What good can come from a young lady strolling through a murky, cobblestone alleyway? Yet, she can always find peace in the darkness. But not today. Coming upon the elderly man sprawled on the ground, Maylu takes a light step backwards, and her dainty fingers fly before her lips as if to stifle a gasp of concern. Her eyes wander around her, but there was no one to be seen. Too easily she could step over his body and be on her way. She is carrying the ingredients for dinner, and doesn't want to leave the soup unattended for too long. The old man moans again and his eyes somehow find hers despite the dim surroundings. She gazes back vacantly. He could yet walk away from this, and then what? What consequences of her disregard may befall her? Better she offer help.
Maylu traipses closer to the old man, and kneels by his body while setting down her sundries. "Hello Sir, can you hear me? You don't look well.." She states the obvious, placing her hand on his shoulder to indicate her presence. She scans over his body but sees no obvious signs of injury. "I'm going to sit you up against the wall, but I can't lift you. I'll need you to help." The man makes no response beside the continuous heaving and grunting. As she situates herself beneath his shoulder with his arm draped across her back, she briskly checks again down both ends of the alley to see if there was another one she could pass this off too but to no avail. With no small struggle, she labours to push the body up against the damp, brick wall. Without help from Cedric, she slumps down momentarily from the sheer exhaustion.
Crawling back onto her knees before the old man, she gently presses a hand against his forehead; it's both cool and sweaty. With the same hand, she lifts his eyelid with her thumb and with her other hand, ignites a point of incandescent light at the tip of her fingertips. She then checks his other eye for his pupil reactivity. Only when this exacerbates a reaction, with Cedric groaning loudly and grasping his head, does the girl begin to suspect a migraine. The flickering star grows slightly larger in her hand as she flings it onto the ground to provide some visibility. She reaches into her purse for a bottle of acetaminophen and places two tablets on Cedric's tongue. Then scooping some water with her hands from the large plastic bowl she was carrying, she presses it against his lips, urging him to drink. "This might taste a bit like tofu.. don't mind it, but just swallow the medicine, okay?"
Once she is satisfied that she had performed a passable intervention, she clumsily gets onto her feet and smooths out her skirt. "You can wait here, I'll go find some help to take you to the hospital." She assures before hurrying away. She leaves the dinner ingredients behind with Cedric.. so perhaps she'll return.
Evening falls, and Maylu leans drearily against the stone wall of a large well in deep thought. She reminisces a memory from just this morning, one more trouble in a long line of troubles..
'Do you think I should marry him?' Her bright-eyed sister daydreamed whimsically.
'But we just met him yesterday.' Maylu protested.
The bleak prospect continues to haunt her until a noise disturbs her cloud of thought.. not just any noise, but a desperate, agonising gasp. Following the sound leads Maylu around the back of the well, and she sees them laying on the floor. A middle-aged woman, writhing on the ground and gasping for air, while her husband straddles her torso and closes his fists around her throat. "No.." Maylu covers her hands over her lips in horror. The wife manages to break free for a moment, crying out and reaching towards the girl..? No, towards the bucket behind Maylu that people use to fetch water. In her desperation, the wife seeks out any kind of weapon to fend off her killer. Her frightful scream pierces Maylu's ears once again but no bystander hears it. Because she's a ghost- they're both ghosts. And somehow, Maylu is witnessing a replay of the grisly demise. The girl knows well enough she cannot do anything to intervene, yet cannot take her eyes away. She stands there frozen.
The husband grabs the nearby rope, winding a skein around his wife's neck while hauliny her over the edge of the wall. Without any sense or hesitation, the husband plunges both of their bodies into the well's abyss. Maylu catches a glimpse of the terror in the wife's eyes before she disappears from sight. The rope on the pully screeches wildly as if being yanked into the depths of the well. The bucket promptly follows, yet a loop of rope catches around Maylu's ankle.. suddenly, she is dragged off her feet and over the wall's edge too abruptly to notice the pain, sunken ever deeper by the weight of two corpses.
Her tiny body jerks like a ragged doll as the rope catches once, dangles her in suspension, and then snaps! She plummets what seems like free fall into the deep, dark well. The circle of night sky above growing further away, she is finally submerged in the cold, black water. She chokes while the shock sets in, chilling to the bone. Kicking and whimpering frantically, with nothing but a bucket and a bit of rope in her immediate surroundings, she somehow finds her way to the damp and slimy wall. Clinging to the slippery rocks and soon overcome with shivering, her voice trembles as she cries quietly for her sister,
"Please save me..! I don't want to die all alone..."