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It's late May, then as now, and the weather is ... Texas. In late May. It's fucking hot and fucking humid and still, people are expected to do things like get ready for commencement. UGH. What's worse than being out in the Texas sun in the middle of the morning in late May?
Being out in the Texas sun in the middle of the morning in late May in a fucking heavy-ass gown with a stupid fucking hat on. Most of the people milling around, getting ready to fucking commence to the endless repetitions of Pomp and Circumstance played by underclassmen pressganged into that particular musical purgatory, are hung the fuck over, sweating out last night's vodka and ecstasy from the absolute fucking rager that Phi Gamma Delta threw last night.
Basically, life could be better.
NO, ROOK, IT'S NOT ANTHELION.
Well, at least not yet. Enter: Lina Cochrane.
The thing about a Texas summer is that you can fucking feel it. Even when you're not outside. Anywhere with a big enough window, or bad circulation is fair game for the pervasive blanket of listlessness. If wearing a cap and gown wasn't bad enough, there is nothing that feels more awful than waking up late - in someone else's dorm - and then having to will yourself into heavy clothing while wrestling a ferocious hangover... before stepping out into the hairy, claustrophobia-inducing heat of a goddamned Texas summer.
She's drenched with sweat after only a few minutes under the oppressive sun - and the water bottle she'd stolen grabbed from the fridge on the way out is drained and tossed onto the ground she'll mess with Texas if she goddamned well pleases as she begins to press her way through the crowd to get to her alphabetical spot.
Life could be better? What could be worse?
One of the worst things is the social expectation to wear heels, too. That is, in fact, the worst. And you know what's even worst than that? (Yes, I said worst than that. Deal with it.) You toss a plastic water bottle on the ground and then a half-second later you step on a plastic water bottle that yousomeone else discarded, how did it even get there? And your heel punctures the plastic and you almost lose your balance because all sins, no matter how small, are answered.
A cold feeling slides down Lina's back. Might just be a trickle of sweat. Might just be the beginnings of sunstroke.
A woman with a bullhorn stands up on a stepstool and begins calling off majors for people to start lining up.
a plague doctor screams across a blasted and empty field, zombies shamble toward her
Fuck, what was in that water bottle? Did Jared dissolve his fucking LSD in something again?
"The fuck," she's shoving her way through the crowd of gathered graduates - having barely had time to recover from the near-fall - when Karma decides on handing her a not-so-subtle reminder of exactly what happens when you fuck around.
Y'know, maybe don't drink strange things from untrustworthy refrigerators in places you barely remember falling asleep in. She reaches up, wiping her forehead with the too-big sleeve of her polyester gown. Her sweat soaks into the fabric, and boy howdy scraping polyester against overheating skin does not feel great. She rubs at her eyes, blinking at the fleeing plague doctor - at the shift in landscape - the call to line up momentarily forgotten.
Sure, Texas could be described as a "blasted and empty" landscape out in some parts of West Texas, but... not College Station. She rubs her eyes with those sweat-soaked sleeves again. Again, it does not feel great.
"What the fuck?"
all sins are forgiven, except mine
Intrusive thoughts can be really fucking bizarre, and where did that come from in this particular moment? The students the corpses are walking single-file, and she is single-file, and she is in the line, and next to her for Humanities is the girl whose body they dug out of a basement last semester during field work after her mother hit her in the face with a shovel for the insurance money; her cheekbone shattered, her eye hangs out by nerves and vessels.
all sins are forgiven, except mine
and then it's just a brown-haired twenty-something, just as tired, flushed in the face, probably hung over, stumbling in her heels over a thick-turfed field.
the goalposts are a tower, and on the left hand hangs a man, depending
and on the right the woman with the scales weighs our hearts
no
It's only the field. It's nothing special.
Usually, Lina has an iron stomach for these sorts of things. It's easy to detangle a person from their remains when they aren't animate. Unfortunately it's also easy to feel like vomiting when you're hungover, and the heat around you is as heavy and choking as it is in this moment... and it's a different story when you're seeing the grotesque horror standing in front of you. Walking beside you.
Bile rises in her throat, but she manages to suppress the urge - muscling through by focusing on the destination, begging - willing - one vision or the other to totality. One foot in front of the other. The ceremony will be over soon, and then Lina can throw up in the privacy of her own room. Lie down in the dark. Sleep it off.
... but. Her mind keeps snapping back to the girl she'd seen.
"Sweet Christ," she groans, wiping the sweat from her brow again. "I'm going to fucking kill Jared."
Pomp and Circumstance is a horrible, horrible tune, really. It plays over
and over
and over andoverandoverandover and the walk is forever.
