CHAPTER ONE



a hellfire rainbow of prismatic glow beams down from a metal sky. a spinning moon refracting colour onto refractors in a nauseating back-and-forth dance in tune with the floor packed with movement and people bearing their own bright colours. roach leans against a railing slightly above that looks like it was built in the 1800s, weak enough with age to crumble under a single person’s weight. luckily for him the meat on his bones barely amounts to half that. he thinks. it’s not like he’s been to a doctor, but being harassed for being a runt half your life never really stops impressioning on you. the cold of the railing is nice on his bare belly, at least. it was cold outside but it’s bottled up with enough bodies that you can’t really tell, on the surface. here you can get just enough of a draft from the big open warehouse windows to relax and still hear the music. and you need it wading through an ocean of hot colours just to get here. his stomach’s still swirling from the dancing. he needs water, probably. better yet a fucking energy drink. even molly isn’t good enough to keep such a compact body dancing without any fluids. the dj does a beat drop and his head rings out like he just took the biggest hit of something he’s never had before and after it sends him tumbling headfirst into the brick wall yeah maybe he is done, actually.

he walks out back through the door he came, fighting his nausea, poorly, tumbling through the hallway into the catwalk-looking back room. shitty couches either stolen or found in a junkyard give a space of ventilated haven to rest your knees. it’s dotted with a dim, tired sparsity of people the same as him. though the still, chilled atmosphere doesn’t make it any easier to approach them. he’s worried his rot will seep into the room and make roots that’ll raze the gentleness seclusion.

black wings and puffy black curls are the first characteristics he notices before anything else upon entering the room, and so that is the shoulder he decides to tap on.

“h-hello?” sorry do you- have any water?” he can hear his voice coming out high and raspy, he knows it's the least important thing but the shame makes him stumble. he feels pathetic, as always but worse with desperation.

their wings jump up and flutter next to his face in surprise before they turn around to face him. their face is iridescent, coiling hair like woven wire wrapped around something fractally undefinable, itself wrapped over chitin, flesh, and a deeply covered exoskelton. it looks tired, once its eyes fade from the quick glance of shock. though its dress screams joyfully, bright purples and reds draped over half her body and exposing the other. he can’t even really make out what the outfit she’s wearing is, but it’s definitely hot.

“hhuh? sorry i’m like, transient as fuck right now. water? iii think my bottle’s in my bag lemmecheck” her words slur like a professional drunk. though in a place like this that could be any drug, really.

she roots around in a big fluffy black purse next to her and pulls out a bottle of liquid, handing it to roach. “wait you don’t have like, herpes do you?”

he grasps at his face, searching for something he knows probably isn’t there. it always feels like new flesh, touching it, though. a plateau of lips, but only divoted by dryness, but nothing special.

“pretty sure i don’t-”

“fuck. that blows. no one has herpes anymore. used to be you could get an STI to feed on soooo fucking easily..” she grumbles, loudly.

the water is so relieving to his throat, he’d say this was an angel sent from god to save him. but that’s a bit on the nose, and only half of it is true.

he spits up words between gulps, trying to take just enough to not cross that quiet social threshhold lingering in the background. “thank you- so much- you’re the best-”

he places the bottle back into her clawed hands. she smiles at him and pats him on the shoulder.

“have fun out there, roach boy”

he steps out, into the oozing noise. it rings and pulses in ways that point up his bristles and make them dance on their own, transcending the very border of senses. his body moves with the tune even as he tries to avoid the crowded dance floor, desperate to fall into its bumping trance. falling for a while, throwing and spinning his little body around in the mass of bodies just so happy to be a part of the glow. but he slowly, trudgingly, finds his way through the drug haze and remembers where and what he is, walk-shuffling his way back through until the amount of people moving in the opposite direction finally begins to wane. pushing through another towering steel door he finds the outside again at last. a blister of air blows through and shatters the little bubble of reality he’s been inside, blasting hypervisual glass-cracking colour out through the doorway and into the world. he hears someone running up behind him and before he can hear what they yell at him he’s crashing on his face on the pavement outside. huddled next to a quiet, abandoned warehouse. the street is sparse, but the sounds of chugging machines still wail not-far off. a side street off a side street off one of many main streets, somewhere most unimportant. looking for it is the important part. faith bringing existence, and all that.

