Page 34 of Cherry Moon

“Fuck you!” Wave after wave of abject torment crashed into me. “No! G!” I tried to scramble up the wall again, quickly sliding back down.

No. No. No. If I could just get up to that screen and smash it, the lie would break. Because this wasn’t real. He wasn’t dead.

“He can’t be dead!” I screamed, slamming a fist into the solid bone.

“The truth does hurt pathetic mortals, I hear. For that is all you are beneath the legend.”

“Get fucked!” My fists slammed into the bone, tears lava on my skin, fury and grief and the entire fucking kitchen sink caught in a vortex of horror.

“He’s not dead! He’s not dead! He’s not dead!”

I made my flesh knuckles bleed pounding at the walls, scraped my knees and palms trying to get up to that screen.

Why was he alone? Where were the others?

It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.

Just like Mama Rita hadn’t been real.

I knew the games these fuckers liked to play, especially the mental ones. I’d defo been around the block a few times to detect bullshit when I smelled it.

Me wailing like this made me putty in her hands. Pushed me into the web.

Not. Doing. It.

My honey bunny wasn’t dead.

I drew on every ounce of resilience I possessed and jumped to my feet. Adrenaline surging, rage focusing on one target.

Her bony fucking face.

Something fell past me, landing at my feet.

“What now?”

A small pile of pink sand sat there.

“You are a defiant one,” the woman said.

“Yep. What’s with the sand?”

From the corner of my eye, I noticed the screen vanish.

And there you go. Nothing but a lie.

“I see your love. I see your fear.”

Erm, okay.

“There are many ways of feeding upon your pain, Taker. You fear the loss of love. You fear the march of time. Question the purpose of love when it so easily slips away like the sand at your feet.”

Forget the sledgehammer, a rocket launcher would be perfect right now. “Stop babbling. I’m not here to be psychoanalyzed by the likes of you.”

“No. I suppose not.”

More sand fell past my face.

“You may not be tricked so easily into grief, yet you will know the pain of dying alone without the touch of love to warm your final breaths. This is your end, Akira. A ritual of undoing. Once you are gone, the gates are broken. You were the final barrier, the object of our own fears because of what you have done and who you are.”