You Didn't Use To Call Me on My Cell Phone

Gabe (or was it Gabriel? Probably Gabriel, since Merrit was in no position to anger the giant before him)- jabbed a large-barreled suppressor to Merrit’s forehead.

“Hey. Stop spacing out. You mentioned someone named Ren, right? Answer before I ventilate you.”

Rosemary tugged insistently on the giant’s coat. She was tall, but dwarfed in comparison to the man who was likely over 8 feet tall. It was a strange sight, and if Merrit could wheeze a laugh through his lungs, he might have done so.

“Gabe-we’re not murderers.”

“Maybe you’re not. But to me, a loose end is a loose end.”

“He’s innocent!”

“You don’t have any proof of that. And if he’s one of them, he could turn any moment.”

“I won’t let you kill a bystander in front of me!”

“Then look away.”

Gabe reversed the pistol and clubbed Merrit in the skull with its handle, sending him to the ground.

Gabe lowered the pistol to turn to Rosemary, addressing her.

“It’s not just like we can let him go- Unless you want to take him with us?”

“I- he’s just a kid!”

His head swam, and time seemed to slow.

… Kid? These two were arguing about his life in front of him… like he was a helpless animal they found on the side of the road… arrogantly giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to judge the worth of his existence. But this sensation wasn’t new to him.

Many times before, in situations like this, he would have just laid down, and accepted whatever judgement came to him, thinking that karma would bring him his just deserts, as visions assaulted his mind.

The betrayed, desperate faces of his siblings as they were set upon and torn apart limb from limb, as he ran away for his life, tears in his eyes. Their betrayed, desperate cries… their pleas… their screams… and at the end of it, their admonishment.

His brother’s screams died out first. But his sister lived long enough to yell out to him, her distinctive voice echoing through the alleyways, cutting through the sounds of tearing flesh.

You… were always so… worthless… spineless-

And then a loud snap, as she suddenly became spineless as well.

Those sights and sounds always haunted him in his dreams and waking hours. He expected to see them again, here at the end.

But now, there was only one memory that popped into his head. A cute blonde-haired girl with a serene, gentle look on her face, and a ragged, shaggy haired tramp with a perpetual frown.

But the both of them stared at him, with a look not of disappointment, not of contempt- but of expectation.

Under the unkempt hair, the eyes of that man were surprisingly fierce. That man knew what Merrit had done, and still placed a slight bit of faith in him. And so- Merrit now felt not a sense of resigned worthlessness, but a bubbling feeling of something else, something foreign.

Inspired by Ren’s habit of improvised masonry bludgeoning, Merrit grabbed a piece of shattered brick from the ground, and leaped up, swinging it in an uppercut at Gabriel’s head.

Rosemary gasped, but Gabriel remained still, as the brick shattered upon hitting the side of his face, having about as much effect as slamming a rag into a stone wall.

Nonplussed, Gabriel turned slowly to the stunned Merrit, and grabbed him by the throat.

“See?”

Rosemary looked from Gabriel, to Merrit, and back, with a struggling look on her face.

“I-”

Suddenly, Merrit’s phone, which had been flung out of his pocket at some point, began to buzz and ring.

Keeping one hand on Merrit’s throat and holding him high in the air, Gabriel bent down to pick up the phone.

“Your friends? This’ll be useful for us to see who to get next… or maybe they can watch as I snap your neck.”

He swiped to answer the video call, and the sounds of a vehicle were heard.

A tired sounding voice echoed out, and Gabriel froze.

“Hey… sorry for not answering earlier, I think we were out of range. Did you need something?”

Silence.

“Hey… hello? Is this thing on? Alice, is this normal? -I just see a big picture of my boots here.”

“Dummy… you have to turn the camera around! You’ve also fullscreened yourself-”

“How the hell am I supposed to know to do that?”

As the camera flipped around, Gabriel let go of Merrit’s throat, and he fell to the ground, gasping.

“... Ren?”

“Who the hell are you? Where’s Merrit?”

“You’re still alive…”

“If you don’t tell me where he is quick, I’m going to come back and bash your skull in myself.”

“Yeah… that’s you alright.”

“I swear, I’m going to-!”

From here, Merrit could only see a singular red dot under Gabriel’s hood. As the hood came off, he now understood why.

He had never seen a human fully transform into a demon before. He could not imagine it, a regular person, turning into some mangled abomination of extra misplaced limbs, scales, teeth and eyes.