around him are a dozen more (visible) angels, huddled on the curb or smoking against the building, or the one running to throw up loudly beside the building. he gets up and dusts himself off and takes a second to breathe in some real air for the first time all night. then he gets a good look at his surroundings and, why are they all just congregating? should be splitting up- keeping distance to not arouse suspicion, it’s too obvious. but i guess with enough colours and flashiness you can distract from anything. maybe the wings are just costumes anyway, right? they could easily just be some regular braindead ravers. roach leans back against the building, cold brick freezing up his exposed lumbar, and instantly a cloud of thick smoke is whipped by the wind directly into his face.

he looks over, and an angel towers over him, at least three times as tall as roach. her halo wraps around her head like a crown of thorns, buzzing around dulled dye black hair with strands of its original crimson at its roots, probably as some form of camoflauge to match the colour of her halo. its concave eyes gleam blood red around a dirt and exhaustion demarcation, the segmented black noctulistic wings raised inside and tufts of red puffing out in their folds, and big enough to wrap around roach in entirety if they so pleased, and a long, jagged bone probiscus hidden extremely poorly underneath her draping black jacket, curving out and twitching frenetically, cutting through the air behind her with each puff of its cigarette, like a slender, gore-made tail. its form screams angelic monstronsity even from this distance. he doesn’t know if he should say something about the probiscus being so visible but if it’s out now, hopefully it’s fine.

her eyes catch his. he’s always had a bad habit of staring too long. he catches himself quick, scraping the frizzy brown strands of hair atop his head, all still bleeding black ink from a previous failed attempt at an identity change, back into place in front of his forehead and tucked over his ears in a short, practiced bob thats infinitely neater than the rest of him.

it pulls another stick out of a thick red case and holds it out to roach, while holding its own with her mouth. its nails are curling crimson claws, like they’d been soaked in blood ages ago and the caked on remains were never washed. “you want one?”

he nods his head fucking please oh my god but waits for it to move to him before he does. you never know what could be a trap. it approaches and tries to subtley pull its probiscus to the other side of its body, away from him, but he always sees everything, he only pretends he doesn’t. he takes the cigarette from her hands and puts it in his mouth before he remembers he didn’t wear a single clothing item with pockets here, and so all his lighters are off somewhere else. even his bag is just one backpack with no minor pockets he’d keep anything. just the important shit. he feels stupid, who knows when he’ll get to change clothes again. practicality is the enemy of goodness but its a necessary enemy and you need to prepare for it, roach. and because you didn’t now you’re just literally fumbling in front of this angel.

“need a light?”

“yeah..”

it reflexively whips a lighter out of its jacket pocket and a spiraling flame of blue shoots out from the tip as she presses the little red button. he’s never seen a lighter like this before, he’s only ever stolen cheap ones from arc stations. now he’s thinking about all the different kinds of new lighters he could get in their newfound absence, in whatever colours or shapes, if this is the thing they’re doing now.

he takes a puff and can stop thinking for a second. he loses himself in it so much he forgets to stop pulling and chokes on the relief. a bubble of air fills his body and wraps around his lungs and he can’t get it out of his throat but at least he’s feeling his body above all.

“thank you- so much” he chokes out.

“no worries man.”

it takes an absurdly long drag of its cigarette and blows out a huge cloud of grey smoke, prideful grin plastered across its face.

