Free Crossfades by William Todd Rose

be chalked up to mental illness or some psychological deficiency: He’d been positive of this. People didn’t do bad things simply because they were bad.
    Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t try to explain away the cold as a trick of perception or a rogue atmospheric pocket in the Cutscene; he knew what he felt, and it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
    Pure, unadulterated evil.
    Stepping away from the window, Chuck tried to concentrate on the features of the turret—things that would distract his mind from thoughts of morality. Flames sputtered in the breeze gusting through the window and molten tar hissed from a torch as light and shadow fought for control of the stairs. The glow burnished the condensation-covered walls, tinting the passageway with a soft orange light but never defeating the darkness completely. Time and time again, the shadows lurched and jumped, ripping bites of illumination before retreating to nooks and crannies the light couldn’t reach, only to attack again. The torch’s brightness weakened with every assault and the shadows pushed forward, claiming more of the battlefield with every passing second.
    Before long, the torch would burn out completely. The light would die and darkness would hold sway, free to mask whatever horrors crept behind its veil. He could sense their presence, just beyond the edges of sight; they clustered and writhed, hungry for suffering and sensing that something new had been introduced into their world. Something whose screams would feed insatiable appetites, something warm and vibrant and brimming with potential passions. Something that would expose itself with the slightest show of emotion.
    Chuck, however, thought he was safe. All he had to do was observe protocol. The human mind was easily controlled, and he’d spent days learning how to isolate rational thought processes from sentimental ones: replacing emotional responses with tangible facts, responding to situations with sound judgment rather than blindly reacting, controlled breathing, and meditation. There were a myriad of tools at his disposal, each one effective in its own right but made all that more potent when combined with others. Even in a worst-case scenario, he reminded himself, he still had backup.
    The torch’s flame was now so small that Chuck could have entirely blocked it with his hand and the impending gloom eased closer. Glancing over his shoulder, he looked out the window again. He couldn’t see the ground from this angle, but the mountains rose above the horizon like inverted fangs. Their peaks raked the sky, seeming to pull long strands of cloud from the heavens as if they were tendons ripped from a carcass. No trees dotted their slopes, the ground being too rocky for roots to ever take hold. No birds looped or dove through air. The entire place was lifeless and barren, a diorama dedicated to entropy and destruction.
    This Cutscene had been responsible for the destruction of Abigail’s Crossfade. It had consumed the energy the little girl’s construct radiated, devouring it so thoroughly that not so much as a speck of pollen remained. Had her soul fled to another location, retreating to a place where her tire swing and field could rebuild themselves, offering the comfort she so desperately needed? Or was she here somewhere? Trapped within the confines of this godforsaken world, more alone and frightened than she’d ever been?
    An image of the child flashed in Chuck’s consciousness. She cowered in the shadows with her knees pulled to her chest, the lenses of her glasses cracked, and her eyes squeezed shut as tears cleaned swaths from the grime covering her face. The scent of decay was so thick it saturated her hair and dress, and she cringed every time thunder rumbled across the sky.
    You don’t know that…she could have moved on. She could have crossed The Divide out of sheer necessity.
    Chuck knew that was a possibility. The shock of the event could’ve been