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The State We're In
It was the same American music kissing his ears, same entrancing vocals that sang the same words again and again, syllables pirouetting on haunting notes. Another friend had given this to him, whispering of its greatness as they wandered out of some club months ago, and so in love with the music, Kazu had kept it still, skillfully changing the subject whenever the topic of giving it back arose. He had gone to several friends, and after having them interpret the lyrics, he had sat beside his window for weeks while working, learning every inflection, every sound to the smooth piece.
Now, it flooded the open air of the building’s roof, floating on the kind wind that drifted gently at his back, twisting on the direction. He didn’t care that it was loud, that it was most likely upsetting the neighbors; they were the least of his concerns during this day. He was waiting for someone, waiting for that familiar face, knowing that he would come, that he had to come, because Kazu couldn’t do this alone.
“Where have you gone, My love, My friend, Somewhere without the rain …”
He hadn’t realized he was humming with the stringed instruments until the sound met his ears, biased and cool in its loneliness. He was getting tired of standing on this ledge, and the wind continued to threaten to push him forward, back to where he began. Gremory must have found the note by now, and Kazu knew he wouldn’t ignore it; after all, he had used the Guide’s old knife (still crusted in places with his own blood) to attach it to the door. He wondered if Gremory would see the significance in that, or the irony. Probably not. Such a shame that all this would go to waste if he didn’t quicken his pace, wherever he was.
“I feel afraid now, I feel alone, We will meet again…”
The pale eyes shifted to the street that lingered below, idly watching the people strolling past, ignorant, careless. He remembered that feeling once, of complete and utter self-absorption. Nothing outside the pre-determined little box. It was a pleasant feeling, as though everything aligned just for you.
The sky was bleeding fire, a darken crimson kissed by a burning dusk. Dimly, carried on wings of wind, the sound of car horns caressed his ears. He favored the music much more so he tuned out the world, white noise on a black television, and stared at the door to the roof.
Come on, Grem. I know you couldn’t blow that off.
He clasped his hands down in front of him, fingers tangling into a knot as they locked. He looked demure, passive, pretty and silent. He was the epitome of outward patience, the lengths of his lips curled into a gentle half-smile as he blinked slowly. Choosing to lose himself in the music, he hummed once again, the soft play of strings settling his nerves. He was anxious to do it, to end it, to be done…
“Can you recall what we once knew, somewhere without the pain. I feel afraid now, but not alone. We will meet again…”
He saw the door move before he heard it; quite a shock, really, considering it was an ungreased metal thing that took quite the amount of pushing before it would normally shift open. But the movement caught and held his eyes, and mesmerized, he could not turn away as Gremory shoved his way to freedom. And he was exquisite, cheeks pinched pink from the dash, ebony eyes wide and attached to him, him and no one else. The world did not travel outside of those set parameters, no, no.
“What is this?” he panted softly, and Kazu could almost hear the thoughts of quitting smoking churning through his head. In his hand he held the letter, Kazu’s lazy scrawl decorating the entirety of it, while a slit was near the top from the where the knife had pierced it. “What the hell is going on?”
“I just wanted to see you,” Kazu whispered, that same haunted smile licking at his mouth with a languid tongue. “Just something to carry me down, if you will.”
Kazu watched as the color drained from the Guide’s face, paling it to the color of the sweet ashen hair that brushed against his cheeks. Oil-slick hues drifted to the gauzy white of the ankle length dress he wore, the way it shifted in the wind, danced, twirled.
Kazu never wore complete white.
“I can't hear your voice, but you know I feel your soul…”
Catching his gaze, Kazu smiled, a hint of color snaking like thieves into the smooth cheeks. “I wanted to look beautiful for you when I saw you in Heaven, Gremory.”
That off-kilter smile remained for but a heartbeat after the words left his lips, before his mouth curled into a troubled frown. His brow drew together as he winced, as he doubled over slightly, ebony locks shielding his face. The sound of the radio was replaced with the sickening wetness of flesh splitting, tearing, forcing itself mercilessly apart for the path of something larger. Black wings did not appear as one who knew him might have expected, no six pairs of appendages fighting for the kiss of dusk. This time, only the broken, shattered bones, three along his right side only were visible, hollowed ends jagged and dripping with crimson life, marring the pristine purity of the white dress. And when he finally raised his head, brushing midnight hair away, the right eye had faded, dusting out to a calloused color of ash, flat and impassive.
His lips parted with a sigh painting them, a sound that was remixed and played back with two voices overlapping, entwined, inseparable. “I am tired, my love. Tired of it all.”
“Where have you gone, my love, my friend…”
“I think,” the hybrid murmured, dual voices entangled, “I think I forgot how to fly.”
He watched the Guide drop the letter, eyes following its drifting decent, before they raised to meet the nightmare eyes filled with panic. He was lunging forward, attempting to close the distance between them, but he had made certain to take the farthest ledge from the door. Kazu had planned for this for days, hours ticking by with only the sweet thought of release devouring all conscious thought, nothing but this final promise licking at his weary mind.
It was so simple, so easy, just like death. The jutting bones twitched behind him, as if flapping phantom wings, and leaning back into the updraft of wind, feet abandoned the ledge and he was falling.
“Somewhere without any pain…”
“KAZU!”
He felt himself plummeting, the darkness of his hair blotting out the sky as it flew up around him. The silver head grew distant as the screams of his lover struck down at him with the force of speeding trucks. He watched the Guide leaning dangerously over the ledge, could swear he saw him crying, could taste the other’s tears on his lips, even though the laws of reality forbid it. Thin arms rose up, as if he could touch those shimmering cheeks, could take the liquid diamonds, the fresh pain, away with him and down to Hell where it all belonged.
Kazu didn’t have to look to know the ground was rushing at him, didn’t have his ears open to the screams of the onlookers; his eyes were blissfully closed as he tilted his head back. He wanted to remember the blessed moments of love, a warm blanket to wrap himself in. He needed something to remember, something to remind him that it wasn’t all bad. His mind flickered, and rooted itself to a single second, a single heartbeat where everything wonderful had began, and with a smile, he latched onto it, living it once more.
Gremory sucked in a wet, choking breath as he looked over his shoulder at Kazu standing there. His ebony eyes still expressed immense grief, but an underlying glimmer of hope as well, that maybe, just maybe, he could still have Kazu. If he just proved it, he could...
He turned around completely and took a step towards the other, only to stumble on his liquid legs and fall to his knees before Kazu. His hands formed white-knuckled fists that rested on his thighs, his gray head still bent. He struggled with all his demons, all his guilt, before he rose, still on his knees and wound his arms around the slim form before him. He buried his face in Kazu's clothes, the tears still not ceasing their flow.
"You're... you're everything... and.. I..." He bit down on his lower lip, fighting down the demons that churned in his stomach, pounded at his head until his vision blurred. He was feeling physically sick, and yet he still tried to force the words out, to push past everything else and just express how he felt with spoken words. And as he exhaled, they came. Three, small words that shook him right down to his shattered core.
He inhaled hard, wet, unstable as another wave of sobs hit him, his arms tightening around the other. "I... love you so... so much..."
Eyelids fluttered open as he noticed the other looked so small now, an insect standing atop an impossible mountain. But that was okay, because this was best, the final act in a play that never seemed to end.
Lips parted to speak the one truth he knew, the one that had never left him, that would cover him and keep him safe until he could see Gremory again. Maybe he would have remembered how to fly then.
“I love y-”
the end
For PC.
The Cycle
Black was never a color but a state of silence, one he was subject to all too often, a thing that he was reluctant to change. He enjoyed the quiet, the hushed sense of grasping reality in its purest form, a sense of purity when no sound could filter through and shatter the state of a perfect world. He had yet to find a noise as appealing as nothingness, had yet to lay his hands on a piece of being so beautiful as a soundless day kneeling among the flowers, just like he was now.
The Angel of Death was not as imposing figure as most would tend to argue; no skulls, no tattered robe, no scythe did make him up. He preferred the silken robes entwined with colors made of the deepest indigo, deepest space, robes he could lose his hands in when his arms were at his sides, robes like the ones spread about him now as he sat in sacred gardens in locked Heaven. His hair pooled in his lap, as dark as his garments and just as soft, and his face never spoke of an age, but of the simple acceptance of immortality. No scars of shame lined his boyish wrists just yet, and naked, they were bare and smooth and comely, in a way that only wrists could be.
Today, he had mused, would be a fine day to be outside, even though where he resided it was always a pleasant day. There was no defining sun, but it was always bright, aside from the days it rained which was even more beautiful then, when the rain would trickle in hungry, bloated drops that separated upon flower petals all around. Perfection never wavered, but was a constant state of being in this blessed home.
It was peaceful in a serenity accompanied only by flawlessness, and kneeling in that cushioned grass, Azrael felt nothing but devotion and love for those around him, for this simple bit of peace. Never in his life did he find the same tranquility as he did in the company of an endless field, alone and left to his thoughts and devices. His eyes were closed lightly, rolling over the day, the endless day, and his obligations for the rest of the hours; he always found himself busier than he cared to. It was a bothersome thing, truly, but he did what he must.
And when he opened his eyes and cast gray irises upon the world of Heaven, he found himself not as full of solitude as he once thought.
He was not sure if the other had spied him, though he thought it would be impossible not to with the lack of hiding places in their simplicity of this field of flowers and the few trees that lined it, but the other’s back was to him some thirty feet off and not yet moving. Azrael’s vision was consumed by the vivid color of those vibrant wings, each feather scarring him, burned into his memory with appreciation, with admiration, and he knew which angel he had been staring at so fondly.
He wondered if the Angel of Vengeance knew he was even there, knew he was watching his back with the blatant obviousness that he had been..
His own black wings rustled, six pairs varying in size and laying just barely upon the grass of which he knelt, disturbing barely a blade. He watched as the other slowly turned to face him, no more than a boy by the simple look of him, but as immortal and ageless as himself, and just as perfect.
Across a field of Heaven, they stared in silence, neither speaking, neither breathing, neither living but trapped in suspended animation. Azrael found himself enamored with the simple visage, and of something underneath. This angel, this soul, he knew, would be important to him someday, perhaps more than anyone else ever had been, and such a feeling warmed him like no other.
Azrael rose to his bare feet, something he enjoyed simply for the feel of the grass between his toes, comforting as it was. Tentative steps carried him closer to the smaller angel, each movement riddled with the jingling of bells from the anklets he wore, hidden by the hem of the silken robes he had donned. The midnight wings flared, fanned and ruffled proudly, before laying flat against his back, brought in tight and comfortable, until he stopped before the angel, the angel who looked up at him with eyes he could not read.
And though there was a multitude of things he wished to say, a thousand predictions coating his tongue, all that emerged was a quiet, “Good day to you.”
The Angel of Death’s world was illuminated as the other, Nathanael, smiled at him and repeated the same.
Azrael bent down at the waist, and plucking a flower, whose petals were filled with blues of every hue, held it out to the other. He watched with stormcloud eyes as the other’s hand wrapped around it gently, grasping it with all the care and needfulness of someone desperately afraid but would admit nothing.
“You hold Heaven in your hand now,” spoke the Angel of Death, a soft, humble whisper. “And I killed it simply by taking it from its homeland. Strange, how little hands like ours can change the world, hm?”
And as Nathanael opened his mouth to speak, Azrael heard the dreadful call of his name, knowing that it was obligations coming to take him away. He turned to look, the silken tresses swinging softly as he did, the robes rustling with his movements, and saw the Lady Shekhina coming towards him. He waved one hand in a kind hello, and turning to look back at Nathanael, he found…nothing, nothing but his retreating back as he walked away. He was about to trail after him, to ask him if he had insulted him in anyway, but the other angel was upon him and speaking already.
Azrael did not have a chance to see Nathanael again before the death of Sandalphon came to light, and he was punished for such, though it bore no true validity.
Time had ceased to mean anything the second the shackles had tightened around Azrael’s thin wrists, condemning him in ways he did not understand. The first day (had it been a day? He wasn’t sure) had been the cruelest display of misery ever recorded; left alone in that circular room, chained between the thick pristine pillars of marble on that dais, he had screamed until he vomited blood, and the force of which he pulled on the chains forced the first of many scars, splattering crimson against the hateful white that he was strapped to.
After time, he quieted and then cooled to nothing, his voice growing quiet with neglect. Wrists that were never given a chance to heal, spilling every time he dared to move, every chance that his restraints brushed against his flesh. His wings weakened with misuse, and gathered dust as the tips rested against the marble of the dais. The only kind face he was subjected to was that of the Lady Shekhina, and she cared for him more kindly that his creator ever had.
Jaded, alone, the lips soon lacked the customary ease that they had once smiled with. Abandoned and loathed, he lacked faith in his Father, in the system, in the people that surrounded him. And he grew as cold as the pillars his chains were wrapped around, but never cruel. He lacked interaction, lacked the knowledge of people anymore, and that made him barren and broken.
But then, the time came when the hateful, ugly doors some fifty feet from him opened, and someone other than the Lady had entered, someone just as beautiful and stunning, someone he had thought of ever since that day in the field when he had left before he could speak any true words. Fire sparked where there lay nothing, forcing the stumbling beating of his heart to turn over as he watched this angel approach him where he stood chained. Nathanael had laid a flower down at his pillar and spoke of things Azrael had no knowledge of. He had come seeking opinions and strength from the Angel of Death with news of a rebellion, and Azrael had so little help to give.
And upon a kiss, the Angel of Death had sworn never to draw up a sword to the other, had vowed to protect him, regardless of what side he dared to fight him. It was a promise he imprinted on his soul, forced down against his heart just as he did with the fire of the other’s wings, with the illumination The words were his, his to hold on the endless seconds that passed, his to grasp, signs of hope in the darkness.
“Bravery will not win a war. Your devotion, your heart will mean more than anything I can ever offer. For that, and for that reason alone, I could never offer my life for your side. Nathanael, whereas I cannot offer up my heart to our Father, I can give it to you. The rebellion can have all of me that remains, but to you, I offer that. If... if something should happen, know that I will not strike you down, nor harm you. Your kindness moves me.”
And the Angel of Vengeance had looked so moved, as if no one had ever spoken such sentiments towards him before, as if no one had loved him that much. "I'm not worthy of you, Azrael... I am not worthy of your mercy, nor your appreciation. I cannot speak so freely as I wish... but I want you to know that your feelings are requited. I... will never hurt you."
Azrael was pinned by the other’s eyes, as surely as if he had been shackled again. Truth be told, in the times he had been left alone in this cursed room, he had imagined those eyes a million times over in his dreams, both waking and not. He had never seen anyone so kind, someone who never wished to judge him, to shun him, to use him as the weapon everyone else seemed to want him for. "Then we have a truce, angel. If I see you, I shall stay my weapon. And no one shall know of this meeting or of what has transpired here. Nathanael, if something happens to you outside of this cursed room, if in the battle you are injured, then call upon me. I shall abandon my comrades to aid you. In the end, I know yours is the one that will taste victory. We... we are a doomed side."
Nathanael had smiled at him in a way no other being ever had, one that promised love and devotion without ever voicing such. "Doomed though the rebellion may be... they are the true side to fight for. They are the brave and the just, and I envy them. Dare any of God's angels lay a hand on you, it is to the rebellion I will pledge my loyalty. I will warn His minions of this. Most of them know better than to go against the wishes of an Archangel. Fare you well until next time, Azrael. I look forward eagerly to our next meeting." And he had pulled his cloak tightly around and left, the door sounding his retreat.
Black feathers rustled, and though he could not tell how long it had been since the Angel of Vengeance had visited him so kindly, Azrael did know a new layer of dust had formed upon his wings. The promise of someone coming to seeking his aid had not left his mind, just as Enlil’s speech of “black sheep” and “keys” strengthened such ideas. Electricity sparked in the air, thick and rolling over his flesh, just as he let out a silent sigh. When he was alone in this room, everything was silent, no matter how loud he screamed. Everything was Black.
He had been dozing when the immense door at the opposite end of the room opened for him, which was not unusual; he did sleep a bit when he was alone. There was so little to do otherwise, and though his dreams were never pleasant, they kept him active in some sense, some ideal. But the simple sound of the door roused him, and the feel of strength slipping into the room drove the fingers of sleep from his mind completely.
And staring down the length of the room, down the stairs and across the marble floor, Azrael could only think of, This is the black sheep. He is my key.
Lucifer, in all of his Morning Star glory, was slowly ascending the steps, the quiet hush of his robes moving over the marble soothing away the nervousness Azrael felt. This was the greatest angel Heaven had ever seen; this was pure power in the guise of a handsome present. And when he spoke, his voice was the purest velvet, the smoothest silk.
“The proud Angel of Death, left to wither away for no other cause than protecting a comrade. How pathetic our Father has become, how twisted.” The angel stood before him, one hand gently caressing his cheek even as Azrael shifted, the rattle of chains only drowned out by the sound of Lucifer’s voice. “He is not well, our Father, and the torment of our fellow angels can no longer continue, wouldn’t you agree, Azrael?”
The steel of Azrael’s eyes found the marble of the floor; so this was it, the time for freedom, the head of the rebellion. Just as Nathanael had said, he had not been forgotten by their side, even if God had shunned him. Dimly, he was aware of the new torrent of blood rolling down his arms, scabs broken open and pattering against the floor in erratic succession. “No, He is not.” And he fought down the stories of the boxes he had overhead, of the wingless shoved into them for no other reason that being flawed by His own hand.
Lucifer’s lips curled in a way that spoke of sympathy, but not pity, of understanding, but not empathy. “Then you know what path must be taken…?”
Dark hair shifted, spilling over one shoulder to settle against his chest. The gray eyes rose, lingering on the face of his savior, and he nodded after a moment. He thought of Nathanael, of where this conversation was headed, of all the things he had promised to the other angel and how he knew he had to keep it for the sake of his own soul. “I do.”
“A grand weapon you will make.” Gray eyes slowly closed as he heard Lucifer stepping slowly around him, his voice battering him from all sides. “They fear you, the rumors of your strength, your power, and with reason. You have been broken, but I can mend you better than anyone else.”
“Tell me what to do,” Azrael murmured softly, words pushed over dried and cracked lips. “Anything, just set me free.”
“Swear your loyalty to me, angel, and it will all be yours,” Morning Star whispered, his eyes positively dancing beneath the fringe of lashes.
Azrael, not hesitating for even a breath, hissed his promise, spoke of offering his life for the benefit of this majestic creature and his ideals, spilled his beating heart down at the feet of this angel. And with a satisfied smile, the other retrieved stolen keys from the inside of his robe and set to freeing Azrael, shackles falling away.
Without them there to hold him, with sweet, bloodied freedom in his grasp, he fell forward to his knees, burning tears in his eyes, but refusing to spill forth. He would not cry in front of Lucifer, would not shame himself in such a manner. A soft hand found the crown of his hair, and looking up, Morning Star smiled down at him softly.
“Let us go, angel, before they realize their mistake.”
And with a solid nod, Azrael climbed to his feet and took his first steps while surrounded by freedom.
Azrael jingled as he walked, the sound of the bells on his anklets echoing in shimmering marble halls. He finally felt comfortable again, swathed in silken robes that rustled against the floor, the tips of nightmare feathers scraping softly against the ground. He was normal once more, alive and appreciative of life, of his savior, of everything around him, though time had hardened him enough that he spoke very little, and never smiled. And his hands never showed from the sleeves of his robe, his shameful wrists always hidden.
The others working in the rebellion avoided him, which suited his whims all too perfectly. None of them had come to save him when he was left to gather dust; none of them gave him precious time to talk, to speak; none of them offered respect. And he was feared, and that was just as good, he had decided; let them fear him, and he could find solace in that simple knowledge.
Except Lucifer. He never was afraid of the Angel of Death, and that also suited his needs. Perhaps Morning Star did understand that Azrael would never go against him, that he was bound as surely as if red threads had wound themselves around his soul. Perhaps he knew that Azrael revered him, looked up to him, found himself in awe under the other’s strength and cunning. Perhaps he was just overconfident. Either one did not matter at all to Azrael; he found himself simply pleased at being trusted.
Wandering through the halls had become a small pastime for him as of late; there was an ecstatic enjoyment over being allowed to go where he wished, whenever he wished it, and so he took advantage of this simple thing to the best of his ability. He loved the feel of each of his muscles moving, the way the wind ruffled his hair as he walked, then sound of his bare feet against the smooth floor. He found the simple pleasures much more rewarding than the larger ones.
And, it also gave him a chance to listen on the conversations of others, to find out what he had been missing in his time of punishment. Love lives, scandals, political unrest were the common places, not to mention rumors and battle plans for the upcoming battles. He found himself turning his ears towards these, and though Lucifer had brought him into a few meetings concerning courses of action, he knew little in the entirety of the war plans.
But, as he walked on this day with his cloak drawn loose over his shoulders and clasped at his throat, he heard the one thing that grabbed his attention more solidly than all the love-life scandals, all the political backstabbing, all the lies and the hate had before.
“Lucifer went to find Nathanael.”
“Heard he’s going to ask him to join up with us.”
“You know what will happen if he says no.”
“Either way, it’ll make the battle that much easier.”
The gray eyes widened, long lashes peeling back from the crystal irises, and in a heartbeat, he was storming down the hallways. Wings twitched beneath the thickness of his cloak, a simple nervous habit just like his rubbing of the wrists were, and fingers clutched his hood and pulled it up, covering his features; he was a wanted man, and if found…
He would not go back to the dais, no matter what the cost.
Hands found the doorway leading outside and shoved them open. He was walked like a predatory beast, though he wasn’t even sure what he was going to do. He had made a vow to Nathanael not to let anything happen to him, but he was bound to Lucifer in blood.
But…Nathanael…
Maybe there could be some sort of reasoning, some sort of even ground, and Nathanael could be let alone, allowing him to go about his way. Or maybe he could convince Lucifer of leaving the angel alone, or maybe he could intercept them before it even happened…
It was raining today, one of those rare days when the light still shimmered through the bloated raindrops and created translucent colors on everything. Had it been any other day, any other time, he might have lingered, letting the drops roll down over the soft contours of his face, might have rested and opened his mouth, tasting the water upon his tongue. But he had no time to relax, no time to stop, even for a heartbeat, and growling softly underneath his hood, he was jarred back to the mission at hand.
I'm not worthy of you, Azrael... I am not worthy of your mercy, nor your appreciation.
Protect Nathanael at all costs. No matter whom he had to defy, no matter whose path he crossed.
Azrael was unsure of how long it took to get to the structure of purest white marble, whose spires were blinding like stars in the sky, but it had felt like an eon had faded and died on every step. The building was immaculate in its beauty, smooth as untouched snow and just as white, and the ground surrounding it was lush with the kiss of grass and flowers, which drew the eye from the immense black iron gate that surrounded it.