“you like the music?”

the music was pretty good, he guesses. angel music’s always kind of out there, fucks with your head, literally and figuratively. he can’t remember a bad experience with it, he can still hear the climax of the night in his head in an infinite echo loop like an earworm times 1000. besides that he’s surprised arcpop is still as popular as it is, but it’s not like he minds one or the other. ughhh he always has to parse through the music retard thoughts to filter through to the normal, even with other angels.

“it was good! heard a lot like it but nothing from him specifically before. really powerful reverbs, too.”

another drag. it takes them smaller and more often now that it’s shown itself off enough.

“yeah, i’m more of a hardcore guy to be honest, but it was decent, glad i came for the visuals at the very least. i love the trips at these shows.”

and the visuals. he’s already lost them but he remembers the colours shining directly into his eyes and then going somewhere completely foreign. like walking on a rainbow, or dancing on the ocean floor. he’s been to a lot of shit amateur shows where there’s nothing other than the noises and the music is just, music. but seeing a good dj, who can just do shit like that, make you feel it in your soul, that’s completely different.

“you seem a little in your head there, you alright?” his voice is sharp. roach thinks that’s a mosquito thing? but he’s not entirely sure either. is his own voice a cockroach thing? the quietness maybe, but even that tracks for his personality. his is good at cutting through roach’s thoughts, either way. forcing himself into the front of them, even.

“oh, yeah, sorry i just kinda- do that.”

“sorry for what? it’s okay to be like, autistic or whatever”

“huh? i’m not autistic.”

“really?”

“huh? what’s that supposed to mean?

“nothing, you just seep out autist. but it’s okay, we’re all a bit retarded, or whatever. haha.”

his laugh feels forced- fake entirely, roach gauges. his eyes glint achromatically and he lights up another cigarette. roach remembers how much he hates silence now, maybe that’s part of why he goes to these things so much. he can’t get the chorus out of his head now, but that’s more of a forced background inclusion than a noise, it is part of the silence. the clash of sensory sensitivity and sensory desperation ticking at the back of his spine never ceases. also, can angels even be categorized into the mental bars of disorders, if our very existence is disordered?

“so.. you like hardcore you said?”

“yeah, y’know. those shows are crazy. they gotta be careful to toe the line so that they don’t get caught on any seismic detectors. i was at this one show and it got swept up right at the end cause it was cracking open earth and shit-”

“and you still like that?”

“fuck yeah i do, that’s the best part! gotta get out there and live somehow. and i dont see any better way than breaking things and people and ourselves.”

“that’s, an interesting way of looking at it, i’ve never thought about it that way.”

he takes a longer drag, long enough to be noticeable. “maybe you should.”

he blows more smoke, but this time his gaze lingers on roach longer. sizing him up, weighing if he’s a threat, something like that. maybe he’s checking him out, his mouth does seem to tremble a lot inbetween puffs now that they’re looking at each other.

“so what’re your plans, roach?”

plans are far beyond him at this point, have been for a long time. planning is a daily action. where do i eat, where do i find peace from the outside, where do i sleep tonight. and once you’ve planned those three, you must enact them. planning further is only a matter of if you can find time during the little pockets inbetween. and that’s if his brain isn’t frazzled from some new wordly terror.

his plans for tonight were supposed to be, as scrawled in his notebook page for the day, were to “listen to great music and get so crossfaded that where i end up after doesn’t matter”, and those have gone just swimmingly up to now. and they would’ve gone even better if he didn’t get shut out before he could get really fucked up. with a metabolism like his and theirs you’ll never reach that nirvana of ignorant bliss with only one drug. but he’s so far away from the tables literred with unnamed pills and ichor-thick jugs of liquor, now. arc-ecstacy and nicotine will have to do for tonight.

maybe something more, if he can play his cards right.

wait, he didn’t give him his name, did he? is he in his mind or just- i mean, he obviously looks the entrapped part, there’s the in. “go home, i guess.”

you’re lying through your teeth, though.

the angel fails the test. “oh yeah? where you staying?”

does it matter? you’ll throw your body into anything for comfort and you know it. your choice left long ago when He cast you out, and it’s not coming back anytime soon. when theres nothing left to do but follow the way the wind takes you, the way god pushes you, does it become a divine act of hatred, that every opportunity is shit?

