Orin sits within the alleyway next to a cafe
Wednesday September 7th 1949.
21:32
I sat in the alley beside the café, watching the snow collect in the crevices of the brickwork. My gloves — black, leather — rested on my lap, sticky and stiff. I hadn't removed them in hours.
"I don't have friends," I said to no one in particular. "Or family. People don't tend to stay. And I don't miss them when they're gone."
I liked things, disliked others. Once, I liked jam-filled doughnuts. Now they reminded me of too much.
Of blood.
I paused. "Orin… That's my name?"
The word sounded foreign. Like something I'd overheard in someone else's dream.
"Prome?"
Four days. That's how long I'd wandered. Different hotels, different beds. A walking shadow.
Only now did the deaths begin to feel real.
I stared at my gloves again. Blood — some dry, some not. I didn't know his name. I hadn't asked. No one would know what happened to him.
But I would. I would remember.
The snow beneath me had long since drawn the warmth from my bones. I barely noticed. The numbness felt earned.
"Names are strange," I muttered. "They shape you. Anchor you. But I only discovered mine through someone else's death."
I clenched my jaw. My teeth ached from the pressure. "Why him?"
He'd been kind. A little too kind. As if he knew what would happen. As if he'd chosen it.
I leaned back and bit into the doughnut. The jam oozed — cold, too dark, too red.
Stale.
My throat tightened.
The taste turned. Not sweet, not fruity — metallic, bitter. My stomach revolted. Something rose inside me, heat burning upward like bile mixed with iron shavings. I swallowed it down, but the images surfaced all the same.
Eyes.
Teeth.
Skulls ruptured like overripe fruit. Not gushing — no, worse — a steady, pressurized flow.
Not gushing — no, worse — a steady, pressurized flow. Silent. Relentless.
Their faces were twisted into half-memories. One man had looked at me, and somehow I knew: he blamed me.
The doughnut scraped my throat as I forced it down. The nausea didn't leave. It never left.
More images followed. Disjointed. Surreal. Familiar in a way that made me question my own memories.
Eyes… not olives anymore. Just holes. Then horns, spiraling up from them — bone pushing through soft tissue. Faces splitting like fruit skins, bruised and overripe. Not gore, not pain — just wrongness.
I doubled over, coughing hard. My lungs burned from the sudden air. The bile had done its damage. My chest heaved again.
"So much blood…"
A voice interrupted me.
"You alright?"
I looked up.
A girl stood nearby — young, lean. Pale skin like porcelain. White hair that didn't belong in this century. Crimson eyes watched me closely.
She didn't flinch at the blood.
Her eyes dropped to my gloves, then flicked back up. Something clicked in her gaze.
"You might need… a change of clothes?" she said softly.
I said nothing.
She tilted her head. "Is it your blood? Or someone else's?"
I finally looked down. Took the gloves off.
My hands were wet. Still red.
I blinked.
The blood shimmered faintly — and then, like ash, it flaked into pale dust. Faded into the wind.
A smell reached my nose. Acrid. Sharp.
White phosphorus.