He had taken too much time, he knew it; taken too long, and the feeling in the pit of his stomach, that thick weight, would not dissipate with all the positive outlooks in the world. His hands snuck out from the end of his robe, and grasping one gate door, he pushed it in without a sound. He slid inside, the soft sound of his anklet meeting his ears, just as he shut the gate behind him. Taking a step forward, he looked up the marble stairs, up and up the dozen steps until they evened out to a doorway.
And there it was, the sacrilege burned down against his heart worse than any brand, more violent than any scar.
Face flushed pink, hair dripping over his shoulders, Lucifer was straddling the narrow hips of the kicking and struggling Angel of Vengeance. Morning Star’s hands were white-knuckled and wrapped around the other’s neck, sunk deep into tender flesh, marking, bruising, strangling, and his eyes were so dark, so dark and lost in this moment as he watched his hands choking the life from his friend.
“NO!” Azrael screamed, or thought he did; he wasn’t sure what he was doing, lost in this horrible moment, suddenly unable to stop Lucifer, stop the one person who had helped him when no one else could. Rooted helplessly to the spot, feet nailed down like on a crucifix, all he could do is shake his head, even as with the last of his strength, Nathanael’s eyes turned to him.
“Lucifer, please, let him go! I beg of you!”
Hands clutched harder, and Azrael could hear the other’s choking. “You want to help him? Where was this angel when you were chained? Where was he when you were suffering?” Lucifer hissed. “He was helping keep you there, locked in a room, by serving a God who hated you! He is no different than--”
“That’s not true!” The Angel of Death took another step forward, stormy eyes resting on Lucifer, eyes that were overflowing in their shame. He could see the light fading from the angel; he needed to get Lucifer off him, but…
He couldn’t defy his savior. And it would be his entire fault that Nathanael died.
“Nathanael has done nothing wrong! He is a kind person who--”
“He will fight to kill us, Azrael!” the other screamed. “It is his duty to see us dead; you and I! We must kill him before he can do so to us!”
His savior and his friend, and here he was, lost as to what needed to be done. Frozen, he felt useless, pointless, all the while each second crying out his betrayal even louder. But who was he to betray, Nathanael or Lucifer?
“Let him go!”
“I am the one that rescued you!” The hard chipped eyes of the other rested on him while Azrael watched Nathanael’s lips turn blue, cheeks a violent shade of purple. “I protect you now, Azrael! You swore your life to me!”
Azrael stared on helplessly through blurry vision as cruel digits tightened to inhuman levels and Nathanael’s eyes rolled back, solid whites showing, all struggles ceasing to exist. Lips, puffy and blue, were parted, as if asking to draw breath once more, such a simple task that could no longer be carried forth. And as Lucifer pulled his hands away, this finger marks were dark and already blue, rapidly falling to an even darker purple, brands of death.
Strength flooded through Azrael like an electrical surge, and he ran up the stairs so quickly that he stumbled on the forth step and crawled the rest. When he finally reached the top, reached the scene of the cold-blooded act, his hands found Nathanael’s face, fingers touching his violet cheeks, turning them, rubbing them gently.
“No… no…please, come back, come back, I’m sorry, so sorry…I should have…should have…” He could taste the tears rolling down his cheeks, resting on his lips, falling down onto the other’s discolored face. They were bitter and accusing, pregnant with hate and sorrow, tainting his senses with their taste.
He heard Lucifer moving rather than watched him, and once he was away, Azrael dragged the still body as much into his lap as he could. He didn’t care about shame anymore; let Morning Star watch him weep, let him know how dead he felt at this moment. Let the world know, and it still would not be enough.
The rain had stopped; he was crying enough for all of Heaven.
“He is the enemy, Azrael.” He felt the fingers of his savior in his hair, soothing it back gently. “It is simply one less angel to kill during the battle.”
“Silence,” he growled, clutching the body tighter. “You know nothing, nothing at all.”
“This is a war, angel,” Lucifer replied as if speaking to an invalid. “You will kill many angels just as I did here, and they will have loved ones as well.”
Ashy eyes turned up to where the other stood beside him. “I swore that nothing would happen to him! I promised him that I would protect him!”
Fingers curled gently around his chin, the same fingers that had struck the life from Nathanael not a moment earlier, and pulled it upwards so they could stare eye to eye. “And you swore your life to me, Azrael. I don’t care about any other vows you might have made. You have done your job well; let that satisfy you tonight.” The palm of his hand found the smooth wash of ebony strands, and petting it softly, he smiled. “This is all our Father’s fault; if He had treated us, and all living creatures, fairly, then we would not be forced to such actions, and there would be no war tearing us apart.”
Shoulders shuddered gently as he nodded. “His fault. His will. He will pay.”
Lucifer let the corner of his lips pull upwards in a small smile. “Do not linger here long; you are still a wanted man.”
Azrael waited until Lucifer had disappeared before he began to sob, leaning over so he could bury his face in the other’s shirt, where a still heart lurked beneath. He waited to flare his wings beneath the cloak, then tore it off so he could wrap the feathered appendages around them both, shielding them from whomever might see. He waited to let the walls of his powers down, to slam it into the marble steps and walls of the building, turning the perfect pristine stones to a burnt, tainted black; just as he waited to let his power slip down into the surrounding ground, the flowers withering, dying, falling away to dust.
And no one came, no one approached, no one saw.
Once he gained composure enough to walk, he laid Nathanael down comfortably against the blackened stones, fingertips running over his hair softly. “I am sorry.” He pressed soft lips to other’s, even as he gently closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to each of those as well. Tugging his cloak over, he laid it over the Angel of Vengeance’s body, letting his hand run over it one last time before he found shaky feet and staggered down the steps.
War ensued shortly after, giving Azrael little time to mourn. In some ways, he felt that Lucifer had wanted it this way, knowing he would fight better as a grieving man, but then also, he had heard talk of the Angel of Destruction gathering his own armies in preparation, and it was clear they could hold their position no longer if they desired some chance at victory.
And so the greatest battle consumed Heaven, all over the classic vices of Power and God and Freedom. Flowers once vibrant with yellows and blues were painted over in thick crimson, moments before being crushed beneath the bodies of the fallen. Feathers and wings littered the ground, the wounded screaming, the dying bleeding. On the skirmishes where victories lay, little rejoicing was heard from either side; brothers were fighting brothers, cutting down equals in the heat of passion.
Heaven had become a mockery.
Azrael fought with the careless desire to destroy all that he could, a wanton need to get to the Almighty with little regard to his own well-being. In this respect, he had been molded into the perfect weapon: efficient, self-sacrificing, and powerful. And perhaps, if Kemuel’s army had not overwhelmed them, and if he had not been beaten by the Angel of Destruction due to several grievous errors on his own behalf, he might have gotten his desire to face the Father.
But, though his growing hatred for his creator was apparent in his every action and every spoken word, so was his respect to Kemuel. And when the angel held his flaming sword to Azrael’s throat, the Angel of Death had smiled for the first time in so long, and had whispered, “You have earned your victory more than anyone else ever has. You fight unlike any other creature, and it really is something you should take pride in.”
And now, chained to his knees on the floor before the grand throne of God, shackles wound around those bleeding wrists once more, along with the metal collar at his throat, he was forced to listen with a slow heart as his punishment found his ears.
“What happened to you, Azrael?” God whispered, the teenage body shifting in a seat far too large for Him. “You were one of my precious chosen, and you have found the need to destroy all that you touch. First, Sandalphon, and then Nathanael, an--”
The hazy fog of Azrael’s eyes blinked, then widened. “You… you think… I killed Nathanael?”
The Almighty shifted pitying eyes down onto the chained angel, before the adolescent head shook. “People have seen you leaving. Your cloak was found there. Your innocence has been thrown away, replaced with the guilt of the countless crimes you have committed.”
The room faded to something of white noise, having found the secret to fading away on thoughts from the days of the pillars. So, they believed he murdered Nathanael. And would they have been so far off? He had done nothing to help him, nothing but stand there as Lucifer had wrapped his hands around his throat and choked the life from him.
And hadn’t that paralysis been worse than anything he could have done, than if it had been his hands wrapped around the slender throat himself? He had broken his promise, his vow to keep him safe no matter what the cost, had sat and done nothing, after swearing to protect him against even Lucifer.
He had killed Nathanael, had doomed him.
“—and your wings shall be torn from your body.”
Azrael came slamming back to the reality of the room, of the trial without a jury, an execution without a verdict. Whatever had been decreed, he had missed, other than that final line, that dreadful punishment that was as unthinkable as anything else. But he dared not argue it, finding the sweet vengeance that it was thick with more satisfying than anything else.
Sandalphon had deserved to die. God had earned His attack and the uprising, for His hands were stained.
But Nathanael had been an innocent, a sweet and pure soul that he had betrayed. He would endure this for him, and for him alone.
And as holy hands found the first of six ebony wings, he made no sound as they pulled, twisting. He held his head high as the bones snapped, as the tendons creaked, then were torn away. His gray eyes on God, he said nothing as the flesh gave way with a wretched wet sound, and a torrent of blood ran like fire down his back. Discarded like waste, the feathered appendage was thrown in front of him, tossed onto the floor to remind him, to etch into his mind just what was being done.
And the pain was sweet and justified.
By the third wing, he was panting, and God looked annoyed on his throne. By the fourth, Azrael could feel the sweat mixing with the crimson running down his back, and knew how pale he must appear. And still, the Almighty appeared vexed, thirsty for someone screaming, pleading, and finding only apathy and silence.
The sixth was tossed onto the pile, a mangled pile of midnight plumage, clotted and shiny with blood. The ends were ratted, matted, long threads of flesh and the pinkness of muscles trailing off like tails. They spoke of a gruesome tale, of a dishonor that knew no bounds, and still, the Almighty found rage in the silence.
“And your soul shall be thrust down to the humans, reborn for countless centuries, doomed to be reborn and killed in horrific fashions for all of eternity,” He growled, the juvenile eyes narrowed. “Your punishment has been decided!”
The Angel of Death smiled gratefully. Fitting, he found this: the perfect punishment to suit his crime. “Thank you, Father.”
Tilting his head back, Azrael made no sound as the sword pierced his chest from behind, no whimper as the serrated, pointed tip broke through the flesh of his breast, thick and dripping with blood. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, tangled in long lashes before spilling over pale cheeks, dripping from his soft chin, and dropping down onto the point of the blade.
And as the blood began to fill his throat, his mouth, he whispered one name, one apology, both thick with his own life, his own soul. And on the wings before him, on the blood pouring onto the pristine floor beneath him, he vowed to –
Kazu shot up in bed, panting and trembling as the ends of his dream fell away. Ebony tendrils of hair were thick with his own sweat, his naked chest glittering with it as if all the droplets were diamonds lounging beneath the moonlight, and his heart was hammering without abandon while encased in the tight prison of his thin breast.
Another nightmare. He peered over at the bright LCD display of his clock, noting he had been sleeping for little over an hour, but feeling more like a century, maybe two. This was perhaps the worst, the most vivid, the most real, to the point that he had really felt like Azrael, this Angel of Death who he understood no more than he did nuclear science.
Damn. This needed to stop, these dreams, these sleepless nights.
A hand slipped out from the covers, and it took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t one of his own fine and delicate ones by the lack colored polish painted across the fingernails. Rusted ends of hair were strewn across the pillow beside his own, and the glitter of a half-open eye was barely seen.
“You ‘kay?”
Kazu nodded slowly, the ends of his dark hair rubbing against the top of his back as he gained control of his tremors enough to lie down beside Kyosuke. He found the other’s arm snaking around his slim waist, tugging him closer to the beckoning warmth that the other just naturally gave him. He buried his face down beneath his chin, and finding this to be a comfortable position, felt his lips curl upwards.
He might not have understood Azrael, but he could easily comprehend this, this blissful feeling of completion as he lied down beside Kyosuke, the only person who always seemed to soothe the nagging feeling that lingered in the back of his mind. He wondered if he should describe the dream to Kyo, wondered if he should tell him all the intricate details of it while it was new, clean, fresh in mind.
But Kazu could tell the other was already back asleep, and he wouldn’t dare to wake him for something that was simply a dream. Palmers still drawn up in a smile, he pressed a soft kiss to the other’s throat, a light little thing, and before he knew what he was doing, he had whispered, “I’m sorry,” though he wasn’t sure exactly why he was. For waking him up maybe? But that didn’t seem right, didn’t seem big enough.
Kazu shook it off, discarding the dream, the words, the questions, and simply fell back asleep, wrapped in the other’s arms. He could worry about it tomorrow.
And tomorrow, Kazu decided, he would get Kyosuke a flower.
The End
Marble and Morphine
“Like your shadow
I will haunt you
Do you remember?
I said to you
'Love is a mountain
But harder to climb.
It should be forever
But love is unkind
To me.
Don't let me down.'
And you let me down.”
~ Gary Numan, “The Seed of a Lie”
Everyone has a single idea of it, of how it functions and is set into motion, but only we know the absolute truth, the ones forced to take the final seat and watch unabashed.
The crossover is as if climbing the side of a proud mountain, riddled and eroded with time and wear. There are the footholds, the ridges for our battered hands to slip into, to propel us to the summit and our final goal. Sometimes the landscapes were smooth as if just sanded, and other times they were riddled and pleading to be taken.
Today, Kazu was a polished marble, smooth, hard, impenetrable.
He has not been well, my human counterpart. Most cannot see his illness, his weariness, for he never truly wishes them to. I have noted him to be quite the actor, when the mood suits him, when the guilt is too much for even him to bear. You see he has a problem with it, with the burden of the blame on him. If there were a hundred of him, perhaps he could deal, for isn’t that his problem really? That he sets himself in too many directions at once and can never devote himself completely to one person?
It is simple to point a finger and scream. It is easy to yell and hit and claim what a “whore” he may be.
It is near impossible to understand.
He never wishes to hurt anyone. It is never a question of the acts that lie between the sheets. It is simply a matter of the heart. It is the acknowledgement that he is beautiful, he is kind, he is loving and worthy of such love, when he had been told for the betterment of his life he was flawed, a hated thing worthy of such only.
“I am so tired.”
His bathroom houses so many memories. The shower is where he crawled to after the scarring incident with Gremory, something I am not completely comfortable with yet. He has sat below the sink and sobbed until he vomited over Freyr a hundred times over. He sat with Kyosuke and cleaned the wound in his hand, while explaining how sorry he was.
And yet, he went here now, sitting beneath that sink once more, the knife that formed scars on his back, in his soul, clutched in white-knuckled hands. Gremory wasn’t home at the moment; I believe he went to gather some food for the barren apartment. He cares for my Kazu perhaps more than anyone ever has. This was a calming thought, even with my need to scream at the moment.
“I really am the Angel of Death, aren’t I? Apparently, I’m pretty fucking good at it, too.”
He was referring to Cade and Freyr. I had no comforting words for those cases, other than Kazu never was vindictive, never was simply out for the conquest and destruction for either of these men. He loved them both, as they loved him, but he could never do what they wished. It is not in his psychological make-up, and as a result, both of them have suffered beyond what any normal person should ever have to.
And for that, Kazu had taken a seat on this bathroom floor.
Kazu, ple—
But he was soothing in his insanity. Most, I have found, are screaming lunatics which wish to take the world down with them. If they must suffer, then so must everyone else in all of existence. Kazu, however, wishes nothing more than to fade into the background at the risk of hurting someone else.
A short quick pain for the others rather than the drawn out dramatic fanfare that has accompanied him thus far was all he requested. He knew the pain of which he will induce on both Gremory and Kyosuke, but they would be over it in time. It may take several days, perhaps weeks, but they will go on. And Freyr and Cade should both be pleased.
What he could not realize is the totality of how wrong he was. At least on every aspect other than the Freyr one; I was pretty certain that he wanted to see Kazu’s insides strewn across every room of this apartment.
Kazu, li—
And he hushed me again, weighing the blade against one blue-lined wrist. He stared at the tender area, entranced, rolling over images of his skin splitting, of the blood bubbling forth, of painting the tiles with it. And he let me taste them all.
I wanted to scream at him, my hands slamming at his walls. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t! If he succeeded…Nathanael and I would be separated once again. And who knows when, if I would ever find him again.
And I fear for Nathanael’s stability if I am gone. And for anyone Nathanael may know. I am not as blind to his afflictions as it may seem I am.
You have to list—
But he’s lost to his own delusions.
“I am a disease, a cancer. I taint and twist all that I touch. I destroy and corrupt and fuck it all up.”
I was always surprised that Kyosuke or Gremory didn’t feel his anguish more than they did. Kyosuke knew more than the Guide did, and that is understandable; Gremory was his morphine, and he felt nothing but the simple pleasures of the moment within his presence. However, that delusion was destroyed that is now gone with the Cade issue. Kyosuke reminded him of Freyr, always have and always shall. And with the thought of Freyr, comes the guilt once more, that unbearable, damning weight upon his shoulders.
“Why? Why do I do this to everyone? How can I hurt everyone like this and not even mean to? How much longer until it’s Grem or Kyo? If….if I ever…
“I could never forgive myself.”
The world shut itself in black as he closed his eyes, as he wrapped ethereal arms around me. “I am sorry about Nathanael, Azrael. I am. I hope you understand one day. You have all of eternity to find him again; I just have this one life.”
Have you ever attempted to find one person in a population of six billion? I inquired with a venomous hiss, but he heard me not, having already shut me out. I wanted to cry, and if I had eyes that were my own I would have; after all that I had done to find my Nathanael, and only to lose him again.
He was still that polished marble. Damn!
Kazu was crying as he pressed the blade against supple flesh, pliable skin that split with a line of perfect, papercut quality. I, we, watched in mutual fascination as blood rushed in a marathon to meet the air, to turn pale tiles a stained crimson with its darkened kiss. He made a small noise of pain in the back of his throat, a soft whine barely audible in the little room. I was screaming at him to stop, pleading for the love of Nathanael and the sanity of Kyosuke and the well-being of Gremory. I was the voice of reason in a chaos that sounded so much sweeter than reality.
He slashed the other wrist.
I clawed at the walls, pounding on them like an insolent child. I screeched inside of his head. I wept.
He ignored me, drawing in his blood against the floor. Big sweeping letters.
I’m sorry.
He was dizzy now, the world hazy around the edges as his heart sounded in his ears, deafening. I was painfully aware of everything, even as he was fading away. Would I just ride away on the tide, torn in an undertow of everything I held dear? Would it matter?
I heard the front door open, heard a familiar voice call out my counterpart’s name. Kazu gathered himself up enough to quiet his crying, pushing himself against the back of the bathtub with a trail of brilliant scarlet against the floor, whining like a maimed animal.
And the name was called again, and Kazu was smooth as marble, and the door opened.
Pale eyes stared up guiltily at those black eyes, black eyes that filled the world. Kazu opened his mouth to speak, to find some words to say, even as he dropped that knife with a quiet clatter onto the floor.
“I’m sorry…”
But the Guide wasn’t listening; as I said before, he was a good man, caring far too much for my counterpart to be mad at him in this critical moment. He snatched two towels from the wall and crouched down beside my Kazu and set to work, just as he, as we, pass out.
A few days later saw us at a familiar door in a familiar home not of our own design. I was warmly enveloped in Kazu’s doubt, in his nerves that sparked a million different thoughts, a hundred different excuses to turn and walk away. His marble had edged away enough for me to slip the tips of my fingers through, but little more.
Gremory, when Kazu had woken up, had sat and said nothing for the longest of times. Even I was a bit afraid of his silence, of his expression as he rubbed that tattoo on his hand, unable to look at his beloved. And I could see that the Guide had wanted to say so much, but could not find the words to aid him, so remained quiet.
“I…I’m sorry, Grem, but can I ex--”
He held up his hand, finally laying oil-spill eyes on us. He was hurt, something I was not surprised of; I was worried about Kyosuke and how he would feel when this was all discovered. Would he have that same expression of inadequacy, of failure, of disappointment, of pain and near loss, of an anger barely subdued?
Leaning forward, he pressed his satin lips to Kazu’s forehead, though it was apparent he did not want to; rage was a sweet thing that he kept in check, though I was unable to tell if it was fury at himself or at my counterpart. But I knew, as did Kazu, that his will to show Kazu the love that he still held for him would overturn all the other misgivings he currently held.
“Go. Make your peace, because all you’re doing is driving yourself crazy here,” he stated. The need to argue his own decision was apparent in his midnight eyes, but he bit back his tongue; letting Kazu go alone to make amends was the last thing he wanted to do, but the alternative seemed like an even more cruel fate. And Gremory would risk everything for a healthy Kazu.
So, now we stand before this door, the flat of Kazu’s hand against the wood. He called to mind what lurked beneath: the rampant run of plants, the bed, the chair, the sleeping body, and Kazu wanted to run again. I could see the bandages peeking free from the sleeve of his coat, a suede piece that is lined with fur. And Kazu was crying behind his eyes, in a place where only I could see, whimpering like a five-year-old. I could console him no longer, and my arms were closed to him, no solace offered.
After finding no safe haven with me, he dropped his hand to the knob and pushed open the door. I was silent, watching as he shuffled in, clad in the clothes of a man for this special occasion. The room was as he imagined it would be, overrun with green, sunlight drifting in, and the tension more thick than anything he could have imagined. And all of his own design.
Light, hesitant footsteps carried him to the bed, a bed where a still form lingered beneath a thin blanket. Kneeling down beside it, he exerted an effort to be as far away from the plants as much as one possibly could. I was as afraid as Kazu was, fearing the owner of the room would send his charges after us and tear us limb from limb.
“I can’t do it,” Kazu murmured. “I can’t. Not anymore. Can’t. I can’t, I can’t, Ican’tIcan’tIcan’tIcan’t!”
He was sobbing already, laying his forehead onto his knees as he cried, the shower of ebony hair shielding us. I was growing afraid, afraid Kazu would break and rip over the bandages and the stitches that Gremory had lovingly placed beneath, but I was in luck that Kazu was riddled with footholds. I could get through if I had to.
His, our, eyes lashed out to where the other lay, suddenly hard, harder than they had ever been. He grabbed the edge of his sleeve, hissing through clenched teeth as he tugged it up. “I can’t keep doing this to myself, Freyr. I’m killing myself over you and the guilt I feel and I can’t anymore. I am literally dying. And you may think I deserve it, but I don’t.”
He dropped the sleeve. How I wish Freyr could actually hear this, but as I thought of it, that might not be the most beneficial path. Freyr probably would not have allowed him to get two words past his full lips before he tore them completely off. I knew the rage of a betrayed lover; I knew how it seared, it scarred.