“i... uh, i lied. i don’t have anywhere to stay.”

“ah.” the angel lets the silence take over again. is he doing it on purpose? he stares at roach like he’s waiting for him to react to it. “you could come back to mine, if you want.”

should he really be doing this? probably not. too much risk going with any stranger anymore, especially when you’re as cut off and defenseless as him. but the cold’s worse than any person could be. so are the drones, so are the cops. and he’d have to search around somewhere else for an alleyway to crumple in for the night in anyway. whatever these ‘suburbs’ are, there isnt anywhere safe to sleep in them. it’s hard either way. but you know the choice you’re gonna pick long before you do, your internal struggle is just as weak as your physical struggle. the angel on his shoulder is experiencing ever-constant death throes. “oh really? you would?” it's like acting out a play. and you can always guess what script the director wants from you.

“mhm.” he steps away from the cold brick of the warehouse. little strings of deep red in his hair highlighted from the street’s orange glow. “right now even, if you’d like.”

roach picks his bag up off the ground and throws the bunt of his cig into the street how he’s seen everyone else doing it. they both know where they’re going, at this point. he follows the angel’s footsteps through the haunting hum of sodium-vapor streetlamps. his feet are exhausted from dancing, every step burns like walking on hot coals. but his wings can lessen his weight enough to walk through the seemingly unending blocks of backstreets with him a while before his legs fail, he hopes.

“so, how long you been homeless?”

“a while now, i guess. i lose track of the days.”

“do you know what month it is?”

he thinks about it a while. he can’t ask, that’s the most embarassing thing imaginable. but he can’t even remember the last time he even looked at a calendar. overarching time is a construct for only those who can afford to include it. fuck.

“i don’t, actually.”

“december. you’d think it’d be especially colder or there’d be fanfare like the old days or, like anything, right? but nope. same as last year and same as always.” he scoffs.

“fanfare and speciality means attention, i dont know if i’d prefer that. i kinda... enjoy the stagnation. i guess.”

“that’s sad, isn’t it?” he looks back at him and blows a cloud at his direction, his eyes sear into roach’s, like burning red stakes. “stagnation is nothingness. wny would you want to be purposeless?”

“that’s a bit harsh. don’t you want to be safe too?”

“are you safe?”

a huge hit of nausuea knocks the wind out of him. like those core morning hunger pangs when you haven’t eaten in days. like a warning shot. he needs to ride the waves of it for a whole street before he can even talk again.

“i- want to be."

the angel ignores him. or doesn’t hear him. “we’re almost there.” his footsteps growing louder and harder, stomping through the depths like a shepherd and an angry parent trying to make their point at the same time. and he follows diligently, like a lost puppy. one foot back, half a foot left, waiting on his shepherd’s every step before he makes his own. he’s probably a bit too focused about it, really. normally he wouldn’t care, but a roof is a roof so he has no choice but to be wary how much of himself he lets free.

around another trisected hyperflourescent corner and they get to a street where the neon city’s scorching existence can once again be seen. grey asphalt steel sky of higher-tiered buildings and highways hide it from the grunge areas, but on a main street you can see it for its whole, mostly. advertisements screaming up a hole in the layers where a circle of skyscrapers tower the entire city- market square. everything streams out from there, and the streets in its cardinal directions bleed with those same bright colours and intrusive infrastucture on all sides.

roach walks towards the city. not neccesarily entranced, but assumptive, hoping he’ll be bringing him anywhere but this place. the inner lower city is the best place to be, because existence in it entitles you be as miniscule as possible, a body in the crowd of millions of bodies, hidden by the mass and by the smoke blown out by your betters, and sunken to the level they keep vermin, at that. it makes it a bit easier to fade through the margins, be so familiarly disgusting that no one can parse you from anyone else. where you can pretend at the very least, that you’re human. except right before they can get under the outer reaches of the city’s siren glow, a tight force wraps around his neck- and he’s yanked out of the street.

his face meets plush grass. fake. a bunch of plastic spines trying to mimic something that would actually cushion him and failing miserably.

