153 Unlucky

There was a lot on his mind, the result of putting off thinking for a while. There were also the crawls of something against his skin, a pestering emotion pressing against his skin and mind again and again. It was worry. It had been a while since he felt worried at himself.

This worry was not something he wanted to think about and in fact, was one of the last things that he wanted to cross across his consciousness. Yet it sat there like an unopened book with an appealing cover. Pulling him in with curiosity and yet repelling him with thoughts of how the words inside would sound to him. He put away the worry. He knew very well that the covers were no way to judge the quality of the words inside. 

He thought about ways to fix his position in the asylum. He had made too many mistakes, from the alarm to the way he had used his power to Regan. 'Regan Duran. Regan Duran…' Vixen thought to himself, her name repeating in her head. The name fit ever so wrongly in his mind, upsetting him at just the thought of her face. 

The blurry lines of her face were a nuisance for him to look at. It wasn't even like he remembered what she looked like, her memory was held together by blurs of colors spread messily against a canvas. The color brown. The dull color brown screamed ordinary in every way, a color the same as the ground beneath his face. That was how she was colored in this monochrome mind. 

Yet such a bland color, such a muddy mix of shades had caused many of the issues in his life at the moment. She was becoming a common occurrence in his life as her color was. It was distracting, a pop of something ordinary that should have stayed blended into the rest.

He found it a bit immature though. His thoughts, that is. How he seemed to be blaming her. Like the presence, ever so subtle was the reason why his life was running backward. It wasn't. It was his decisions that he took towards that blob of brown. Something that insignificant couldn't mean something until it was given a presence, until it was given a thought that gave it a reason to be noticed. 

It was no doubt that he was influenced by her just as she was by him and it was just the reason why the presence she gained wasn't needed. It was giving him more awareness of emotions and the world around him when he talked to her just like he was awakening all her insecurities and deepening the wound for her to fill. They weren't people that should be kept near each other, like his mother had pointed out. 

What his mother wanted… the blank canvas, those empty eyes were the mold he would have to fit in. Those were the eyes he would have to wear. He couldn't be humane, the devil had no human attributes but a longing of desire to achieve what it wants. 

With that in mind, he knew very well what the outcome of the meeting would have been if it got an ending. It was the same result of what he wished to happen with Regan. A clean way to communicate with her without fully involving himself in any of the things that she was involved in. 

Vixen stood up from his seat on the bench and turned around, slowly walking past the gates surrounding the normal courtyard. 

This was not the time for him to be getting involved with the matters of the ones he takes care of and works with. This was not the time for him to be remembering the names of those around him. This was the only week he would have to think about the person who left him behind years ago, and the only time in which his emotions would be in touch with him and his surroundings enough for him to fix the mess he was in smoothly. 

He wasn't going to waste it on common colors. 

He walked to the special courtyard and peered at the people inside. There was close to minimal interaction in its gates. It was expected, it always happened. It was funny how people who had lost something of their own somehow found a way to make themselves different from a pool of others who lost the same. How they managed to shut themselves out due to thoughts of being special meanwhile being spun of the same thread as the others around them. 

Vixen walked past the special courtyard and was about to turn around and walk into the walkway in between buildings 2A and 2B and 3A and 3B when he paused and turned to the gates before him. He looked up at the winding, tall wire fates that stood high above his head and the second, just a bit past it that stood even higher than the one before it. 

Tall and wide walls that had kept him covered for mostly the entirety of his entire life. He could barely remember what the outside looked like. 

He turned around and walked into the walkway. He wasn't talking about the outside of the walls but rather the outside of this world, the outside of the world owned by his family. He exchanged glances with the bodyguards outside of the large employee-only doors into building 2A and pulled out his keys, opening the padlock. 

The last time he remembered, the outside world was just like the one he was trapped in. Just as cruel, just as cold and filled with more… different minds. 

He pulled open large doors and stepped inside the building, a long wave of coolness washing over him as he looked up at the ceiling and his surroundings. 'The lights,' he thought to himself, 'the light is just as bright as that of the outside.' 

He listened carefully for the click of the padlock and began down the long wide hallway to the elevator and flight of stairs at the end of the hall. His footsteps echoed off the tall walls as he passed and stopped in front of the elevator. He was about to press the button for the elevator when his hand paused and he turned, pulling open the doors for the stairs. He had to think.

Through the walls of the building and past the joyful and loud chittering of those in the courtyard was the high first walls of the asylum. There, lying at the bottom of the wall on the other side, was Juan, hanging on to her line of life and death. Her silence calls for help being heard by no one on the other side of the wall.

Her eyes, draining from crying were the only ones that had seen the true walls of the asylum. Her mouth, dry and chapped beyond quick restoration, was the only one that could speak and say how tall the walls actually were. Her feet, weak and limb, bleeding from gunshots, were the only ones that had walked to those walls and tried to get through them, her mind was the only one that had been scarred from that day. 

There was a sense of regret and a deep sense of self-hatred. One that mocked the owner of the body for their loose mindset, for their ability to trust easily. There was a sense of deep sadness as she laid there on the rough ground, bleeding, and throbbing from pain from the excruciating moments she had faced before. 

How foolish she had been. How thoughtless she had been, how blind she had been to think so easily of the mess she had brought herself into. It was pathetic, how at her last moments, these were the thoughts that came to her mind. Thoughts about how much she hated herself, about how much she regretted her decision, and how much she wished she had thought better of what she had done to herself. 

She tried to think about her family. Her daughter, her father, her mother, her siblings, and even her pet dog. She tried to dig up memories of them, tried to indulge herself in their images, in their light for a second longer. She fed herself memories of them sitting at the dinner table, memories of the outings they would make that would always be dreaded but always ended up nicely. Memories of the gifts they would open from each other on Christmas day and even the times when they dressed the tree in the prettiest ornaments. 

They came to her like a bright torch and then fused out as quickly as they were lit. 

The ground felt close and her eyelids felt heavy. She let them close. There on the cold ground and blood still spilling out of her like a slowly dwindling river, she felt one last emotion and imagined one more scene. 

It was one of her in her jail cell, a deck of cards in her hand as she dealt the winning hand against her cellmates. A bright smile would cross on her face as she would receive hugs and pats of congratulations on the win. A tear ran down Juan's cheek as her grip on her lifeline got loose. 

It was the feeling of loneliness. It was the last she felt.

A body bends over the limp body of Juan, a grim expression on their face as they let out a long sigh. 

Mrs. Cloud stood up from her squat in front of Juan and nodded her head towards her body, a bunch of bodyguards hauling it into the car they drove with. She watched as they drove away, their destination, Juan's final resting place. 

Mrs. Cloud walked back to her car and pulled open the door, sitting down in the backseat. She pulls open her tablet and reads the name on her list. 'Rosia Hanes… what a shame.'