PREMADE SANDWICHES / testing

[tricky]

[align=center]

rescuing an old oneshot i wanted to redo from ff

Code:

Beck knew the village as a harsh, cold place. Its people were mean, although he could always get back at them with something meaner. Everyone had ostracized him in life, and continued to do so in death. He could recall the many legends he had sparked in adolescents during that time, before they grew bored with him, and he grew bored with them. But that was okay. He didn't need anyone. He was like a hero... yeah. A lonely sort of hero, bringing justice to the village.



Beck remembered the dawn that the bushes rustled and how quick he was to ready a stray stone that was at his side as he waited for something unknown that didn't exist. He straightened, lantern-like visage locked on the trembling undergrowth like a predator anticipating its next meal. It was probably one of the pesky, crabby merchants that passed through. With a quick stretch and release, the pebble was hurled at what ever stepped out of the foliage.



Which was not a wandering merchant, as he had predicted, but a little human girl. The rock had made contact with her forehead with a dull thwack. The girl yelped in shock. That was his cue to hide. Beck scrambled into the nearest tree, not having to worry about finding gnarled knots in the bark as he climbed, before pulling himself onto a slender perch to observe from above.



The girl looked to and fro, massaging the forming bump on her head gently, before her eyes started to shimmer. She sniffed pitifully, then began to bawl to the sky. The rock, upon striking her head, had caused a fresh cut, and while his eyesight had only worsened with his passing, he could plainly see the line of red blooming from her hairline. He winced at her sudden tears, he didn't mean to actually hurt her. Kids were innocent in his eyes, partially because he was merely a kid, as well, just frozen in time. Watching her tears stream down her face and collect on her chin like morning dew, Beck gathered up the oversized cloak that trailed behind him, and tore off the bottom hem in one easy rip. That would have to do. He found himself sitting on the tree branch, debating with himself whether to jump down and assist the girl or to simply toss the cloth down and hope she was smart enough to know what to do with it. He examined her with keen eyes trained to assess an opponent's weak points and advantages. She was tiny, and couldn't of been any older than five years. Beck felt a part of him give up. It wasn't like she would remember him anyways. Infants had the worst memories.



He jumped down from his branch silently in front of the girl. She looked at him for a moment or two, fear in her watery eyes, before whimpering and blubbering out, "Please, don't eat me! I'm lost... I've been for hours! I won't taste good at all, mister. Please, please, don't eat me..." The dead boy remained silent, his emaciated frame slouching as he forced himself not to snarl at her in an attempt to quiet her down.



As she wailed again, crying out for her mother and backing away clumsily, Beck sighed with agitation, "You're so loud - I ain't gonna to eat you. You'd rot my teeth anyways," So, the very village that murdered him now told his legacy as a forest demon that cannibalized lost children? He supposed he deserved it. The girl continued to tremble, as Beck rolled his eyes dramatically, wheezing out with a tone of forced patience, "Your forehead is bleeding," he stepped closer, impatiently tapping a boot on the forest floor, before adding with his honey-brown eyes narrowing in mock seriousness, "Turn around unless you want to bleed to death."



That persuaded her. She turned hastily with a sniffle, and he swiftly tied the torn piece of fabric around her forehead, having practiced on his own injuries many times before, and it wasn't long until his ripped hem covered up the wound. He stepped back, crossing gauze-wrapped arms over his chest with a huff. "There. Told you I wasn't gonna eat you." She stared at him now, the tear trails slowly drying with her eyes. He stared back, the shadows of the forest canopy giving just enough darkness for his dull amber eyes to glow ominously as he watched her every moment. Then her eyes widened in recognition, "Are you the monster that my Mama told me about? The one that goes around playing mean tricks on people?"



The poltergeist stiffened, bloodless lips shifting into a dark scowl, before he relaxed, yet still towered over the younger girl, "Why should I tell you?"



The girl fearlessly chirped, ignoring his endeavor to frighten her away, even going as far as to inch closer to the demonic entity, who watched her in disbelief, "You're nicer than they said you were. And you really do have terrible teeth!" She pointed at his sharkish teeth with a giggle, much to Beck's dismay.



He tensed, slapping a hand over his once-snarling mouth in newfound embarrassment, "What did you just say?" he growled through his now ashamedly sharp teeth. The smaller girl quickly recoiled at his warning tone in rekindled fear. There was an uncertain silence for a few seconds before Beck begrudgingly gestured to his left, extending a curiously bandaged arm. "The town is that way. Keep going and you'll get there eventually." While the girl looked leftward, following his pointed finger, he retreated back into the closest tree, allowing his apparition to disappear into nonexistence. She turned back around and gasped in surprise, frantically glancing around to assure herself that the strange boy indeed had existed, yet there was no trace. After a minute or so, she finally headed off in the direction given to her, glancing over her shoulder before disappearing among the foliage.



