Storm – a Short Story

I can see the life leave you. You died for nothing.

Atmosphere:

I’m coming. Like a storm.

You had to know it would be me. Don’t pretend you didn’t; that’ll make it harder for both of us. I’ll see the truth in your eyes, anyway.

Hong Kong is made for hiding, and that’s where you go: to a city old and new, crowded with humans and garbage and cars in equal measure, with dark alleys and narrow doors and forgotten spots underground, where you try to slide between the breath of the dead and lost cracking artifacts of power, but you can’t.

You can’t because I can feel your storm-funnel from any distance, and I will find you.

Why did you do this?

The humans have a good chance of spotting you here. Maybe that’s why you chose it: after all, three hours ago, you ripped out a little girl’s throat in broad blazing daylight, and you did it making sure the humans saw. You even chose a white girl so their fucking media would care, and you did it all so they would see.

You knew what came next. You knew I came next.

You ass. I could catch you quick, but I won’t. I’ll just chase you for a while. Let you remember how it feels to be prey. You earned it.


I’ve decided: I don’t care what your reason was anymore. You and me, we played and argued and made up in glorious wreckage for six hundred years, fought and loved and teased and hunted for six centuries. You and me, we were the good thing: the twin tornadoes, transforming topography whenever we touched down, and now—

Now you threw it all away in some stupid protest murder. As if that would change anything. As if by taking life, young and helpless life, you prove anything to anybody.

I might ask you: did you think he would send someone else just because you’re mine?

I am his knife. I strike hard, deep, and only once.

Yes, he asked if I were willing. I was. Because when you did this, you didn’t do it to me. You did it to him.


I catch you by the sea.

I end your life in the shallows of places that remind us of times when your squall was small and weak and mortal, and I found you and raged you into a tempest.

When I am done, I wash your blood off my hands before it can flake away to ash. I replace you with oil and brine and engine-chemicals in the polluted, filthy bay, and I turn my back on all that is left of you before your body finishes disintegration.

I saw the life leave you. You died for nothing.

Damn you for forcing this.

Damn you and your dying storm.

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