Brady Tyson & The Two Little Liars

Chapter 21 - Coalescence, and The End

 "Mold... what have you..." The words have trouble forming in my hazy mind, and my shaking hand moves to cover what remains of my bloody, missing arm.

"Kah-hah! Man, Brady, I know it's kind of your thing, but you really never saw this coming? Not for one second? You really are a moron, aren't you?" Mold continues to dance around in front of me, licking my blood off of her fingers. "It's good to know that I still got it, though. It was fun to play the good girl with Wis and Benjamin, but old habits really are hard to kick, aren't they?"

"Mold, what are you talking about? Quick... I need- I need bandages, something."

"Can you stop muttering about that?" In a flash her face is in front of mine, an ugly grimace plastered across it. Her nails dig into my cheeks. "You're kinda ruining my fun here, okay?"

"Why would- why would you do this? We're so close, just help me up and-"

"Ugh, enough!" She palms my face and pushes me backwards. I let the momentum carry me, lying face up on the wet asphalt as the red mass jitters and twirls silently in the sky, watching. "This isn't how I wanted this to go at all! Let me help, Brady, use your infinitesimal brain to think for a minute, okay? Try to put two and two together. Hasn't there been anything about these past few days that hasn't been quite right? Anything at all?"

I can't think. I can't think about anything. My arm hurts. Everything hurts. I want to go back, back to the start. Back before I knew about any of this. Before all of the war and death. Why couldn't I just be happy working for Mr. Argyros? Wasting my time with Fukuya at the library? Seeing Madam Kuznetsov's beauty ads on TV and wishing to myself that I could even have one opportunity to doll myself up like her... To have a normal life...

"Wait..." The mist clears a little bit in my mind, and I speak up to the sky. "Ofelia said... Ofelia said that Kuznetsov was the first one to die."

"Hmm? What's that Brady?" Mold cups a pointed ear with her hand.

"Yeah... it was probably because of her link to Ereshkigal, but Kuznetsov never exploded into those strings when you killed her the first time in her manor. But you... you knew that something was wrong." I crawl backwards towards the fire hydrant, and dunk my head into the stream of water. In an instant the shock leaves my body, and I crawl to my feet, tearing a piece of my shirt off and wrapping it around my arm. "That's why you were examining her body. But the only way you would have known that her 'death' was out of the ordinary is if you had done this before!"

Mold has an ecstatic expression on her face as I tie the already blood-soaked bandage into a knot, and she runs her fingers across her head, pulling her hair back. The ugly scar above her eye glints back at me.

"There we go, Brady! I knew you had it in you. Yes, you're right, of course. But it's a bit too late to change anything now, I'm afraid. There's no one left to help you now."

"If you're not from the future... if you're not some shapeshifting alien, then what are you?" My muscles are tense, and my feet automatically carry me in a slow circle around the girl.

"Oh, I did come from the future, do believe me," She pauses for a second, and flashes me a sweet smile. "I suppose you have no reason to, though. But I'm not an alien, those invaders are centuries away from developing a technology that can replicate my naturally-born ability. You see, Brady, I'm no extraterrestrial, I'm no representative of Hermes. Just like all of the other gods, he's long dead. Humanity gained a modicum of intelligence and suddenly decided that they didn't need the gods to explain away all of their woes in life. All except for one. All except for me. I am the mold that grows between human bonds. I am the doubtful shadow that lingers in the mind of man in the depths of the night. I am the harbinger of deceit, the master of mischief, the one thing that humanity simply cannot live without; I am Loki!"