And yet, standing in front of him was someone frozen in the middle of that process. He had the rough facial structure of a human, but beyond that, everything was foreign. There was no skin, only dark, blackened, chitinous scale with bulging veins constantly pumping unknown liquids. There was no hair, only a scalp resembling a basalt plain.

Somehow, he also looked frozen in time in his 20s, if one were to look past all the other deformations. The eyes were entirely red and glowing, with black veins running through them. Or more specifically, just eye. Merrit could only wonder what was under the eyepatch.

And yet, somehow Ren seemed to recognize him.

“...Gabe?”

“It’s not- Yeah. It’s me.”

“But how-”

For a moment, the two of them were silent, and nobody dared to interrupt.

Realizing, Rosemary gave Merrit a hand up, leading him into frame where Ren could see him, and then led him away to where the two could talk more privately.

Merrit could see Alice walk out of frame, waving Merrit goodbye as she went.

Ren put the phone down on a table, and sat down, Gabe doing the same on an abandoned picnic bench.

Now, there were just too many questions, how could they pick one to ask first?

Gabe broke the silence with the worst one he could have picked.

“If you’re alive… the others- Brynn- Mina?”

“No.”

“You’re sure? Mina… is she… did she-”

“No. No… I- I’m sorry… It’s my fault… It’s all my-”

A fierce, almost murderous look flashed across Gabe’s face.

“Shut up.”

“What? I-”

“Don’t apologize. Whatever happened, I know it had to have been their choice.”

“That’s exactly why it’s my fault! You don’t get it-”

“You’re the one that doesn’t get it. Do you think we all never talked without you? We knew you were taking all the burdens on yourself. That you were overusing your abilities, that you’d succumb to Necrosis sooner or later- all for some noble cause of protecting those you loved.”

“I-”

“Do you think we wanted that? To leave it all to you, and see you suffer in our place? And now you’re taking their deaths… our choices… on yourself too. Don’t rob us of that.”

“You don’t know what I said to her… what I did…”

“I can guess.”

Ren was silent for a moment.

“Go ahead, then.”

“I bet things between you two came to a head, and you both said things you regretted.”

“How-”

“She told me. She told me she was worried for you, that she wasn’t doing enough, that you were taking on too much yourself. She told me that she felt worthless, like a trophy prize that we were all just bringing along.”

“Why- Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She asked me not to. She had some power to read your emotions… She told me that she knew, deep down in your heart, everything you did was because you didn’t want to lose anyone again. Even if you were arrogant, even if you didn't consider our feelings, even if it made me want to punch you-”

“Don’t give me that.”

“What?”

“Those are just excuses. Do you know what I told her?! I told her that she would never have been able to get where she was if I didn’t help, that she was nothing without me. And she still- she STILL-!”

“... I know you wouldn’t say those things normally. I know there had to be some-”

“DON’T YOU GET IT? No matter what she said, no matter what secret noble motivations I had behind it, the actions I took and the words I said are still there. She’s dead, Brynn’s dead, you’re a monster, and the world’s gone to shit.”

“And you’ve just been sitting around, waiting to die? Even if her last wish was for you to live?”

“How did you-That wasn’t-”

“Before we went into that final room, she pulled me aside. She told me that if anything were to happen to her, to get you out alive. No matter what.”

“...”

“So if she did some heroic sacrifice for you in the end… it wasn’t out of guilt, it wasn’t because you made her feel like she was worthless- it was because she loved you. You’ve probably been moping around, looking for some excuse to die, right?”

“I… “

“Stay alive. Wherever you’re going, make sure you come back- I still have to beat the shit out of you for what you said to her. And then… we can put an end to all this.”

Ren sighed, and for a moment, they both looked at each other-not with a smile, but no longer with anger or apprehension.

“Alright. I think I’ll have to go soon though, the signal is getting choppy. You can reach me at this number again when you need to.”

Gabe twisted his mouth into something that could almost very closely resemble a grin, something he had not done in at least a decade.

“Before that- where are you headed?”

“That’s… a really long story. Some new scatterbrained HIgh Priest girl wants me to help her resurrect the Goddess, and I’m headed to their secret base, and she won’t tell me anything… it’s all a mess.”

“You- what?”

“Did you get that? Is this thing working?”

“No- I- Listen! This is urgent, the Church isn’t what it seems anymore, you have to be careful-!”

“Sorry, you’re cutting up… I think our signal is spotty again. We’re - temporary safe house- Red Zone- call - back”

The video cut to static, and the call ended.

Gabe sighed.

“Out of the frying pan, into the fire…”