Chapter Four: Welcome to Town

The people of San Francisco aren't the most welcoming when Siveka decides it's playtime.

Days passed being taken care of by the ghostly servants before Siveka recovered from the ordeal. By that time she had decided that it was time to leave.

The dying rays of the setting sun lit Siveka’s room when she woke curled tightly in bed with blankets nested around her. She got herself up, inspecting how she felt. It seemed to her as though the poison had finally exited her system, and with relief she made up her mind to leave the house to it’s many corpses. She didn’t pack anything. She didn’t change cloths. She simply left. Out the door, using her inner eyes cast overhead to guide her way along the road to the city. 

Chirps of crickets and cicadas were few and far between as Siveka walked. The white light of the barely waning moon above filtered through the tall bare branches of tree limbs over the road, creating a myriad of angled shadows on the old grey asphalt. There was practically no noise to speak of, and only a very soft padding of her own feet met her ears.

Siveka remembered how the people had thought of “animals” all day. That’s what the people called the furry, scaled, slimy creatures that they kept trapped and confined in cages and fences. Which was odd to her. The people weren’t kept that way, so why the “animals”? But regardless of the things being kept in place with the people, Siveka knew that there were lots of animals that ran wild, that were supposed to be in the trees she walked by.

Animals were very strange anyway. There were thousands of different types, and even ones of the same type were called differently by the people. For her these catagories were still too much, confusing to her.

She thought back to Nathan. He had been a confusing coagulation of information as well, but at least he was understandable after a little bit of mental probing. Then again, he had tried to make her stop. That wasn’t something she liked about him and didn’t like having it as something she remembered about him at all.

Siveka reached another much bigger road where people in what she knew were cars were driving over the bridge away from the city. She wasn’t very fond of the vehicles; the noise was annoying and they smelled weird. Plus, it looked to her as if they had eaten the people, trapping them alive inside while the metal and glass beast digested them. Keeping on the walkway seemed to be the only way to avoid them and still safely make her way over a large stretch of water to the major area of the city. As she walked over the water she looked through the fencing separating her from a long fall where far below the water churned. People in the cars heading away from where she was headed gave her very open stares. None of them would ever think of returning to the wasteland, so why was this anorexic girl going there?

Burned out shells of building towered above Siveka as she entered the main city, knowing that she had done this to it. No feelings of guilt occurred; Siveka was proud. So proud that she’d made it broken and uninhabitable.

A man stumbled out of an ally as she passed it. She gave him an inquisitive tilt of her head. In return he squinted his reddened, bleary eyes at her, slightly woozy, then hurled the bottle of rum in his hand at her. Siveka crouched down in more than enough time to escape the glass projectile. The exchane reminded her of what she’d done with Gladeke. This man wanted to play like Gladeke had, only much more enthused to do so. 

She felt her eyes flash, and coming out of the crouch she pounced on the man. They fell to the cracked pavement, the man giving out a “pmph!” sound. He lay there immobile, not fighting back at all, which served to annoy the girl. Fairly unenthused by the man’s lack of enthusiasm, Siveka took his head in her hands and smashed it against the ground. A loud crack issued from the back of his scull as it cracked open like a brittle egg, spilling its gore out on the ground

Siveka stood up and wiped the red stuff on her hands off on her long blue Pikachu jacket, under which were a pair of black leggings. The sticky substance was irritating on her hands, and the man had been no fun at all. He couldn’t play properly like Gladeke. She walked away from him, licking the red off and then wiping them on her cloths. Since she’d had no fun with him, Siveka wondered if the other inhabitants of the city could do better.

Practically everyone had fled in their metal and glass things, leaving only the homeless and people with no way out. But even some of them had already gone in search of other places by way of foot. The leftovers had broken into abandoned apartment buildings and stores for shelter from the winter nights and food. Honestly, Siveka didn’t understand why they disliked it outside where the wind could blow soothing snow over her skin. And though she didn’t understand, she knew that for them the temperature was a very bad thing that could make them stop like Kyland, Melinda, Tom, Maury…Nathan. How did any of them even stay working if they stopped so easily?

Siveka moved through the streets at her own leisurely pace as white snowflakes brushed her face. The small touches sent joyous little flitters down her spine each time. Making her smile. She wanted to play again, with people who were better than that drunken man she’d just left. That want swelled up around her, gripping her and pulsing out. It wrapped around her limbs in a slightly constrictive manor, making sure that it was well known.

She found herself in a large open place, something the people called a ‘square’. it was something she knew was a hotspot of activity at night, and even now there were people beginning to trickle in.

