BREAKING

They climbed up the paved steps, their sneakers making a shlck sound as they slipped past the rain-wet concrete. Vash usually tried to stay out as late as they could, tonight was no exception. It was Halloween. They’d wasted their afternoon with strangers, hanging out on the covered porch of one of their townhouses. They spent the rest of the night walking around on their own in the gentle rain.

Eventually, they came home.

They were dressed like Chucky, with straightened and bleached orange hair to match. His mom was holding a stranger. An old, bald, white guy with mustard-colored eyes. He looked nothing like Vash or their mom, but they believed he was their brother anyways.

October 31st, 1993. The day Vash’s home stopped being their home.

October 31st, 1993. The day Malcolm Almagro began impersonating their brother.

Vash sat on the floor of their bedroom while this stranger sat on their bed. He looked younger, with hair, but still very tall and still definitely white. He was still the same guy underneath it all, but nobody around him knew that. Other than Vash, who had a feeling. The man impersonating their brother lied about what had happened after he had killed their dad and kidnapped and maybe eaten their real brother. He acted like he was their infant brother, all grown up. As grown up as a thirteen-year-old could be, at least. He had lived a whole lifetime and now talked to a kid who technically still had a curfew about what they’d done with their life.

October 31st, 1993. The day Arthur Vaughan’s name was ruined forever.

November 3rd, 1993. The night Vash ran away from home.

Vash dreamt. They dreamt the same thing they’d dreamt every night since the man pretending to be Arthur came home.

The sound of a window breaking wakes Vash up. They look out over the living room. The man pretending to be their brother storms out from the kitchen. Vash sees through the walls as he approaches the crib holding their baby brother. Their dad tries to stop him. The man accuses their dad of something vague for being his ex-employee and gets shot for his time. He no-sells a bullet to the jaw and incapacitates their father with a touch that fills his torso with sickness and turns him to sludge.

Vash is in an empty city, holding their baby brother but otherwise alone. They watch their brother turn to quicksilver and drip up into the sky. The sky is a massive eye, colored like their brother’s impostor’s own but slitted like a snake’s. It can see them from anywhere, through walls and ceilings and blankets and sewers. Its sight burns them like lye. The pain and the stress makes them tense up and they cut their hand. They’re lucid, but no matter where they hide or how far they go they cannot escape it. Their false brother leaves sickly stains on everything he touches.

Vash has been losing sleep since the dreams started, since the man pretending to be his brother came home. He didn’t even really live there; he was out every night. He only came by to gloat. Their mom fell for every word. The dreaming made it nearly impossible to get good sleep. They spent every waking hour sluggish and every sleeping hour burning. They had to do something. They had to get out.

Vash bleached all of the stains on their clothes, the sickly black-yellow ones that the man seemed to leave on everything he touched. They dyed their hair purple, mercifully not one too badly tinted by their fried orange hair. A few months later they’d end up shaving it all off and starting from scratch with weave in royal purple, but for now this is what they had. With that, they were a new and different person. Home was tainted, so they left.

November 3rd, 1993. The day I became Vash.

Now that we’re all caught up, I can drop the revisions and just speak.

I relied on the hospitality of acquaintances, rebellious kids, and skeevy strangers to keep a roof over my head for a long while. I muscled through the exhaustion and tried to make peace with the dreaming for as long as I still lived in Ashalot. I worked, I studied for my GED, and I went out looking for someone new to host me for when hospitality at my current place finally ran out. I shouldn’t have worked myself that hard, especially with the sleep I was getting, but I was fifteen. I ran on fumes and black coffee for a couple years there. I found out what had happened through a headline. A smell complaint from a downstairs neighbor revealed the rotting sludge that passed for my mom and brother’s bodies. Too decayed to be recognizable. The rot was so bad they had to condemn the building. I didn’t slow down when I learned. I didn’t even feel surprised. Maybe that was the exhaustion talking, but I was busy being relieved I got out when I did. I didn’t even wonder who the other body was. I wasn’t going to let that rule me.