The bile in her throat tastes like blood, like rotten cabbage, like blood. She takes a step forward and her heel sinks into what feels like swamp, and when she looks down to steady herself, there's the hand of the body they took out of the construction site.
she was maybe twenty and we never found
we never knew
she died and no one knew who she was or who killed her
her throat cut like an uncertain smile
It's probably not the first time a hungover dipshit came late to their own graduation. Hell, it's probably not even the first time a hungover dipshit that came late to their own graduation threw up at said graduation, either... but that doesn't make it any less embarrassing. Fuck, the taste, though. The taste of bile and blood, and rot and disgust and. It all comes up. Lina empties her stomach with a wretch - not that there's much there, anyway - into the grass beside her, coughing and dry heaving and sputtering.
... at least all the bad shit's out now. She's had bad trips before, but hopefully now that the sickness is over, she can enjoy it - or at least coast? She wipes her mouth with the back of that poor, abused gown's baggy sleeve, and then rights herself.
It probably wasn't that obvious, right?(edited)
Sometimes when vomit comes out, you feel better afterwards.
Sometimes when you straighten yourself up, you're --
-- standing in the middle of an empty, rocky landscape, and ahead of you rises a single Tower with two spires.
The dead and damned trudge endlessly by. Pomp and Circumstance plays through their bones, whistling endlessly. High and reedy through their ribs, deep and endless through their skulls.
The breath catches in Lina's throat, and she stares off towards the tower. Again, she's no stranger to bad trips - she spent the first two years of school under the influence of just about anything she could get her hands on, and even after getting her shit together enough to graduate it wasn't like she just stopped.
This... is not that. There's a moment of anxiety. This doesn't feel like a delusion brought on by psychoactive substances. It feels real. Fear clutches her - like an iron grip around her heart - but she ramrods the sudden feeling back wherever it came from, and shoves her way out of the line. Lina focuses on the point at the end of the line - where everyone's heading.
Where the fuck are the shambling dead heading?
This is not that.
this is real, this is realer than real, this is more real than
This hell is real. And around the edges of her mind -- throbbing like a bass drum struck, and not from the hangover -- she can hear a hundred thoughts, trickling into her mind like water running down the wall of a distant cave, just far enough away to not make very much sense.
one of the dead trudging off toward the two-spired tower turns to look at her and its eyes are the eyes of her ex, sad and sweet and wide, after hours of crying, and she fucked her one last time and left her crying again
Their knees creak and their lungs rattle her grandfather's last sigh, but over and over, a thousand apologies left unsaid.
all sins are forgiven, except mine
"Jesus fuck!" Hopefully her voice doesn't carry - or draw the attentions of the other looming spectres of her past. Lina slams her eyes closed, scrunching up her face as that fear tightening in her chest morphs into something colder. More restrictive. Regret.
"Fuck," she mutters again softly - then repeating it rapidfire a few dozen times under her breath, and the regret gives way to frustration.
"I know I fucked up, but what was I supposed to do? You wanted something from me that wasn't me - you wanted something that wasn't real - and rather than just break up with me, you tried to brow beat me into doing it for you!" She sways dangerously - legs threatening to give out from beneath her - eyes darting between the spectre, and the Tower.
Yeah, take that undead ex-girlfriend.
And now all of the dead stare at her
it isn't her, it only had her eyes
her grandfather
Ray died in sixth grade, the car made his body spin, he looked like a doll
he got dared to run into the road, she didn't say no
she didn't dare him to do it too but she didn't say no
her eyes are wide and wet but what they leak is blood,
Lina's head hurts. All their thoughts, all their judgment
is she okay
what's wrong with her, what's wrong
oh my God, is she still drunk?
She slams her eyelids shut again, willing it all back to normal again... but it doesn't shift back. There's a part of her that's fucking thrilled by this all - a sort of morbid fascination buried underneath the layers of hangover, fear, anxiety and self loathing that just wants to see how this nightmarish trip plays out.
"Fuck thi-" Lina throws up her hands, and the right one clips the annoying fuckin' hat that she has clipped into her hair - knocking it off-kilter, but not entirely off. "Fuck this bullshit!" She tears the hat off her head - a couple of hairpins splinter off into the grass, never to be found again. She hurls it like a frisbee, and then takes off towards the tower - shedding her heels when they become too much of an impediment to her progress.
They can fucking stare for all the fucks she gives. She might have to carry the guilt, but she doesn't have to look them in the eyes. They can't make her.(edited)
The dead scatter out of her way, mostly confused
just kidding, they're only people in robes
until before her rises the base of the tower, a craggy edifice built of bones on bones and solidified anger and guilt and she doesn't have to look them in the eyes but she can hear them she can hear them all she can hear the pain she knows the sound of bones breaking but she knows the feel of tendons tearing now too
and the fear of the dark
not the lights-out dark, sweetheart, but the end of everything dark
what do you mean, Dad?
Tomorrow exists, just not for me
On the left spire depends the Hanged Man, reaching down for her but perhaps in warning, come for wisdom, or come to take my place, you choose
On the right spire stands the Empress, her hands folding over and over each other
spinning together, like a dance
and in the middle, the feather and the heart
left path, right path
her head hurts so much, and all the voices keep screaming
Wisdom, yes. Some fucking wisdom would've helped her tremendously in all of this - to, perhaps, not drink herself half to death night after night only to expel it all and start over again. Yes, some fucking wisdom would've taught Lina that it's better to live through quiet times than to actively seek trouble. To actively seek discord. Finally, to be fucking wise.
