Hysteric

Phran began moving slower and slower clearly bothered by her body. She grasped at her stomach and moaned as she tried to progress back to the mansion. Phran screamed out trying to suppress the new personality attempting to emerge in that body, but ultimately Nic would come. She arrived to the beautiful red colors of blood that Phran had splashed onto her. Blue hair sprang from where blonde hair was. Pink eyes melted away giving to those familiar cold blue eyes and Nic stood in front of Kira and Teric with a disappointed visage. She briefly analyzed herself taking in the mess Phran had put on her body.

Without looking up Nic said, “I’m disappointed in you Teric, I watched too. We all watch from behind the eyes of a shared body. I had hopes that even without your memory you’d at least be able to maintain some humility. You are as much of an animal as anyone else in this house, slipping down a slope of madness and gluttony.”

Teric grimaced and ran up to Nic, “I know…” she whispered gently into Nic’s ear, “I need you to help me… I can’t… I can’t deal with all these conflicting emotions without knowing where they stem from. I need to get to that power plant.”

Nic viewed Teric with condescension, but there was a sadness growing Teric’s expression. Perhaps it was guilt or maybe it was synthetic. Teric’s quick admission to guilt and her submission that begged for pity or understanding was a method Father Joseph would have employed. Without knowing it Teric asked for human understanding from Nic with intent to manipulate those sympathies. Her ask for help was a lie. Just that she wanted trust between the two.

For Teric though she could feel a faint memory she was trying to reach, but the farther she extended her arms trying to grasp for it the faster her mind moved those memories away from her. “I just want to remember Nic… Kira, helps me feel closer to something familiar at times, but I know it’s not enough.”

“I will do what I can. I will stay as long as I can by you.” Nic turned her attention to Kira, “boy, I need you to run ahead for us, Teric is feeling faint, she needs to sit down. Perhaps you could get some water?”

Kira glimpsed at Teric who had indeed started to turn pale before agreeing to Nic’s terms, “oaky,” he muttered. He bolted forward through the thick trees as Nic sat Teric onto a stump.

“I saw you give into madness Teric… a very vindictive madness. I don’t know if you even worth helping now. I question if your memories are of any value. Are you just a monster now? Are you all ready to be so much like the man who made you?”

Teric gulped, “no… I don’t know,” she whispered, “I still think of them… of the two humans Skitz dragged in. The man and the woman and I feel guilty.”

“What about the camp? You went in with a malicious plan to gain trust as you manipulated those poor people before destroying every last one of them.”

Teric’s throat felt dry as she spoke, “there is something in me that says my actions are bad… a distant memory I can’t access.”

Nic wondered how much of what Teric was saying was the truth and how much of it was her trying to manipulate the situation to something more favorable. “So, you don’t regret this incident?” Nics eyes scanned Teric suspiciously.

“If I could remember…” Teric muttered.

“If you remembered you would be in pain Teric. You’d become like me. Do you want that pain? The memory of being human will tell you why the incident that just occurred is bad, or would you prefer to live in blissful arrogance and be the perfect monster Noia has primed you to be? Your set to be the pride and joy of every new coming Necrolord perhaps even fit to be a leader unaffected by madness. Would you rather know humanity or be what you’ve become, a monster?”

Teric felt intimidated by Nic. She spoke as an interrogator making Teric feel worse and worse about herself. Nic was a person Teric should not waste her time treating like a human.

Teric said, “I still want to know… I desire it…”

Nic was profoundly disappointed with the new girl, but she shouldn’t have had such high expectations. This was a very successful result of a mind wipe. If the new necrolord was to gain her memories back, then maybe she too would see why her actions were wrong. Perhaps she’d even know regret or fall to self hatred. Right now all she knows is that she is a monster, and there is no hope for human side if she doesn’t understand it.

Nic found a new resolve before speaking to Teric, “We will have to move quickly,” she said, “my time is limited, and we have a 45 minute run ahead of us. Its best we go now in order to evade Kira. He’s out of the way, and I would prefer to keep it that way. He won’t help you recover your memories. He’ll just stand near to take advantage of your weakness, and you are still very weak.”

Teric lifted herself from the log and wiped the base of her dress free from dust.

“He’s still out of earshot. Keep up, I won’t slow down for you like Phran did. Remember you’re a monster now, with monster like qualities.” Nic took a fast left and bolted off into the distance.

Necrolords were blessed with both lightning fast speed as well as superior strength.

Teric would have had trouble keeping up with the athletic woman, but after feeding on a human and her strengthened desire to regain her memories she found herself capable of pushing past her mental block. Together the two monsters ran through the forest at an unnatural speed. Over logs, past stumps, rocks, wildflowers, through the forest deeper and deeper. Every now and then a stray zombie would be knocked over as Teric pursued Nic. Then run became more challenging for Teric to keep up.