The lost spirit watched her retreating figure with a certain curiosity.

Beck perched himself on a stump somewhere near the outskirts of the forest, carelessly close to the rolling meadow that separated the darkness of his home from the high walls of the isolated village. He fiddled with his age-old flute, occasionally tweeting out the notes of a melody which he didn't remember the source of, yet muscle memory was faithful even in death. With each note, he felt his dead heart - if he even had one anymore - grow heavier, burdened by uncovered memory. The melody, which was written as cheerful and bright, a beacon of hope in a confusing world, reminded of days when he was not alone, the tempo dragging slower and quieter until Beck stopped playing all together, resting his mother's silvery flute on his lap in lost silence.



"Mister Monster! It's you!"



LBeck flinched, falling over with a cry of surprise but not before instinctively bringing his flute closer to his chest. That was a familiar voice. He quickly recovered, patting off his tattered red tunic, salvaging a bit of his pride as he picked himself up from a tangle of limbs. "What are you doing here?" The poltergeist wheezed out, subconciously jabbing his flute to her chest as he seated himself back on his mossy stump. He paused, tilting his head to the side and allowing dark auburn locks to fall in his face, which he quickly brushed away, with a small spark of hopeless youth speaking for him, "Did ya wanna play a game?"



The girl shook her head with a genuine smile curving her lips, ringlets of blonde catching the sunlight as they bounced. The makeshift-bandage around her head was absent, although a healing scab could be noticed. Rocking on the balls of her feet, the little girl continued, hands folded suspiciously behind her back. "Remember when you helped me home a week ago? I came to thank you and also to thank you for not eating me. Mama says thanks for that, too."



The spirit, unsure of how to react, was about to stammer out a line when a little bag of what he could identify as various sugary concoctions was placed in front of him. While he couldn't actually eat them due to a lack of a functional stomach, Beck remained in stunned silence as she spoke once more. "This is from Mama and me," she shifted uncomfortably, twisting up her faded skirt to fidget, "I was gonna return your cloth thing, but Mama decided to wash it before giving it back"



He couldn't remember the last time he had been treated more than a pest, or the last time he had interacted with a sentient being at all. Beck was all too used to being forgotten, being left in the dust of progress to rot away alone. He felt fuzzy inside; someone had remembered him, even if it was someone with a pulse.

When the girl returned the day after that, somehow finding him in the woods playing around on his flute again, and then the day after, Beck grew to accept the child as daily routine. The sun would rise, he would find some local adult to harass, he'd find a clearing on the border of town, then the girl would visit. She started off by played games with him, the simple ones, mostly ones upon her request, like "hide-and-seek" and even "tag". After a while, she began to accompany him on what she dubbed as "pranking missions", assisting when she could and giggling when appropriate- and sometimes when it wasn't, spoiling the prank. Beck did not remind the girl of the piece of cloth she had yet to return.



Her parents couldn't figure out why their innocent little girl was growing into a young prankster or where she spent her free hours, but they would never try, assuring themselves that it was simply a phase, and that their sweet daughter would return once more.



Beck wasn't sure how, but seasons passed and years ticked by faster than they ever had before. He grew to spend the whole day waiting for and missing her, becoming quite dependent on her visits.



The girl, now into her double digit numbers at age fourteen, lay on a grassy hill with her hands delicately folded over her torso, gazing at the cloud-speckled sky. "Beck, do you ever think that the town will ever fall on hard times?" When her inquiry was met with silence, she elaborated, prompting an actual answer from the dead boy, "My Nana told me about a time when families were so stressed, they couldn't love each other as much. It was horrible."



The poltergeist kept his honey-brown gaze glued to the pallid blue sky, before a ragged sigh left his bloodless lips as the girl poked his bony side with an impatient finger. Swatting her hand away, he shrugged, "It doesn't matter to me. As long as I can still have fun, I don't care what town, or even world I'm in." He giggled at this, his unnerving laugh finding itself welcomed for once. There was a comfortable silence, Beck fixing a tear in his bandage-wrap gloves as best he could, and the girl staring up at the drifting sky with a thoughtful expression. Then, out of nowhere, the girl turned her head to face her friend, smirked and finally quipped, "I'm taller than you."

More years passed. The citizens of the town noticed the flow of childish torment lessening during the past decade or so, and, afraid as they were to question it, they thanked whichever deity was responsible for such a blessing. Beck, however, felt a pit starting to form in his gut. The girl was not so much a girl now as she was a young woman. She would soon be an adult.


He hated adults. But he couldn't hate his friend. Adults abandoned people, they forgot about the simple joys and troubles, they were selfish and hogged their resources to themselves. He couldn't imagine his closest friend ever becoming like them.



