Knowledge Rather Unlearned

Isaiah fled from the nest not wishing to stay a second longer. Hopefully, the unabated weather could freshen his mind before he returned to its cave of dreams. 

When the door finally shut with a muted thud, Claire was alone in the home with the object of her desires. Desires that nearly manifested themselves all too quickly in that moment. Suddenly, she wrapped her hand against the other forcing herself from the room before further actions could take place. The moisture from that afternoon settled abruptly, condensing her mind to draw up half-excuses for the way her fingers twitched as well as lips puckered. It sought to influence such dangerous ideas into manifestations from her clogged will. However, it was exactly her will which warranted the ideas in the first place. 

Claire withdrew into herself, closing the door behind her then facing away. If she knew he was a flicker away, then she may jump again forcing further intimate stealthy motions upon the sleeping boy. Therefore, thinning barriers were consciously staked into the unconscious wanderings. They had to be built, but of course they could never last. 

'Ring! Ring!' A breath caught in her throat as she was startled away from her desires by the ring of her phone. It rattled with vibrations alerting her to numerous messages coming inbound from various senders. 

Her hand fled into its pocket only to turn up empty. The same occurred with her other to have the same result be demonstrated. Then the two went to the ones decorating her bottom finding a similar tale to tell. Her sight flashed about the room taking stock of where she may have left the device. All throughout her search did the ringing proceed to grow in intensity as more alerts blurted from the device's speakers. For some reason more and more people felt the need to continually message her all of a sudden. 

Finally, the phone was discovered when she returned to the room where Kage's surgery had been conducted. In her worry to aid him had she dropped the object on the floor, one which was splattered in dribbles of his blood. Claire grabbed her device then flipped it over to witness the smattering of red against its cracked cover. Gazing deeply into the smudged surface nearly brought forth a fit of coughing out of her depths. Calmly, she dabbed the cover with her shirt to erase the marks upon it. 

Meanwhile the alerts had grown more distressing with even those she barely struck a conversation with came to address her. It was as if a wailing banshee had been signaled. After cleansing it, Claire swiped off the home screen unlocking her device only to be greeted by the mass pile of messages that sped at her. 

In the corner of her messaging app was the number increasing, already at two hundred in unread texts. The notifications did not stop there, from several social media applications she was given a similar story. Even in missed calls it steadily furthered in number. The sight perplexed her thinking, never in her life had she gotten so many messages despite her popularity the occurrence rushed onward with a troubled start. If the rolling of clouds overhead told a story, then only dread crept from the corners of the profiles shooting questions her way. Even after the student body learned of her efforts in abating the attack in Dolemeut was she lost of such attention. Quickly, she glanced through the covers of the texts, only willing to see the first five words before being cut off. 

"Hey, Claire, have you seen…"

"Whre R U rn?"

"Call me back right now…"

"Miss, if you could give…"

"holyshit the news, rn…"

"Do you know that Kage…"

"are you with Kage? Call…"

"Kage is all over the…"

"Fudging Kage, have you seen…"

Several more retold the same account. Some from people and numbers she could not identify nor ever interacted with in the past. These deliverers of hastily addressed texts barely gave Claire the mind to contemplate their approach or reasoning for doing so. The messages just kept arriving one after another without an end in sight. There they all told the same tale questioning about Kage. However only one did she choose to tap on. It was a message from a fellow dancer in their extracurricular club. The text was relatively short but filled with a worry Claire saw as genuine. She selected the profile cover of a girl, hair dyed blue in color with a pink star tattoo beneath her left eye, opening a conversation started weeks prior. Claire skipped through the weeks' worth of laborious interactions before coming upon the most recent of phrases passed onto her. 

"Claire where the fuck r u rn?" It was sent five minutes ago. Without proper time to consider, she was already fast in replying to the question posed. 

"With a friend, why? What's going on?" 

She had expected the coming response to take a few minutes at least, possibly longer considering the girl's ability to commonly lose her phone as quickly as she grabbed it. However, no such mistake was made here, Claire was surprised to find her reply instantly read. Only for the coming seconds to bring forth another text. 

"Do you not watch t.v.? It's on all the stations about your friend, Kage." 

"What happened?" What felt like years may have passed, a faulty perception served to heighten the encroaching roach of anxiety. Tasteless anxiety that ticked with each tock as the clock objectively demonstrated the simple thirty-seconds which were lost as the next message arrived. This time it was in the form of a blue hyphenated link to a subsequent video. 

A top of her finger escaped the image to settle on another from an online platform. The picture on the video was displayed in a black and white format, positioned from the corner of some person's room. Due to the video having just started facing nothing more than a plaster wall and window, Claire understood no reason for the first minute as nothing occurred. The wall remained the same, as did the pitch black of the night. Similar to the window which… The window which now had been opened. Finally, intrigue took control as her awareness fell on a discoloring in the room which had not been present at the start. Her eyes settled on a black figure subtly residing near the window in question. Its limb quietly lodged the window back into place resuming its presence to be null as nothing more than a similar shadow accompanied by the room. 

This shadow provoked similar qualities with a person Claire rather not remember. The person was wide and imposing yet average in height. Gloves decorated the person's hands as a flash of lightning sundered the sky. 

The hyperlink to this video showed a muted blue warranting her touch, a touch that she was forced to concede in order to learn the truth. 

'Truth.'

Before her now laid the truth to Kage. What he had done. 

Her vision stuck to the closed door, a fervent knowledge catching her interest. 

'If that door wasn't closed, if I had seen his figure atop that bedding. I would never have checked... Should I?' 

This pondering was cut short as her painted nail flicked across the button commanding the video to continue on its one-track path awakening her curious set of eyes.