What felt like hours had passed as she charged on forward with all her might. She was becoming short of breathe and the blood on her clothing only weighted her down further. She was sticky and irritated. Nic finally slowed in front of a large building. The front of it looked much like a regular office building with glass windows, but around every side of the structure walls were built up to block off the inside. Back behind this front building was the power plant itself. Water could be heard flowing in the distance.

“We should be careful; the Father does not know we’ve come to visit.” Nic muttered.

Teric stepped up to the glass gently touching the outer walls. The glass that had been designed not to break when the zombies beat against it over and over again trying to get to the humans within. She used to be so afraid of the windows when she was a child. Rotting corpses would stare in with the hopes of gnashing at her bones.

“Oh…” Teric whispered recoiling her hand away from the glass, “zombies were scary… they wanted to eat me up, gobble me away… I’ve always been afraid of them.”

Nic smiled, “now you understand how brave the outside humans are, and what a waste it is to kill them in cold blood.”

Teric licked her lips nervously, the blood no longer tasted so sweet now that a small fragment of memory had returned to her. It once again tasted bitter in her mouth.

“Its bittersweet is it not?” Nic said whispering in Teric’s ear.

She nodded, “I need to go inside… things are coming back to me, but not much. I need more… there must be something inside that will trigger the remaining memories…”

Nic nodded, “you’re making this difficult, but since you’ve been so good so far, why would it matter we defile the place? Your presence will no doubt haunt this building.” Nic opened the front door with ease, and Teric realized it wasn’t locked anymore. It used to be sealed. The lock was a series of bolts that ran the length of the door so that it could not be easily pushed in or knocked over. That door held for many years, through the duration of Teric’s childhood.

“I used to be so scared of coming here… so scared they would just break in through the glass and doors… but they never did. My mother would just hold me close… it’s okay Arisa… don’t you cry Arisa… that was my name… Arisa…” Kira hadn’t lied to her about that. She was almost sure that the names he mentioned were all true.

Nic replied, “Well, something is coming back there. Your childhood, your morals and ethics are slowly re-entering. Your mother’s teachings should never have been so easily forgotten.”
“No… there is a large chunk missing still. Up to the point before I died… I knew Kira once… I just don’t know how. I mean to regain all of my memories. Noia told me I had run away, I need to know why.”

Nic nodded, “well, would you like to lead the way then? You would know the place better than I do.”
Teric traced her blood stained hands along the window leaving a smudge, memories of friends and family came flooding back into her as they walked into the building and began to explore.

“The places where we lived… the rooms, they were down there.” She pointed down a hall, and then started walking in that direction. She stared over rows and rows of cubicles, “each little open box was a home… we lived in our little boxes,” her brain felt as though it had glitched for a moment.

Suddenly the pristine white room no longer appeared white at all; Teric could see blood on the walls and corpses strewn about. More corpses were moving in, an army of them.

“They were led down this hall… a horde of them… the nasty creatures were let into the building, but not through the front door. The people panicked and blocked themselves into this room… by the time I got here; their bodies were just then starting to rise back up. I didn’t want to look for my family anymore.” The vision disappeared and the room returned back to its clean walls.

She turned her head back, “the outside areas… where the engineers walked along to make sure everything was okay… something… something happened out there too…” Teric bolted the opposite direction and through the long halls of the building until she got outside.

“Here, we were safe up here,” she pointed across the length of the generators, “they came in from outside the river. Someone opened the gates that let the trucks in. Someone let them in through the back… no… they were brought in from inside the trucks. Our trucks carried food, and supply… this time they carried an army. We watched…. We watched them come in and stood here not knowing what to do.”

“Who watched them come in?” Nic asked.

“I don’t know… I don’t remember…” Teric closed her eyes trying to remember the face on the body that stood next to her when the zombies invaded her human home, “I don’t know…”

Her eyes snapped open. There was a tugging sensation from within the building. Something inside was calling out to her. She turned and ran towards a mysterious force. She gave Nic no lead as to where she was going; she just bolted down the halls. Deeper and deeper inside Teric became intent on finding her last puzzle piece. There was something in this building, something calling out to her, resonating at the same frequency her heart beat at. She needed to find this mysterious pull, she needed to discover it. She could hear voices around her. She was unable to differentiate whether or not the voices she was hearing were real or just inside her own mind, but she followed them down the halls. There was something in here that was going to help her.

She rounded the corner and ripped open the door to a large conference room. It was almost an auditorium in size. At the base a few humans seemed to be talking with a blonde haired man. Teric halted and felt her body crippled with fear as she gazed at the strangers in the room, “The Father…” she whispered.

“Teric, no!” a voice hollered from behind her. Kira had tracked her and Nic to the power plant.
The blonde man moved swiftly like a blur up the top of the stair to stand in front of Teric, “What are you doing here,” his voice was deep but calm as his eyes searched over her questioningly.

