Last Words

[Dogs231]

There was a burst of static from the radio. It was the answer: the one wanted desperately, the one dreaded from the deepest depths of being, the one that paralyzed like venom in veins, the one that shocked out of silent stupor back to the world of the living. It was the call of the void.

She chose to answer it.

S091: CLAIRE HAIG — CONTINUED FROM "When The Man Comes Around"

Claire stared out into the distance, her hands buried deep into the worn pockets of her greatcoat. There were no snowflakes left to catch on her tongue, a dying tradition of her dying childhood, last strangled gasps of the life that, once upon a time, she had known. She stared into the distance, towards the ocean waves, silent and statue-like on the cusp of the town's ramparts, surging foam striking just below where she stood.

In one hand, her hand held the radio, afraid of the answer that was coming, needing it, needing it anyway. She drew it out and held it to her head, waiting for the words that would come next. It was Evie, of course. Evie, the many-time murderer, with hands stained with as much blood as MacBeth. Evie, the once-friend whose images Claire struggled to reconcile with another—a living "what-is-wrong-with-this-picture?"

Claire stared out at the endless horizon as she spoke. And, though she was not the only person on that island, she felt like one unto herself, standing alone in an ocean of blood. It felt like the whole world had gone mad, and she was somehow sane despite that; perhaps, in a way, that made her the most insane of them all, clinging desperately to her shreds of sanity in a world that had long forgotten it, a currency now worthless.

"Why?" was all she said, three words containing a million universes of nuance, meanings she couldn't articulate appropriately with her voice but needed Evie to understand. Three letters that composed the sum of her existence poured out into unspooling threads of hollow-heartedness, a question and an answer and a begging plea for some explanation, some reason to forgive her friend, some reason not to condemn her now.

It was a lifeline, an exit valve, a dangling rope into the darkness, a final, definitive chance to give her side of the story. And Evie threw it back to her, spitting in her face the entire time, shocked that Claire had even bothered to ask. Claire held the radio aloft, listened, silent, face blank, beyond the point she could manage to care. It was nonsense, a long stream of angry nonsense, the ravings of the monster in the attic.

At the end of it, Claire said nothing. She just held the transmission button on the radio down until it couldn't spring back up again. Then, the radio transmitting a sound that wasn't there, Claire held her arm outward over the rampart. For a moment, her fingers held tight to the plastic shell, the one last token of their friendship she had. But with every second, that grip grew weaker, and her resolve triumphed. She knew what to do now.

She let it go, let it all go.

The radio fell into the sea. Claire watched it fall, tumbling through the air, rotating as it went, air rushing past as it went down, down, down, towards the depths. It hit the water with a splash, a small foam geyser exploding upward from the point of contact. The radio lived for a moment, then short-circuited in short order, sending out as its final message a crackling burst of ear-splitting static and the crashing sound of rushing waves.

After that, there was nothing left to hear—as if even the silence had died away.

S091: CLAIRE HAIG — CONTINUED IN "A Catastrophy Played By a Symphony"