“Grem… He told me I have to forgive myself, because I’m not just punishing myself, but him and Kyosuke, too, and I can’t hurt Kyosuke. Can’t.” He closed his eyes, one hand rubbing at his eyes, at his cheeks. “I’m sorry for what’s happened, Freyr, so very sorry. But that’s in the past, and I have a future I have to look forward to, people to live for, and I couldn’t do it until I saw you, and until I forgave myself. I can’t live like this anymore.”
Leaning forward, he brushed hair back from the other’s forehead, pressing his pliable lips against the flesh there. Even as he broke his heart, I could feel him mending it, sewing it together once more, tighter, solid. “I love you, Freyr. I always will, until the day I die. And I’m sorry. But…
“I forgive myself, too.”
He shifted on the floor, crawling to his feet as he looked down at the sleeping other who had never changed expression. “Goodbye, Freyr.”
I relaxed myself as Kazu turned and walked out, the soft footfalls echoing in my, our, senses again. Kazu had regained pieces of his stability the further he drifted from the room, and ultimately, from the Manor. I shed my support on Kazu as well as I could, showed him the comfort and the approval I felt, but he shunned me politely.
“I only did,” he whispered, “what I should have done all along.”
And I agreed, leaving us to both walk in silence.
Once we were home, he realized the morphine was no longer needed. Rose-colored glasses were shed for simple grateful kisses upon velvet lips, and lithe fingers that slid through ashen hair.
I took my leave and let them be, busying myself with thoughts of my Nathanael in the now peaceful back-end corner of Kazu’s mind.
The End
“I'm giving in to you
Take me under
I'm giving in to you
I'm dying tonight
I'm giving in to you.”
~ Adema, “Giving In”
Chapter 2
Hands curled around the stand as he tugged it closer, lips parted and notes flickering through in forms of words memorized after being written down during late nights and coffee stains on the paper. The crowd cried out, a living entity, hands raised as if to touch him, or heaven, or the song that hung so desperately in the air, and he closed his eye to it. They were lively tonight, loud and happy, and that made this so much easier, forcing the nerves away to some deep rooted piece of himself where he worried no longer for it.
“Angels wrapped in barbed wire, I never stop this dizzying dance. Your kisses burn, fire, and we’re cruel, so damn cruel!”
His fingers were splayed in front of him, arm rising as he carried that note higher. He felt tight inside his flesh, dying to shed the shell and emerge as something bigger. Passion coursed through him, glad to lose himself in the music, worries no more than melodramatic daydreams with completion in sight.
“And I wanted to tell you this; I wanted to scream to you, but you’re so damn cruel!”
He wrapped both hands back around that mic stand, and the sweat running down his cheeks from the million watt lights that circled them was ignored. The final four lines were sung out, cried and free from broken lips as he swayed on his feet, soaking in his element as people screamed for him, for them all. Somewhere, he heard the final riff, the ending drum beat, cutting through his mental state like a needle through fabric. He stumbled a few steps back, bowing, He opened that one chocolate eye, and he could see the wash of Az’s hair in the crowd, the friendly smile of Holden. Bending over, he picked up a plastic water bottle down by his feet, waved to the crowd, and walked offstage.
There really wasn't much to "backstage", just a cardtable with some water, a fan, dirty light from overhead flickering flourescents, and a place for their instrument cases. Without a glance, he tossed his bottle into a garbage can that lurked in the corner and began to pack up his guitar in the velvet lined, sticker covered case. Drawing it close with a snap, the corners of his lips curled up, lighting up the visible portions of his face that, those not covered by his hair. He was satisfied with the performance; it had been one of their best in awhile, and dragging out new material seemed to have done the trick.
"Great show," he said, curling his fingers around the plastic handle of the case and hefting it up. "Don't forget we have practice tomorrow at three-fifteen, 'kay?"
Obligatory speech, short as it was, finished, he nodded, laughing, to everyone and ducked back out on stage. Lights had been turned back on, and the crowd was milling about, talking while prerecorded radio music filtered through speakers in the ceiling.
Author: Chauni
Email: asukalangley2nd@yahoo.com
Website: geocities.com/asukalangley2nd/ "Angelic Demon"
Disclaimer: Do not own the characters; they belong to the wonderfully talented Kelly, maker of "Arcana". Read it. Now.
Notes: I've written something I'm proud of! Yay! I don't know how long this is going to be, but I have ideas, nice little things. I'd like to take a moment to dedicate this to Sam (Happy belated B-day!), to Ryn (thanks for always supporting me), to PC (you feed my writing ego FAR too much ::smiles::), and finally, to Kelly (thank you for all your hard work on the comic! ::Smiles::)
Incubus
"Touching you makes me feel alive;
Touching you makes me die inside."
~ Jay Gordon, "Slept So Long
The night hung still with the frigid breath of wind nymphs, slicing through spaces fingers could never hope to see. Darkness raped streetlamps, leaving them hollow and black, and even the Goddess Moon refused to show her pallid visage. No one lingered on street corners; no one stumbled free from college bars and bass-filled nightclubs. Even the strays had enough sense to find shelter on such a powerful hour, and not even their glowing oculars peered from the shadows.
But he hadn’t paid attention to the signs, had he? He had chosen to turn a blind eye to them all, to all the nuances and whispers that lingered in some private portion of an inner core, and had voted to take the long walk home, while sending the equipment on with Sloane. He would be fine, he vowed; he would see them in an hour, pink cheeked and bushy tailed.
“Like a dog,” Az had said, and that was simply met with a glare and a growl.
Now, though, he regretted such promises, as his cheek was slammed against the unyielding bricks and the world slid in and out on a dim haze. He felt the tender flesh of his lip split, caught between his chin and the alley wall and smearing into all the crooks of mortar. The caught arm was jerked higher, and he could felt the weight straining, the bones grinding and creaking as he whimpered somewhere in the back of his grating throat. His free arm was captured between the building and his body, and everything had been so strategically placed that he wanted to lose consciousness just so he wouldn’t have to think of how ridiculously stupid he had been to be caught in the first place.
Hot breath, thick with death, washed across his ear, a the moist tip of a tongue soon to follow. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it isn’t smart to go out alone at night, Caine?”
The singer’s lips move for a moment, but nothing emerges aside from a new torrent of blood. Some other dimension away, he felt the hard rounded brunt of a knee get shoved between his legs and his one brown eye widened.
But the next blow never happened, and his belt buckle was left untouched, much to his immense pleasure. That thrill was short lived once he realized that something as simple as that was hardly an end to his current situation as he felt the wall pull away and crash back again.
“You have kept him from me for too long, and this is where it ends.” Another breath, another tantalizing lick. “Not only will I get him, but you’re going to be the one to bring him to me. How do you like that? Enough of a twist for you or almost borderline cliche?”
His good eye slammed shut and he wished this was some nightmare, begged for someone to come save him, pleaded for some holy fire to strike this asshole dead.
Instead, all he felt were two bitter pricks at his neck, and the sound of his own desire slipping from his throat.
Caine stumbled into his room sometime after three, bleeding, broken. He didn’t remember hitting the bed, or the way the air hung, thick with his own spent need, but he didn’t care. It was some cruel nightmare, had to be, because in the morning, all signs of such an attack were gone.
“Wake up! Come on, wake up already!”
The bed moved like a storm-cursed ocean, and burrowing his face down into one pillow and covering the top of his head with the other did no good. Sunlight kissed his flesh in a lashing as he heard the curtains yanked open with a vengeance and more bouncing of the bed ensued.
“You sleep like the dead, Caine! Don‘t you have a pop quiz, or band practice, or something?”
Blankets were tugged up over his head, another sure fire sign of defiance as he burrowed down deeper into the sanctity sheets offered. The voice was familiar, happy, sunny, so sweet and powerful, and one that needed to be utterly ignored for the sake of sleep.
“This will be sure to get him.” Another voice, this one more excited, higher, feminine, and right beside his ear. “Hey, Caine, look! My puppy’s in your room!”
The speed at which he rose from his comfortable spot locked inside bedding was astounding, and had to, Holden and Az were sure, break some sort of record somewhere. The mocha iris turned wide and frantically searched, shimmering in the daylight as his trained dark hair fell over the scar that sat adjacent. White knuckles wrapped themselves in the sheets beneath him and finally, coming up empty with no hellhounds in sight, he relaxed and turned his burning eye towards the giggling duo.
“Glad you’re so amused.,” he growled, sweeping his feet free from the bed, glad he had passed out on the bed with his pants on. His shirt, on the other hand, was another story, and scanning the floor, he brought up nothing. Oh, well, he figured, waving a mental hand; he’d find it later. Feet never leaving the carpet, he shuffled to the bathroom with an exaggerated slowness due to a loathing of mornings…or at least this one.
“It’s not our fault you’re being so lazy!” Strawberry hair swam into view as he regarded his reflection in the bathroom, fingers straightening a few errant scarlet strands. “Your alarm went off three times!”
Holden peered in behind his shoulder, talking more to the woman than to the subject of the conversation. “He didn’t come home until really late last night, you know. And he sounded really tired, just sort of stumbling towards the bed. I could hear him from my room!”
“Ooooh!” Azriel reached over and blindly poked Caine’s smooth cheek. “I thought you were coming straight home after the set. Did you happen to run into Kis-”
“No, okay!” He jerked his face away, before ushering them from the bathroom, one hand on each back. “God, I just woke up, you harpies! Give me a second to myself, will ya?”
The soft click of the lock sliding into place echoed through the room for a moment, and he leaned against the cheap wood beneath the plastic hooks were they draped their robes. His eye darkened, then slammed shut as fingernails scratched one layer of eggshell pain from the wood of the door. The nightmare -was that all? - slammed into his consciousness with all the weight of Armedgeddon, and all the power to send his world shattering apart.
“No…nonononononono!”
He was afraid to look into the mirror, afraid to breath, afraid to see the evidence he willed away, but he forced himself to meet a gaze with that reflection. Pushing himself from the door, he crossed the distance, only to steady himself against the sink as he stared into the one brown eye. Flushed in the bones in the high rounds of his cheeks, but the same old Caine.
The sigh ran out with a flood of relief. Same ol’ Caine, same ol’ human Caine.
Class rolled by with the speed of a dying man, and with an idle eye, Caine watched the time tick past on the round metal clocks he remembered from high. The professor was babbling on about the importance of iamb pentameters, or something, and he was content to listen with half an ear. Holden was in a class two doors down and he figured anything being taught in this school had to be better than the drivel he was listening to now.
Sloane kicked him from the row beside him, mouthing, “Make your boredom anymore obvious and the teacher will kill you.”
Caine waved a hand before he grabbed the mechanical pencil that teetered dangerously close to the edge of his desk. Fine, fine, he’d look interested; maybe drawing would help. His thumb pushed down on the black eraser, lead peeking out, before opening his notebook and began drawing lines. One curve here, one straight one here…were those eyes?
The world faded to white noise, the teacher’s drone becoming soft and almost lulling. He drew his bottom lip in between his teeth, gnawing on it as his hand slipped around the paper, growing faster with each second, lines filling, colored, shadowed. Faces grew from nothingness, art taking life.
When the universe came crashing back down, he was staring into the face of Vincent, his open mouth extending towards his own ecstatic face, teeth flashing in the most promising of fas-
He slammed his notebook shut, eyes widening as he watched the class gather their items and move towards the door.
“You seem out of it today,” Sloane commented, gathering his books onto a notebook littered with doodles and letters, notes peaking out from all sides. He gave his vocalist a sidelong glance out of the corner of his glasses. “Are you okay?”
“Hm?” He was gathering his own items with a speed he didn’t believe he possessed, slapping them into the crook of his arm and cradling them against his chest. He wondered if the other could see the confusion etched into his skin, if he could hear his heart thudding and threatening to burst through his flesh and across the room. “Me? Just tired. Didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Don’t forget the show tomorrow,” he said, knowing that the other wouldn’t, but finding some sort of need to mention it anyway; call it small talk, if you will. He began heading towards the door, free hand pushing the glasses up the slim bridge of his nose.
Caine nodded, hair bouncing as he moved in quick repitition. He wanted to go home, wanted to lock himself in his room and forget all of this, all of these little incidences and abnormalities. Concerts seemed a distant fantasy lingering on some mist coated isle, dreams he didn‘t want to dwell on. However, obligations did offer blessed moments of pure reprise, and he couldn’t change it now, so he simply nodded before slipping out the door, much to the following cries of his friend, who pleaded with him to wait up.
The sun had been devoured by the hungry horizon several hours ago, and another night was in full bloom, black rose against the sky. No moon proved her place again this night, and the darkness swallowed the labored panting that echoed in the smallish room.
When the single brown iris was suddenly visible in the room, white threaded through with sporadic red, it rolled around franticly searching for something or someone in the shadows. His narrow chest hitched, breath caught and slamming against lungs that had ceased to function correctly some time ago, some time while he slept. One foot was protruding from the protective layer of blankets, and quickly, he tucked it back in with a small frown as he sat up on his elbows.
A blind hand found the lamp on the nightstand beside his bed and turned it on with practiced ease. At first, the crash of illumination across his eye was enough to force a momentary blindness before colors and shapes came back into view. Solids formed on walls and in corners, shadows hiding away to the secret places they lurked when radiance came near.
Caine sighed, before his hand slid across the naked plane of his chest. Comfort forced him to sleep in nothing but shorts, and that he did with an eagerness. His back rested against the wooden headboard, feeling his spine rest against his as he looked down to the hand that lay across his lap, atop starched blankets.
Blood, so dark it looked rusted and black, covered the flat of his palm, diving into the predicting lines of life and love with a need to conquer, to dominate, to control. It was carved into every crack, every crater, thick beneath his fingernails and across his callouses.
His wide, quivering eye snaked slowly down, down across the flat length of his chest as he realized it wasn't sweat that trickled down in heated rivers. He was afraid of what he would see, was afraid of the four ragged cuts across his chest, of the blood welling to kiss the air and dribble in streamish waterfalls down over the tightness of his abdomen.
The marks screamed back at him, offensive and alluring all in one bout. Thinking slowly came to a halt as he trailed one coated finger across one of the rivers and brought it to his mouth, arm trembling. Once the liquid danced along his tongue, his mouth was on fire, his mind was numb, and his body ached for another taste, which he gladly gave as he licked each finger clean, lips forming a word over and over again as he did.
"...Vincent..."
Morning would come soon, igniting the shadows with a wanton glee, and this would be another lazy dream, at least until he spied his chest.
But even that might lose importance as the sun burned high among the clouds that next day.
Vocals echoed throughout the writhing room, pumped full of high watt fuel and a bass that slid up calves like electric fingers. It was soothing, the grating female voice as she cried out about lovers leaving and brakes of cars. Lennon, I think the band name was, but I never really kept track of the female side of the music business; however, this I could enjoy, leaking with an emotion that is far from forced.
I stayed near the bar as the place turned into a snake, moving, slow, people offering their souls to some musical deity, and I was more than content. I never fooled myself into thinking that I could actually dance, and the only reason I came to places like this was for the occasional good margarita and the atmosphere. Sometimes, a person would catch my eye, but I was never one to follow through on a piece of flesh that everyone seemed to flock around like harpies. Tonight it appeared to be some statuesque “woman” in a pleather skirt and a poet’s shirt, held tight with a dark corset. I use the word “woman” loosely, considering that from my vantage point as “she” pulled black hair away from her smooth face, I could tell that whatever man would be taking her would discover her lack of anatomy up top, and something even more drastic down below.
It was enough to bring a little laugh to my lips, small enough to be taken by the wave of a new song, something about suns and oceans, and swallowed completely. I tapped the salty rim of my glass as the bartender walked by, and I was already heady. Tonight was an easy night, a convincing one that might yet make me believe my life was beyond this small town and the empty bed that called me homeward. I felt restless, had for awhile now, and chalked it up to post-teenage angst; I wanted out, wanted to meet someone and be out of this little town with its little people and little ideas.
The margarita was kindly refilled, and I dropped the money on the damp surface beside little plastic swords and a cup of olives. The salt was merciful on my tongue, cool and sharp, before the choppy drink slid past the threshold of my lips. My eyes, brown before he got a hold of me, swept the room, idly lighting upon fishnet clad arms and vinyl swaying hips.
Boring.
My teeth found a larger chunk of alcohol-laden ice and ground it down, the sharp tequila swarming across my tongue and wrinkling my nose. I could have done without that, really, and I felt my features twist a little more before I felt someone staring at me. It sounds generic, now, but I couldn’t describe it in anymore detail than that, than someone bypassing bone, flesh, and muscle and peering directly into my core.
I hate to admit I was stunned that he didn’t have his own set of followers fawning over his every move like the drag wonder back there, but who was I to complain? His eyes were the purest green, chartreuse as I heard a color like that described in a book once, and they were blatantly discarding all my outer layers and laying me bare under their power.
Had this happened ages ago, he might have been surprised, even amazed. However, if life had taught him anything with its pathetically cruel and mocking tales, it was that abandonment was an agonizing circle that never ceased its karmic ways and always spun around to the center once more.
The scarlet river was spread out across the tips of his boots and disinterested eyes attached themselves at the patterns that spread like constellations against the black leather. It was almost artistic, almost appearing to be laid with great care in its disarray and hurried speckles like some post-modernist painter with "an enlightened existence". His foot lifted and he rubbed it off on the calf of his opposite leg, wanting to wipe the burn from his line of sight and his mind.
His words had all been stolen from him, ripped from his lips before they could even be dreamed, and the idea of such was only beaten in more with the constant view of that crimson stained back. It almost seemed to stare back at him with that gaping wound that resembled a drunken eye, and it disturbed him more than all the sights of his previous life, God's Little Bitch. He hated it, hated each ripple of flesh that had been burnt to a nauseating black around the edges, leaving a collagulating scent to shift in the air. He hated the way the sky sat mocking him, low enough to touch and gray enough to lose himself in. He hated the frozen moments he as he was rooted there, hands dangling at his sides as the drops of scarlet clung loosely to each digit before losing their fight for leverage and tumbled to the ground, marring the dull gleam of his boot once more.
The tips of his hair slid against the back of his torn shirt, tickling that special place between his shoulders, feeling no more soothing than as if ants had taken residence inside his flesh. His eyes closed, but the scene coaxed them open once more, and he found turning his face to the side worked better. Curious, he wondered how long he had remained there, frigid and stiff and so damn-
Obsidian tresses swayed back and forth as he shook his head, driving that train of thought away for the moment. He couldn't focus on that, not now, not with so much to accomplish and work for and obtain. He grit his teeth against the wordless wails that echoed inside his head, clamping his eyes shut against their mournful screams, and worked his best to calm his Other. It worked very little, if at all, and the only sign of progress were the somewhat coherent syllables that accompanied to cries.
Knowing his Other was a lost cause for the moment, he wrote him off and let the lashes pull back from the flat lagoons of his eyes. Completely at a loss for what to do, he realized he was dropping to his knees before any conscious request to do so had surfaced, which bothered him not at all. He could feel the tacky life smearing itself against the gashes his pants, a slick watery feel around his knees, the sharp edges of rocks digging in as well, mingling the two liquids together into one sweet mixture that trickled out beneath him.
He tugged the loose limbs into his lap, that ruined back laying across his thighs as he pulled hair away from closed, hollow eyes. He didn't want to look into them again, not for another breath; they were colder than any he had ever seen, chips of some false and shattered jewel. Instead, he was content to hold him, as if to bleed some of his life into the cooling flesh.
He didn't like the feel of him; the weight was wrong, the skill was off, the ideas were mingled and so incomprehensible! Eyes tightened as they shut, that voice inside his soul screaming once more in a voice so close and so different than his own. His Other needed to calm down, to shut up, shut up, shutupshutupshutupshutupjustshutthefuckupgoddamnitshutu-
He doubled over the pallid torso, his own body covering it completely as he found himself mewling towards the ground in a soft keening.
He tastes like smoke.
It was a completely idle thought, one that flickered on the dangerous edge of struggling coherence as the delicious muscle plunged past the dams of teeth and lips, raiding the cavern beneath with a savage need that he secretly relished in. The pleasurable sound coaxed by the sweet movements broke free before he could cease its crawl from the back of his esphosagus, and he could feel it filling the other's mouth with a tangible state that he craved to expierence as well.
I haven't tasted smoke in awhile.
The thoughts were a defense mechanism, he knew; a simple act on reality to keep him rooted in the now, rather than being snagged away on a tide that threatened to devour him completely. Somewhere, he felt the mouth atop of his being pulled away, and opening eyes lined in the soft smeared kohl, he saw the remnants of his own obsidan lipstick traced across the palmers of the other boy. In this moment, he wanted nothing more than to lean up and trail the tip of his tongue along their blurred marks, ridding him of the blemish.
How the Hell did this happen? I don't remember how we got here, don't remember...
The black nylon latching him back to the bed by thin wrists kept him from rising and attending to the lipstick; it had been fastened five minutes ago, makeshift and easy, taken from his left thigh. He growled his displeasure at denial, raising glaciers to the other's foreign eyes, before he felt a hand slip behind his mass of ebony locks and pull free the two sticks that had been shoved through his hair to keep the bun in place. The surreal feeling of hair slipping across the smooth rounded planes of his shoulders struck his mind, and content for the moment, he fell back onto the pillows.
Maybe the wine was stronger than I thought. Maybe I had more than I...
The cool calloused hand slid along his outer left thigh, destroying the rest of that thought before it could ever breathe it's initial air, and his hips moved upon the bed, pressing up towards heaven. The corset that had been tied so agonizingly tightly around his midsection was fingered with his companion's free hand, unknotting the leather straps that held it in place over the shimmering satin dress he had chosen for the evening, all their customary ebony black, all with a slight gothic flair to them, be it the embroidery etched into the cool planes of leather on the corset, or the cut of the ankle-brushing dress.
When was... when was the last time...?
He had been so proud of himself this evening over the way he had looked, cut and molded straight from the fluttering pages of some gothic publication. Would he have come home alone if he had not been such a painstakingly perfectionist? Would he have had another lonely insomnia-laden evening as ignorant hours flickered by on their own accord? Teeth sliced through his consciousness as they clamped down along the jugular, tongue playing against the flesh with a quick flicker, and again, he struggled against the thin bounds that secured him.
Feels so familar...
But how many other nights had he teased the power game? How many other different items had been wound around his petite wrists and fashionable ankles, fastening him in positions that seemed little more than a fantasy as he viewed back on them during his late waking nights?
Fingers slipped over the final ridge of his thigh, brushing against the lace garter that had clasped the nylons and held their seams straight. The dams broke, rushing scarlet to his cheeks as he turned his face away, strands splayed against his features and shadowing his eyes. Muscles rippled in his neck, in his shoulders, tightening the closer to the center the other got.
This is it; do or die.
A spike through the consciousness, violet and consuming, announced his decision, and hips thrust into the air as lips parted and made a familair call.