Fast forward to the day we all care about. The day I finally, properly broke out. I was in university in a new city. I was pretty young for it, obviously, but I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. I was enjoying a hefty scholarship from a mediocre university in an even mediocrer city. Minton sure wasn’t where dreams came true, but it was definitely where you made shit happen. I was talking to someone before one of my 102 classes, we made conversation pretty frequently. He looked weird, like most of the people I talked to, with a personality to match. He said something to me, and it just clicked. It didn’t really matter what we talked about before or after that. All that mattered was the line itself, said all jokingly, like it couldn’t possibly be true.

May 1st, 1996. The day I made my first real friend.

Damn, I'm fucked forever.

May 1st, 1996. The day I decided I wasn’t fucked forever.

That was all I needed. I was tired of that fucking eye. That night, I went to sleep excited.

May 1st, 1996. The last day I dreamt of it.

I dreamt. I dreamt the same thing I’d dreamt every night since the man pretending to be Arthur came home.

The sound of a window breaking wakes me up. I look down from upstairs. The man pretending to be my brother storms out from the kitchen. I sees through the floor as he approaches the crib holding my baby brother. My dad tries to stop him. The man accuses my dad of something vague for being his ex-employee and gets shot for his time. He no-sells a bullet to the jaw and incapacitates my father with a touch that fills his torso with sickness and turns him to sludge.

I’m in an empty city, holding my baby brother but otherwise alone. I watch my brother turn to quicksilver and drip up into the sky. The sky is a massive eye, colored like my brother’s impostor’s own but slitted like a snake’s. It can see me from anywhere, through walls and ceilings and blankets and sewers. Its sight burns me like lye. The pain and the stress makes me tense up and I cut my hand. I look down. I’m holding a black obsidian arrowhead, now tipped with my own blood. I’m lucid, but no matter where I hide or how far I go I cannot escape it. I don’t go farther and I don’t hide. I flick my own blood into the air, it rises like quicksilver. I reach out and grab onto it, letting it carry me towards the predatory eye that swallows the top half of the horizon. I am high above the city I dream about, high enough I can press a palm to the face of the thing in the sky. It looks at me, I can see the inches deep ridge of where the pupil meets the iris.

I take the arrowhead and cut into it. It slices into the lens of the eye like the wax rind of a soft cheese. I cut slices and I pull away handfuls of tacky ochre jelly, coming away easily in my grip. It pulses with each breach of its body, I keep going. I dig at it until I can step into its interior. I dig and I climb, pulling away rods and cones the size of baseball bats. I follow a nerve arcing with visible agitation towards its core, scooping handful after handful of optic material behind me and letting it fall to the city below. I dig and I climb, slicing through tangles of nerves and eliciting pained pulsing from all around me. My hand reaches something, another waxy layer ahead. I can see sunlight shining through from the other side. I scrape away more jelly around it, revealing a circular patch of the membrane. I sink the arrowhead into it and cut a strip away. The sunlight lights up my tunnel through the eye and all of the yellow material that composed it. I climb through, breaching into the sunlight atop the back of the eye.

Nothing burns anymore and nothing can see me. I could do whatever I wanted here, no consequences whatsoever.

May 1st, 1996. The first day I got a good night’s sleep.

December 31st, 1996.

University has been new, especially with three years between now and the last time I’ve been in a classroom. Getting around at all on my own has been tough, but I’m good with figuring things like that out. Where I live now, I’ve got this whole apartment to myself. Two friends of mine are coming over for a small new-years forward slash birthday party. I'm wearing my acid wash overalls for old times sake. I would say that wearing them makes me feel like a kid again but in all reality I feel freer than I ever did as a kid. My name is Vash, I just turned 18, and I can do whatever the hell I want.

Hell 6

Spawn 5

BREAKING