Andy

Summery: she felt nothing, needed nothing but the final, agonized scream from dying lips. She had needed nothing more…until she looked into those hazel eyes. In that single moment Lora felt herself destroyed…but agony comes in many forms.

Disclaimer: I own the characters and the story.


Andy


The snow fell in sleets of white cold. It shattered the ground into sparks of white between masses of green grass. Lora watched as the paths of white lace slowly formed a complete blanket of pure, unmarred white.

A touch at her shoulder made her turn, bright blue eyes first catching on the deep, earth brown mass of hair before coming to rest on the face. Hazelnut eyes, large and full of an emotion Lora herself had never been able to comprehend. The rounded face, full lips, and too thin fame seemed only to exadurate those eyes.

“You’ll freeze,” Andy told her.

“I’m fine,” Lora answered, averting her gaze from those eyes. Those eyes…they reminded her of the past. She had never felt remorse before she looked into those eyes. She had never felt that oddly fierce thing called protectiveness before she looked into those eyes. She had never FELT before she looked into those eyes.

Honestly, and honesty was the one thing she clung to now, those eyes scared her. They were the mark of when her life changed, of when she, Lora Brown, had died.

Lora knew of death, she had brought it to so many, it would have been imposable for her to not know it. She had held death, watched its movements, its behavior as it acted, settled. She had loved death, loved it with the only form of passion she had ever known.

But her own death, that was something beyond her. It had been the release of everything she was…yet she still lived. She still walked and talked and ate…but no longer as herself. She was no longer herself. Not since the moment those eyes met hers.

“Come inside, I’ll make tea,” Andy begged.

“I hate tea,” Lora reminded, her eyes refusing to stray from the safety of the distant snow.

“Coffee then,” Andy supplied.

The hand on Lora’s shoulder tightened, begging her to come. Lora could not move. She wanted this, to be here, in the cold, the snow. She wanted to stay here forever, frozen in time, in cold. Her greatest desire, the only desire she had been able to feel since those eyes had killed her.

She wanted to die. Right here. Just freeze until nothing remained within. She wanted true death, the kind that would remove this pain those eyes had brought upon her. The pain of feeling. She just wanted the cold to make her numb again.

“Come on, Lore, just come inside, please,” Andy begged.

Against her will Lora raised her face. The movement caught her by surprise as much as it did Andy. They stared at one another, blue meeting hazel.

Pain seared through Lora’s chest like fire through snow. All she could understand in that moment was pain, the pain of hazel filled with the only emotion she had not yet been burdened with.

The hand was no longer on her shoulder. It was grasping her own and Andy was pulling her up. Lora could hardly comprehend the movements she made as Andy walked her inside, walked backwards, keeping her enthralled, a snake charmer...

“Sit, I’ll make coffee,” Andy said, pushing her into a chair upholstered with gaudy purple and pink flowers.

With the eyes finally giving her respite as Andy moved away Lora let a breath escape her. Drawing it out, she let it become a sigh. She closed her eyes. The house was warm. Too warm. It was thawing her out like a frozen fish in the sun. It made her skin itch and her brain go to fuzz.

A warm mug was pressed into her hand and Lora opened her eyes. She glanced into the mug, the smell of the coffee, black like she always drank it, filled her with a weary calmness.

She took a sip, ignoring the sting as it burned her tongue. Glancing up from the rim of the black mug she saw Andy settle across from her in a chair identical to her own.

Trying to avoid looking into those eyes Lora moved her gaze across Andy’s body. Long legs that stretched beneath the kitchen table were invisible though Lora knew they were there. Thin hips, nearly flat stomach beneath a navy blue tank top. Lora could see the slight bulge in the shirt where Andy’s navel piercing pushed against it.

Upwards a bit more and Lora was examining Andy’s handful sized breasts. Andy had no bra on, and she needed none. Lora hesitated on those breasts, remembering all the times she had held breasts, smaller, bigger, sweeter, or simply the same as Andy’s. All the times she had leaned over the rest of the body to suckle at those nipples. All the times she had risen, lifted the blade from the white cloth. All the times she had carved those sweet, beautiful mounds into artworks of agony and screams.

Lora started at the odd flavor on her lips. Running her tongue over them she realized her ruminations had caused her to bite into her lip hard enough to draw blood.

