Crossing Paths... (PHUNKE)

Katie felt...blind. Or she wanted to. How nice it must be to be blind, she thought. To wander and not care where you go. So she did. Allowing her eyes to glaze over, she left all powers of direction and propulsion to her feet, which gained a mind of their own and began to quicken. Focus on the wrench, she thought. The wrench. The wrench. Her fragile hand tightened around its metal handle, giving her comfort.
Katie wasn't usually one to flee her factory shift early, but it was too much. Making light switches had been easy, but her new factory produced showers, and it was all too much. Having to fit into a new routine, forge a reputation with new people, use different types of wrenches. It was all too much for Katie, and so she'd fled with nothing but the wrench in hand and the steady drip of saltwater on her face.
She shut her eyes tighter, clung to the wrench for stability, and willed her legs to move faster. They did; and though she tripped numerous times, the girl finally found that the backs of her eyelids had cooled: She was in a damp, shady area, a forest probably. Now she allowed her eyes to open, and slowed down from her dead run to a steady jog. She wandered through the woods, enjoying the incline. Beauty, she thought. I need beauty. For she had tried blindness, and rejected it. Now she wanted her powers of sight to be used for good. There was nothing to see in the endless grey-and-white of a shower factory; surely there was something here?
There was.
Katie stopped dead as the forest ended abruptly and she found herself with a steep hill to her right and a dropping cliff to her left. She took a moment to take in the sunset on the left side, her eyes widening. Beauty; she had found it. Finally.
But straight ahead...a person? Oh. He must have been doing something private. Embarrassed, and not wanting to intrude, she quickly turned and tried to run silently back into the woods. The girl tripped and as her right leg flew back, pain erupted. A shriek flew out of her mouth and she squeezed the wrench in her right hand so hard it would surely break.
No, she whispered. No, no...
The blade slipped out of her calf, and with a rising tide of vomit in her throat, the girl stumbled back out onto the rocky top-of-the-cliff. Her wide, terrified eyes looked upon the boy-man.
Wh-why... she said. Why?
No other words came out, but a fair amount of vomit did.

The laughter. It stabbed into Katie; first in her arm, then her stomach, her calf - doubling her agony from the bleeding wound. Finally, the laughter stabbed her in the face. She felt shock first, then pain. It erupted in her right cheekbone and sent waves of torture through her brain. Another scream, this one lower but louder and more unstable, tore from her mouth and she bent over on her hands and knees. Vomit-smell filled her nostrils and the bile in her mouth threatened to make a reappearance. She swallowed mightily, gulping and gasping like a fish on land. Her throat burned, seeming to do so as much as her calf. The stab wound flashed between burning-flame-hot and frigid cold, switching back and forth so quickly it made the girl dizzy. Her mind spun.
So when his words should have been cutting into her, instead they seemed to...heal her? It was confusing. Everything was. But the stab wounds from his laughter were subsiding, patching, morphing. Morphing into - was it anger she felt? Katie wasn't sure, but when she managed to process a few words in her delirious mind and realized he was talking about her having some filthy disease, what else could she have been feeling but fury? Huge, pure, hulking fury. It consumed her mind, blinding her to the pain and the beauty and confusion.
She would not take it. Katie Morven would not cower and scream on the ground. This anger wouldn't allow her to, and Katie was never one to defy her own emotions.
When the knife came down, the wrench came up to block it by instinct alone. She'd never fought before, of course; but her reactions were fairly quick, and some sort of idea was fighting its way through her tangled thoughts. When it escaped the abyss and clawed into the forefront of her mind, this idea immediately began to ricochet around Katie's head, slamming itself against the inside walls of her skull: begging, demanding, to be not just acknowledged but accepted. The idea: Fight.
And fight she did. What choice did the girl have?

By now, Katie was sure she was hallucinating. Or at least deliriously, disturbingly insane. Her vision rocked back and forth with her shaking knees, and every flick of her eyes from the boy-man to the cliff-edge brought her a fresh wave of nausea. So when she clumsily swung her right arm out, still gripping the wrench like she clung to life, it was no surprised that Katie's attack was blocked.

Too much too much too much.

