolish eejit I’ve seen so far in my life.”