Lacrima: Chapter Nine

Descent

Job could feel his eyeballs beneath the lids. Sleep did not come to him easily. He spent the past few hours lying in his bed, thinking of who may have killed Argus Nebbel. Getting up for the sixth time in the hour, Job went to his door in the pitch black and tested the doorknob.

Locked.

As it should be.

He returned to his bed, unsure if this would be the last time for the night. Job couldn’t think of the last time he struggled to sleep. He prided himself on never pulling all-nighters like his peers. Tonight, however, one may just transpire out of miserable circumstances. Just before he closed his eyes again, the outline of his bulbed chandelier came into view.

Konrad O’Flannery, Bae Yuri, Catherine Lovelace, & Lucille Azure…

If Argus Nebbel was hiding something, surely one of these others would hold something inside their vaults.

There’s not much to go off right now.

The locked door…

Konrad and Bae learned how the doors locked and told us about that at the party, so those two knew the function of Service. Catherine might’ve learned that capability of Service from her intensive probing of the AI - I saw the stack of notes she transcribed.

But, I don’t have cause or motivation. All I have is the vague impression of the means of the murder.

God. I need sleep.

He fluttered his eyelids. After a minute or so, he gradually felt sleep sink in. His mind wandered over the four other, remaining, guests. Less thinking and more mentally meandering. Job felt worn. His first day in Lacrima took her toll on him.

Soon, it came to collect.

Abruptly, he nodded off, but felt his whole body detach from him. Sleep paralysis. The weight pushed into his chest. He took shallower breaths, even though he knew that wasn’t necessary. Job could think, but couldn’t move. He tried to slip his mind into unconsciousness. Have it catch up with the rest of him. His thoughts refused to be still.

Who killed Argus?

Why?

When?

Now that I think about it, Konrad really wanted people to think it was a suicide. He even nudged me toward that conclusion.

But, he could’ve just earnestly thought that.

Lucille. Lucille. She formed an antagonism with Argus immediately. Perhaps, she knew about him being a Nebbel or that he had an ulterior motive.

But how would that catalyze into her killing him?

He tried to stop his choppy breathing. Air entered his nostrils. Job’s lungs filled, resisting the pressure. His chest strained as the vessels became taut.

Then, he didn’t exhale.

For a moment, he floated. Inhaled.

His awareness fluttered to a new space entirely, as if cast adrift from the anchor of his paralyzed body. One second, he lay in the enclosed room in Lacrima. In the next second, he awoke on the ground, staring at a phantasmagoric sky.

Auroras of sunset red and violets burned a sky that stretched over blackened peaks. Raw burning discs, silhouettes of planets, shined, but couldn’t cut through the warped color streaks. Fear didn’t come over him. Job knew he was in a dream.

What kind of dream? That he did not know.

He let the gulp of air go. When he breathed in again, hot, noxious sulphur went into him. The heat alone burned his organs. Job dusted himself off. Fine volcanic dust and ash flew away in clouds. He looked across the horizon. No trees populated this acidic hellscape. Crags and cracks were all that the ground provided. Water did not flow, but lava did plentifully.

Goosebumps, of all things, snaked us his arms. A shiver stabbed into his spine. Job needed to move. Danger lurked just out of sight - he knew it. His bare feet weathered the uneven terrain. Volcanic glass sparkly darkly within the bed of black dust. Tiny cuts abused his soles. This, he did not mind, for he knew worse, far far worse threats hounded him.

Beyond the fear, a sense of guilt wormed inside his skull. He had no reason to feel this way. This guilt suffused him like alien radiation.

Job knew he walked on holy ground. And, that the most profane thing here was him. How dare he venture here? He didn’t belong. Soon, that would be rectified.

The hesitant steps turned to stomps before transitioning into a dogged sprint. Music, bellowed by a thousand voices, rose through the earth. His neck felt warm and wet. He touched it and his fingers came back red. The blood came from his ears. He clasped his ears shut to shield against the song, but it proved so sonorous that it only slowed the bleeding.

Job found a niche he could hide into. He ducked and dove into the gap, squeezing his flesh between the jagged rock. He scuttled deeper until he couldn’t descend any farther. His wounded feet pulsing. His hemorrhaged brain cried more blood, unable to contain the horrid chorus. Job became a knot of flesh, wearisome in its pathetic coil. Now, the rock hewed into his back and shoulders. With each adjustment and twitch, he further whittled his own body. Abraded, Job finally looked towards the force which caught his unholy scent. Low to the ground, close to being dragged, a blade of burning spirals hovered. Motes of light flickered off the eye-searingly white metal. A blackened claw, more bone than flesh, held the weapon. This too was attached to a body of scarred, burned flesh segmented by rings. It was bedecked in eyes of every natural and unnatural color, some with too many pupils, but all uncanny. One taloned foot dangled from the earth. A pupil-less mask of ebony swiveled from a veiny neck of tough, fibrous muscle. How all it came to be attached to this single creature - Job could never fathom. His peripheral vision hung on the visage. He beheld, but wanted to look away. The very act of looking invited punishment.

Orange light came from the mouth slit of the mask. More of that overwhelming song spilled from its lipless maw. The angel gave one last survey before extending then collapsing its wings. It jackknifed into the burning sky. Fellow farther-back sentries joined the angel into a flock.

Job didn’t sigh. The less sound the better. He held his breath, tucking all the air into his diaphragm. His eyes closed.

Then he snapped right back to his bed in Lacrima. The breath ripped out from him in a sharp exhale. He heaved, gasping, before pressing a hand to his ear. Dry: no blood. Not even a drop. He grabbed his foot. Again, no cuts: no blood.

As he reacclimated to the comfortable chill of the mansion, Job couldn’t shake a thought carried from the dream. The guilt faded away, wherever that came from, but an image remained. That angel’s mask. He didn’t recognize it as his dream, but in the waking world - it held a familiarity. Service’s hazy semblance looked eerily like the mask. He couldn’t answer why he felt this. They were both faces that lacked defined features. Perhaps, it was the shadowed quality of both. Or the indecipherability of either.

Dream logic, he told himself. That’s how I “know.”

He rationalized his dream as flickering hallucinations of his mind, as all dreams were. While no less fantastical, it made them understandable. Even still, Job found that unsatisfying.

In his gut, he knew the dream came to him. Rather than blossoming from his unconscious, it invaded him. Perhaps it used memories and impressions, but the dream wove them in truly foreign patterns.

Job didn’t know what to make of this feeling besides it being irrational.

He shook his head and slipped back under his covers.

Unmoored. Disparate. Fugue-addled. Yet, deeply aware of what he had to do come the morning.

Finally, Job slept.