Katie didn't remember falling back onto the ground after he blocked her attack, but she did. She felt her elbows and lower back collide harshly with the unforgiving surface in a rush of inertia and numbness jarred her bones. For the pain of that impact was small in comparison with everything else, and it merely made her feel less aware of her nerve endings and their signals to her poor, confused brain. How is this happening?
Garbled words fell from her mouth, pushing each other out of the way in their quest to find open air.
I don't...Why- why- no!...too-too m-mu-...p-please...can't...wrench. Knife, knife knife knife knife-
The words stopped and the girl's eyes bugged. Her hair, matted into thick strands with sweat and mud and vomit, clung stickily to the teenager's terrified face, accenting the visual impression that she was crazy. Rays of red light reflected off the skin on her arms - wet and slick - but never reached her eyes. The girl's eyes should have been alive, but appeared strangely unfeeling. In reality, there was too much feeling; an emotional overload which Katie had never felt, and which her eyes could never express. It was pain and terror and everything her nightmares had teased her of; it was the whimpering cries that escaped from her when she woke up at four in the morning, hopelessly tangled in her covers and coated in cold-but-hot sweat; it was her father telling her she wasn't good enough. Most of all, it was this terrible man-boy with eyes that sparkled with insanity, smiling - actually smiling - as he held up a knife, telling her lies [were they lies? Katie had no idea, but they induced dry sobs from her anyway], then sheathed it in favor of...some other small object? Katie couldn't tell. She knew that it was no friend of hers.
Therefore, the near-instantaneous pain in her calf shouldn't have surprised the girl. Yet somehow it did; a shock of electricity and a pinprick that went too deep; a hurt that did not radiate outward, but rather concentrated on that one spot. She dared a glance at it which she immediately regretted: the dart was almost completely buried in her flesh.
You- you- she screamed, you-
But the tide of words had receded. Words were never important anyway.
Somehow, she managed to raise her arm, still shaking violently, and threw her whole body weight behind it as she struck out at the boy with her trusty wrench, an ever-thinning thread holding her to what was once a sane consciousness.

She took no satisfaction from her weapon finally hitting flesh, but it at least assured her panicking body that she was, indeed, doing something to stop the tide of hurt. Katie's fist was now wrapped so securely around the wrench's handle that her whitened knuckles throbbed and began to turn purple. Still, some part of her mind felt a tiny bit relieved as she managed to bruise his right shin.

Why? Why was he doing this to her? Why? Shooting her and talking about beauty and taunting, always taunting? What did he care of beauty, anyway? He was examining his gun after all; a gun was a death instrument, certainly not something of beauty. Not to Katie anyhow - maybe this man-boy had different concepts of beauty than she. Her bleary mind raced in every possible direction in a frenzy. Only one idea caught her attention: what else did men value as beautiful? Women.
And then her why question was answered, in the most horrible way possible.
This man, this monster, was trying - no, was going - to take advantage of her.

The largest shudder yet wracked the girl's body, but she didn't scream even as her body instinctively ground itself into the rocks, trying to become the dirt below her. Everything hurt and her chest was too tight, far too tight for any sort of respiration.

You- you monster! she yelled, a wild, furious animal.
How-how dare you, of course it hurts, you-monster, trying to- to-
The words tumbled in a terrifying rush from her mouth. A wall of tears, a hundred feet tall and ten feet thick, tried to force itself out of her eyes. Feeling an enormous headache but even more afraid than before - this was not how she could even fathom losing her virtue, it was too impossible - she stood, shakily. Then fell. Then again, with a tenacity belonging only to Katie, her knees produced just enough upward force to help her off the ground. Trying to draw strength from this success but mostly failing, the girl clenched her teeth and, with one arm out for balance and the other raised behind her head, looked down at the man-boy. He was laughing, actually laughing, Katie supposed that this shouldn't be surprising since he was clearly a psychotic, manic molester, but in her current state it still set off sirens in her mind. She groaned, but continued to trudge toward him, eyes narrowing in hate.
You- she sputtered. That's- that's- despicable-
Nothing was coming out right, but it didn't matter. She tried to convince herself that he looked vulnerable rolling around on the ground, clutching his stomach, but could not. She realized that he was just trying to fool her - make her think that he was in pain while he was just waiting to lunge for her to pin her down. That was when he would assault her. But she wouldn't let that happen. She would hit now, before he realized she was capable of reacting. So down her right arm came, trusty wrench leading the defensive strike.
Katie Morven was not going to be raped. She was not.

The wrench came down forcefully, bruising his right hand. Katie could only hope that that was his dominant hand, so that maybe she'd stand even a fragment of a chance.