She took another sip from he mug, trying to calm her nerves. She loved those memories…until she returned to reality. Because in the here and now, those memories, those sweet, beloved memories, brought guilt, remorse, disgust.

“Lore,” Andy called.

Lora looked at her. The girl who had changed everything. The girl that had killed the killer she had been.

“Lore, you don’t look well,” Andy said, her voice filled with concern. Concern, the one thing Andy hated most…well, almost the most.

“I’m fine,” she said. It was her standard answer. Thinking back Lora could remember only two conversations with Andy where she had said anything more than “I’m fine.”

Biting her already bleeding lip once more Lora forced her eyes to meet Andy’s.

“I meant to kill you,” Lora whispered.

Andy started, surprised by the sound of Lora’s voice. After a moment of shock she smiled and said, “I know.”

“How did you stop me?” Lora asked. She had asked this once before, she had not received an answer, of course that may well have been a factor of the drugs Andy had been full of at the time, and the gag in her mouth.

Andy tilted her head to the side, her smile serene. “I didn’t. I didn’t do anything at all, Lore.”

Lora shook her head, her teeth drawing a few more droplets of blood as they dug into her lip. “Yes you did. I never would have stopped…you made me, how?”

“Lore,” Andy said, her smile never wavering, “I never stopped you.”

Lora shook her head. Andy had done something. She remembered the moment. She had had the knife in hand, she had stared down at the girl, raised the knife…and then she had seen those eyes. They were beautiful eyes…so beautiful. And…and she had stopped. She hadn’t been able to kill her.

She had fallen to the floor of the cellar, stared up at the table Andy lay on. Shaking she had screamed at he girl, screamed, demanding to know why she was still alive.

That had been the beginning of the end. She had not been able to kill after that. She could not recall the killings she had done without feeling sick. And she felt, so many things she felt. Hatred, rage, fear, anxiety, remorse, guilt, pain, pleasure…it had destroyed her.

And Andy, Andy was always there. For eleven months and thirteen days Andy had been at her side, cajoling, talking, laughing…loving her.

Lora stared down at the carpet, the dark crimson carpet that reminded her so much of wine, and of blood. She watched as a single drop of blood fell from her lip and landed within the folds of the carpet, like a drop of water disappearing into a sea of wine.

“Andy.” It was the first time she had spoken the girl’s name aloud. “Andy…I never killed you…”

There was no response. Lora slid her teeth into the grooves they had already formed upon her lips. She ground the piece of flesh between her teeth, watching as drop after drop of crimson blood fell to the carpet and was consumed by the sea of wine on her floor.

Closing her eyes Lora recalled the nights she had been pulled to bed by Andy’s insistent hands. The nights she had lain there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for answers to come. The nights Andy had pulled her face forward in the darkness and laid her cool lips against Lora’s own. The nights they had moved as one. The nights, the moments, Lora had been able to forget who she was, who she had been turned into, and only feel.

Lora opened her eyes. The visions were gone. In there place was a cold spot reserved for the gnawing agony of being alone. Alone and cold and alone.

She tried to keep her head turned down. She tired not to move. But her body disobeyed. She felt her head rise, her face turn towards Andy. Her eyes found the girl, the sweet, pleasant, infatuated girl staring back at her.

“Lore,” Andy’s innocent voice whispered in the silence of the room. “I’m so sorry…but yes you did.”

Before Lora’s eyes the image of the healthy sixteen year old girl faded into something putrid. Blood poured from a gaping wound in the neck, flesh pealed and rotted. Muscles, features, clothing, rotted, falling from the skeleton.

Lora felt bile rise in her throat. Felt fear envelop her. She stared at a corpse, decomposing, maggots, the smell a thing all itself. And placed within sunken sockets, perfectly unique, clear and bright as the day she first saw them, were those wide hazel eyes.

Those eyes…they held the only emotion she had not been forced to suffer through. But now…now in this moment of horror, Lora felt the last and final agony any soul could suffer.

Falling from her chair, her legs hitting the tables edge, she crawled forward. Moving around the table she found the god awful chair Andy had been sitting in. Nothing…there was nothing. No smile, no laugh…no hand to pull her up…not even a corpse. There was nothing. And it was to this nothing, this lack of what she had known as her savior and executioner, that Lora confessed.

“I love you…Andy…god how I love you.”
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