... and if she found it at the left path? If she ended up in the hanged man's place - suspended from the spire with her hand outstretched as a cautionary tale for the next weary fuck up to chance by? Would it be so bad? With all the stupid, fucked up shit she did? She'd deserve it, after all. Would what she found be worth it?
... and, all the while her head is fucking pounding and the Empress's imposing figure towers over her, arms folded as if disappointed - watching and judging. Staring into her as if it knows her in a way that only she could know herself.
The heat in this blasted field is suddenly too much to take - this awful, good-for-nothing robe like a prison in the claustrophobic humidity. She tears it over her head, abandoning it at the fork - and heading towards the Hanged Man. Padding barefooted and hungover along the path to enlightenment with messy hair and sweat-soaked gym clothes.(edited)
There's a sort of acceptance that comes at the point when life has just gotten so fucking weird that it can't get any weirder at all, and that washes over her like the hundred thoughts of humanity, the thousand thoughts, the million thoughts, crashing into her mind and crowding her brain until it feels like all of their wants and hopes and dreams and fears are going to drown her.
Until it feels like their dreams have overfilled her eyes and are pouring down her face.
no, that's just tears
And the dead turn on her as she pushes toward the Hanged Man whose hand reaches for her, and their hands grab her shoulders, her arms. It's time to sleep now, whispers one rotting corpse in her mother's voice. Miss, miss, you can't go that way, hisses another between broken teeth and worn-chewed lips. Miss, miss
Miss, I'm afraid I can't let you
"No, sto- Fuck!" Lina stumbles as the hands paw at her shoulders and her back, and she lashes out backwards with an elbow in an attempt to jerk an arm free from the clawing dead. "Let me? Get the hell off me," she barely realizes she's crying - between the crushing heat, buckets of sweat, and how utterly disoriented her senses are. "I know what I'm doing - and I won't be stopped."
If she can just reach the Hanged Man's hand - it's so goddamned close...
The hand reaches for hers, and there's a moment where she feels like perhaps she might miss it.
And then the Hanged Man is stone, and his hand is around hers, and his grip is as tight as a vice, and she can't let go
And his eyes are open, and they stare into hers, and he whispers
All sins are forgiven, except for mine
His other hand holds a book, holds it out to her, as if she's supposed to know what to do, as if she's supposed to know what goes in the blank spot on the page dripping with tears and blood.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the cacophonous pounding in her head - the groans of the damned, the hoarse whispers of lost loves and family, the splitting headache that's threatening to tear her skull right down the middle - she knows what to do... and if she can just wrench that other arm free she can.
Lina was never strong. She's been stick-thin and wiry since she was a fuckin' teenager - never having quite grown past that awkward and gangly phase to where muscle catches up to height and frame. But something else is driving her. Principle? Fascination? The intense, spiteful desire to never, ever, be commanded? She pulls hard enough against the dead things' grasp that it feels like her arm just might come loose from it's socket.
... but she breaks free, rubbing her eyes and drawing that hand down her face, and - with her sweat and tears - she makes her mark in the Hanged Man's book.(edited)
There's a moment where the world opens up and she can see everything, good and bad, where all of the world folds in on itself and all places are the same place and she holds them cradled in the palm of her blood-flecked hand as she makes her mark in the book.
And all sins are forgiven, except hers.
Those, she holds in the palm of her hand as the blood and tears seep into her skin, and she understands her Name is written, and it is written Mastigos, and the symbol runs through her skin, pulsing along nerve endings and firing to the base of her brain, tattooed there as indelibly as the pattern for breathing, in, out, autonomic.
And just before blackness swallows her whole, her eyes clear, and for a moment she sees several thousand faces gaping at her from beneath their mortarboards as she hangs by one hand, tangled up in the electric wires for commencement's sound system, dangling from the goalposts on the football field.
Later, someone will tell her that they don't know how she climbed the scaffolding, but she did. Later, she'll have misdemeanor charges and a lawyer who argues passionately that she had a breakdown. Later --
-- but now, blackness reaches up one hand and plucks her from the tree like an overripe fruit, and her loss of consciousness comes as a blessing --
-- wrapping her up and laying her gently in a hospital bed, swathed in a clean cotton gown, tethered to reality by so many plastic tubes.
Fuck.
She's so disoriented that it's impossible to tell if that was just the final, awed thought - or if the utterance actually made it to her lips. Though she's gripped by a moment of intense terror as reality snaps back into place - as the blackness takes her, the last thing she feels is satisfaction.
... and when she awakens in that hospital bed? Lina's eyelids are so heavy that it takes every ounce of strength left in her bruised and battered form to pry them open again - but when she does, she does so triumphantly. She sifted through the nonsense, and the chaos, the awful, terrible sights and sounds and smells, and found exactly what she had been looking for.
Proof.
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