"I didn't know girls were coming with these nowadays."
The flat of one foot found the down-filled comforter beneath him and pushed himself up into the hand that grasped his core, another low sound pouring like water from his lips. Fingers twitched as he turned back to the other, pupils wide, deep, endless while he stared up at the long hair, tips rusted crimson. His voice cracked as he whispered the name that stained his palmers in kisses, rolling it across his thick tongue with quiet contentment.
Need this...
The corset, once untied, parted and fell open onto the bed, and arching his back, it was pulled away to be tossed onto the floor. The black embracing shirt that had lurked beneath was torn away with minimal strength, meeting the same fate upon the floor as the other article seconds later. The final outward piece of clothing, the skirt, was pushed far up to his hips, revealing that ebony garter and another bikini-cut panties.
The lips inside his thigh brought coherent thought to an immediate halt.
His lips are... nnn, his breath is so fucking warm!
Tugging on the restraints only brought the sound of the headboard creaking dangerously, but instinct had kicked mercilessly in. His fingers itched to feel that hair clenched within one tightened fist, hungered to devour that mouth and all the Ambrosia that lay beneath. His thighs trembled with want, a feeling that only multiplied as that final barrier of clothing was torn away, all items meeting a discarded destiny on the carpet.
The scent clung with a silent desperation to the vinyl and soft planes of flesh making up the length of his neck. It was strong, undeniable with its musky nature, too powerful to be female, lingering with a carnal knowledge, a primal feel. Damp inside his hair, ebony locks tangled from ten sweet digits thrust into the depths for the better half of four hours, it hung around him, intoxicating, addictive, mesmerizing. Upon trailing his tongue along the thin length of palmers still carrying faint traces of crimson lipstick, it filled his senses once more, curling around his mind like a sweet serpent, squeezing.
If he could have purred, he would have.
Two hours past midnight had come and gone, and now it lurked dangerously between that and the following hour, the LCD bitter glare crying out it's distaste in the shadows. The naked pads of his feet whispered past, the stilletto heels clicking together as he clasped them in his left hand, and with the free hand he possessed, he flipped the clock face down. He could feel the contours of his own face, stretching into the lazy content grin he had been tasting for hours now, ghost hands still crawling over his arms, trailing teeth along inner thighs.
Such a perfect night!
Fixing the crease in the vinyl mini-skirt he had chosen for the evening, he pushed up to the balls of his petite feet, imaginary heels, and made his way to his bedroom, humming. He imagined his vision in the mirror, kohl smudged around his eyes, masscara marks along the tops of his cheeks, glitter splashed along the top of his naked chest until the midnight lace shirt took over. One thigh-clasping dark nylon had a run in it, had heard it so perfectly as the other boy had so eagerly attacked him, and he wanted to be subjected to it every night for as long as he drew breath.
The narrow hips swayed to the music in his head, the sounds that still reverberating inside his mind. The powered eyelids fluttered downward as he pushed the door to his room open with of those dancing body parts, and mouth moving unconciously, he lipped the words to songs from earlier.
It didn't strike him as odd until the thin layers of skin that covered his eyes exploded in red did he realize that something just wasn't...right.
"My... God..."
The shoes slipped from numb fingers, clattering to the floor as the quiet voice slipped like dying breath across his ears. One eye slowly opened, peeling away from speckled ice, and all he could see was his neat room showered in light from above and the pale image of his mother sitting on the bed, robe askew, hair tangled from restless sleep. Breath refused to come, locked tight in the center of his throat, and if he could have found the words to say, even then, he was sure they would not be slipping forth.
"Wh-what are you wearing?"
He wished his mother could not see the marks that lined his neck, those bruising coin shaped bites that he had squirmed under before returning the gracious favor. Fingers sought refuge in front of him, occuping themselves by playing with the hem of his skirt, and counting himself fortunate for the moment, he lowered his head in hopes of hair slipping forth to block damaging view.
"Mom, listen, plea-"
"Just...stop for a moment." The tender inside of her palm, riddled with love lines and life paths, rested against her forhead, the simple band of glaring gold on her bonding finger trembling and catching the light in the room. From his spot in the doorway, he could see her naked feet swishing back and forth, encased in nerves and confusion.
Silence was never his companion, and now, it threatened his sanity like any well trained enemy.
"Mother, le-"
"Quiet!" Her hand lowered, and she looked afraid, sitting atop the bed, comforter tangled up close to the cotton of her nightgown as it covered her thighs. The soft azure of her eyes, the one's he had so graciously inherited them from, reflected him a thousand times over in the deep ebony of the pupil's, and he could only stare at her for a heartbeat before turning his face away.
Shared honeyed breaths
Painted across palmers with cool mercury.
Can you realize
The marionette I have become?
Time's nimble fingers stroking wooden manipulated limbs,
And I kiss your name with flavored tongues.
Crawling up inside,
I will never ever leave.
After one intoxicating taste,
I can never ever leave.
Faith of an obliterated domain
Slipping away to a freedom unknown,
And under a mercury visage,
Consciousness fights for refuge.
With Metatron in my ear, I have never lost resolve
With the dusk riding on dreams, I have never lost you.
Placid lips awash in wine,
I will never ever leave.
Reborn on crumpled satin,
I can never ever leave.
Where the Styx meets Eden, I will be waiting.
Where the blood of Gabriel washes through splayed fingers,
There shall be my mound.
No one wants to be alone.
No one wants...
~~~~~~~
~Dedicated to my beloved Azzy~
Gone on a smirk and a whim
Completely synthesized,
Modernized,
And we all become one
Coporate machine,
Society's dream.
Release me from me.
I wanted to touch you
But they told me, "no".
So I destroyed the world
And reside inside a scream.
This isn't for you
Self-absorbed indulgence and a credit card answer for all.
This isn't for us
A pathetic ten minute facade
Of borrowed mockery and whispered shame.
Released,
I breathe,
New lungs of purchased time.
Freedom,
And you die,
Twitching on the glorified press release.
Nights enrapt in miles
An eternity of electronic gratification;
What is technology
But a vapid whore,
Forever dropping me to my knees?
Received,
I desire,
Frigid discarded acknowledgements.
Consumed,
And you reject
Frozen moments of random lying purification.
"Explosion discovers loathing"
Or so the violent ebony headlines claim
Palmers still blaze with parting words
And I loved you from that blessed heartbeat
That screamed my hatred for you.
Indulging,
I whispered,
Trailing canines along shuddering arteries.
Obliterated,
And you fell,
Nothing in a world running rampant with anything.
~~~~~
I never claimed to be a poet.
He lingered in the emotion, in the weightlessness of apathy, tongue lapping at the cool indifference of a million whispered comments stewing beside his ears. Marbled eyes reflected the confusion, the primal rage at ignorance, the desire to wreck and destroy the image inside kohl rims. Dozens, hundreds of lips moved in unison, hissing low words of damning ideals, threatening delicate balances pressed upon decades of work, of blood, of bone.
"No."
Stumbling away from the throng of black-clad bodies, freedom still tainting the edge of peripheral camera views like a common plague, fingers sought the confines of his hair, tightening, tearing. Tiers parted, screaming irises telling titles, declaring battles and driving wars, but no sound came forth, dead leaves sitting on rosened petals. Scarlet, like a letter, poured from the temples like communion, herding from eyes like a weeping sacred Mother.
"No."
Desperation beckoned, the hushed alto of a song fingering their conscious, nipping at the electrical gray, and the crowd turned as One. Step, pause, step, and It shuffled, glasses flaring in the rising dusk, fire bred across flatbed flesh. Whispers rose to screeching, bellowed beyond that 'til throats tore, 'til the ground was sprinkled with the bloody remains of syllables proclaimed and hung like clothing in still hair. Arms opened wide, It stood, acceptance just a mechanical step away, with just one step across a threshold of plastic limbs and faulty heavens sold in your local catalogued store.
"No."
And one footfall backwards was all it took...
One calculated step to be set free among the rocks...
And we swam in a fragile sweet self-delusion of silent peace until the tide receded and carried us home...
Author: Chauni
Email: Asukalangley2nd@yahoo.com
Website: geocities.com/asukalangley2nd/
Disclaimer: I own no characters from this fic; they all belong to the very talented Kelly, the creator of the Arcana universe! ::smiles::
Notes: Happy birthday, Kelly! ^-^ Such a milestone!! This is my gift to you! ::smiles:: I hope you enjoy, and have a wonderful special day!
Your Death. Your God.
Sometimes, the clarity comes, bright flashes of sanity that washes over me like basking sunlight fingertips caressing the cool embers behind my eyes. They're fleeting, rushed, too fast in a day-to-day madness of tormenting sights and sounds that just revolve like the maddening carousel, point A to point C, and back around again, and I grasp onto them with translucent fingers, watching with a cool expression of indifference, because I know they cannot stay, will never stay.
Not with what's coursing through my veins, they can't.
Time ceased to truly exist some while ago, a few weeks after The Night. I refuse to go into any more depth than that, really; it was simply a cruel event, one that I regret on many different levels, such as losing my chance at claiming what is rightfully mine, such as committing such acts against the pure alabaster flesh that tasted like Eden in the confines of my mouth, such as giving in, losing control, and relishing in every bleeding second of it. But ever since that Night, I have cherished the scent of him that lingers in the air from places he might have been, sought to trail my teeth across the tender marble of his chest, wanted to lick the sight of others from his golden eyes.
I need him, the one that got away. He was born to die.
I wonder if he would taste of another man now, for yes, I have seen him with that other human, touching, kissing, staring. Did that pathetic band member even realize the depth of what he has stepped into? Could he still sense the imprint I left in the warm cavern of his mouth, that possessive slash that I wanted lining every moist velvet wall beside his teeth? Does he know that he desires what is forever mine; does he know just exactly what the punishment is for coveting my property?
I feel my creator's form rather than hear him, sitting tall, prim and proper against the leather couch where I took him, muscles tight, chartreuse irises witnessing nothing other than my absolute will. It wasn't until the first wash of frigid nectar had slipped over my tongue so long ago that I realized I understood why he was so addicted to this feeling, to this control, to this primal desire, fingers driven down deep into the heart of all that moves, manipulating, controlling. There is a freedom in dominance, a release in commanding the world around me, in covering it in my whims and toying with it all at my desire.
It is just missing one final element, that little bent brass key.
No words pass through numb lips, but the shell comes over, kneeling down between the warm area lingering between my leather coated thighs, only to lay his cheek upon one. Ebony nails tangle in his endless mass of colorless tresses, and I picture him, the embodiment of all I desire, helpless with his amber lava lakes, his hands strung tight between bedposts, the length of his body open, torn, bleeding, an offering to his god.
An offering to me.
What is his humanity, his mortality, but a sacrifice worthy only for me?
Adonis, my soulless doll, how pretty you look, so delicious, so tasteful. If only there were more of you to devour, I might be sated for longer still. But by the voices that slip through the blue of my veins, I can feel the totality of my consumption, the nature of your existence now. Pet. Mine.
I can feel the bitter cool of the shell’s breath against my fingertips as they play across the pliable lips, pricked by the fangs lingering beneath. Can he taste my scent, I wonder. Does he desire the ecstasy-laden wash of crimson life over his tongue still, cascading down the velvet tubes of his throat in the same manner I do? Can he even comprehend what he is, what has transpired, what the world has allowed to happen?
How I miss you, Holden. This is but a tool to return you to my side, to right the wrongs of this life and reunite our tangled roads together, braiding our paths into one strong union. I wish you could see that, honestly.
But you will, soon. I just have to show you the correct way. I am your light, your ending, your beginning.
In dreams, it is said that death means not the path of demise, but of a new beginning.
Let me be your Death, my pet.
Liquid mercury slips through an uncurtained window, resting frigid palmers against the back of my hand as it lies buried in the freed silver locks,. Rolling my head to the side, cheek pressing against the scented leather of the chair I sit in, I peer at Her, pregnant, radiant in the sky. I hear the club that reigns some ways away, feel the beats as they pulse through my kidneys, my liver; the bass and the noise of the band you cheer for, long for invading my ears for a breath. I hear you clapping; I hear you say his name. I feel your comfort, and it brings the murmuring laughter bubbling from the back of my mouth, much more eloquent than the music that has claimed your fickle attention.
Sometimes, I can remember the me that once was, the me that could have been, like little postcards paged through in a child's scrapbook. I regard him with little more than a disinterested nod, the cool casual nature of a thing that should never have been, that could have been the powerful, the delighted, the Master. What a fool, clinging to the melodramatic nature of a human ideal, the knife that tears, the eyes that glaze so easily.
But he is perfected now, not a mere shepherd, but a God among the sheep.
I’m quick to my feet, pacing softly as the words drift like smoke past the barrier of my mouth, speaking to myself and the thing that cannot hear me, but simply just feels the need to do what I wish. He rises as well, even as I circle him, even as I fall close to his lips, even as his emerald swamps regard me with me a sweet nothing. I am assured his compliance in his lack of anything less.
“Now go. You know what you have to do.”
Your Death. Your God.
The end of need beacons me from just beyond the horizon.
Only a few more steps, and I shall be there, your hand in mine, you sweet life slipping from the corners of my mouth.
My destined, eternal pet.
The End
Author: Chauni
Email: Asukalangley2nd@yahoo.com
Website: geocities.com/asukalangley2nd/
Warnings: Language, implied homosexual relations, graphic dreams
Disclaimer: Ghost and Steve both belong to the amazing Poppy Z. Brite, and appear in "Lost Souls" and Wormword. I urge you all to read it if you have not yet!
Notes: I have planned for this to take place after my "Death of Children" piece and after the New York story in Wormwood (the name escapes me for now). I might string this and DoC together, creating a longer fic, which sounds like a strong option at the moment. I would like to have something with a stronger plot, but I do have ideas sitting in my head... Hmmm...
Inspirations and Thanks: Ryce-chan and Misty… Thank you Misty for making me read the book; you did something wonderful for me, and I don’t even think you realize it ^-^
Sanctuary
Thin and watery, it covered him like frozen love, complete and utter and shocking. It slid down the breastbone of his narrow chest, caught up in the trap of dark hair around his temples, and was softly tangled in the tender fur nestled between his long legs. He didn't mind the effect, the way it cooled in still air, the way it bathed his lips and tasted of salt and hidden natural things, the way it slammed into his head that he was alive, alive and sitting in a rented room off some whore of a road.
The images clung to his retinas, rewinding and playing in a repeated, broken record fashion as his black lashes met his cheeks. The torn thighs spread wide open, coated in blood that flooded from a naked, tattered cavern; the crooked, loose smirk that gripped blue lips and loose hair; the fetus held close to a ripped breast while it suckled straight to the beating muscle beneath, gumming struggling ventricles.
"Look, Steve," her voice whispered, lost on a drug he couldn't place while stroking the alienish head of the child. "Isn't it beautiful? The greatest gift that anyone has ever given me. Much better than yours, you fucking asshole! RAPIST!"
And the rolling blackened eyes seemed to smirk as it clenched the meal within its pink gums, as it pulled back, as she screamed and sighed while new dams were broken and torrents crashed through caverns and through the milky thighs once more.
Beaded sweat brought him around once more, that saving liquid that soon trickled along the rough path of his tongue as he licked his broken lips. Beer, that satisfying relief, was gone, and this night in the cheap motel was a luxury that seemed only too rare on their forced road trip. Another gig wasn't for a week, and their last one had proved decent, but nowhere near as extensive as he had hoped, needed. Clove cigarettes still whispered along his clothes that sat bundled in a corner, while the pads of his digits remembered the brutal cut of the strings.
Ohio loomed outside, somewhere outside Perrysburg in flat land and quiet neighborhoods. Roads never ended, releasing themselves to all that came along with a gallon of gas and a decent set of tires, but the drivers certainly did, when the hypnotic Morose code of lanes drew eyes and minds from the important to the tiring trivial. Stars secreted somewhere; the moon away on hiatus until the following month. Silence stifled the sound, more tangible that the waves that reacted as he moved among the crisp white sheets there were crumpled and strewn across the agonizingly old mattress, complete with dips in the corners and a scent that he chose to ignore.
Liquid lights screamed inhuman hours, and with one fumbling hand, he clutched the display of time and flipped it down. The urge to toss it through the bay window, hidden behind beige stained curtains, almost overcame him, but he pushed it back as the soles of his feet found the comforting thick shag carpet, slightly matted down with hundreds of feet from a hundred nights. His eyes succumbed to the lack of light, molding vision until he could see the shapes looming just inside consciousness. The flat length of blocky wood for the dresser, along with the color television that if hit the right way, could get the porn channels both lurked in shadows, along with a darker void that led towards a mildew sparse bathroom. And lying between that hole and the tainted bed was the doorway to salvation with a cheap metallic knob.
The carpet was warm, calming, against his balmy soles, and he found himself digging his toes down deeper into the thick masses. Ignoring the lack of clothes on his own shimmering body, he took several steps towards the door, wondering just exactly he was going to do once he slipped into the other room, into the other calming bed and rented crisp sheets. What would he say? Would he need to even speak the words? Knowing his roommate, one look at him, and he would know.
After all, Ghost had that gift, that sweet empathic gift. Magick, if he believed in such, was the simplest and most complete way to describe him, and one look at the pale visage of the vocalist and all those doubts would be brushed aside.
"Fuck." Easy semblance, a single syllable that set his muscles, synapses, body into liquid motion. The metal circle felt inhumanly cool against the hot inside of his palm, seeping its frigid kiss down deep into his lifeline. It had been so long since the last one, but Ghost would understand, would know how to take the situation and make it safe.
Idly, he wondered if it was the pure horror of seeing her that night, strewn out and torn to shreds that haunted him, or his own guilt.
The question faded away to blissful white noise in the back of his mind when he opened the door. A room identical to his own was neatly arranged before his eyes, with a thick coat of vibrant pink filtering in through a crack in the curtains brought on by a sign that screamed vacancy outside in a nearly deserted parking lot. Clothes, nothing extravagant and bearing the same sweet, tacky smell of cloves, were neatly arranged on the back of a tattered chair in a lonely corner. A book was sitting on the floor beside the bed, and without looking, Steve knew words and notes that only held meaning to the owner decorated the tight margins of every page.
And lying in the middle of starched sheets, his own chest covered in a starlit sheen of sweat, was the momentary owner of the room. Lips were slightly parted, glistening, moving slowly while caught in the middle of dreaming murmurs. Pale hair was strewn across the pillow he had captured, colored gently with stroking neon fingers.
"Ghost." His voice cracked, trying to keep itself between a whisper and a waking call.
The lashes peeled forth, achingly slowly, and eyes that cleared more by the second landed on the silhouette of the man in doorway. His look, one that threatened to inquire as to what was happening exactly, calmed to a silent acceptance and understanding that brought about the beautiful qualities in his lips, in his eyes. The silence was slain by the sound of him moving to his left elbow, leaning up onto it, while tugging the sheets up.
"Again?" Ghost whispered, his words thick with fading sleep. Then, as an afterthought: "It was another bad one."
Simplicities of nudity were forgotten, laid to death in the backs of minds that cared not either way. The pads of bare feet slipping across the filthy carpet whispered his intentions, carried him to the other's side while slipping beneath the sheets that the boy held propped up for him. Fine boned fingers found sanctuary deep in the raven tresses that sat tangled atop his head while breath slipped across his jaw, hot, thick with sleep and Love and Nature.
"You're holding onto it even now, after everything's that happened," the breath whispered. "You need to let go, let it slip away, otherwise it'll be tied to you forever on gossamer threads."
The neon was shocking against the smooth planes of endless pale fields, a harsh stroke, a gentle kiss, a full flush. Bloodshot eyes curled upwards to the opposing pair, those calming lagoons of matching sets. Roads loomed naked outside, the need to move, to play, to exist overwhelming and igniting the tight passages of his veins, and yet, those pallid iris', rimmed with unnatural shocking pink, pushed all obligations away, smoothed them from the deep wrinkles in gray matter.
"We have a lotta driving tomorrow," Steve muttered, changing the subject. He knew full well what he should be doing, knew that this would drive him eventually insane, even now a year later. But he let it sit quietly, let it fly in the back of his mind as he felt the tightness in the muscles, the blood that roared through his blue tunnels like a freight, calm to the tainted whisper that lingered just beyond his range of hearing.
"Are you going to be up to it?"
"Have to be," was the quiet response, muffled slightly through laxing lips. "Gotta make it home before we head out west."
Out west. It sounded like a cheap cowboy movie, and such a thought brought the languid smile to the pale visage. Fine-boned fingers twirled raven locks, round and round, as he took in the scent of the other. Home, home for a brief moment, to the familiar shades, the customary fragrances, that feel that never left him inside the cool sanctity of his humid house. Idly, he wondered if anyone had crossed over the protective symbol that lay upon their porch, curious on how many people had traveled over the threshold in their absence. Not that it mattered much to him; he had left their haven in good hands and trusted those he and Steve dealt with.
"Excited?" Ghost inquired, moving his lips to rest where his hands lay.
Silence for a moment, before, "Mmhm. New place. New people. New gigs. New memories."
New memories to block out the old ones, but that was left unsaid and well known. One thin pale leg slid up and looped around the other contrasting set, two limbs downed with wispy black hair that was softer higher up the thigh one traveled. The same vibrant light had devoured the darker skin, had washed away the scruff brought on by a few days of not shaving, and had made the eyes glow with a radiant incandescence.
They were both bewitching, appendages soon tangling one another in the dim room, the neon like washes of blood upon the sheets. Perhaps suicide lovers they were, with some clichéd note speaking volumes of cruel worlds and even crueler people hidden somewhere in the depths of deposited jeans. Perhaps murdered in the path of love, with some random encounter of bigots that happened upon such an act of homosexuality. But under the glow, their faces filled with peace rather than horror, they looked as if they passed from the world, let it linger behind them without any desire to return.
Nothing had told them to leave, and they had obeyed with little argument. Home seemed a memory, some Heaven to the Hell that had been New York, that twisted play of Poe's with people that seemed less than human and street urchins that had laid vile touches upon their ego. Sweet as it was, it was a lingering mirage until feet settled onto breathy steps, until the thick southern layer of heat and moisture settled against his skin, his clothes, and caused both of them to become one. It seemed so far, yet close, something fingertips could not touch, yet was tangible enough to taste.
They would leave the confines of this borrowed room tomorrow, the neon to be replaced with the natural once the sun slipped over the road. Steve's breath was hot against his pulse, already slow, already quiet, smooth and even as sweet sleep let him rest. Digits uncurled from the depths of his hair, moving down his back, tickling the ridges of his spine, and he knew that he if touched those lips with his own, he would taste the lingering beer that sat on the tip of tongue.