“oh, my bad. i just meant to pull you over, we’re here!” he chuckles a little and smiles at him that same beaming proud grin as before.

he grabs a hold of his hand to pull him up and as she does, he gets a look into the angel’s eyes, staring down at him wide, rimmed with centennial raccoon bags just like his. except his are bigger than roach’s and the white of his eyes are shot with blood and black, and they seem to shine off the moon where roach’s get dulled. roach can’t stop staring. he knows you’re not supposed to stare at people, that’s how you get hurt- but he’s so enraptured, it feels like a hypnotist’s trap. though he’s never been to a hypnotist. that’d give up too much control, seems like letting yourself get taken by the psych ward nurses. the personthing ahead of him stares back and roach shivers. is he giving a bad vibe? she may be scary but the elements and what lie inside them are scarier. its hard to appear normal and non-targetable when your minds going a mile a minute and your body panics at every particulate, though.

roach grabs his hand tight and he yanks him up onto his feet, with no effort at all and a smile on his face. another look at his face shoots up the question in the back of his mind that should’ve been asked from the first line. name. you never got his name. you deserve to at least know who’s about to kill you, or whatever. “i never got your name, by the way-”

“Zyphon.”

“zyphon... that’s a really interesting name, where’d you get it?”

“I made it myself.”

roach wants to ask more, but Zyphon’s hands and their attached daggers push him towards the front steps before he can try.

the door’s already unlocked. zyphon opens it and ushers him over, waiting for him to enter first. when he passes through it’s like breaking through a fog wall. the ambient light shatters, and it somehow becomes even darker inside than out. all the light you never appreciate until it’s gone, when only then you can truly feel what it did for you. now, the only light left is the orange streaming from a single open window facing the street. zyphon’s drab coat quickly fades into the dark as they walk through, and he with it, becomes formless.

“hey, i can’t really see you in there-”

cockroaches are supposed to be able to see in near-darkness, y’know. the one’s his carcass-fed form is based from, have thousands of photoreceptors and light-sensing cells built purely for that purpose. a win of the genetic gamble for them, while he’s stuck with a pathetic failing of the celestiogenetic, to make complete darkness such a prevailing fact of angelic life. they probably see better than him anyway with how many screens and light beams are projected directly into his eyes every single day.

zyphon’s eyes dig out through the black like beaming red lasers, scoped in on him alone.

“don’t worry.” his voice comes as hot steam hissing from invisible pipes in the fog. “before anything happens, i’m going to get us some tea. there’s a table by the front, sit.”

it doesn’t take much more than a full stop to make him obey. you’re in his house, you need to be a good guest. like when you’d have an inspection officer over and they’d have to get all the younger ones to look normal while not throwing out all that nascent celestial energy into the house. and the house always belonged to revelant more than you, you were the guests in their hovel. above all, you must be good, polite, and most importantly, still.

zyphon takes a seat across the table from him. the chairs are wooden and ruinous, they dig into roach’s back and he feels like that’s just another part of the endless purposeful little tortures. zyphon sets a black mug of tea in front of roach and crosses his arms, watching.

“you didn’t want any?”

“i’m not that thirsty. i prefer water, mostly.”

“well, what is it?”

“i said. tea.”

“what kind?”

