2019-07-18 - Down the Rabbit Hole

Did you know we have two wolves inside?
Lilith knows.

Do you know what happens when you feed the wrong wolf?
You become that wolf.

Did you know that wolves chase rabbits?
You sate the primitive drive.

Do you know what happens when you chase rabbits?
You find a deep dark hole.

And where does that hole lead?
Madness.

It's mid-morning. Lilith Winslow slips down the stairs before shop opening, down from her loft, through the office, out the back door. She cuts an alley attached to the back lot of employee parking and dumpsters. She avoids the main road of Elm for caution for a while.

Now Lilith is running. She's running so fast and so hard her lungs may burst. Her feet hit the pavement to time with every third beat of her quick slamming heart. Every inch of her skin is on fire, her breath comes fast and desperate, her hair blows with the damp wind. Lilith has been running a long time. She's close. So close. Her body is ablaze, the muscles can't continue at this pace, the breath is starting to gasp.

I said hey! Uh huh. You can't stop me. 'cause my pain? Uh huh. It's gasoline.

The woman has headphones on and she can relate. She's always been fire and kerosene. Now she's doused in gasoline. Her sprint is desperate, but she's not running for her life, no. She's running to look death in the face. The Stone Bridge is ahead. When she gets close to center, her steps gradually slow and she hangs forward with hands on her knees, begging air to comply, fighting the dizziness of exertion, focusing on the headiness of knowing what's in her pullover pocket.

When she straightens, she takes the headphones off to hang about her neck.

Lilith doesn't look out of place in her running shoes, short shorts, and light, billowy aquamarine athletic pullover here on this bridge, even though it's nicknamed the Hanging Bridge. There's pedestrians and other runners, but she is the only one that stops and takes time at the edge there central. Her hand worms into her pullover pocket to clasp tight around the box. And she starts to whisper a conversation to the air while looking down at the drop to water. What she's saying is really anyone's guess. The wind knows a few things, though.

... your blood was weak ...
... it was meant to be ...

Everyone keeps saying Lilith looks amazing. She was pulled out of a headfirst collision last week. Now she's standing here, vibrant, confident, and halfway to madness. The woman is standing in the middle of the bridge. It matches the inside. She's dead center, existing between reality and delusion. One waxes, the other wanes. Ebb and flow. Tides and current. Ever since she touched the gem, felt it resonate within her like a lover's caress... it's been inside her the all the while. Why else would she want to keep it in her shop after all that? She needed to protect it. The mark started as a whisper, she incubated it while it ate her from the inside, and while the world fell down around her, everything was tested to breaking point.

She survived. It didn't break her, they were made for each other. She's beautiful and upright standing there with windblown, sweat-soaked hair looking down at shadows of death. Hasn't everyone said how amazing she looks? Lilith is perfectly fine. And everything from that gem that has resided inside her all this time has moved from whisper into a downright roar. It only took a spark.

She would not be the hanging man.

She's taunting fate. Reality? Delusion. The men that had this stone before were weak and unfit. Lilith can see the murky impression of the hanging figures from the noose in place memory, even without spirits, without ghosts, her mind fills the gaps, the gem fills the gaps. She watches them swing.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Now that she's claimed it and embraced it, the others will want it. It's already happening. She'll be ready. She won't let fear and paranoia reign. She was made for this. There's a reason it came to her, why she knew the world would end if she didn't touch it. The gem. The stone. The ring. The box.

Right in her little hand.

An hour later, Lilith walks home in no particular hurry and goes in the back way. She showers with the box in reach. The woman goes about her day and she waits. She waits for someone to try and take it from her. She plans her smoke and mirrors. She has escape routes in mind, plans to evade, plans to deflect, plans to fight. Paranoia is in her bones, but she's twisting it, turning it into action.

Lilith Winslow is perfectly fine. She looks amazing, don't you know?