Morning would be cruel the next day, but until that arrived, Ghost basked in the quiet comfort of the night and the hushed world that surround them enough to stroke their hair, but remained far enough not to swallow them. For the moment, for his life, this was all he would ever truly need.
The End?
Author: Chauni
Email: asukalangley2nd@yahoo.com
Website: www.geocities.com/asukalangley2nd/
Disclaimer: I do not own Steve, Ghost, Nothing, or any of the charries in this story. They all belong to the wonderfully talented Poppy Z. Brite, and I suggest that you go and read her wonderful works…NOW!
Notes: I’m still hesitant on this piece. It’s the first time I’ve attempted to write a fanfic on something that was not anime or laid out before me in visuals. I’ve tried desperately to keep everyone in character, and as far as the timeline goes, this happens after Lost Souls and before Drawing Blood and the side stories in Wormwood. As for the question mark on the end? Well, I haven’t decided if this is all yet, so I’m leaving my options open, if you know what I mean.
The Death of Children
The slips of light that slid in uninvited through the plates of glass struck the thin wisps of eyelids and warmed the stubbled face beneath. Hands gripped dirty sheets, color around the knuckles fading to white, as he attempted to fight back the bile that rose in his throat and the hammers that drove rusty spikes into his temples. Another rough night; he could smell it wafting off him, the sweet clove smoke, the thick layer of beer that hung thick in the air, the soft scent of pot that gripped the edges of his nostrils before hiding back away. Another night at the club, as his fingers, calloused and hard, lived to tell the tale of guitar strings and off-key vocals that were made tolerable by the amazing grace of the lead singer. Another night of outcasts and music, of kids crying against the world that they were not afraid, even if they were.
The house was eerily (and almost refreshingly) silent, letting only the occasional board creak with long needed rest. Outside there was nothing, nothing but the soft songs of birds that had never learned the common courtesy of gentle morning quiet. There was no wind, no sounds of the summer that burned outside like raging fire; nothing.
One elbow found the pillow, even as he pushed himself up, cloth damp against his flesh. The sheet fell away, sliding down his naked chest to pool around his narrow hips and against the tight abdomen. One hand grabbed the corner, pulling the bedding off him, taking a moment longer than he had hoped as he had tangled himself in it sometime during the dark. Growling, he fought free, finding victory before finding his feet against the cool floor. Fingers met dark hair that made new directions, new pathways in the air, as he stumbled out into the hallway, narrowly missing a nice trip from his guitar in the process.
The silence was as thick as the humidity, covering his body like the sweat that slid down his chest, collecting and dampening the top elastic rim of his thin cotton boxers. The other one, his housemate, had to be sleeping in, an odd thing, really. Normally the soft scent of banana-nut pancakes floated through the house before hangovers ever began to develop, let alone progress to this level. One dark eyebrow arched, but the narrow shoulders shrugged off such little intricacies. After all, they played their third set this week at the Yew last night; poor kid was probably tired.
He stumbled towards the kitchen, intent on grabbing the familiar cool amber bottle and finding the cure to his headache within. The winter was gone, gone and nothing more than some memory that he willed to get rid of every night. In the beginning, he had slept beside his housemate, in the same bed, just to get the unconscious comfort, the patient calm of another person, a special person filled to the brim with some magic he couldn't even imagine starting to explain.
But that had stopped once the weather had turned warmer, once the days grew in length and the idea of sunset at five-thirty in the afternoon was something of a perverse joke. The nightmares lessened, not in their frequency, but in their intensity, and in some ways, he found quiet peace in that. Enough to live on, anyway.
He pressed the cool brown glass against his forehead, feeding the headache that lay beneath. It was slowly falling asleep, slowly hushing it's incessant whining, only to come again another day. He was used to it, the morning nausea, the late night drinking. People had once told him it would get old after awhile. As long as it kept the demons away, he didn't care.
Of course, he had lightened up a tad after the winter, had stopped going to the liquor store every night to buy a new bottle of Jack, or whatever had caught his eye that day. Whereas society would call him an alcoholic, he would laugh back and them and call them ignorant fucking sheep. It didn't matter much to him.
He set the bottle down onto the kitchen table, not really in the mood for any more Hopps and Barley hammering against his tongue this early in the morning. The house sat idle, staring at him, and he couldn't wait another minute more in the suffocating air alone. Best to wake up Ghost, if for nothing else, to have someone to talk to.
He padded through the hallway, dodging a black t-shirt he had thrown carelessly onto the floor the previous night after he had stumbled in, two beers past memory and inhibitions. He felt quiet, strangely reserved as his mouth stretched into a yawn, threatening to dislocate his jaw in the process. He chalked it up to the fleeting hangover and the painful hour.
He stopped before the door, the flat of his hand laying against it softly. Ann might have laughed if she could see him now, staring at some hunk of wood and imagining the silvery-gold boy lying in bed on the other side. She would mocked him, called him a pussy, called him a sap, called him a fucking mushy bastard.
He would have told her to shut up...in less than pleasant terms.
His calloused hand slid around the cool metal knob, turning it as he pushed. His mind's eye curled around the room that lay beneath, imagining the multicolored walls decked out in thousands of words, some to songs that he heard everyday, others just random that sounded particularly beautiful to one golden ear. Crayon streaks looped and created pictures, made waves and designs that coated everything from floor to ceiling and back around once more. Planets and solar systems gleamed bright when it was night, that neon green radiance slowly fading to a dull white with time and age. And finally, against one wall, tangled in sheets and silence, would be Ghost, one small foot peeking out like a fearful animal.
He couldn't help but smile, the ends of his lips curling up as he shook his head, raven hair falling in front of one ear. Maybe they could take the T-bird out, going on a short roadtrip or something...Thank fucking God for days off.
One bare foot slipped inside the threshold, passed through that gateway into color and comfort, and froze before connecting to the squeaky floorboards beneath.
The silver-pale hair was strewn across pillow, dipping off it at the edge, while one naked arm snuck over the sheets. As Steve had predicted, one foot peeked out, tentatively pointing at the figure in the doorway with bright painted toenails that glittered like precious jewels locked behind glass cases in the high priced stores. Bedding slid down under his arm, revealing the small expanse of bare chest, hairless and lean, skin perfect and shimmering like it was the moon itself. Thin slips of flesh covered the pale blue eyes that lay beneath, long golden lashes sleeping gently against the tops of smooth cheeks, while thin glistening lips were parted and soft breath slid through. Light washed in through the window, pooling on the ground, on the bed, on the flesh that absorbed it and shone it back twice as bright.
But it wasn't the sight of his companion that made him stop, but the few dyed black strands of hair intermingled with that field of familiar wheat. It was the other sleeping arm slung over his housemate, the other painfully thin leg sneaking out and laying atop the painted toes. It was the familiar face, the one that had looked on with pity as he stood encircled in his father's arms, the one that had held remorse, one that had stared on with quiet resolve.
Instinctively, his hand reached for a bat that was long shattered, ruined beyond any sports glory dreams now. Fingers clutched air, then sank down into his palm, curling into a tight fist that turned knuckles white.
"Nothing."
He didn't like the weight of it on his lips, or the way his tongue lifted and brushed the roof of his mouth to make the sound. He didn't care for the protective arm around Ghost, or the curtains moving in a gentle gauzy way from the open window he apparently squirmed through. He didn't like the smell that hung in the air, sweat and something primal, feral, thick, suffocating.
There were no visible marks on the pale shimmering flesh, and for that he was grateful. Hell, if he was a religious man, he might have prayed and thanked whatever deity sat in the sky, mocking them. But he wasn't, so he narrowed his eyes and leveled them at the knot of limbs tangled within the wrinkled sheets.
One thin arm moved, the muscles tensing for a second before sliding over the bedding, fingers curled loosely. Long golden lashes peeled back, unfocused eyes like a newborn's staring at the ceiling and seeing nothing. Steve cleared his throat, drawing the golden boy's attention over towards him, forcing those soft lakes to settle down onto him with the normal calm, loving regard.
"Is it that late already?" The voice was scratchy with sleep, hushed and muttered.
Steve ignored the kindness, the question. His gaze drifted over the pointed shoulder, resting on the sleeping face of that young teenager with dyed black hair and dirty clothes. "What's he doing here?"
Small elbows buried themselves in the pillow as the boy squirmed out from under the lazy looping arm. "He came in around five in the morning, through the window." The sunlight smoothed his voice, let it run out softer, though always carrying that gravelly tone that was so obvious and magical when he sang. "I let him sleep in here."
The sudden surge of rage subsided at the innocence that leaked off the syllables like rain, dripping to the puddles with ripples seeping everywhere. It wasn’t that Ghost hadn’t realized the possibility of his housemate’s anger; he had just hoped to sate it in the first precious moments before any irreplaceable damages occurred. He could feel the tension of the room, of the air that was labored and pregnant between them, could taste its sweaty texture on his tongue, before he lapped at his own lips for a moment. “Ghost…”
“Steve.” Thin limbs swung out from the bed, the soft pads of his feet meeting the wooden floor and a discarded t-shirt from the night before, stiff with spilled alcohol. “He needed somewhere to go. He was here, and he needed me and-”
“Have you forgotten all that fucking shit that he’s put us through by comin’ here the last time?” the taller one hissed. A dark winter clamped smothering hands over his ventricles, and he fathomed he could taste the blood that wanted to seep into his lungs. Damnit! The beer he had abandoned whispered into his mind, coaxing him with tantalizing promises of forgetfulness and patience. “I won’t go through it again, you fucking hear me, Ghost? I can’t do it again!”
“Shhhh,” the pale image whispered, before walking towards the other. Willow-whisp arms found the narrow waist, clung to him tightly as he buried his face into one jagged shoulder. He tensed as he felt the taller body move against him, waiting to be shoved away or broken free from, but he had just moved from foot to impatient foot, eyes dark and staring at the object of discussion which was still tangled and asleep on the strewn bedding. His lips moved towards the pulse that beat steadily beneath the hard flesh, his breath hot against the damp shining neck.
“Let’s wait ‘til he wakes up, Steve.” The sweat was sharp on his tongue, but natural and addicting, softly stroking his sense of smell with long fingernails. He drove his face down into it, one hand resting against the back of the boy’s neck, fingertips playing languidly with the ends of his dark hair. “Then we’ll sit down and talk, together, and find out what’s going on, ’kay? Please, Steve? Please?”
Ghost expected the drawn out silence afterwards, was waiting for the low voice of his housemate to sit quiet and finally break through with either an affirmative or other. Such a touchy situation this all was that his confidence in Steve, in their friendship and whatever bonds may lay beyond, wavered, his own heavy breath sitting in dry, aching lungs. The fragrant smoke of many cloves from the night before, and between that, the singing, and the few mouthfuls of pot he and Steve had shared, he was paying for it in full this morning.
“Let’s talk about it now.”
“But he-” but Ghost had stopped in sentence, the lagging realization that it was not Steve that had whispered it, but the cracked lips of a small teenage boy sitting up among wrinkled damp sheets and crumpled pillows. The white figure looked over his shoulder, never loosening his hold on his taller companion, and spied the murky eyes he had seen almost a year ago, dyed dark hair flopping loosely down into them. The t-shirt was a tad too big for his painfully narrow frame, exposing the smooth top of a sleek pale arm. Underneath the blankets, Ghost could imagine the black jeans that he had felt scraping against him in the night, the same weighted material he had been first aware of when he felt Steve standing in the doorway.
"I booked you guys a gig up in New York," Nothing said, attempting to find some sort of comfort in the worn couch, curling against one lackluster cushioned arm. A few smudges of dirt were splashed over the tops of his cheeks like a nightmarish rouge, shadowing and accenting in the most model of spots.
"You did what?" The cool beer sat comfortably in Steve's hand once again, his fingers unconsciously picking at the silvery papered label, curling the battered edge back and leaving a transparent layer of glue in its wake. "Why are you doing any favors for us?"
"Zillah had friends," he responded, almost visibly sinking down lower into his skin. He fumbled within a dark denim pocket for a moment, only to produce a crumpled package of cigarettes, slipping one between his small lips. Transparent plastic green flashed into his small hand, a green that was too similar to memory’s eyes, flint striking and bursting into a small flame. The papered end flared up, sparking into flaring orange embers. He inhaled deeply, swallowing it down into the depths of his lungs, before releasing it out through his nose, smoke lazily wafting in front of his eyes. He visibly calmed, as if a giant hand had massaged the nervousness out of his thin tight muscles. "He didn't have a lot, but the ones he had were pretty damn close."
Pale eyes shifted towards Steve, questioning the enigma that sat on the end of the furniture. A harsh glare was his response, and truth be told, he had not expected much less from his housemate. After all, winter was not that faded yet, the edges still crisp and awaiting to slice the delicate flesh, peeling it back with its cruel razors. Clearing his throat, he drew his thin legs up underneath his body, curling them at the knees and sitting atop them. He had grabbed his own brown bottle in the awkward trip from bedroom to living room, and found that it served a better purpose for keeping his hands busy than anything else.
"So you want us out," Steve muttered, lips poised over the bottle, his words trapped and echoing in the dark glass. He cast his gaze towards Ghost, holding him there for a moment, before his raven hair dipped back, filling his mouth with the familiar amber taste.
Smoke drifted languidly before his face, lingering around the boy's dark head for a moment, before slowly dissipating. "For your own safety. They've heard things, know some shit. It's just not safe for you guys here right now."
Small fingers tugged on an errant string that protruded from one couch arm, twirling it around the smallest fingers with pale eyes attached as if they had been soldered there. "Leave?" The house leaned in, as if to embrace him, as if to burn it's memory into his veins, his very molecules. He wanted to cling to it, to the pile of wood and mortar, to the souls that lurked between the walls and behind the glass, to the room covered in words that enthralled him. The symbol on the porch outside grabbed his heart, wrenching it, as he saw it behind his open eyes. Leave this place? His home? His safe haven? His heaven?
He could feel the speculation and anger sliding like eager tentacles around the lank body of Steve, sitting so comfortably in a chair that was mismatched from the couch, but equally as stained. Ghost stared up at him with beseeching eyes, witnessing the other undercurrent that he had missed before, the snake that devoured all the others.
His utter need to protect Ghost.
His smile was thin, strangling him. "We can get Terry in here to take care of the place while we're gone, Steve. Wouldn't be hard, you know."
Black hair swayed. "I know."
"We can come back again," the pale visage whispered, feeling the smile fill out, wrapping burning arms around him. "This isn't forever. And you have been wanting to take a roadtrip for awhile now."
Another swig, and a smile would slowly slip into his face. Ghost's belief was always intense, as if the world was wrapped around his ideas and he knew, ultimately felt, that all would end in a beneficial light, regardless of the neck-deep Hell they might have to trudge through in ankle waders. If Ghost said they could come back, they would. And if Ghost said that he believed Nothing, then he had no choice.
"Yeah, a nice roadtrip. Maybe afterward, we can head out to California or something."
The satin eyes rolled to the smoking boy a few feet away from him, offering what his lips would not: a chance to come with them, to turn and high tail it away from what Fate, that Eternal Bitch, had set down before him. He watched the cigarette hesitate, pausing before his lips, dark eyes flaring with a want so deep, so harsh, Ghost feared it would destroy him on the spot.
So lonely...
"Have to get going," Nothing muttered, taking a final drag to settle into his lungs while he stamped out the smoke in a cluttered ashtray among several other orange butts and a few burned down joints. "Molochai and Twig are waiting for me."
"You don't ha-"
"I'll see you later," he said, slipping free from the delicious, broken-in hold of the couch and moving towards the door. His black shoes slipped across the floor, avoiding the strewn beer cans that glittered like silver treasures.
Ghost watched the back of the black shirt slide out the door, whispering under his breath. "Goodbye, Nothing. See you again soon."
The sound of a bottle striking the floor jarred him back to his surroundings, and he met the suddenly warm eyes of his housemate, soon to be roadmate. The highway would soon be their whore, and they would ride that lady any where they damn well pleased, T-bird willing. The smile gripped his lips, pulling them upwards towards divinity, watching as Steve untangled himself from the chair to begin packing.
"You sure about this, Ghost?"
"Yeah," he called out to Steve disappeared into the cluttered room that was his. "As long as you're there, I am."
And even the walls couldn't hide the heat that slid from that familiar room, or the smile he could see just beyond them.
The End?
The fork clattered down, bouncing off the cheap imitation porcelain, and skittering onto the cream Formica table. Ice cubes shuttered, clinking together in the confines of a plastic maroon glass, finding their fate lying trapped between two hard molars, one complete with a silver filling. Calloused pads of long fingers searched the expanse, finally encountering the glass salt shaker, and carried it back, dumping far too much of it for any health conscious person across a field of golden French fries.
Solo slid a few of those speckled potatoes into his mouth, crunching softly, before he waved one at the boy across from him. The tip, burnt a darker shade than the rest, bobbed as if in some friendly greeting, unaware of it’s destiny between those grinding teeth. The sapphire eyes, having lost their albino pink shade, reflected the quiet blonde across from him in the abnormally immense pupils, so black that they nearly devoured the iris’ completely.
“So, where are you from?” The small talk, that boring filler and get-to-know set line, had been next to none, and instead they had chosen to pass the time discussing food, the science of a dine and dash, and how wonderful it would be to feel the weight of a full stomach. The vision in the alley had been left untouched, yet not forgotten, hovering within the bounds of unspoken words and tentative questions. Best to start with the easy stuff and work the way upwards.
After all, it wasn’t as if he could just say, “So how about those wings, eh?” like it were some sports team.
Or could he…?
“Me?” Vin spoke around his food, moving most of it to rest against the silky lining of his cheek in hopes of creating some sort of understandable English. “I was just out walking.”
“Kids don’t walk around this neighborhood this late,” Solo muttered as he shoveled that unsuspecting piece of food into his mouth. “Not unless they’re hookers, drug runners, or homeless. Try again.”
“I’m not a kid.” It was no more than pouting, without the lower lip being protruded. Another bite from the bacon-cheeseburger (minus lettuce) was ripped away, chewed, and swallowed. “I told you, I was out for a walk. My folks live near by, and they were fighting. I didn’t feel like listening to their bullshit, so I left.” And, to add the final cincher, he challenged the other with a “Is that okay with you?”
The other didn’t wince, at least not visibly. Okay, fine, chalk one up for the blonde kid that liked to sprout wings whenever he damn well pleased; he wasn’t stupid. If Vin had parents, they sure as hell weren’t from around here.
Silence slid down their throats, killing unborn words with a surgeon’s proficiency. Occasionally, the stolen looks would be exchanged, though no sounds would be shared, until the waitress, tired and bored at three a.m. slapped the bill down on the table with an impatient hand and walked away. Solo chewed ice; Vin shook his head.
“Ready to go?” the older one hissed, spitting a small chip of ice onto the table. It swirled in a circle for a moment, round and round, before stopping only to melt into an unnoticed puddle.
The waitress, a tired young woman that might have been attrative in her sleep when worry lines slipped away, ducked into the back, the door swinging on noisy hinges behind her. They were alone, blessedly alone, and the taller one made no second slip away unused. Silently, he slid off the plastic booth seat, glad it wasn't summer when he most likely would have stuck to it. Getting to his combat-booted feet, he wrapped one tight hand around the small pale wrist of the boy still sitting, and drug him out, like a child might yank on the battered arm of a trapped teddy bear. Once free, he took off, still pulling, fingers meeting and overlapping around the small, fragile arm.
The bell of the door sounded their tactical retreat, but they did not stop to gloat until they were three blocks over and panting inside the dank coolness of a shadowed alley. Solo laughed at the exploit, pride slipping through as he managed a few, "Can you imagine the look on her face? Classic!"
Vin wiped the sweat from his forhead before it could slip between his buttery lashes and burn his eyes. He stared up at his panting, laughing companion, watching as color flooded his cheeks, barely visible under the pale lights from a few apartments above. He was almost doubled over, almost to the point of landing on his face into a murky rainbowed puddle beneath him.
This is who you want to have as a companion? the mocking whispers inquired. This thieving drug addict? Maybe you do deserve each other; you both are idiots.
Bright eyes turned up, meeting the sated sapphires of the other boy. One calloused hand wrapped around the delicate wrist once more, just as he began to tug him deeper into the alley, deeper into the shadows that lay just beyond.
"C'mon, let's get out of here before someone catches us," Solo muttered, the cracked corners of his lips still pulled upwards. "I don't even want to try to explain what we're doing."
The hungry mouth devoured both figures, leaving the sound of heavy feet tramping through small untouched puddles as their signature card. Arguments above continued, enraged at adultery and scandals, at piling bills and bone-gnawing work. Police spotlights that hung on the edge of car doors slaughtered the shadows that once reigned like gods, looking for a couple of thieves, one almost definitely doped up on something or other.
Not that it wasn't unusual around here, mind you.
The mock gold handle never wanted to work, and now was no exception. He turned the key left and right, back and forth, jiggling, jangling, growling and cursing, and none of it helped the situation to go any faster than the customay nine and a half minutes that it usually took. Once the familiar click slipped into place (after three false alarms), he pushed his thin hip against the cracked wooden door and knocked it forward, dirty hall light barging in.
Solo smiled, the slight embarrassment leaking in around the sapphire eyes. "Welcome to my humble abode. Sorry it looks like shit; wasn't expecting guests."
It wasn't as bad as the other made it out to be, by far. Beer bottles littered the counters like proud trophies, making the dirty light even more muddy, more dark, while the labels stood out like beacons in their white silver paper. Magazines were strewn about the unvaccuumed brown shag carpet, half of them of questionable adult nature, and the other half plastered with the cocky faces of recognizable band members and beautiful ink body art. On the back of a stained couch there were a pair of leather pants, while a silky violet shirt was lounging across the arm of a plush recliner chair. A few dishes with food obviously several days old sat upon a cracked coffee table, along with an empty bulky bottle of Jack Daniels.
The taller one walked in, kicking one of the more explicit magazines under the couch on his way. Vin followed close behind him, eyeing and memorizing, curious and silent for the moment. The smell of pot still clung desperatly in the way, long since burnt, yet so common it had found home in all sorts of fabirc. Overhead lights flickered on, hesitant at first and no more brighter than the ones that hung in the apartment hallways outside. The small slam of the door almost caused the younger one to jump, and he was able to catch the retreating form of Solo out of the corner of his eye before he disappeared behind a yellow refrigerator door, fishing out a couple of beers.
"Twist offs," he muttered, not matching the emerald eyes as he made his way back to the couch. He brushed an issue of Maxim from the cushions and sat down, rest one bottle onto the nearby damaged table. "Gotta love 'em."
"Do you live here by yourself?" He came closer, finally taking a seat on a relatively clean looking spot.
"I don't think anyone else would ever let this place get this bad," he muttered, the glass meeting his pursed lips as he leaned his head back. The alcohol slipped into his mouth, stroking his tongue before he swallowed it and set the bottle onto the table. "The other one's for you, you know."