“the kind you like.”

he knows that doesn’t make sense, deep down. but it feels right. and how kind of zyphon to make him his favourite. the smell hits his nostrils, peppermint and something he’s never smelled anything close to before in his life. he’s lying, roach knows he has to be. but how could he care about that when fuck, that peppermint smells so damn good. he wraps his claws around it and can see how grimey they are for once. he makes a note in his head, when he gets out of here he needs to find a coffee shop or something to bathe in.

the liquid swimming down his throat before he even realizes he lifted it. absentee motions from what his body knows he must do. it’s so easily to control someone’s nerves without them even knowing.

he puts down an empty mug, and all that’s left is zyphon’s face on the other side of him. its body seemingly absorbed into the presenceless gas, reality-bent material. he stares into roach’s eyes and splits into double before him. zyphon’s mouth opens wide, and jagged, cut-through teeth await. and then it opens more. skin stretches, peels away at itself to make way for razor sharp mandibles to force their way out both sides. four jagged bones already bleeding, chittering like they’re just waiting for the next animal to feast bleed more from.

zyphon slinks backwards into the void where no one can see, and roach takes it as his opportunity to dash for the way he came, one last chance to choose himself. but he already made his decision, and told the universe what he’d take.

a disembodied force sends him tumbling into the abyss. all around him hands grasp for his body. he kicks his legs in the air but there’s nothing to strike. a seventh hand wraps around his mouth, stifling his screams. his nails dig under trying to pry it off but they’re ripped away by even more untangible limbs, and he’s pulled into it.

facefirst into the fog, with a choking breathe of smog. then his body follows, limb by limb, until none of him is there at all.






CHAPTER TWO





all around him, encompassing dark. even the little warm background glow of promised escape, gone. he tries to grab something, anything, in the darkness, but finds nothing. the feeling of hands then claws digging into his shoulders, then a toss and he’s flying weightlessly through the murk. he floats in it, unnaturally. he feels he could die here and not feel it. he feels every thought he’s ever had. and then red. wild strings of red, and a rapier of bone layered in hard chitin soaked in it. it bleeds in front of his face, onto a shirt he knows he’s wearing but that he can’t see when he tries to look down at it. there isn’t even a down. here, there is only abyssopelagic absence and cold.

the appendage slices through space around him, cutting inches from where he knows his flesh should be. where it is. he has to remember, it is there. he is real. he forgets every mantra he’s ever been taught, who has time for memorization? just get lost in your own head instead.

a voice sears through the clouds, “mantras are useless to you now, little insect.”

it slices through his flesh so easily. he can feel every millimetre of his imperceivable skin opening for zyphon’s blade torturously slow. it drills into his navel, curving in the direction of his organs and digging deep. once it slots itself in a tunnel deep inside him, it begins spinning and twisting and slicing into his gut like it’s covered in a million little sawblades, spines, and razors. it twists and curves and thrusts out before piercing multiple more holes, searching, rooting, tunneling around between his guts and his vitals until finally, it slows. the ripples of utter feeling and full-body pain begin to wane, gradually- back to the source, the hole irreparably ripped inside of him. and then begins the pulsing. having found a suitable spot inside of him, a deposit of blood-like-oil rich with power for one like him. it starts sucking from the pocket, draining his lifeforce directly from its source. he can feel his detached body deflate with loss, more every second- or minute- time becomes unreal, not a law of reality in this reality. he’s heard what comes next, been warned of it so many times.

“don’t assume so little of me, roach...”

he feels himself fading with every second. dissolving into the blackness around him as his life force is used up for someone else’s. like an astronaut untethered in deep space, wading through benthic black sky until cosmic megafauna will descend upon him. does zyphon even know how much blood can be taken from someone safely? let alone an angel? does he even care? he can hear him licking his lips with hunger. and then another piercing shock, and the spear filling his abdomen is gone, leaving multiple feet of blank space in its wake. he feels the blood drool off of zyphon’s proboscis and onto his skin. and then into his long-waiting maw. a gaping hole now ripping through roach’s stomach, zyphon sighs with a satisfaction so heavy it rocks roach back to feeling. though he’s not thankful, for the feeling is only of loss and of daze and of pain, no more free from his celestial shackles as before. zyphon giggles, like roach’s shaking is funny to him. it’s a little joke. was this worth it for a place to stay, roach? are you happy, roach? you’re lucky you’re funny, roach.

