2a: Dividing Interests

The woman in black’s steady gait falters as she sees Daria running for the cliff. A primeval look of a predator who’s prey is escaping comes over her face and she darts after Daria, completely oblivious or totally unthreatened by Amanda’s weapon.

Julia sprints up to the remains of Jared Woodward. She lifts his now empty skin, her body spasming with gut wrenching sobs. She begins kissing Jared’s remains through her tears. Oh, Jared… Jared…

Daria jumps off the cliff face feeling her stomach turn as she fully comes to see the hundreds of foot drop leading to a tumultuous sea below. Clearing the lip, she is overwhelmed with a sense of built up static and ozone and then she begins to fall. True terror grips the woman as the large black rocks taking the beating from the sea approach too quick. Just as the woman is about to smash her face into the rocks she jolts.

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Daria lays with her face pressing against the stained carpet of the editing room suite. She lifts her head to find a pepperoni stuck to her cheek and being this close to the carpet, Daria is pretty sure the mess that Woodward had started in here.

Daria finds the editing suite empty. As she stands and looks around the room, she sees it much as it was, save for the images on the projected screen which seem to be moving independent of the mechanism running. In the scenes being displayed, Daria sees cuts to a knife making an incision, blood free flowing across black rocks, Amanda being approached by the woman in black, a sun being blocked progressively as the sun itself seems to be swallowed up by void. The images are disturbing and vivid.

Amanda’s bullet plunges into the woman in black’s head, hitting squarely and cutting deeply. The woman gives no indication of pain. Nor does she pause as she turns and begins stalking toward Amanda. As she moves, oily black tendrils begin protruding from the hole of Amanda’s bullet. They writhe and expand straining to reach the production assistant. The tendrils seem to be made of the same substance that could be seen through the woman’s eyes, a black void with pin pricks of light that seem to be continuously being devoured by the heart of the void.

Julia continues to bury her face in the skin of Jared Woodward.

Amanda runs for the cliff as the monstrosity pursues her. Just as Amanda is about to jump, one of the only black tendrils snaps out to entangle her.

Daria cuts the film reel with abandon, trying to find any specific frames of the woman in black and removing them. Idly she registers just how many frames seem to be focused on masses of blood. Plowing through, the producer hacks and cuts trying to get Amanda out.

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As Amanda leaps off of the cliff a spindly black tentacle swipes close enough to her head to feel a cold permeate through her skin and straight to her bones. As Amanda begins to fall she looks back over her shoulder at the giant monstrosity that was the woman in black. Where her body was now is a mass of writhing black tentacles undulating and pulsing to some cosmic beat.

The last thing Amanda sees over the lip of the cliff is the form of Julia Cortese, still sobbing and gently stroking the skin of Jared Woodward on the black basalt cliffs. Amanda feels an odd sense of vertigo as she opens her eyes on the floor of the editing suite.

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Daria feels an odd pulse of energy and the smell of ozone stinging her nostrils as she looks down to find Amanda on the floor, gasping for breath. At the same time, Daria hears a chime that draws her attention to Jared's laptop. An upload prompt to the Church's servers says "Upload Complete" with a green check mark.