The air inside felt stale, separated from the outside world. The carpet next to the front door was covered in gashes, stab marks barely visible through the strands of fabric that made it soft, flattened over a decade of use. There was a constant, droning noise coming from the far wall, in the bathroom. The rush of water. Both of them shuddering in horror, in recognition.
Susie ran further in, her eyes catching a slash across the fridge, cutting all the pictures that were stuck on it with a single, clean slice. She tried the bathroom door. Locked, of course. Whatever Kris was doing in there, she had to stop it. Before it got any worse. She let her head hang down, a shiver spreading from her neck to her tail as she stepped back, tensing up. Berdly approached her, but immediately jumped back. "W-Wait, Susie—"
SLAM.
The door went off the hinges, falling into the bathroom along with the large monster. She quickly got up, disregarding the pain in her shoulder, eyes wide with fear, darting around the room.
"Kris, whatever you're... doing..."
The room was empty. Evidently, someone had left the water running and crawled out the window. Berdly stepped inside, checking every corner, as if this was the first time he'd ever seen a bathroom before.
"I-I don't... I don't understand. I saw Kris run into the house, a-and then..."
Thump.
Both of them immediately went silent. With the noise of the rushing water gone, their ears acclimating to the silence, a new sound began to fill its place.
Thump.
A quiet, metallic whine followed, before the walls once again vibrated with the hollow sound. It was coming from upstairs. Kris' room.
Berdly ran first, Susie following behind. The picturebook Kris had shown to her last year was missing from the bookshelf upstairs, but that didn't matter right now. In this moment, her only thoughts were of Kris.
The door was wide open. Pieces of paper littered the floor, some still floating through the air as the curtains fluttered to either side of the open window. The computer screen had been shattered, and a large gash split the carpet in half, severing the Angel's wings. Susie caught her breath, fists up, ready to fight if she needed to, while Berdly picked up one of the leaflets on the ground. It was a letter, torn open, with the contents missing.
Susie shouted, her voice cracking with a powerful roar as she gasped for air. "KRIS! God damn it... Kris!"
But there was no one there. The sound, whatever it was, had stopped. Susie fell down on one knee, raw emotion sucking what power had remained in her legs. The bluebird looked around, looking for the source of the noise, for Kris, for anything that might give him a clue.
He stopped. An unknown power grabbing hold of his eyes as they focused on one of the corners of the room. A pile of bedsheets were stuffed around a large object, tied together to muffle any noise that came from within.
His feathers stood up. They both felt it. The light outside began to withdraw from the room, every blurred shadow sharpening like the edge of a blade. Berdly felt himself shaking. The primal urge to run. To hide. To leave this be. To deny it ever existed. "I— W-We should go. Susie, l-let's go— I'm—"
Thump.
Berdly forgot how to speak. How to make any noise. It wasn't his turn. Not yet.
Susie stood up, weightless, and stepped towards the corner, as if suspended in deep water. Every cell in her body screamed at her to stop as her claw reached out to the warm covers. She began to pull, undoing the hastily made knots, with only hope keeping her muscles going.
The fabric fell down.
"K... Kris..?"
The world went silent.
It was there, hovering perfectly in the center of the cage. Freed from the rot of its beloved vessel.
A heart-shaped object.
