The Final Contender

Left foot, right foot, left, and right. You do not have me, she repeats under her breath. The corridor stretches on forever, Calla tightens her grip, deeply inhales the scent of blood that flows and hangs off her chin. Drip, splat.

An expanse of darkness covers the path stretched before her, she raises her flashlight and tries her best to see through the veil of blackness. Squint. She tries to see what lies ahead; whether its promises outweigh what came before, whether they are beneficial for Calla who now staggers along the stretch toward seemingly nothingness.

You do not have me, she repeats once more.

Beware what you speak and what you seek; the unknown is promising but what it promises may extinguish as soon as the wick burns to extinction, like the many candles that came before that will also come after, a voice speaks.

Calla spins around in high alert, right arm raised, lighting the road she's travelled thenceforth. Her left hand clutches the wound that misses her left chest by a mere few centimeters. You. Do. NOT. Have Me, she echoes into the abyss of what's past.

She refocuses herself and sets herself forward once more.

Do I.... not?

Calla freezes, the wind wheezes around her. One beat. Two beats. Silence. Calla places one foot forward of the other, and trudges on.

It has been a perilous journey, she has fought a long hard battle to get to where she is, nearly losing her battle with life against The Faceless Contender From The Ago. The one contender that continuously haunts her dreams, the one contender that can never seem to let her go. Yet she prevails... Not without suffering a few hazardous wounds - the marks of Calla's survival, and what remains to eat at her lucidity.

You don't have me, you won't... EVER, Calla pushes herself forward.

Do you truly believe that?

Calla turns and points her flashlight toward the source of the voice, fearing the look of The Faceless Contender, the disturbance to her barely sound sleep on nights where she manages to catch any shut-eye.

What meets her eyes not only fails to meet her expectations, but leads her to loosen her right grip. The flashlight hits the smooth concrete floor, and glass smashes upon impact.

You... you're not Faceless.

The Presence giggles. Each wave of laughter higher than the one before, they pierce at Calla's ear drums almost rhythmically in the deafening silence.

Calla stables herself, snatching at deep labored breaths, blinking hard as she peers through the darkness to the shadow that resides in her visual field, anticipating its fading. Yet she remains.

I necessitate your existence Calla, you know that. Yin and yang, remember?

Calla scrambles to pick up her flashlight that lays extinguished, blinded by the darkness, her hands come away cut and bloodied. Why do you haunt my dreams?

Calla hears the calm, light footsteps of The Presence, this little fucker is walking slow, circling around her, like a wolf awaiting to pounce. Shhhh, listen. You never listen, and that is why you're always running.

What the fuck?!

Have you never wondered whether there is an end to all of this?

There WAS an end, I made sure of it. I killed you, DESTROYED you, right after you missed a stab to my heart. That was the end to it. That was IT. Desperation floods Calla, and trickles down her forehead.

The footsteps continue to click. Click. Click. Click-

It's about time you opened your eyes.

...

Calla freezes in the silence, the air now still, allowing no sound but only that of her existence.

You are mistaken, I am not The Faceless Contender. He is no more. You were right, you destroyed him. I am not him.

Calla finally understands, her hand on the handle of her extinguished flashlight. Click.

Then it rings, loud and clear right into Calla's left ear:

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Calla looks into the eyes of her younger self, only it is not her, it can't be.

I am your worst enemy, Calla giggles

Calla drops her flashlight and traces her hand up her own cheek and reaches for the eye-socket. The initial grip on the eyeball was unlike anything she has ever felt before but she is sick of all of this, she is sick of the game of life and death. Her fingertips plow through the appendages containing her eye in the hollow, empty, orbital socket.

She completes her grip on her right eye, and with her other hand firmly pressing against her forehead, she pulls in the opposite direction. Blood spatters a puddle around her, but she does not flinch, no, not anymore.

She tugs in a numerical value that exceeds the number of fingers and toes they both possess in totality, severing the superior and inferior rectus, the medial rectus, then the lateral rectus. She does not stop, not until the separation is complete.

Calla lays on the ground, bleeding her final seconds of existence before its ceasing.

She picks up the flashlight once more, she is going to need this.

Calla finally eliminated her biggest contender.

She steps forth on her journey into the unknown.

Calla trudges on.