They wanna play! She realized as her playful mood engulfed her, causing more people to gravitate towards her.

Siveka felt something else welling up in her: energy. The same from whe she’d played with Gladeke. Enthusiasm flooded her system in a slight short circuiting. Her slow heartbeat sped. The energy moulded itself as the people closed in as a mob upon her. Those in the first wave of trance-like attack were cut through with a blender-blade of white blue lashes encircling Siveka like the numbers of a clock, the lashes struck through with veins of indigo. The wiggling tendrils spun in a blur in accordance to her increasing heart rate.

The silver nails on her hands extended into talons in her excitement, but with nothing to sink themselves into. Her attension split between each tendril and the vision, waves of information and decisions racing through her brain faster nad faster.

Snakey materialized energy sought out soft human bodies. They bit into cooshy tummies, hard muscles, famished flesh. Childish satisfactoin relayed itself through their lashed to their mistress, amplifying in her and being relayed back.

With her eyes wide enough to make the rest of her face seem half as small, Siveka watched in rapt interest as her own will turned living things into ground flesh. It was fascinating the way their eyes froze when they were hit. The eyes were what were fascinating. Different colors. Variations of the same color. Multiple sized ans angles. Shapes. She took care to lood at every set of eyes and comitt them to memory. A sudden realization struck her with enough force to stop the lshes from circulating: the people weren’t moving. In fact, most of them were falling over like statues on the spot.

The lashes flickered away, but intense curiosity took their place. Siveka stepped closer to an immobile man caught in the middle of raising his foot. He was very frosty, coated in a thick layer of it. She gripped one of his fingers and it snapped off in her hand. Siveka giggled and pulled at his wrist. In a matter of minutes she’d shattered him. She moved on to every last frozen person and broke them apart. Every little bit taken off was a little celebration that brought giggles until everyone was in pieces.

Boarded by the end of the event, Siveka wandered away from the scene in search of something else to entertain her. Somewhere in the city a bell chimed nine times, the sound stopping her so she could listend to the echoing ring bouncing off the cracked shells of building. She searched quickly with her inner eyes for the source of the sound. Before the last peel ended she had discovered the place, but she didn’t go towards it. While making the sound it had drawn her interest. Without it, it lost the appeal, so she moved towards other things.

Ears open, Siveka came to the conclusion that there was no one left in the maze of towering wrecks. That was a curious thing, after hearing them for so long she felt odd not hearing them anymore. Oh well. She shrugged it off and let other things grasp her attention.

A few blocks from the square she found her way into a gigantic building through a busted display window, her eyes swept over the evidense of people having looted supplies. Something tickled her nose. Sniffing, she followed the scent to an area of the store that had been stolen almost bare. The only items left were high up on shelves that people hadn’t hat time or ability to climb to get to . After another sniff Siveka began to climb up the shelvves. She mame to a stop at the 8th shelf up. Directly in front of her nose was a large bottle with a red lable. She grabbed the bottle with a lash and made her way back down to the ground.

On the floor, Siveka sat down crosslegged on the linoleum and thought back to something she’d seen a human doing with a bottle similar to the ones she was now holding. She grasped the neck of the bottle securely with one hand. Immediately the lid popped off and she was drenche din a spray of the fizzy brown liquid. With a slightly harassed expression Siveka sat momentarily in an unhappy state. Then the strong weet scent assaulted her nose and she forgot about it entirely.

She ran her grey-blue tounge over her soaked hand. The taste of the liquid was even better than its smell. Exited, Siveka put the opening of the bottle to her lips and tipped it up, swallowing down the remaining fourth of th eliquid. She let out a loud, euphoric mewing sound, throwing the empty bottle and another bottle coming down to her as her eyes flashed. It flowed down her thorught without a swallowing reflex this time. Another bottle after that quenched her drwonign thirst. 

Another sound, this one very unhappy, issued from ther lips. The liquid had began freezing to her porceline skin, making her sticky and very uncomfortable. Remembering that the water in her bath the other night had washed off the other stuff, Siveka looked around ofr something similar to a bathtub. Sending her vision out through the mega rooms, she located something huge and filled with water on the other side of the building. Excited to rid herself of th efeeling on her clothes, Siveka ran through the big halls towards the giant water holder. She hopped the brick lip around the water and landed in a pool up to her chest sitting down. With a giggle, Siveka stripped off the jacket and leggings. She used the jacket to scrubb off the stickiness.

After she had cleaned up, Siveka climbed out of the pool yawning, ice dropping off with every step. She sent her eyes over the store looking for a bed, wasting no time climbing beneath the thick comforter.

Author's Note

Opinions welcome.