zyphon gently touches the largest wound with the same weapon that just inflicted it. “i plan to keep you for a looong time. y’know that, little roach? or, should i just call you bloodbag now?”

he hears the flick of a lighter and his soul flickers with it. something made of real life, not outside of it. he tries to grasp onto it with his mind but the feeling of blood leaking out of his body and pooling in his sinkhole of a wound tries so badly to take his attention. it hurts like nothing describable. a thousand wasps would be a better punishment.

“you taste like fruit, y’know. no pun intended, haha. but it just, called to me from the first whiff i got of you. you’re ripe, just like your blood. fruit, meant to be picked. if it wasn’t me, somebody else would’ve got to you someday anyway.”

he closes his ears from it, even though it’s heard in every bit of his being. he focuses on the flick, flick flick. click after click, feeling the way his lips might make the noise, curling lips he can’t feel and a tongue he doesn’t know if he even has anyway into-

somehow. he can feel it. enough to get just an inch of a hold on reality, enough to comprehend speech again. his lips move without him, held back like a feverish ripstick toy let loose.

“please”

and just like that, he loses it again, before he can say any of the words he needs to let out so badly.

her voice is the only sense he can feel. he feels it inside him, outlining his soul.

“i’ve never tasted anything as sweet as you in all my years. and you’re just so... stupid? easy? i’d be insane to not keep you around. you get it, right?”

no. no. i don’t, actually. let me be stupid in peace, is that so much to want?

gotta grasp onto something real, like they always taught you. any memory. the table, the tea, the light. the door the grass the streets. he tries to feel himself breathe so he can manage it but he can’t, his lungs are gone. he is part of a celestial soup now. and boiling in it.

“yyou’re sso ssmall, bbut yyour bbody ccontains jjuuuuuust aas mmuch bblood..” his words echo but with time and not sound, like failing film or a cheap glitch effect. roach can’t tell how much is real, or how much is hallucinatory magic from the remnants of the party drugs being actively sifted out of his system. and then a different dark force wraps around him, leathery and fluffed. they bind him tight, and he can actually feel his body in how they constrict him against-

him.

that has to mean he’s- real. roach wiggles his hands out from beneath him, it's hard beneath zyphon’s weight but he can just barely manage, though tearing some invisible fabric along the way. he flips them around, and finds real, tangible meat. his claws tear clean through his wing. a bright red gash of red strikes through the void, and then he can see clearly the blue leathery wing torn in twain. and from out of the incision it bleeds, growing until the void of black has been turned naught but red. zyphon’s pained howling shakes the very reality roach’s confined in, threatening to burst that thin bubble that keeps them segregated.

“little fucking BITCH.” he growls and roach feels it inside the rhythm of his heartbeat, “i’m going to claw your eyes out from your head so you can watch as i b r e a k you.”

swimming in an ocean of blood, with a starving shark stuck prowling inside the same waters as you. where did your life go wrong, roach? stupid question, you know when. he can see his hands now, at least. the blood pouring down them hides some of the dirt. and as he stares at his one living limb, it spreads further up, unveiling the flesh and body hidden beneath like it was covered up by a cast of thick tar. the pain becomes even more real, as well. the rediscovery of old nerves discovers new types of pain, each inch of body he gains back stabbing ethereal pangs through his soul.

it’s when he remembers what his eyes are, that he can finally see once again. he wishes he couldn’t. in front of him, four white streaks cutting through the fog, bleeding red. he blinks and they’re gone. blinks again and they’re right in front of his face. chittering, clattering, clicking in the back of its throat with a desperation roach has never heard before. then again it’s gone.