Little lips parted to ask, "Don't you think I'm a little young for that?" but shrugged it off as the foggy glass was soon encased in his palm. After all, it wasn't like he was really normal, now was it? And there was always the question of his ego coming into play; how ridiculous would he have appeared asking such a stupid question?
"Thanks," he replied, always the respectful host. Voices had grown quiet, even as the turned the cap with a bit of trouble, and tossed the bottle top onto the table with a small clang. Reaching over, suddenly brandishing a small smirk, he lightly knocked the two bottles together, amber liquor inside rustling. "Cheers."
The flood filled his sensitive mouth in a flourish of Hopps and Barely, stinging his senses with a rough slap against his tongue. The urge to spit it out was immediate, brutal, harsh, but he refused to act his tender age in front of someone like his recent addition of a companion. He choked it down in respectful silence, scraping his throat, his chest, before resting like a ten ton weight in the bottom of his gut. Brief flickers of something resembling images flashed behind the irises, curious if it would burn as bad as it did going down when he pissed it out against some back alley brick wall several hours later. The picture was almost comical, the idea of him trading his dick back and forth between hands as a burning arch of petroleum streaked and landed against some wall, only to burn through it like some cartoonish acid. So compelled was he by this idea that he turned to share it with Solo, to add a small sembelance of laughter to this rocky evening.
But he noticed the silence, the glazed sapphire eyes, the soft way his lips were parted and moist with drops of amber liquor still staining each one. He kept his peace, waiting for the inevitable story that lingered just behind that tongue.
The wait was in vain, and instead black lashes beat that blank look away and replaced its somber attitude with one a bit more jovial. It was uncanny, watching those twin flaps of thin flesh slip over the gleaming pupils, altering the darkness into something more bearable, more delectable. The pert tongue slid out, swathing the remaining alcohol and drawing it into the velvet cavern that lingered just behind the white teeth.
“So, are ya staying here tonight?”
The inquiry (or was it an offer?) slammed him back down to the couch, tearing him away from the tongue, away from the mouth that was still awash with droplets of amber spirits clinging to the soft lining. The eyes blinked, the bottle inches from his own lips and creating music as his breath from his stunned open mouth kissed the top. “What?”
“You said your folks were fighting.” The tip of the darkened bottle intimately met his lips, before another swallow was stolen. “Just figured you might not want to go home at all, and my place is safer than the streets. You could sleep on the couch. I know it ain’t the Ritz or anything, but hey, keeps the bugs and creeps away, right?”
Yes, yes, let’s stay at this fool’s house, where porn lies across the floor more than carpet does, one low growl taunted, the edges of its teeth tracing down his spine. You’re probably going to wake up in the middle of the night, naked and covered in c-
“I think that sounds like a great idea,” Vin quickly rambled out, though who exactly he was addressing in the admission, even he wasn’t entirely sure.
Sapphire lakes rimmed with fine hairs and brown glass looked in affirmation at the boy, before he pulled the bottle away and down. His throat noisily clicked as he swallowed the swill; it was cheap beer in reality, nothing fancy or expensive, but brown and bitter and intoxicating enough to deliever a decent buzz after a few rounds. The final drink remained in the bottle, foamy with spit. He set it on the carpet and it promptly tipped over onto it's side, the remains pooling in the body.
By the time Vin was finished with his own bottle, his host had his back leaning against the broken arm of the couch, feet dangling off the edge of his cushion loosely. His lips were parted, glistening with spit and beer, lashes hanging low and soft. Clean out, he appeared almost dead, with the pale flesh, the deep blue-tinted circles under his eyes, the streaks of dirt like bruises across one cheek. Only the rise and fall of his narrow chest signified some sort of spirit still remained in him, unburdened by the stimulants thinning out somewhere in his veins.
Vin left him to his trials in sleep, finding solitude in another room, and the bed that lurked there. Little else made up the closet-sized space, other than more explicit magazines, some more racy than the others. Delicate Asian faces whispered up from laminate pages, both male and female, though oh-so-similar in their androgyny, and a pair of silver restraining bracelets dangled from one of the looping metal bed-posts. A black lamp sat upon a wooden dresser that bore drawers missing handles. Clothes, mostly covered in the soft gleam of vinyl and latex, littered the end of the bed and a corner of the floor.
A crooked smile licked at the corner of his lips while he pushed all the items from the bed and crawled in, forgoing the blankets and sheets all together. The pillow housed the other’s scent, and it wafted gently up his nostrils as his head settled atop it, sunk down into it. It was sweet and musky, tangy of sweat on hot summer nights. He nuzzled it gently like a small pet, glad to finally found someone who’s life was obviously in as much disarray as his own.
It was another hour before dawn even began to dream of revealing it’s bold, arrogant self, but that didn’t matter much, as the sorry state of affairs warned him. The urge to rise was more than enough to rouse him from his loosely strung together dream of thieving wallets of cute blonde boys, and it leading to so much more. No more drinking before bed, he swore, like the hundreds of other times he promised so much to himself. His bladder throbbed and pleaded for attention, weighting his stomach down like a sock full of pennies.
Light from a lamp still illuminated the room, giving birth to shadows and other dark creations that lined the floors and walls. He peered down at the matching bottles on the floor, pieces of his shrine that had managed to migrate over towards the living area, proving that the boy from the other evening was not his drug-fevered mind toying and mocking him, proving that the… whatever he was... was still here.
Once finished, he pressed the lever and put everything back where it belonged. Hands ran under cold water, quickly soaped up, then rinsed once more before dried on a stiff, crumpled towel. Turning and walking out, he wondered where the boy had run off to in the middle of a yawn that encompassed not only his mouth, but his entire body, with arms stretching high over his head, splayed fingers scraping against the top of a doorway.
And that was when he saw him, standing naked aside from one of his own dirty T-shirts what hung just past his narrow hips, shadowing all the treasures that lie beneath. Pale hair dusted the legs, shimmered in the dim light like gold, lightly thicker, deeper on his calves. Lips were parted slightly, damp and slack, and the eyes were cloudy with violet lancing through the yellowish whites. The same dark aura flared around him, coaxing and warm, then flickering with promised oaths of violence.
Solo knew Vin was not in there, knew he was floating on some cloud of something or other in the back of his mind. Multiple personality disorder? Perhaps, but sincerely doubted it, reflecting briefly on the totality of the situation.
"He is leaving. You will not stop him." Inflections were different, quiet but stern with an elogance only acquired with age and a class that Vin did not seem to carry in his step. "Is that understood?"
(work in progress)
Rain-slicked store walls brought no relief to a screaming head or dying temples, even as he leaned his pallid cheeks against the grainy brick. Insanity crept away for a few heartbeats, random voices losing it's power as lashes dipped down over emerald hues to provide some momentary peace. Solitary confinement in it's most blissful of natures, he took in the silence, took in the gentle mist of drizzling water, and let himself drift on pure senses rather than emotion or thought or logic.
The small mouth that whispered tainted pleas of forgiveness was soon painted with crystal rain, even as fingernails dug unconsciously into grooves in the walls and bent back at bitter angles. The puppetmaster would return soon, would take him over and force him to seek out this figurehead it constantly spoke of. What he would do after he found him was left to be seen, but that wasn't his concern. He was just the tracker, the ride to the rest of eternity.
But it was killing him; he could feel it. His back burned as if wounds had been torn into his flesh and salt dumped by the handfuls inside, then rubbed into every crack with cruel fingers. He could feel blood run waterfalls underneath his shirt, could feel as breath slipped away only to be more allusive when he grasped for it a moment later. And his wings...Damn, but he refused to even look at those.
The slim lashes slipped up and down over his cheeks, so much like the coating of lush catepillar's during the high months of summer, and though it brought no comfort. Waking nightmares were the cruelest ones, ones that bore no escape, no refuge, not sanctity above the madness encircling it all. It simply felt completely futile, useless, to attempt to fight against whatever it was that had slipped into his life a few months ago.
The words had been carressing, soft, almost alluring with the promises of power, of the rise in rank, the chance to become something more than the dumping ground messanger and the beaten dog for all. They were coaxing, spun with gold and silken oaths, and he could not help but agree, relizing not how close to some Faust tale he was, selling his inner purpose and being to something much worse than the devil himself.
After all, these words were the ones coming from a creature that wanted him to seek out the Prince of Lies.
The mist struck harder, birthing to almost a storm status, but lacking the spetacular light and sound show. The tiers parted mouth, craning open in an effort to allow the refreshments down his cracking throat, and he swallowed as hard as he could, to the extent of his mouth could take, and drinking from the heaven's never tasted so painfully perfect.
"I want to go home."
Croaked words, ones that hurt his ears as his cracked lips gave birth to that simple statement. To say that he had not expected to say such a thing a few months ago would be an understatement; despising the world he came from, and the people surrounding it, made those whispered phrases all the more lulling, soft hymns sung to the oppurtunity of freedom.
But they had never told him of the death, of the destruction, at least until he was drowning in the path of fire he had chosen. Resentment filtered in, though so lost between the borderlines that pulsated, he couldn't tell if it was his pure emotions or the ones the controllers felt filtering in. Everything was so damn blurry, charcoal lines rubbed apart by clumsy fingers.
And before, in that other realm, they had tormented him, kicked and abused him, laughed at his misfortune and his lifestyle. They mocked him as they sent him into missions that took him to the center of forever, and returned, broken and bleeding with legs barely strong enough to support his light weight. And even then, if he reappeared with tidings less than thrilling, he was met with unfortunate circumstances that made him shiver when thought of. How he ached still, burning in portions of his body that he could not believe.
So, of course revenge seemed the only option.
The sound of a few streetwalkers met his ears, dreamy and far off on oblivious clouds that floated past just inside the boundaries of his senses, and pushing from the comforting wall, he stumbled down the alley a bit more. Shadows crept over alabastor flesh with hungry tendrils, until the slight frame was encased in utter darkness. To hide here would bring not ultimate relief; he could never deceive himself, after all. A feline, a gleaming beacon in the oblivion, darted from behind forgotten, soggy boxes and ran towards the opening into the street, leaving the tormented boy alone for the moment.
Boy. So slight in nature, he looked as though no more than thirteen summers old, and could look much younger when he wanted to. Eyes turned to large offers of pleading and gratitude, lips that found pouting to be a hobby, and cheeks that could have pleased even the most stubborn of relatives, in all his torture, he had kept his ideal expression of innocence, even if such was long dead. Perhaps that was why he was chosen; perhaps that was why they had promised him so much.
It could never be the innocent one.
One hand slipped under the nylon and cotton, biting the bottom of a worried lip to hold back the shrieks of agony as tenative digits brushed against the ends of broken feathers. It was pure torture to bring such birthright even a little forth, but he needed to assess the damage, needed to know if it was worse than he thought. Turning on one heel, he rooted through the garbage and forgotten lives in the alleys and cans, until he came up with something that proved that perhaps his luck was changing: a broken, but still usuable, mirror. Positioning it atop a closed dumpter, and shifting it back and forth until he could get a bareable angle, he slipped the coat from his narrow shoulders, his shirt soon to follow.
Nervous eyes peered back towards the mouth of the alley, watching for the appearance of anyone and anything, before he faced the splintered reflection once more. A moment of hesitation and a seemingly lifetime of agony was his rewards as the broken wings flew forth, pristine white dripping with blood. The ends, once something to be so proud of, so admired, were blackened and burnt, singed with the decay of fire, while the hints of gray crept up the lengths of them, until they faded away to the purest white once more.
"Damn them. Damn fucking everything!"
Juvenile features twisted once more, calling up the pain as such holy appendages found santuary inside the flesh there were called forth from just a moment prior.
It coursed through his veins like a second consciousness, stroking unbidden parts of him and turning palmers upwards in their intoxicated heaven. The rain that still lived in his clothes weighted him down, refreshed and rejuvenated like cheap shampoo, or so the commercials usually insinuated. One hand pressed against the littered alley blanket, small jagged brown bottles seeking refuge beneath the flesh of his palms directly between life and love paths. The back of his head rested against the ragged bricks, brown with age and dirt, and the dark hair ran in rivulets down his pallid cheeks.
It was beautiful not to think.
Combat boots taken from some army surplass cult store dug into the ground, weakly and with only the effort of a half dead animal, and slowly, he climbed upwards, pushing and pulling. The black jeans hung from his thin hips, speckled and stained, while his t-shirt in some band tour logo rolled up along his lean stomach and he pressed his back against the wall. Water loosed itself from above, pressing eager mouths against his throat once more, embedding wanton devouring kisses in his hair.
It had been so long...
Fingernails played along the inside of his stomach lining, whispering and tickling him with sensations that could never be real, and he found himself laughing at the intensity of it. The first regret he felt before his saliva had taken the pill from his mouth and down along his digestive track were gone, and now, now, he was beyond all that ridiculous crap of boring bullshit that accompanied the hollow existance of a early adulthood.
This made it a bit more bearable.
Lashes as fine as baby hair laid against the tips of his bright cheeks, even as another set of soft snickers slid through his mouth of their own selfish accord. The shit was good and cheap this time, though laced with something a bit harder than he was used to. Most likely heroin or some bullshit. Oh, well, mine as well ride the rollercoaster all the way now; after all, it was too late to stop what was already half done with anyway.
The flats of his hands pushed him off the wall, and he only stumbled once before he was walking as if he had just won the lotto...or gotten the best lay of his life. Both ranked equal on the general scale of life in his emerald eyes. The corner of his lips were turned upwards, giving almost the impression of dimples before he walked beneath a streetlamp and killed all of the desperate illusion. Hands found their homes in the denim pockets, sliding past the cheap neon green lighter, two dimes, one quarter and a lonely dollar he had found in the gutter a few blocks back.
Turning left, he made his way down the alley that was nestled between the Adult Book Superstore and David's Pizza Court (famous for their business to underage kids looking for cheap beer). He ignored the screaming tenants that lived above the buildings in roach ridden cheap apartments that still seemed to cost a few pennies too much. It wasn't like he wasn't used to it all; he had lived here for more years than he cared to remember, and this was the best place to score anything a bit on the darker side of human lusts.
He could have sworn he felt the threads of crimson vessels sliding through the whites of his eyes, tracing and tying themselves in knots, rotating and mocking the sapphire of his iris. Everything was sharper in it's dull intensity.
Including the small shape a bit further down, nestled in the shadows.
The threads of violent scarlet ran back away from the white as the lashes pulled back wider and wider. The world stopped breathing, ceased living, as he saw the damaged wings, burnt black and bleeding, violated and mangled. The blonde hair, dirty and tangled, matted together with blood and rain, waved in the breeze, dancing across the bottom of his neck, while a choking noise drifted to the voyeur's ears.
Ain't no way this is real. Can't be real. WON'T be real, if I don't think it is, ri-
The wings pulled themselves into the folds of his back, along the shoulderblades, a few straggly feathers, edges rotted black, floating down to the ground after the split flesh devoured thier inhuman appendages once more. The shirt slipped over the head, even as he gently shook his head back and forth, the hair becoming a mess of perfect style. Then the pale, almost shimmering and shifting rainbow green caught the reflection in the striken glass, catching the taller, slightly older young man staring in a mild shock that was only slightly elevating to something a bit more suffocating, a bit more dangerous.
And it was if his high revisited him, for the world slowed down to a painstaking moment as the small figure turned on battered heels, eyes widening as they met his sky ones, blues half-obscured by the blackened fog of his long bangs.
"Oh, shit."
The voices grew to a screaming intensity inside of his head, blinding out all sights and sounds as he stared into the threaded mortal eyes of the spy. They slung insults at his own careless, his stupidity and vanity, for even existing, all the while coaxing him into the murder of yet another person. He could feel himself slipping away, floating back on a pure ocean of violet, leaning back and floating as he relinquished controll to the others, as he let himself become the puppet once more.
"Oh, shit."
Something about the lack of emotion in the tone, in the fated desire to do nothing more than stare in the quiet shock for a long moment without fear or reservation, but simply with stunned consideration on what exactly was falling before his drugged up eyes intrigued the other boy. His shoulders were so slim, pointed beneath the dark cotton shirt, his torso narrow between it's weight, and his hair, cut short at the base of his neck and long in front, just clung and wept it's own rainy tears onto his neck.
And suddenly, he was fighting against the aura, swimming upstream against the lavender current, ignoring the betraying voices that screamed like voilated women. He clawed his way to the forefront, the only man against a million, the only civilian in a world-encompassing war.
What are you DOING? You fool! How dare you!
"He won't hurt us. He won't-"
He's a visual; he KNOWS! They will tell, they will all know and then you'll be killed, have your wings ripped right out of your back, and you, you fucking idiot, will scr-
"I don't care. I'm tired of it; let me try it my way for fucking once!"
The sapphire eyes stared back at him, lashes of such feminine quality residing deep within questions whirling around the dilated pupils. The small tip of a pink tongue slid across his dry lips, mixing with the rain that still trickled down like blood from some open wound. Whether it was the intoxicant giving him the courage, or just his natural resolve, the blonde was not sure, and frankly, at this point, it didn't matter much either way.
"Who're you talking to?" the taller one asked, his head titling to the side as he blinked on.
"Other people," he answered, carefully leaving out the "inside my head" part on a rather intelligent whim.
He straightened again, squinting his eyes to peer into the alley deeper, using the neon lights from the adult store to aid in his search. He looked feminine almost, long lashes, even lips, smooth cheeks bare of any hair, aside from the bangs that hung down in bright chips of oceans melting away to the deepest reflective black, restricting at least some of his sight.
"I don't see anyone," he said, still scowering.
"Don't worry about them."
"Sounds like they ain't on my side too much," the intruder replied, taking a few steps forward, then off to the left, leaning against the cool wall. Relaxing, he mentally attempted to draw his high back up once more, to float on something and give some piece of a mangled explanation to his tired mind.
"They're on no one's side," the boy muttered, barely audible under the soft pant of his breath.
"I know quite a few people like that," slurred the older one, his lips turning numb from the chill. "Selfish bastards."
He's not asking, the messanger thought, tentative as if even thinking such a thing was automatic damnation. Anyone else would have asked, but why not him?
He's not normal, was the calculated response, devoid of curiousity or anything at all that might have been interest. Or he's too stoned to care. Look at his eyes. He probably thinks this is all one huge delusion.
That he could live with. And maybe if he wasn't normal, maybe if he was like him, they could travel together, find the destination together, d-
NO! screamed the voices, all at once, enraged and frustrated. It echoed through him, down through his legs and his arms, in the pit of his stomach and ran rampant through his chest between the ribs. This isn't some fucking field trip vacation you're on, damnit!
And the smaller boy's mouth curled up at the right side, ignorant of the slit sapphire eyes that stared questionably at him. Perhaps, we began playing by my rules here. There's something that you fuckers you can do with me that no one else can, and you're getting all the perks. I want one thing, damnit! I want one thing, and I will get it!
He'll die. If not by us, then by you, yourself. Want that kind of blood on your hands?
"I'm willing to take that risk."
"What risk?" The obvious effort of pulling back the thin flaps that made up his eyelids leaked off him like a shower, even as he lolled his head to the side to get a better view of the other.
"Hey, what do you have going on tonight?" Emerald eyes moved up along the thin body, resting on the flushed, smiling face. "Want to get something to eat? Talk?"
Food. Now that was a godsent, one of those dreams you forget about until something throughout the day flashes by and you remember in one overwhelming flood. "Mmm. Sounds good." Pushing himself off the wall with his shoulders, and the movement seemed to settle him down a bit. "My name's Alex, but most the folks call me Solo."
"Me?" Shit, when was the last time someone cared enough to even ask him something like that? Been too long for his fickle little memory. "Call me Vin, short for Vinafeil."
"Sounds Italian, old Italian." Hands found sanctuary within dark pockets once again, even as a smile began to pull up at the corners of his loose mouth. "Ever heard of a dine and dash, kid?"
To Be Continued...
Walking through alleys consumed in cheap vacancy lights and neon breaths, he drove stubborn hands down into depths of denim-stitched pockets. Catcalls and narcotic whispers filled the fog-thick air, suffocating hope and all sense of innocence in a realm full of bittersweet lulls of despair. Lost in a maze of concrete and slow death, he turned down one corner, ignoring the state of affairs and locking himself down into one deepened shadow of his own ideas and problems.
The imprint of darkness in the night halted his steps, catching his eye and driving him back to reality as eyes crept up along ancient stones, littered with rainbowed glass. Large wooden doors graced with wrought iron handles pleaded to be touched, to be used, as crosses held refuge above, crying out for the evils of everyday troubles to keep away.
Turning his head, he passed the sanctuary by and continued down the littered sidewalk, kicking some battered aluminum can as he moved. The gentle touch of the wind kept the dangling, unruly bangs from his face, giving him just a bit of an advantage as he watched his feet connect with the game he had began with the metal trash, dispassionately eyeing it as it skittered down the street. Shrugging down deeper in the nylon depths of his spring jacket, his small nose wrinkled gently before striking the can once more.
Idiots, all of them. Assholes and careless, they were only ignorant fools caught up in their bliss, selfish in their absorbing little worlds. They enraged him with their thoughtless actions, with their stinging words and vile temperaments, with their seedy love affairs and dramatic "epic" stories.
Not that he hated them; that was hardly the case at all. Only the things that were loved the most would anger someone to such a degree. But either way, it burned, blazed like an inferno to watch the unnatural decay of a creature that could mock such beauty and elegance.
"You're nothing but some fucking short-shit little twerp."
To them, perhaps. If they had only looked outside the conventional bonds of mortal relations, they could have seen the aura, then strength of a higher being. But they had been blind, blinded by their foolish shelters.
They made him kill them, really.
"That's the guy! Right there!"
Lips parted gently, a small sigh bursting out past pliable lips, before turning around to see the two uniformed officers staring back at him with wide-eyed expressions, almost slack jawed. The disbelief ran rampant in their eyes, one set green, one set brown, and claimed that such a small boy could hardly have just induced the massacre that was brought on a few miles back.
The blonde head tilted gently, off to the right as if hearing something on a frequency that no one else could receive. The lashes dipped down halfway, long and buttery, so feminine, so delicate, while the jade eyes stared blankly at the men down a hundred feet from him, hands a few inches above unlocked holsters and hats that covered most of their eyes.
The voices spoke in his head, the ones that told him he couldn't be bothered with such insignificance, with such little items as these close-minded lives, people who never really cherished what was around them or truly breathed a living day in their meaningless existence. Of course, reason tried to make some sort of contribution, but it was bowled over by the less civil orders that erupted through semi-conscious thought.