Katie wanted so badly to run. She had to. Seeing this man's furious face, watching him as he surely contemplated her assault and subsequent murder, every ounce of logic in the girl's body screamed for her to sprint away as fast as she could. Yet she stood, frozen to the ground. She didn't want to feel his glare, watch him select a weapon. Her feet were rooted as though in a plaster mold, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Finally, when he brought the knife up again, Katie's body decided to take her brain's advice. She spun and began to ran, gaining speed as she flew over the rocky ground, when a brief shrill whistle was followed by a knife grazing her back. Katie's back instinctively arched forward, away from the blow, yet it was still a serious injury. The pain, the back-arch: It was too much for Katie. She fell flat on the ground, sand filing against her skin and rocks pressing into her entire body. Panicking, and not willing to part with her wrench, Katie lunged for the nearest fist-size rock and picked it up lightly. Her left, non-dominant hand flung the stone over her shoulder as the girl's torso pivoted around to face the oncoming man. She felt clumsy, awkward, throwing the rock - but what was a girl to do, really? She wanted to keep her antagonist far away.

[katie attacks marcuss]

The rock, flying at a velocity Katie hadn't anticipated, collided with the boy and gashed his left arm, probably also bruising it. Katie couldn't tell. All she knew was that maybe, just maybe, she had delayed her attacker's antagonism for one small moment.

Falling. It was such a terrible, sickly sensation; she fought against it with what little might remained in her tattered body, yet Katie could not resist her shaky, slow-motion descent to the ground after she threw the rock. Her arm had been flung out, her abdomen pivoted around, and suddenly her other arm gave way and she was pushing, pushing against the rocks and sand, willing herself to stay up in a tenuous couch rather than collapse through the foot of air between herself and the ground. Katie hated it. She groaned, face turned sideways, and her dry tongue darted out to lick her lips, only to be met with more sand. She sputtered, revolted, and attempted to roll over. Failed.
Her eyes caught something, something that gleamed for an instant with reflected orange light. Then it was gone, and two moving feet occupied her vision. Katie looked up and saw the insane boy-man licking a rock. She knew that she should've felt revolted, disgusted, yet as the creature looked skyward all Katie felt was fear, and a twinge of something that might've been anger. But Katie was never one to be angry. So she stopped looking at the psychotic thing and stared at the grass, longing to see that fleeting orange glint once more.
The ground trembled as his licking-rock hit the ground, and so did Katie. Yet her eyes, desperately focused on one patch of grass, were rewarded with another glint of light from a short blade. His throwing knife.
Anxiously, automatically, the girl glanced up. He seemed distracted, reaching down for something in the tall grass...
Determinedly, Katie shot onto her knees and had just plunged her left arm forward when a sting ripped across it.
She cringed, but was it too late? Katie concluded it was. There was no point in taking her hand back now when it was so close to the dagger's hilt.

Once she had it, the girl hardly hesitated. She shifted back onto her knees. He was so close. So dangerous.
The knife flew from her slippery wet hand, shaking pitifully in the dry evening air as it strained to find a target.

Somehow, the knife found its target, however unintentional. How, Katie wondered, had she even achieved a deep gash to the chest on this boy-man? It was a feat to be proud of in any circumstance but her own, surely.
Surely heroism was a myth when it came to life and death.
Katie didn't want to be a hero; she wanted to be a factory-worker. She wanted to lose this battle and be picked up by a helicopter. She wanted to lose, but how to do it? Her own hands had given her precious time, sent a knife toward his heart. Surely she was meant to survive.
Surely she should want to.

Why was this still going on? Why was this, this - this what was it? Fight? Brawl? Unlucky meeting of two kids who'd been in the wrong mood at the wrong time? Why was it still happening?
Katie's mind held no answers. The whole of her - her body, her mind, her heart beating so hard it would surely tire in a minute - was crying out, yelling and screaming and fighting against an enemy she couldn't see or feel. Her skin had the feeling of being ripped apart like a patchwork quilt with too-thin thread. Every laceration, every slice, every nick fought against every other to transmit the largest number of pain-signals through her nerves to her brain. The girl's spine shuddered, her arms clamped down to her body and suddenly her neck was refusing to hold her head up any longer. Matted, filthy clumps of hair dangled in front of her face, which itself was covered in grime and blood.
Perhaps, Katie thought, perhaps this blood will act as a sealant. Perhaps it will seal everything in so that my body doesn't fall apart.
But she doubted it. The caked layer of gore on her skin was dried, breaking, chipping, crackling in the evening breeze. What little light remained on the horizon cast ghoulish shadows onto her face, highlighting only the cheekbones and whites of the eyes.
She didn't even want to look at the face of her antagonist.

In a final attempt at pitiful defense, and because she couldn't stand the non-motion any longer, she flung the wrench away from herself. She needed it no longer, anyway.
Death was coming.

[[katie attacks marcuss]]