white fills his vision. he lunges out of the way and he meets the first solid thing he’s felt in his life, or however long he’s been in that stasis. his claws meet floor, the same shitty wooden floorboards he felt on his heels coming in, thank iblis he’s still here. he knows where here is, vaguely, at bare minimum. not even that far from the rave, maybe he can still will it back. her one mistake, making a nest too close to a landmark. a rookie mistake at that, really-

searing pain digs into his leg. sharp edges stabbing into his femur. zyphon’s maw wraps cleanly around his leg, with a crocodilian grip. he kicks, and kicks, and kicks, but makes no ground. despite being able to see again, despite reality’s return, zyphon still fades in between the layers, zipping back and forth out of conceivable measurements like tv static. but consistently his jaw sinks into roach, black ichor seeping out from his wounds around zyphon’s jagged teeth. no choice left, he wraps his hands around the roots of the mandibles, squishing through his bloody and inflamed gums, and pries them out of his leg with all of his remaining strength. he closes his eyes and cries out and as he feels a chunk of himself being torn out of his leg, he manages to tear out the beast, its jaws snapping shut like a hair-triggered bear trap. roach trap.

zyphon crumples alongside him on the floor, shaking with the pain from the enormous gash slicing through half his wing. roach almost feels proud, and tempted to put a few more through him. but then he sees zyphon’s teeth again, and her eyes burning with rage, staring directly at him even as her body is inert, worn out of lifeblood. and so instead his claws clamber his way out. it’s lucky no one lives in or sells these things, because all these claw marks in the floorboards would *really* lower the property value.

there’s a crack and the wood’s not only clawed but stained with a huge blood splatter, and then another, harder crack comes, and it’s puddling beneath his face. that’s deeefinitely gonna bring it down- he can’t feel his face anymore, stringy blood being the only thing that connects it to the rest of him, like it connects it to the floor. he feels the warmth running down it, and the senses coming into it, and nothing more. his hair is balled up before he even realizes there’s a hand in it, and then he’s forced up by the finest of threads, curled up like zyphon’s purposefully trying to torture his malformed bones.

“why do you *deserve* to be out there, huh roach? you think you’re worth more than this?” he’s like a childhood bully, but with roach’s life utterly in his hands.

blood from roach’s nose drools down over his lips, eyes glazing over even as he tries to look forward. he sighs. sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

he tears his head forward, letting zyphon grip rip out a chunk of his hair in the process. it kills him and he can feel what feels like a thousand shot nerves screaming at him for it, but zyphon didn’t expect it, at least. roach claws at his other wing, desperately trying to get her off and away before they both die. zyphon screeches and howls like a dying kaiju and tries to chase roach, but he’s utterly off balance from blood loss.

like him.

but zyphon collapses, where roach scrambles.

“good luck out there, pest.” he’s- laughing. how can he possibly have the nerve to laugh? “don't think you’ll last long out there, with what iii’ve given youu~”

he’s lying. again. has to be. roach grasps for the doorknob. it’s cold against his fingers, which themselves feel their own distant cold. like he shouldn’t be able to move them, or pilot his body at all. but he can still move them and that’s the only thing that matters. it slowly turns and he uses it as leverage to pull himself up onto his hind legs.

“just come back, roach. there’s no point in running away, i’m going to find you anyway. wings heal back, blood poisoning doesn’t. and the mark i just placed on you? that *definitely* doesn’t.”

“s-sorry i just don’t think that’s-”

he’s overtaken midway through, by the coagulated blood piling in the back of his throat finally vomiting out of him, spilling into a pink and red visceresque puddle of watery puke at his feet. looking nearly identical to the pipeline punches he chugs to get through the day nearly every single morning. hope you’re thirsty, zyphon.

“-safe.”

he grabs the straps of the bag glowing acidicly in the dark, “PRØPERTY OF: ROACH 𓆣” and twists the knob. the door bursts open and for maybe the first time ever, he’s happy to see that buzzing orange glow.