Everything moved as if caught in some salt-water tank, sluggish for convenience. The small frame slowly encased itself in a warm violet aura, one that began at the sneakered feet and moved up the loose indigo denim and too-large t-shirt with the black coat. The golden tresses waved gently in the foggy wind, even as the skilled hands of the police officers drove for their weapons, even as the darkened radiance gathered together in front of him and drove forward like a moonlit ocean wave. It sliced through the two figures, even as they fell back screaming curses and names, screaming to God and His Son. Incandescence forked before both figures, crashing into thick chests, cutting though Kevlar vests and blue pressed uniforms adorned with metal, slicing through the delicate flesh and brittle bone beneath. Crimson droplets littered star-crossed skyline, lingering for a moment as if suspended in some artists painting, before falling down onto the still bodies that had been felled.
The young blonde's face twisted for a moment, not close to being a man, yet no child either. One small hand reached up to massage the bridge of his pert nose, while violent voices subsided to the whispers of finding one person, one solitary figure in a cornfield of humanity. Foolish quest.
He winced again as he turned to leave, clutching his back while a few feathers leaked from underneath his jacket and fluttered, scarlet and damp, to the cold cement. Damn, it hurt, killed, to be slowly destroying yourself, to be flipping through your chances like cards in a child’s game of War! He had to find this other person, had to find the only redeemer to this slowly forsaken one, before he'd kill himself off in the flurry of destruction he was leaving at every turn.
There was no turning back now. He was going all the damn way.
To Be Continued...
Author: Chauni
Email: asukalangley2nd@yahoo.com
Website: www.geocities.com/asukalangley2nd
Disclaimer: I do NOT own anyone in this fic, not a single person. They belong to the very talented Kelly (so go an pay tribute to her now! ^-^ )
Notes: Another one? So soon? I feel your shock, trust me, but I have been utterly inspired by something beautiful and amazing. Have you ever heard of the webcomic called Arcana? No? Then I implore you to take a look. It houses an amazing mixture of angst, bishies, vampires, harpies, more bishies, and some shonen ai thrown in. The art work is amazing and breathtaking. I am in love. ::smiles:: http://arcana.keenspace.com/
Forsaken
You asked me for the truth, the bitter truth of everything that happened between all the fragile details interlocked amid nightmares and daydreams. I still find no use in this, refuse to see how this will help anything later down the road, but you could be so damn persistent when you wanted to.
And I never could say no to those eyes, amber energy ringed by obsidian shackles to keep it far from the pristine remaining white.
I fight the urge to look at you, calm the possessive, slightly insane voice that screams for me to take you, to make you eternally mine in every way possible. Fingers grab the sheets beneath me, twisting them, threatening to shred them, while knuckles turned even more pallid than they already were, all the while worrying my bottom lip with one fang. Why did you agree to meet me? Why the fuck is this happening?
Stop staring at me...
I clear my throat first and it cuts through the silence like my nails through the flesh of your chest that one night that seems so ancient, like my nails through your bed sheets now. I can feel the weight of your soul on me, staring out through endless pupils, and I shrug it off before beginning.
The entire time we were together, playing, laughing, smiling, all those breathless moments where your cheeks were so sweetly, deliciously flushed to a deep burning crimson, Adonis whispered sweet somethings into my mind, deep into the center of its eye, past all the shit that doesn't matter and straight into the heart. The words were smoothed, honed, fine, designed not to kill, but to maim, to send me whimpering back to him with my proverbial tail between my legs.
It became unbearable when he stopped telling me what a failure I had become, such a disgrace to the vampire race and to him, and he moved to talking about you. I probably could have ignored it still if he had mentioned you in passing, in quiet little remarks here and there, but he knew how to destroy, how to get whatever it was that he wanted. He knew what it was that would bring me back.
He whispered of his fingertips moving over the planes of your abdomen, of kissing your hard clavicles, of how you would feel wrapped around him, like home, or somewhere safe. He spoke of taking you, taking you right there while I watched, discovering the fickleness of a human heart, before tearing apart your flesh in an autopsy style Y cut and drinking you from the inside out, tongue slipping around the gray sacks of your lungs and teeth tearing into the meat of you heart before suckling it like a juicy peach. He described the bed sheets, soaked in whatever blood he happened to miss, pooling onto the floor, while he would set each organ onto the nearest table after licking it clean, spleen, liver, kidney. He told me how your amber eyes would fade out, wide, surprised, cold, disbelieving.
Had it been anyone else that spoke such things to me, I might have ignored them, written them off as fucking idiots that really had no clue what they were even saying. But this was Adonis, the one who had created me, and I knew he was capable of anything that suited his sick twisted little fantasy.
The time with you had made me weak; you know I did not touch the humans in the time we had spent together, all for you...everything was for you. But, I digress. I must admit I lied though, telling you that I was worse off in my health than I truly was so I bore an excuse to leave for sometime and shut that tormenting tongue before he drove me utterly insane.
I still remember the taste of your lips that day, that sweet tangible fiery taste that lingered just beyond your tender flesh. It tormented me like nothing else, but then again, maybe I was just a masochist all along, right?
Okay, so it wasn't funny. Stop looking at me like that.
Knowing this would be the equivalent of walking into a lion's den, I broke my own personal vow to you and partook in a young woman's life, rolling its sweet texture in my mouth, letting it rest against the length of my tongue as she limply struggled in my arms. Above us, the clouds burned like fire, ignited by the sun that had just disappeared for a night out, leaving his queen to rule in his absence. We were alone in the alley, alone aside from a cat who's head poked from the shelter of the dumpster it sifted through for meager survival.
I left her lying in the alley, beside several boxes and the dumpster, with a blanket I had pulled from its disgusting depths to drape lightly over her. She was already cold, muscles slowly tightening as rigamortis snuck in with frigid, unforgiving fingers, caressing limbs that would never move of their own free will again. I shoved my hands into my pockets and began the long walk home, the dead weight of knowledge sitting in my gut, mingling with the warm wash of blood coursing throughout me.
This was as close to drunk as I could get.
I cannot remember the walk home; I just let my feet wander down the semi-familiar sidewalks on their own memorized accord. The dusk had morphed into twilight, and finally into indigo smooth silk, and the people had thinned out to the few different classes of college students that lived solely on coffee, hookers who lived solely on the money, and the rebels that just liked the attention. Somewhere, about three miles from where I began this little trek, I found the apartments we had stayed at looming, all red brick and mortar with dimly lit scattered windows lining the front.
I climbed up the broken cement steps, brushing the hair back from my eyes as I slipped through the doorway. Hallways and stairs greeted me, winding up and around, and I took the first set going up, finally stopping on the first plateau I reached. Rusted gold sat against the deep mahogany of the door, pronouncing this domain as 2D, our home. I knew what lay beyond: a few flashy possessions like our fancy fucking stereo with tons of CDs, the television we took from some local store, the Playstation 2 we snagged one night while out and about. Black thick curtains that felt as though they weighed twenty pounds each hung from windows, destroying all hopes of light ever entering our humble little abode. The kitchen bar was clean, the fridge empty, the sink dry.
It took a moment to calm my nerves; I somehow knew this was going to change everything there ever was, ever would be, and that even my soul could be lost in this simple battle of wits. Or at least, that was all I hoped it would be. I was not going into this looking for death, but I was determined not to shy away from it if the need for such arose.
I would have done anything to protect you, don't you see? I loved you that much. Why don't...
Right, right, back to the story. I apologize.
He was sitting on the black leather couch, his back to me, tendrils of hair a pale color against the obsidian smooth furniture. His head never moved, never acknowledged my existence, but he knew where I stood, knew the expression on my face without even having to gaze on it. His shoulders were square, little bumps just barely peeking over the sleek top, black ribbed fitted t-shirt adorning his tight chest. I could see the rounded curve of one ear as it listened to the strong voice of Tool as it drifted through the room, Maynard's voice tearing through the otherwise silence.
"Back again?" he purred, slowly standing and padding over to me, the toes of his bare feet peering out from the bottom of his bootcut vinyl pants. Sex appeal dripped off him like rain water, slipping over his thin arms and rampant through his long hair. "You've been gone far too long, my pet." His steps closed the distance between us, his breath hot against my lips before I tasted him, intoxicating with blood and lust.
He was inside my mouth before I could stop him, the taste of his gluttony filling my senses, swallowing my world for a moment. One thin hand crept up to grab my chin, fingers splayed across my cheek hard enough to leave momentary imprints, while his thumb threatened to crush the opposite side of my jaw. The tip of his tongue slid across my back teeth, the expanse of my own muscle, the smooth roof of my mouth, searching in his passion, demented logic fading through.
He didn't have to look to know my hands were curled into tight fists at my sides, enough to leave bloody half-moons across my palms.
Adonis pulled away, eyes glittering dangerously as he flippantly glared at me from beneath the long eyelashes. His lips glistened with my saliva in the dim light, pouty almost from the depth and cruelness of our kiss, fingers still clutching at my face. "And you taste like a human, you slut."
I tore myself from his grip, crimson eyes flickering to the tile that lined the kitchen floor, black and white checkered, making me dream of chess and pawns. My voice sounded weak to my own ears, shaking softly even after I attempted to stir up my struggling strength. "Sh-shut up..."
"Is it that boy perhaps?" The mocking innocence reeked among his words, tainting them to a dark maroon as they whispered against my cheeks. The irises spoke volumes of what he wished to do, wished to taste within you, and their own jokes taunted me, stabbed me. Fingernails lightly rose to my throat, caressing the Adam's apple with hidden promises, while his other hand found the curve of my hip.
"Don't...fucking...touch...me." I hissed, but the words were automatic, meaningless, spoken with an unfeeling tongue. My audacity surprised him, my hand clamping down onto his shoulder, pushing him backwards as rage and adrenaline fueled my robotic body. Feet stumbled backwards, mouth forming a small growl as his ass and legs slammed into the back of the couch, leaving him to teeter over the edge, as if debating to fall backwards.
If I had given him a chance to recover, that would have been the end of it, completely in his favor; that much was common knowledge to me. I was screaming wordlessly as I closed the distance, as I jumped on him, throwing both of us over the back of the couch, our feet hanging up and over the end. He was restless beneath me, squirming, fighting, hissing, cursing, but he was silent to my thudding ears, gone from my crimson sight. Only his blood called to me, that ecstasy laden treat better than any drug a human could produce, and three times more addicting.
He knew, knew before I even felt it spill onto my tongue.
"Don't you fucking dare, Vincent!" he yelled helplessly, nails running ragged tracks down through my shirt and parting the flesh of my back. "I made you, damnit! You can't betray me! I created you, you selfish son-of-a-bitch!"
I fisted that black shirt by the collar, my body pushing his down into the leather cushions beneath us, his head tipping off, hair spilling a waterfall onto the floor, and all I could do was laugh, a soulless echoing thing.
His skin parted so perfectly beneath the tips of my fangs, as if it had been craving nothing else for endless centuries. With us almost upside down in our struggles, his blood was a torrent into my mouth: quick, sudden, and surely devouring me as much as I did it. His fingers continued their painful assault on my back, my shirt now held together by nothing more substantial that mere threads, but they soon weakened, even as his screamed quieted to a few pleading whispers, bargains, then finally nothing.
I lay atop him for a long time after, his muscles twitching, his fingers now playing softly along my rapidly closing wounds, his mouth working soundlessly. His eyes were marbles, staring at nothing, useless items for information gathering, long gone. He was so far away, so dead, yet coursing through my veins, never closer before in our paths together, not even in bed.
To say it was a mere consciousness sitting inside me would be an understatement; I inherited him. His obsessions calmed my jagged nerves, before igniting them with new fires; his needs consumed the tattered moral system I had attempted to sustain for you. But it was a slow process; he always did tease before swallowing, and even now, in death, he did the same to me.
It was an eternal blaze, one that tickled the edge of my mind with small kisses and gentle fingering, before finally engulfing completely. Nights became difficult to endure without feeding; I was consumed by the thoughts of you spread out beneath me, tied and waiting for all of me, screaming when it exceeded human standards for sanity and survival. You were my prize, my grand trophy.
You were born for me to take you.
I came to you later that month, having regained enough of the me that you remembered to feel strong enough to make finish this one task, to tell you goodbye and never see your amber eyes again.
We know what happened after that.
Are you satisfied? Is this what you wanted? Will this make sleep come easier? Can you find solace in your nightmares now?
I didn't think so.
The gaping holes in the sheets scream at me to leave while I have enough of my old self in the forefront. I find my feet, flinching beneath your cool gaze, the one that longs, yet shies away quietly. Such a monster I am to you, and with good reason. Is your chest still scarred? Do you still sleep with Usagi?
Yes, yes, I know all about that.
My feet are steady on the window sill, and I cast you a hesitant look over my shoulder, eyes glittering in the darkness. I lick my lips before I speak, but you know who's voice is creating those words, know they belong to the obsession coursing through my veins.
"I will have you. Nothing will ever keep you from me."
But then, what would be the fun without a little chase, right, my pet?
The End
Disclaimer: Nope... don't own "Somewhere" by VAST
Notes: Originally, this was a Gundam fic... then it went to Eva... then it just was. I guess... it's whatever you want it to be. I still look at it like it's Duo's voice though... especially with the hair comment.
Every time I cry out
No one ever comes to me
I’ve screamed until my throat was raw, clawed until my fingernails turned crimson with old blood, and no one came to see me. I suppose I know why, know why I am alone; they all left days ago, abandoned me to this old house in the middle of nowhere, the kind that creaks in the middle of the night as it settles in the darkness. You know the type.
I successfully scratched away two different layers of wallpaper, showing a glimpse of a dirty beige drywall beneath between the ragged strips. It glares back at me like a swimming eyeball or a…
I’m not even going to say it. Somewhere, I can hear the soft drip of something hitting the floor beside me, and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s my own blood. Fancy that, right?
God, why did they leave me, leave me to wander aimlessly around the numerous bedrooms with nothing in them but a random bed or couch? Why couldn’t they take me with them, let me hitch a ride on their dreams and their adventures, instead of holing me up in the middle of nowhere? Do they hate me that much?
Every time that I reach out
No one ever rescues me
I want to tell you that I wasn’t always like this, a little off the deep end, a little insane, a little unhappy when I’m smiling. I used to be a kid with dreams, a kid with parents and friends, and ideas of Santa Claus and angels and some proverbial being that cared and watched over all the speckled human race with an unconditional love that surpassed all. I used to play in the streets and get grounded, used to have toy cars that I made zoom, used to have a bear that I drug ‘round with me everywhere.
But then I grew up, the walls were painted with small handprints of the deepest passion, and I blocked half of it out, aside from where my mother held the ancient Colt .45 to her thumping temple and her bloody finger pulled the trigger.
Can’t think of that! Stop it! It’s breaking you, this house, this loneliness. They knew, they knew and they plotted and they won, because they were never your friends!
Shadows play across the room, and I find solace in one bright corner, where the moonlight meets the softened glow of tainted midnight cloth. I can’t hear them, the soft murmurs of the demons inside me, of the companions on the outside, of the sensitive logic that sits silent in between. I want to cry, want to scream and kill them, like she killed us, them, me, and then burst into that sobbing laughter like the bystander did.
Did you know that I can’t feel my body anymore?
Did you know that I can’t feel?
I wish I could hide from everyone
My hair is heavy, trying to suffocate me with it’s evil intentions and weighty conscience. It has become my enemy, so I killed it, mangling, torturing, decapitating it and throwing it from a shattered window. I watched it flutter down, the beginning rays of sunlight slipping through fingers of trees to light against it, while woman’s screams fill my head like the fire alarm it has been all along.
I killed her again, and felt so much freedom to watch it all drift on down the ocean view.
Occasionally, my breath stops, and I forget I’m alive. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see his darkened outline, like someone snuck up behind me and sketched him into my life. I want to sever my name so I can murder him again, wallow in his cries as he’s banished out of my life for the second wild time, but I can’t.
Fucking love.
I leave him to watch me, to sit in the bleachers and be the cheering section of my life like the annoying fan that he is. The silhouette stays, lingering in the backdrop of my head, as I clutch temples that throb, that pound beneath the shell of flesh.
I know the others aren’t coming back for me, leaving me locked and strapped to this battered shack, with windows like eyes that are cracked and walls that weep and breathe. But I must admit, I pushed them away by opening my arms, I destroyed them with a kiss and a soft smile, I slaughtered with whispers and winks. I use all the weapons available to the human soul, to the mauled sections of societies heart.
I’m a crafty bastard, aren’t I?
I heard the sighs of bored torments brought in on the harsh breeze of reality today, calling out my name with all its malevolent intentions, all its twisted little designs. I showed it my back, showed it my vulnerable weak point and let it slide its weapon into the chink on my mental armor, and delightfully threw all cares and desires to the wind.
This time...
Next time...
And all the gray shades that lie in between.
Is there somewhere else to be
Is there somewhere else to be
Shredded paper flowers pool at my feet, stripped and broken, while the naked plaster of the enclosing wall mocks me. I found a mirror that refused to die amongst the roses, and stared at violet eyes rimmed with strings of red. I think they once knew the secret to the face that held them, but now it's gone, all gone on a wisp of a scent, on the rain that drove the family out.
Music dances outside my reaches sometimes, leaving me so lonely. I've taken to talking to the one that stalks me, the one that stands just outside my peripheral vision and laughs because he knows I'm flailing while standing perfectly still. The other voices have quieted down to something bearable, but he... he stands still in the center of a moonbeam and creates a whirlwind of sound without opening his mouth.
I've moved to the living room, on braver days, and its irony is unmistakable. A living room sitting in a dead house; a family room resting in the epitome of abandonment. The couch is upholstered some disgusting faded yellow color that resembles things I don't want to put names to, and the curtains are dust-colored and tattered, resembling the clichéd type in played out horror movies. Unpolished wooden floors sang with uneven boards, while televisions with shattered faces sat still in their unbroken death.
I rose up a protest in dust and caused sunlight to slide in through obscenities I had written on dirty windowpanes. Call it my message to the wonderful society, to the graceful world that shoved me in here in the first place.
Knives litter the kitchen, but all too worn to do any real damage. They knew, damn them; they knew.
I'll return to the room upstairs once the dusk settles like a blanket in the skyline. I can't take the dejected worldview from scarred windows anymore.
Take me in
I want out
That’s all I need
Standing in the battered doorway, I could not help but eye the lush forest of unshaved grass, of weeds that stood as tall as I, swaying, barring, beckoning. Lashes blocked out my view, only to burn it into my mind, branding it forever on the haywire synapses. Pads of fingers pulled down the iron bars, traced their twirling nature, their binding hold, while I flared to life behind my soul.
Freedom...
So dangerously close...
Its taste lingers by my security, lulling me into some almost sated personae with it's high-pitched mewling.
I slam the door closed, panting as I lean my back against its wooden, splintered chest. Almost fell for it this time; almost saw the cement beyond that cold crypt, and then what? To be faced with the decisions and choices, the ideas of mending ways with the people that left me to rot within the shell, to become the introvert, the ideal silent born child that no one could love?
Shuffling towards the banister, my hands griped it, ignoring the slivers that dug and embedded themselves beneath the flesh of my palm. I crawled upwards, caught between growling and crying, screaming and whispering.
Where was everyone?!
I need them...to leave... to become...
Gleaming tile met my sight as I stumbled into the bathroom, disinfected and ripe with cleaner as it assaulted my head. Hands fumbled with the knobs, forcing the rusty brown spray of water out. Steam wafted forth, condensing around the ceiling and hiding ghostly expressions from mirrors and windows. I curled my trembling fingers around the slick white plastic of the curtain and pulled it free from the wrungs that held it, watching as it fluttered down and pooled along the slick white floor.
Shoving it away, I clambered into the water, letting it soak into my clothes, to scald my sacred temple of flesh, and clean me of the stench freedom had imprinted on me. Nails clawed at skin that ripped and birthed crimson rivers, while the stream of water refused to dissipate. I screamed and swallowed heat; I cried and wept fire.
I wish that I could run from everything
I watch them outside, the ones that commanded my fate with steel-trap jaws. Their shadows are long, and I am done.
Even my stalker has left me be, seeing me nothing more than a lost cause on a twilight whisper.
I wanted to tell you, one final statement before I take the key to my lips and devour its promises, just one ending statement that proclaimed softly of my own final chords that tie me to a whispering sanity.
"I asked for this. This is my heaven."
"Did his hand just..."
"Muscle spasm."
"I see..."
The footsteps echoed through whitewashed halls of divine order, promising of a hope long lost and mangled until there remained not even a soul left to manage. Hands found solace in a pocket, curling around cruel keys that bit into the flesh of a bitter palm, opening old wounds once more, one final time on the way outside, under streetlamps and moonlight, under shadows and silhouettes.
The End
Nope... don't own the charries... well, I kinda own one... :d
"You know," the younger one drawled as he buried the battered palms against the soft carpet of nature, "I forgot what I was gonna tell you."
"Time's a bitch like that, eh?" the other muttered in a gruttal hiss under the soft breath of wind that blew like splayed fingers through the foliage above, seductive in a simple way. The heated fire god caressed fine cheeks while the ebony lashes dipped down and thin flesh covered sensitive oculars. "It kills everythin', ya know, and ain't got no mercy for nutin'."
The silence bordered between peace and violence in its simple nature, reigning over them both for a moment until the rustling of black sacrilegious clothes. The sudden heartbeat of the conversation quickened, thudding behind the nothingness, before it flared to life in a final question.
"Why did you go?"
The lengths of feminine qualities parted to allow emerald lagoons to peer out, following along a roadmap of loneliness and regret. Guilt found itself etched into violet irises and ebony pupils, and a face of all too familiar shattered mirrors and dirty bay windows met him in return.
"Didn't I just tell ya why?"
"Fuck you!" the other snarled, rolling away from him while jade blades of grass slipped into the lengths of his hair. The emotion flared to life under the newfound shade beside one tree, even as his lip curled upwards in pure malice. "Is everything a big fucking joke to you?"
"Bit ironic comin' from ya, ain't it?" Leather boots dug into the dirt as he rose to unsteady legs after a low, lazy growl at the disruption of his comfort. "The little comedian can't take jokes very well, eh? Someone's humor is a bit prejudiced, I'd say."
"Goddamnit, why didn't you just stay away? Why can't you just fucking leave me alone?"
Shards of bark bit against the thinly clad back as he leaned against the sheltering tree, palmers slowly tugged towards heaven in a smirk that brought the other back into a dreamy reality. "Ya bitch 'cause I ain't here, and now that I am, ya just want me gone. Ya people can't ever make up your minds, can ya?"
Another silence fell from heaven, reigning over all for a long moment. Nimble digits slipped up to brush away long obsidian bangs that teased the tips of his cheeks while the corners of his eyes filled with emerald irises. "Hit a nerve, did I?"
"I'm tired of this conversation!"
