Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A.N: Written to Bear McCreary's "Something Dark is Coming."

A.N#2: Touched this old fic up at bit 04.01.19.

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"When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies."
―Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

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Confessions

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I confess.

At least, that is what I'm trying to do. My hands shake as I kneel at the dusty alter of the old church. The ruined face of Christ leers down at me from His wooden perch, His plaster skin sickly in the dim moonlight. Half His face is gone, blasted off in some gunfight during the Epidemic. Thin pale moonlight streams down through the broken beams and lights the inside of the church. Motes of dust whirl slowly in the air as tranquil as a dead man's sigh, each speck tiny and bright.

My eyes follow their firefly movements. I need anything to keep me distracted from the bullet-riddled figurine of the savior. I wonder what it would be like to escape in the air like a speck of dust, to be so insignificant. I realize I am being stupid. I have always been foolish like that. Why I am in a church is beyond me. I have not been in one since my mother let herself die from a broken heart.

I should have known I would find no comfort here tonight. There's been none, not since the whole world got sick in 2030.

I am twenty seven years old and I have survived the worst organ failure epidemic the world has ever seen. I've outlived my father, my mother, most of my extended family, and my lover, Jonathan. But today I am one hundred days past my payments. This can only mean one thing:

The Repo Man is on the hunt.

I choke on the irony of surviving all this time only to die because of the lack of money in my possession. I know with cold certainty my transgression will not go unpunished. This comes across as so terribly ironic I can't help but laugh in the dead church air. It is tinged with hysteria, like air escaping a balloon through a tiny hole. I clamp a hand over my mouth to stop but the laughter stays, echoing in the deafening silence.

Stupid. I should be more quiet, but it's hard when you realize people think Rotti Largo is God's gift to man, the savior reincarnated. He would have been a gift, had it not been for the fine print at the end of the contract. GeneCo is no savior. It is nothing but a devil in sheep's clothing, the leering face of Christ in a broken down church. But of course people are more than willing to ignore the dotted line. If anything it is commercialized, pasted all over the big screens and government blimps and on posters. The rich elite of our remaining civilization feed off the surgery like it is a privilege, boasting on Vanity & Vein what sort of surgery they undertook at such-and-such an age. All blind. All stupid. What had once started off as necessity is now obsession.

I glare at the broken statue, understanding once again how foolish I am. I knew the moment I found out I had liver disease it was a bad idea to go to GeneCo. I suppose—no, I know—a great part of it was because of Jonathan. My father died in WWIII. Shot in the head, I have been told. I don't remember him much, but I do remember watching my mother waste away by the window, face serene as the Epidemic raged outside.

I still think it was because of heartbreak for my father. She had always believed in the line "til death do us part," and despite the terrified child by her feet she let herself die in '32. I drifted through life fatherless and motherless. I have always been used to living with one parent, but to suddenly go from a stable home to none at all, nothing could have been more tragic to a young girl.

No one had time for an orphan when the world went crazy. No one except for Jonathan. He was fifteen. I was thirteen. It was night but I remember the sky blood red from all the fire and smoke from burning buildings. My mother had been dead for two months. I was ready to end it. But then there he was amidst the rubble, as grungy and dirty as I, but handsome, as if nothing could touch him. Our eyes met and I knew in my child's eye everything would be okay.

He took me from my old haunt and brought me to an abandoned apartment, from there we both began rebuilding our lives. He taught me how to live again. How to survive. And when the world began to right itself out in '34 with the appearance of Rotti Largo he taught me how to hope. In '40 we became lovers, our bodies moving together in perfect sync. Jonathan, my sweet Jonathan. But all good things must end, and his body turned on him four years later and rotted from the inside out.

Of course I didn't know that then. All I knew was learning I had liver disease at twenty five and the panic of being trapped in a dying body, feeling a terror so strong it stopped the breath in my lungs. I was dimly aware of the legalized repossessions. I had followed the lawsuits and newsflashes to some degree but never paid much heed to them. Did they stop me? Of course not. I remember it had been so easy to sign the dotted line, so simple. Just a tiny prick, a swell of blood, and I signed away for a fresh liver. Why not? I had my life to live with Jonathan. I sold my soul for a pound of flesh and got the ninety-thousand dollar operation.

Jonathan died two months later.

For two years I did everything to take away the grief. I partied and drank and made love in back alleyways. They called me chére, sweet little thing, and I ate it all. The feeling of cheating death, of being one step ahead, was incredible. I lusted after the rough scrape of life to the point it was all I craved. Who wouldn't? Who would pass up the chance to live forever? Believe me, it's a drug the whole world's high off of. Everyone, from zydrate junkies to the upper echelon of surgeon whores. It was easier to think that than my Jonathan's passing.

I don't know how it happened, but two years flew by in a blink of an eye and the next thing I knew I was holding the manila paper with the big red DEFAULTED stamped across it. Was there even a grace period? I don't remember the fine print. Everything was so simple when I signed the dotted line. I don't even remember a cheerful letter mentioning the outstanding funds. Just the one with the DEFAULTED stamp, and with a kiss I understood.

DE-fault-ED, DE-fault-ED, DE-fault-ED.

Defaulted. What an ugly word. What's even uglier is the natural fact that I found out I had enough in my account to buy two Long Island drinks and a cheeseburger. Of course I was confused. I had lost my job as a realtor's executive assistant a month back, but how could that mean I was that bad off? Had I been blind to my financial status? I remember panicking in my apartment, going through everything like a creature crazed. I tore up papers, pacing, and flung my mattress to the side to get at the stash of emergency money. I remember holding up twenty-three dollars and thirty-three cents in the middle of the destroyed room and feeling the whole world go numb and cold.