"Beck!" The young woman he had been worrying about dashed into view over the hill, hair wild, long, and tangled, nearly tripping over her own excitement. She had the largest, dopiest grin plastered on her face, wider than he had ever seen before. "He talked to me!"



"Huh?" he cocked his head, as she approached, rearing his head to just barely look up at her, "Who?"



The girl-but-not-quite-girl flopped onto the moss besides him, rolling around in glee before settling and patting the ground as an invitation for the poltergeist to join her among the moss patch. With a dramatic swoon, she admitted, "The sweetest boy I've ever met."



Beck's expression plummeted to one of heartbroken shock. While the girl's moonstruck gaze was tracing out clouds and stars in the setting sky and turned away from his, he recovered with a feigned snicker, "That's so lame." You won't abandon me for him, right? "You're all lovey-dovey about this one boy." You won't leave me behind, right?



"Yeah, but he's so... perfect," she sighed, her hands running across the flattened grass around her figure, too distracted to control her fidgeting. The spirit purposefully ignored her, sticking out a pallid tongue in a childish gesture before leaning away.



He could not remember the last time he had felt comforted by another's presence. He didn't want it to end. He wanted to be friends forever. But the pit in Beck's gut expanded as conversations seemed to revolve around this boy as the days passed. She was replacing him. She wasn't going to want him anymore -



"Beck? Are you listening to me?" the girl frowned as the distant poltergeist snapped to attention, "I want to prank the mayor, we haven't gotten him, right?"



Now this was something he could distract himself with. It would be fun, right? "Sure. How 'bout pouring buckets of burrs into his bed?" Beck mused aloud, plucking off the leaf of a nearby shrub and tearing away the edges as the girl fashioned her own idea out of stray twigs.



"Nah, how about..."

When the girl stopped seeing him as often after three years, Beck knew she had grown up. At eighteen, the girl-no-longer-girl was getting married to the sweetest boy she ever met.


She was replacing him.



She was leaving him behind.



She didn't want him anymore.



He thought they were friends.



So when she came running down the forested hills with an ornate ring glinting in the afternoon sun on her finger, her long-time friend was nowhere to be found.

He didn't appear for a long time. He hid away from the world, bitter. Once again, he had been abandoned by a friend. He should've seen it coming. Why did he even bother to stay friends with her? She grew up. They would all grow up.


On a warm summer evening, a sound rose over the hills of his forest's bordering meadow. Unable to surpress his curiousity, Beck approached a clearing filled with celebratory music and the laughter of joyful people, the festivities illuminating the surroundings as he clung to the shadows of midnight. He couldn't help himself; he watched the dancing before him with an air of envious interest, when the crowd circled around a certain couple, dancing like they were the only two people in the world.



It was the girl-no-longer-girl.



In his glassy amber eyes, he saw the little four-year-old, bawling to the heavens about being lost, then offering him toothache-sweet baked confectioneries. The companion he relied on to prank the mayor, countless merchants, even her own peers, her own parents. The one who had been graced with the title of "friend" in his book, and the first one to hold that title for a very long time. His closest friend, and he wasn't even a part of her world anymore. She had grown up.



Like everyone else. While he was left trapped in his own limbo, suspended between two realms and dividing the veil that was there for a reason.



Beck stormed away, knocking over a decorative vase placed on the grass in light of the marriage ceremony, in a foul mood, before his apparition melted away into the night, a frigid force escaping into the trees.



He did not utter a word to her ever again.

As even more years passed, Beck would ignore the young woman stumbling about the forest, calling out his name. He would ignore the looks of despair that crossed her fair face. He would ignore the strip of familiar, tear-stained fabric set on a familiar stump, day after day.


One day, a woman wandered into the clearing, sadly, and took the worn piece of cloth, stained with old, old tears and the scent of tree bark. She walked away and never looked back.

Years turned into decades. Beck resorted to tormenting traveling merchants and setting up traps around the entrances of the town, but he pointedly avoided the area of town where a woman and her family resided in. He often heard laughter and sounds of happiness from that side of town. He would stand for a moment, thoughtful, before turning away and disappearing into thin air, filled with spite.
He found himself standing at a tombstone, decorated with wilting flowers and melted candles, frequently visited by mourning family.


He was right.



She did leave.



He was right.



He knew all along



He did the right thing, cutting off all ties with her.

If I was right, he thought, why am I crying?

Beck stood vigil at her grave throughout that long and lonely night, teardrops falling onto the settled earth. It was only when the groundskeeper came hobbling up the dusty path in the thick morning fog, that the man spotted a vague shadow fleeing from the beam of his lantern, leaving nothing disturbed, except for a single indentation in the earth where it appeared someone had been kneeling.

Beck vowed to never love again.