"I would swallow my pride
I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside.
I would swallow my doubt:
Turn it inside-out.
Find nothing but Faith in nothing!
Want to put my tender
Heart in a blender:
Watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion."
-Inside Out, Eve 6
Ellis blinks to realize that he stands once again over the grave that he now knows Jean to be buried in. He can smell Vivian's musky, sulfurous scent. With a cry of pain and rage, he throws himself into the freshly turned dirt and begins clawing at it with his bare hands hearing his heart thrum over the sound of his own sobbing roar. He is dimly aware of the vermillion creeping in from the edge of his vision as the sensation of tearing at the ground grows more and more distant…
Redness descends to muffle all other sensation.
Ellis feels the vague sting of tears on his cheeks and continues to sob, and slowly discovers a female presence. "I'm so, sorry, Ellis," she whispers. He reaches out and squeezes her hard. But the smell is wrong; the woman cries out in pain at Ellis' touch, this is not Jean. He jerks backwards to look into the face of this stranger. She is gaunt, nearly skeletal with blue, fractal veins showing through her yellow, paper-thin skin poorly covered by the filthy rags she wears. Her hair is long, pale and brittle. She might have been beautiful once, long ago, but she is a thing to pity now. Deep crimson tears run down her cheeks as she looks on Ellis with sympthy painted all over her sickly features.
The woman-like creature smiles sadly at Ellis and he is aware of a growing disoriented feeling and quickly looks away from her eyes. The feeling subsides.
"My Sweet Brother brought me here to help your Lovely, but I have failed you! Pretty, pretty, so pretty…" She sobs again for a moment. "Alas, poor Jean, gone the way of Ophelia. There's rosemary: that's for rememberance; Pray, love, remember." As if through a dream, Ellis feels that she is not quite there. Also, her words are not words, but unintelligable sounds; he feels that somehow the only reason he can understand her at all is due to something broken within himself.
"Broken she is, and yet this is not the worst! No, no, no," she laughs then and sobs yet more. "She bears the Wanderer's Curse now! The Mark of Caine!" She seems to plea to the sky above, "yet may she be redeeeeeeemed." She pauses for a moment to watch a tear fall from Ellis' chin. Then she launches at him and holds him, her grip like velvet. Her pale eyes fly open wide and Ellis finds himself struggling not to look into her labarynthian gaze. He can hardly understand her through the sobbing, "All who Wander are not lost, Ellis! It is up to you, you, you…"
Ellis smells burning flesh and as she pulls away, he sees the smoke rising from her hands. She goes on, "And worse still: he has escaped you! Go away and come again another day… Not the Hellhound; forget him! The Other is free and his disease will spread! No pockets full of posies. None! Please! You must! You must… So many Broken will fall prey…" She breaks off with a forlorn wail.
The red mist fades. "Pretty, pretty. So pretty," the choked words echo in his ears.
He finds himself covered in mud on top of a pine box, several fingernails having apparently been torn from him while he was gone. Devin is yelling at him to back off so he can open the coffin.
A flurry of activity, then Jean is there, unconscious and gripped to his chest. She does not breathe, though she is not yet completely cold. Her eyes flutter and she speaks in an alien voice that sounds oddly familiar, "Fuckin' pussy." Then she frowns shaking off her lethargy as though waking from a dream. She rasps, this time in Jean's natural voice, weak, at best, "Ellis? Oh thank God!" She grips him with fitful spasms of sadness shaking them both and they hold each other for what seems like hours.
After a moment, Ellis looks up to the assembled Chosen; beyond them, the cavalcade of fools seems to be drifting away from the graveyard center. Many of them wailing or shouting incoherent remarks at no one in particular. Ellis notices Dorian's face twisted into a mask of horror before drawing back enough to look into Jean's face: she has tears of blood running down her cheeks.