The church air is musty and cool, like the rotting breath of a basement. There is a lot of that smell here, not just in the church. It is in everything: the clothes, the skin, within the pores. Even after a quick coupling it is there under the rough musk of sex. It is in the look in everyone's eyes as they throw themselves in the frenzy of pleasure, that already-dead gaze. It is only now I realize we are all dead, killed off in the freak sickening of the world.

We may have survived as a race thanks to Mr. Largo, but what had made us a society worthy of survival is no longer around. My world, the people I knew and loved, is gone.

I attempt to pray again, because isn't that what you are supposed to do in a holy place? I can't help but hear my phantom mother besides me in the pew. Sit up straight, she always said. I straighten on my knees before I can stop myself. The only prints besides my own are the tiny rat scuttle marks in the dust. When was the last time anyone breathed here? I listen to my own shallow breath as it absorbs oxygen. In and out. In, and out.

I tell myself I'm worth dying with dignity, but I know this is a cruel lie. The truth is my life does not matter so much as the next one, and when the Repo Man comes I will be nothing but a tiny checkmark next to a name and a black bag filled of repossessed liver. I know I'm kidding myself by thinking I matter. How can I? In a few hours I will be just another job, just another night. Nothing but an insignificant lump of rotten flesh and rotten lies—

"Stop it." My own voice shocks me into the stillness of wild dogs when spooked. I can't think that. I won't. I clasp my hands together in the same way my mother used to do. I stare the riddled face of Christ in the eye and resist the urge to spit. I will not beg for my life in the end. I can't lose the nerve I have left, the one keeping me from bolting to the door and escaping through the cemetery. Because a part of me is screaming, begging me to run. Run far, far away. Change your name, change your appearance, it says. Even the thought of dying from liver disease hasn't terrified me this much.

I clear my throat. My hands are shaking as they come together and embrace. "Hello," I say, and though I feel silly talking out loud I shrug off the disquiet. "I know we haven't talked much for awhile. A few years, at least. The last time I had something decent to say was at Jonathan's funeral, when those two men came by to recollect the flowers for another person's funeral. I remember being so upset I said a few choice things to You. I take them back. I take a lot of things back. I'm just letting You know so we don't have any misunderstandings between us when . . ."

I take a deep, shuddering breath, then another. I brush away sudden tears with the back of my hand and force myself to stand up on stiff legs and aching knees. I turn around and want I see causes goosebumps to break across my skin and the cold fear I first felt upon seeing the words DEFAULTED grips my insides in an icy clutch. The backs of my knees hit the pew and refuse to let me budge. The musty stench of the air is overpowering. I can't draw in a clean breath.

Him.

He's standing in the shadow of the entrance's archway, most of his body cloaked in such a complete darkness there is no way I can tell anything about him. Only his eyes are clear, glowing bright blue from the light within his helmet. He's too far away for me to see his expression but I can sense them on me like a predator's, cool and bloodless.

Wolf's eyes in a man's body, I think for no reason. I feel him watching me, gauging me, measuring me. My skin crawls at the violation. He cocks his head and the perverse image of a bird searching for worms comes to me. I struggle to remain standing. I clutch at the pew behind me in a white-knuckled grip. I want to die from the pure fear pounding in my veins. I know without a doubt this is The Repo Man, Mr. Largo's personal pet. I don't know how long he's been standing there in the blackness—minutes? Hours? Had he been waiting for me to notice him so he could relish my reaction?

He steps out of the shadows with a lion's grace, power and violence all rolled into one. I can hear the heaviness of his booted step and know it is deliberately loud. He appears in a dim beam of light streaming through one of the holes in the tattered roof.

He's large, bigger than I would have expected. He's swathed in a mixture of black leather and rubber, not a single human feature recognizable aside from those eyes. I can hear the creak of his surGEN's apron as he stalks closer. The old-fashioned head mirror on his forehead reflects nothing. I can still feel his fixated gaze on me, pinning me down. It's not like I would run if I want. My legs won't work. I am the rabbit at the end of a shotgun's barrel.

Dusty motes swirl in the air, betraying the sighing breath of the old Church. He walks down the isle like a groom to his bride, except my groom is death, a bag for my liver in one hand and a scalpel in the other. He's slow and steady, each footstep calculated, taunting me to run, daring me to escape.

I do neither. They say he comes at your weakest hour, but he'll find me at my strongest. I think back to the moment I found out I had chronic liver disease and remember being so terrified of my own death, of whittling away to nothing as my own body betrayed me. I remember the fear of being unable to breathe, to reach the point where each breath got harder than the last. I realize it is all pointless now.

There's a moment where the Repo Man stops three feet in front of me and my heart sings—I made the monster stop, I made him pause, and I know then my decision to stay is worth all the running in the world. I am close enough to see his eyes behind the Plexiglas of his helmet. They are blue and empty, devoid of anything remotely human. They stare at me like an unblinking lizard's.

I wish I had more time to observe them but I can feel him tightening for the kill, coiling like a snake to slice my flesh to ribbons. I stand up and thrust my chin out even though my legs are wobbling worse than ever. I am not going to cower, not going to beg. And yet, now that the moment's here, all I can feel is the shaking of my hands.

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-fin-