Kira ran up from behind her, and it was while standing in between the two of them her memories began to flood in. Everything, everything up to the point where she died, and the point afterwards. Every experience she had with the zombies, and more so with the Necrolords surrounding her. She glared up at Father Joseph with a new found hatred before she fell to the ground unconscious. She was sent into a deep slumber as her mind began to once again turn the gears inside her head forcing her to relive her past.

The priest stared down at what he had first assumed to be a wandering zombie. The little girl was covered in blood, and appeared to have just eaten. He was more or less surprised to see signs of intelligence peer back at him before the child fell unconscious.

“You’re new…” he nudged the little girl with the heel of his foot. She was well dressed, like an upper class southern belle. Her dress was knee length, and her high socks made her look like a doll. Noia had been dressing her up, he could recognize his sister’s work. The father’s surprise further grew when he saw his youngest brother running down the halls after the girl.

Kira bent down and lifted up her head carefully cradling her in his arms, “No Teric… why would you do this?”

Nic walked down the hallway peeking out from behind a wall just long enough to show that she too had come unannounced, Noia’s daughter.

“Nic, is there a reason you decided to show up here with a baby Necrolord?”

Nic smirked with a devious gleam to her countenance. This is the first time she left a kill from one of her other personalities clinging to her body and the priest had never seen her wearing so much blood before.

“She wanted to meet her father, her creator as it may be. She does take after you, almost a disturbing duplicate.”

Father Joseph looked down again at the girl in utter revulsion, “are you sure this one is mine… no one ever comes back when I touch them.”

Nic sneered, “we’ll know for sure once she regains consciousness, won’t we? She’s been searching for the key to her memories that Noia tried to wipe away.”

Kira’s face turned pale, “why would you do this Nic?”

“Shush,” the priest ordered, “I have work in need of completion. Your appearance here, though convenient, is currently unwanted. The men down there have a job that needs to be done, and I’ve come to realize I only really need one of them and the other is a back up. I have decisions to make on whether or not I should let one live.”

Nic moved down at the same speed the father moved up and slit the throat of one of the men. The other man screamed and moved back, “problem solved father. Now he’s dead and he’ll never be able to say another word again.”

The priest sighed, “you killed the smart one damn it!” he yelled down to Nic, “but it matters not. You, get back to the generators before I decide to kill off what’s left of your family.”

The man squeaked and sluggishly jogged his way up and past the Necrolords. The priest watched the dead man bleed out onto the floor, “blood is blood Nic. I expect you won’t waste it. We have methods of collection, wrap up that wound before my idiot minions come sniffing about.”

Nic used the dead man’s shirt to tie a turnicate around his neck and lifted him from the ground. She took her time walking up the steps.

“I thought you didn’t kill,” The priest said.

“I ensure no more zombies are made. You would have killed, he would have come back, and then you might have killed him again.” Nic flashed the knife she had pulled from her boot, “I kill and it gets done right the first time.”

The priest smirked, he had always had a fascination with Nic, she was so unusual compared to the other two that resided within her. “Well Kira… I don’t know what you’ve done this time but pick that girl up. We have some rooms set up now that she can sleep in… Nic, could you clean her up? I thought she was a zombie when she first walked in.”

Teric was gone, completely unconscious as Nic lifted her from the floor taking her from Kira. Nic watched as Teric had begun to sweat which was something the dead didn’t do. She moaned and occasionally would cry out. Nic decided it would be best if she stayed by Teric through the night.

“Do you think she will be okay?” Kira asked looking worried.

“She’ll be fine Kira. She is remembering. Whatever you people tried to keep from her, it’s going to be revealed now. It was the Father who brought it back to her, not so much this factory. Her memories would have come back with or without this visit. She will awake changed. She will be the person she was meant to be, not the carefully molded creature you all so admired.”

Nic wiped the sweat from Teric’s head and sighed; she could feel Skitz wanting to come out and play with Kira. Perhaps she could calm the other personalities so that they would just let the body sleep for the day, and let Nic deal with the girl until the Priest was satisfied.

“I’ll let you stay until morning,” Nic said to Kira, “then you will need to go back. Noia knows hunting trips can last over night, but with all three of us gone, she will start asking questions.”

Kira nodded, “As long as I may see her awake in the morning.”

Teric felt her mind spinning, the sight of priest was bringing memories in faster than she could handle. Every event up until her time in the manner was being recovered; every painful memory. Every last bit of betrayal and fear was all entering back in her. Her human memories immediately began to conflict with the new ones she had formed. Her mind was ridden with guilt and she felt cheated by her own conscious. When she fell to the floor, it all began to play out before her, all over again. A movie she had hoped she wouldn’t have to watch again started to rewind and replay.