Rikka was very much alive.

She was a bundle of tubes, unconscious when Levi came to visit, but he didn’t stay for very long, because he didn’t want to cry in front of her.

Her left forearm was gone, an IV bag was hooked up to her, and a friendly little chart, a dry-erase board with flowers had her name on it with notes by the nurses. The holo-screen next to her bed had basic medical information and Levi was flabbergasted when underneath her name it said Status: Alive.

What else would she be if she were not in this bed, he thought.

He hated hospitals, he hated the bright lights, the smell of cleaning products, the soft beeps, and the slow and long, wah, then psssh noise of ventilators. Seeing Rikka in the bed, holding her remaining hand, brought back terrible memories of past traumas in hospitals.

The first was a car accident he was in as a child.

It was not a regular car accident in every sense of the word, it was purposeful. Maximillian had many people who hated him, most were justified in their hatred. The car was driven, crashing into the left-hand side of the car, rattling Levi’s head, and shaking it like a smoothie.

Delilah broke her arm, sprained her collar bone, and had multiple bruises all over her face, the intense swelling making her pretty face a bright bloom of purples, reds, and blues.

Maximillian was not in the car, the assailant died, and so did Levi.

He was pronounced brain dead, in a coma, but somehow, someway, he had survived, and everyone praised the doctors, praised whichever deity they believed in, but Levi still hated hospitals, being poked and prodded with needles.

The second event, is another ‘car accident’, this time a warning sign sent to his sister by her father for participating in degeneracy. Again, little Levi had to return to the hospital, his sister the only survivor, her boyfriend, Clint, dead.

It took a great many years for Levi to get into another car without sweating profusely, gripping the seatbelt, closing his eyes, and not wanting to catapult himself out the front window.

Sitting in the chair, holding Rikka’s hand, horrible thoughts crept into his mind.

What if the car accident that occurred when he was a child was executed by his father?

What if this entire ordeal, Rikka losing her arm was planned by his father?

It was no secret within everyone in the family that Maximillian wanted the family heirloom, that he was not above any tactic to keep everyone in line, and that there was no option of leaving.

Maximilian wasn’t in the car during the ‘accident’, excellent timing as well, and strangely he was very ‘supportive’ during the aftermath of both incidents, saying, that sometimes these things happen when people do things they shouldn’t.

He cried.

Levi was feeling quite lonely, too proud to ask his wife to stay, and too embarrassed to visit Ace in jail. He didn’t want to go back to the empty, quiet hotel, coincidentally the same hotel where the murder of Ahana Hori occurred, and he didn’t want anyone making the connection that he and Ace knew each other, hurting his chances at innocence.

With no idea what to do next, Leviathan decided to try and do something about the entire issue of his apartment evolving into a tropical rainforest. He brought a backpack to try and scavenge some things from the apartment and pieces of the broken mirror.

It was worse than when he and Ace had left it.

The entirety of the house was covered in moss, grass, shrubbery, and small trees. It appeared as if Mary Jane tried to clean the house, took all the shards of the glowing mirror, and put them inside a bag, leaving it on the kitchen counter.

The kitchen was cleaner than the rest of the house, but new mushrooms were creeping along the underside of the handle to the fridge, and snails living inside the dishwasher. Levi picked up the bag and shuddered because when he picked up the bag, he swore he heard the sounds of faint, tiny, little screams.

After finding a few clean clothes from his bedroom that weren’t covered in grass or leaves, he turned to leave the apartment, but loud bangs came from the guest room door. It rattled, the door heaved, and thumping noises could be heard, ruffling the various designer clothes and furniture inside.

Blue secretion seeped out from underneath the door, a thin, long, and hairy protrusion pushed out the side of the closet door.

Pushing himself against the side of the walls, Levi slowly made his way to the front door with his backpack and pieces of magic mirror.

He tripped while exiting, and all the pieces flew out in all directions, all of them screaming, crying, and the guest room door finally broke against the pressure. Pieces of magic mirror fell out of the bag when he ran, his daily jogging of use, but mostly fear, propelling him towards the elevator, as a giant moth crawled out of the apartment.

It looked more like an engorged, mutated bear with wings. It had furry white fuzz surrounding its entire body, making it difficult to move around in the corridor, but it knew where it was going, with its large black eyes, encompassed by various nodules, taking in its prey.

It screeched and struggled to move, as Levi ran in fear, the same fear he used to terrorize his wife months prior, chasing her down a similar hallway, wearing the suit of a beast.

He got inside the elevator, shaking and shivering, rapidly pressing the lobby elevator as its padded, brown antennas that looked more like ears whipped around in the hallway, tearing up the walls, and the residents inside screamed, as the soft ding of the elevator chimed, and the doors closed.

An elevator version of the remix of Ace’s ringtone played as the metallic box went down, the strange song making Levi laugh in confusion at the popularity of a song he did not like. More tiny screams could be heard from the plastic bag, now with only five large shards left, tiny faces of Lush inside every one of them.

“You never listen,” they screamed. “You never listen and think with your other head!”

Loud thumps came from above, shaking the box, and Levi clutched the railings, bolting once the doors opened, pieces of marble falling through the shaft and destroying the elevator.

He ran, ignoring the screams of the few remaining pieces left. His flip-flops were impeding his speed, and he stopped, momentarily to take them off. He looked back when pedestrians screamed, they pointed, a giant insect was in the air, a household pet and owner was its lunch.

He ran faster, barefoot avoiding the drops of blue acid on the pavement.

“I need you to help me,” Levi rasped.

The earrings refused.

“You did not let us eat the yellow creature, nor will you let us take a lover,” Tair complained.

“You’re very selfish,” Trom added.

“I...am not...your matchmaker,” Levi screamed. “You can’t eat Ace’s dog!”

Levi stopped running once he saw the creature flying high in the sky, far away from him, having found its meal, a fish person walking its quadrupedal fish-dog, screaming for help, and no one did help, because no one wanted to die.

He sat on a bench in front of a shop that sold specific hard brushes to make your scales shine, and he knew, Levi knew he had gotten himself mixed into something far-fetched because of his relationship with Ace, and even if he left him there would be no way out of this horror, the same as two and a half years ago.

Levi gave up once the fires began again.

Plumes of fire rocketed into the air, the same ones as two years ago, but they were bigger, stronger, Nero’s anger much more intense, and far, far into the sky, across town, the night sky did not seem as if it was there, the bright red glow lighting up the sky.

Levi shuddered in horror as a loud laugh could be heard all over the city, gravelly and deep, tasting their misery, taking it in deep, breathing it in, and holding it inside his lungs.

“My uncle is not forgiving,” the pieces of Lush said. “Unas will come for us the first chance he gets if he knows where we are. Run. ”

Levi ran with no particular place in mind, and then he stopped because that meant there was no place to hide.