One hand dove into a denim cavern, fishing for a moment, before a few muttered curses slipped out from dry lips. "Damn. I coulda used a smoke, too."
"I told you that I'm done with this! Don't you even care? Aren't you even paying attention?"
Sated eyes drifted down towards the shorter companion with an almost bemused expression etched into the smooth corners of his circular face. "Tired of talkin' to yerself, are ya? Ya finally think ya can let me go? Forever? This ain't no game, ya know."
The chestnut lashes could not conceal the sudden second thoughts, imagined countless chances, the flaring need that curled like a fiery tendril around his arteries, before he turned his face towards a calming section of sun that seemed to exist to awash his face. The fine line of reality and dream merged together, flashing behind his mind's eye to replay a life of hardship and death, of mistakes and victories, of devouring the nature of those around him. Whitened teeth dug into the soft bottom tier until the crimson contrasted with the gentle slope of his chin, tainting the flesh. So long, so dependent upon memories and torment, and for one fleeting moment he was offered the safe passage through the mountains that held him captive for so long.
"Yeah... I think it's time you leave," he whispered as the covered oculars burned bitter sweetly. "I'm not six anymore."
"Yer right, kid. Ya ain't. Yer way beyond me." Words drifted from the satin lips like political lies, smooth and dangerous, yet strangely heartfelt and sincere, hanging in the breeze like sakura petals. "I was gettin' kinda tired of hangin' 'round 'nyway."
The younger one stared up at the taller figure, the young man that stood staring at the leaves above him like he could spy the space that laid beyond all intrusions and with that find the meaning of the universe and comprehend it completely. Emeralds turned glassy, before lashes grew damp and struggled to keep the emotions encased, failing just a hair while one errant drop skied down the slope of his cheek. The long back hair slipped back from his cheeks, away from his shoulders as he took a few steps into the sunlight, radiance that slid through the skin and to the grass behind him.
"I guess this is goodbye," the sitting one hissed with a suddenly hoarse throat, choking on years of abandonment, of isolation. Being in control of the situation did nothing for the rolling tide that slipped into his lungs, slowly suffocating him. "I-"
"Just stop, brat. Ya can tell me later, when we meet up 'gain." The beginning of a smirk teased transparent lips as the definition of flesh slowly phased out into the unnatural illumination of the sun. "I got all o' eternity to sit and twiddle my damn thumbs, and I'll do it, too. Take yer sweet time, Duo."
"I will, Solo." Waiting until the image of his one true companion dissipated into the nothingness that was sweet summer air, he closed his eyes and allowed a gentle smile onto a forbidden mouth. "Promise."
The End
The apathy was suffocating, agonizing as it tore the breath from his small pulsating lungs and threatened even more personal areas of the human soul.
"Help me."
Pleading, how pathetic, yet still the only thing he knew well, knew in the strong sense like a security blanket. Her eyes glittered beneath the fringe of strawberry blonde, so deep it looked almost like a dull fire. Boredom, neutrality, the darkness of a mind that cared for noone, she regarded him with nothing at all, the sapphire waters watching him. Her lips, ones he had kissed once on more of a forceful nature than anything else, berated without air, rambled with a calmness that seemed inhuman, as she took steps forward, bare feet carrying her lithe form across the cool tiles.
"Help me."
To take such words at face value would have been pointless; nothing could ever be as simple in a world that threatened to implode with its devouring complexity. Help what? Him? Such a thing was impossible, for he was damned, if by nothing else but his own insecurities and need for constant escape, to run until breathless and blind, until death crept in like heated lovers’ air. But still, he would beg, would seek the salvation of someone else, of someone who could be like him in fun house mirrors and dark attics.
"Help me."
It felt so good to say it, like the mantra that would slowly drive the sanity through him before fleeing, leaving him alone once more. Yes, to seek the help of others, to depend on them and have them let him down... or better yet, to let them down first! To hurt them, kill them, before they could do it to him, destroy their full house with a royal flush full of spades. To hurt, before he could kill...
"Help me."
Or perhaps, it was the notion that he could do no right, could accomplish nothing more than resurrecting a pyramid of sand that would be leveled by his juvenile feet once more. Vicious cycles that refused reprieve, he was encircle and bound in a life where he would hurt, where he would destroy, where he would bring no pleasure to anyone as long as...
"Help me."
The flat of her hand found his chest, pressing where a heart thudded frantically beneath the ropes of flesh, and she eyed him as he stumbled backwards. One flailing arm struck the glass coffee maker that sat up a boring wooden table top, splashing and skidding over, drenching one sleeve with its lukewarm remains. A soft thump reverberated in the minute kitchen, bouncing off cream walls and sitting in his head along with one violent word he had heard her spat.
"Pathetic."
Crumpled within a limp cocoon of thin limbs, he took in several shaky breaths, ones that sounded so much more sane that what he truly felt. Forget the world and it's problems, forget an abandoning rejecting father and long lost mother bound within a steel gate. Forget the lackluster albino girl with a bible of secrets and forget the flaming eyes of someone who loved him. Forget the stigmata, forget the cross, forget the past, and kill the future before it could close it's hands on him.
"Help me."
Newborn-like legs untangled, and he crawled to his feet, shoulders slumped, arms dangling without muscle at his sides. Head down, the dark hair covering the portals towards any mortal soul, he whispered his mantra one final time, as if to bring the world down with it and open the gates of Eden with one holy choir.
"Help me."
Silence grew to be his companion, for no other sound met his ears. The crushing defeat, the final passions flared and sizzled out, only to rise like a phoenix once more. Hands grabbed the damnable kitchen table, toppling the rectangle furniture in a lazy fury, while his head remained lowered, quiet voice repeating it's plea of redemption.
"Help me."
Flat eyes did not waver as they stared down at him, frigid in their nonexistence.
"No."
And the bars swung forth with heated resolve, a flood of silent determination, of action and ideals. Fine-boned hands darted out, fingers digging into the soft partial German flesh, while the heels of her feet slowly rose off the tiles, suspended in frozen air.
And the world went silent on it’s panoramic view.
The End
I do NOT own Gravitation or it's charries....as lovely as they are. There is no real plot, and the imagery is lacking for a reason...it's first POV. I made Shu a lot more elegant, a lot more serious, but a bit flighty and happy as it was; he's in one of his more somber moods. There's no real plot, just a lotta thinking and sap and shonen ai. Here...enjoy
Sewing
It won't come, even as much as I try. A fool to them all, but I don't care, don't even think twice at the ridicule and confused looks they all swing in my direction, because damnit, the words just won't come out! The paper's so white, unblemished, screaming to be covered in lyrics to a song that has to become a hit, but I can't even string two syllable's together, let alone words.
Grabbing the sheet in two shaking hands, I began yanking it apart, gnawing on the top of it while my unfocused eyes stared back at the matching shell-shocked expressions that got me from all corners of the room. One of K's hands twitched, the fingers itching to grab that revolver underneath his jacket, while Hiro shook his head in a defeat that I had known for years. He was a bit used to me, I guess.
Looking down at the torn mess, I released my hold and spit out the slimy bits of dead trees. They can't stop staring at me, as if I'm some insane person that's going to jump out the nearest window in our studio or something. Do they really think that li- Nevermind, don't answer that.
"I'm going for a walk."
They all knew that translated to "I have to get my mind on/off Yuki", taking into context whichever one gave me this damn block in the first place. Well, wouldn't they be surprised to know that it's nothing to do with him, but with the band, with Nittle Grasper, with everything in general. My life does extend outside Yuki, after all.
Granted, not *far* outside of him, but it does!
No one stopped me; they knew I needed to get my head cleared, which was fine with me, even if I could feel Hiro's eyes burning holes through the jacket I just picked up. He worries too much, and sometimes I wonder if it's because-
Nah, not Hiro!
The streets were busy outside after I dodged through the hallways and prayed to God I wouldn't run into Tohma or anyone else. I didn't have a real direction as I dodged between the bodies, none of them paying attention to me as I slipped the baseball hat onto my head and pulled the brim down lower. I was definitely getting more popular these days, and it's never too much to be careful, you know? Safety first!
I didn't realize that I was arriving at a rather familiar park sometime later, standing down the same pathway by that customary bench. The wind was blowing the same way, soft but with enough force as to not forget it's presence, and it constantly knocked my hair into my face, no matter how much I tried to push it back. The day was slowly killing itself, and I could feel the heat of it all against the back of my neck and running through my shirt as if it could light my soul on fire.
Too bad it's already too late. Someone beat it to it.
Images overlapped, with the past pressing against the present, grainy images superimposed on lack of figures. Sometimes, I swear I could see those tiger eyes staring at me, just above the burning embers of a newly lit cigarette while smoke wafted up gently and making reality seem like nothing less than some perfect fantasy.
At least til he opens his mouth and berates me.
Yeah, it's constant, and I can tell he doesn't mean it, but it sure as Hell pisses me and just about everyone else off. His voice just grows so cold, like some nightmare grabbed a hold of his tongue and started speaking, while his eyes turn so deadly, so... damn scary.
So, why do I stick around, you're all wondering. Simple.
'Cause I know those eyes, that voice, aren't meant for me, but for the rest of the world that did a nice little stampede all over his battered little soul.
That's why I dressed up as a girl, and a banana, and a dog, and went chasing after him to America. That's why I'd break through walls, belt out songs, and cry if he doesn't look at me in the right way. That's why I love him so much.
Because the world hated him for so long, and didn't retract its claws once, I was left to mend his soul with this little needle and piece of string I have. I've poked my fingers til they've been bleeding and raw, but each time I gain a little bit more skill...
And I grabbed some thimbles.
The bench was cold, shooting right through my clothes as I plopped down on it. Night was in full swing, leaving me to realize that I'd been out here a lot longer than I had intended to be. It's not a big deal; no one's missing me right now since they think that I'm somewhere else with someone else, be it Hiro or Yuki.
Damn, it's getting cold out, all at once like the night not only took the sun's place, but banished all the heat to some other dimension with it. I pulled my legs up to my chest while my little arms locked tightly around them. My breath's so hot against the tops of my knees, like I’m the only warm thing left in this world, the only thing that hasn't gone off to some desolate little corner and died.
I was getting whiney.
I wish Yuki were he-
"Hey!"
There's a sudden weight that's dropped around my shoulders, heavy and thick, while the familiar scent of leather is swimming thickly around me. My eyes move up, wide and expecting to see faded golden hair and those entrancing eyes that could melt me just as much as one of his -
"Hiro?"
The way his hair danced in the breeze that night was-
"C'mon, I'll take you home."
His hands were bound in these fingerless leather gloves, and they sneaked under my palms, unwinding me from my nice comfortable spot on the bench. Of course he wasn't expecting the sudden fall I took as I stumbled forward, landing completely on my face so badly that I would be pulling blades of grass from my teeth for hours.
I turned to gaze up at him with a weak, hesitant smile as he stood illuminated under a pregnant moon. "My legs are asleep."
I could tell he wanted to call me a "baka" or something, but instead he just kneeled down beside me with his back to me. The auburn hair brushed back and forth against the smooth leather of his coat, moving in this alluring sort of way. "Climb on."
"Wheee!" My arms tightened around his throat enough to get him to cough several dozen times before he picked me up, off to carry me to his bike just outside the park. I could just hear Hiro now, walking along the sidewalk to find me, "Stupid park rules! Making me walk all this way! I have a mi-"
"Hiro, how did you find me, anyway?" I murmured into the slick black jacket.
There was a moment of hesitation, almost as if he was caught with his hand in the jar of cookies or something. "I know you better than you think I do."
"Apparently." I whispered, closing my eyes and seeing Yuki's face staring back at me with that expression, that small smile that he leaves only for me. "Just don't ever forget how well you do know me. You come in handy sometimes."
He made a mocking movement, like he was going to drop me on my butt right there, and I clutched onto his neck tighter, yiping all the while. Another coughing fit later, we were at the bike, my arms around his waist as we began to speed off down the street back towards Yuki, towards my little sewing project, a newfound respect for those closest to me sittind down inside.
Somedays, writer's block just wasn't so bad.
The End
Call them history
Where the edges blur to a sweet imperfection
And faded to a dull parchment
In the middle of the mind,
And I will tell you truths that
The world hid from you as it danced on tightrope
And threatened to slaughter your hope with.
Time is lost
In sand gusts and percarious clocks
Where hands can't determine which way to follow
And little girls in christening dresses
Find clothes lost on stained floors
And prayers whisper past nonchalant ears.
And angels lie down
While laughing like lunatics
And I find peace
In the history that was stolen,
Manipulated and massacred
All for a piece of mind.
~Old poem I wrote... I'm not very good at poetry, I'm afraid, but since this is my outlet, I thought I'd post it here.
And their fangs of righteousness hurt
Searing agony from the deepest of pleasure
And I scream to the heavens of my sins
As Eden bears accusing tears down
(Scarlet like the fires of Hell)
With each brandishing a digit of scars
Burdened by my incapability
Slaughtered by my inconsequential lust
And I am nothing without it.
I take it unto me ‘til my seams creak
(Just like I did with your supple lips)
And push back the hand of God
Trading eternal reprise for
A moment
A breath
Between the sacredness in folds of flesh.
And I push back the hand of the Prince
For a blessing handed down from
A crown
A clover
And lie between inner spectral realities.
Disclaimer: As much as I hope and pray, I still do not own Cowboy Bebop.
Warnings: SPOILERS, POV, Angst, Language
Notes: And does anyone know what scene this takes place in? ::smiles::
The Call of the Final Stage
I wanted to speak an eternity of words, expelling the distinct taste of love that seeped down upon my forked little tongue, but I could not bear to taint them all with brutal oxygen, air that twisted and confused, that seeped down into lungs and mangled the phrases before they ever saw life. The words taught by God and used by humans sat down like some beast in the pit of my pregnant stomach, pleading to be born like some fabled Antichrist that might destroy the fragile little crystal castle we built for ourselves.
The back of your suit is covered in a thin layer of dust, making it look as if the sun had just disappeared and lights littered a deepening horizon far off, and my hand twitches to run up behind your retreating form and brush it off. You walk with your customary gait, very distinct and smooth, like on a windless day over water, and your skill, strength, shines through similar to that of a beacon on a misty day.
The bittersweet taste of blood fills my mouth like a torrent as I bite my lower lip, holding back the screams of rage, of loneliness, of abandonment that compensate for twelve lifetimes over. That familiar talon sneaks around the ventricles, cutting off the blood as I grow cold and my eyes fill with a fire I haven't felt in awhile.
You are never coming back. You're going to find your life in your final dying moments, and will never come back to me, to this ship, to your friends.
But were we ever really friends? Sure you saved my ass a few times, here and there, but your words were short, your ideas cold, your lips as callous at your hands. Only between the sheets, under the cover of space when the stars passed like wildflowers through the heavens, did I realize that you had some heat simmering down inside.
My heel clicks against the metal walls, reverberating a million times over, while my hand trembles up in the air, cold weight threatening above. I can't believe it, can't imagine how everything was warped, shuffled, and this was what fate led us to, the inevitable separation. My finger spasms, tight with rage, and I fire, not to frighten, not to change your mind, but to kill the demon that's forcing us down these little rat mazes and laughing at us all the while.
Your happiness is a death, not of your body, but of a bond, of a single unity that began breaking apart and will finalize now. I wonder if you're smiling as I release several more rounds and collapse to my knees, the fire exploding like a volcano and running lava down my cheeks. My hand curls up, beating against the tin can that's been my home, my only place to belong in so long, and even through my fuck-ups, my cold little episodes, my backstabbing and bullshit, you have been my joy, all of you.
I can't hear your footsteps any longer.
I'll never hear them again.
A hand as frigid as the rest of the ship curls around one of my shuddering shoulders, pulling back the dark edges of my hair, all the heat of his body locked inside of his movements rather than the flesh. Fingers slide from the trigger, from the gun itself, and for a moment, I just stare at him with the black tracks of mascara running down my china doll face. Pushing up from my makeshift seat, I launch myself at it, feeling the hard arms wrap around my lithe form. The comfort of another body is exquisite, intoxicating, especially as I cover his chest with all the pain I've felt, and will continue to feel in my personal mourning.
Those footsteps are ringing like sirens in my ears, drilling through my consciousness as manicured nails attempt to dig into the metal of the familiar arm clutching me. I want to jump away, to run away and follow him, save his life and keep him here, alongside us, forever, until the end of some stupid galaxy. I want to have a million more adventures, a hundred more stories to tell, a partner to help me discover myself amid a ruins of half-truths and lies. I want the only family I can remember staying locked in arms so tightly that pasts fade away and God can't even separate us.
"Let's eat."
"I'm not hungry."
My response is bitter, cold, and the snakebite is barely kept from my lips. For a long moment, I hate everyone, everything, hate God and this fucking life where everything is taken from me in the end. For a moment-
"Come on. He'll find his peace, and then maybe we can find ours."
The words are bursting with a logic that seems so much easier to ignore, but what can I do but nod slowly and pull away. One little hand rubs at my cheeks like some three-year old, the soft sniffling coming forth gently. Looking up through a blurry underwater scene, I see my only friend left staring back at me with a peculiarly soft expression that surprises me, to say the least.
"Let's grab something to eat, okay?"
I nod mutely, the sound of retreat still vibrating in my head, but slowly fading away. The knowledge of that too being gone is bitter; I don't want to forget you, don't want to simply get over it all like it never really happened. I wonder if you'll think of me, or her, the dangerous female covered in a scent of thick life and violence, but I realize I already know the answer. One more swipe of my hand, and I'm following the soft sound of a griddle cooking, entering to a bond of two in exchange of a team that might have been a few weeks prior.
Goodbye, space cowboy. May happiness find you, and may you live long enough to savor its sweet taste.
The End
This is for Ryce, my good friend and my inspiration on all such matters such as this. I hope she enjoys it ::smiles and waves::
Epilogues of a Long Night
I remember the way the wind danced the night the news was carried to me on wings of demons, as I sat on the gentle shoreline of the ocean. It carried the sand into childish cyclones, made it dance beneath the diamonds and among neon whitecaps, while somewhere a mile down the beach, the sounds of late night water lovers caressed the curvature of my earlobe. The glistening grains were captured to my lips, gritty, brittle, harsh, glued there by crimson saliva and violent heat, just as the others that were speckled against my smooth bare arms. I could feel the cool course of scarlet life slipping from my laxed fingertips, dripping and coagulating the shifting, blowing ground beneath my toes.
Something had forbid me to wear white this night, but I disobeyed it; I had never been the easiest creature to sit beside, after all. Argumentative, stubborn, snide, it was a wonder that I had even lived this long with all my limbs still connected to the remainder of my body.
Not that it would have mattered much for my kind even if they had been removed.
My life has been surreal since my path had strayed far from the man who discovered me, and led me into the depths of the River Styx and into the arms of Hades himself. I loved him, my arrogant unnatural abomination, with the cocky smirk and that raven hair that pleaded to swallow my fingertips. I loved him, the one who destroyed me, remade me, stole me, enthralled me. He was my new religion, as he spat at the old, and devoured me whole.
For the moment, I could find solace in being ignorantly alone. Several mangled cadavers littered the sand north of me, arms jutting out at impossible angles, one leg with a tattered thigh a few degrees to the west. The blank green eyes over the mother rolled to me, so glassy that they captured the moon and shone it back to me with as much life as any flat mirror would. The child had screamed the most, her shrill underdeveloped voice choking so mercifully as I slit her pale little throat and washed myself in her life. It felt so warm, its bath of crimson rain, that I could feel myself shuddering, the tainted lips cracking in a lunatic smile beneath the coating liquid; I wished it would never end.
It is rare that I take any sanctuary in brutish violence, especially when it is directed towards a child; whores and derelicts suit my tastes so much better. But tonight was special, that single solitary night that make the others burn in the flames of regret and rage.
My original God died tonight.
My first beloved left me, left this plane, for the sweeter treasures of a burning Hell and the sweet realm of sleep. There were rumors before this, the tentative whispered hush of the madman drunk on his own anguish and lapping at his angst. He devoured his pain more than he did the blood that coursed through his blue veins, and savored the bittersweet guilt that was the lingering aftertaste upon the tip of his tongue. They spoke of him, my fallen and abandoned deity, and I wanted to scream my fury at all their mocking tones, all their disrespectful and snide remarks.
Especially at him, my new religion.
At nights, his agony pricked the back of my mind, sharp needle fingers caressing the back of my neck before slicing in with cruel precision. Flickering flinches would slip through my gray storms and leave me stunned for a moment, long digits twitching with muscle spasms. I could feel the flat of his hand moving inside me, through the gaping cavity of my chest as he fingered the ventricles that serviced my heart that ran on stolen blood, could feel the lackluster fire that sat in the bottom of my gut, churning, flickering. Soon, lines merged, and our matching guilt danced and tangled themselves into one solid knot, where it blurred and become inseparable.
I wore the dress I frequently donned when I shared his company, that gauzy white piece reminiscent of the gypsy wear with loose flowing sleeves. I wore white, even after all the warnings of my spirit, and now lived to tell about it as it bore more crimson swatches than that light pristine cloth. Streams trickled down my calves, beaded lightly in places, dried to that brittle brown in others, and some had caked around my toes, binding sand to my flesh like slippers. I can still hear the drops running off the tips of my fingers, falling to the ground with quiet sounds of connection. My hair was tangled, matted with it, the golden tresses dulled to something more violent and full of malevolent rage.
The waves were beautiful tonight, glowing from the kiss of the pregnant goddess in the sky. I want to drown.
I could feel him as he slipped away, put out of his misery by some other god sent demon. The overwhelming power of satisfaction, of this final chance at a peace that had alluded for more years than any of us cared to count, crashed upon me as I had stood with Antrim in some dark alleyway wedged between two brick buildings. But my first God, he was happy, painfully happy as it devoured me for a moment, stroking all of my centers, all of my cores and emotions, as it forced the whimper that had locked itself in my throat.
My gray eyes had turned red before I knew it and my lips tasted of bloody tears, metallic, salty.
Then, there was nothing, this hushed silence that consumed my world for a moment, laying it’s harsh slap against all sound, all sight, complete and utter sensory depravation. I swore that I was suffocating, that the world had turned in upon itself, and chose me as its evening meal on this cruel hour. Never had I felt more alone in the world than I did in that solitary moment, staring at nothing while I felt the whispered comments in my ear, the vibrations of his sound, the pattern of his breath against my flesh, letting me know what he had muttered.
"Gone. He is finally gone."
But so was I, for the moment. I couldn't read the other's words, could not hear if it was that arrogant gloating that laden them, or just complete indifference. It did not matter, not now, when I felt the world had shifted onto its side to run me down. My hands shook as I grabbed an alley wall, nails digging into the mortar and brick, steadying myself as I stumbled away, alone, leaving the other to watch my decreasing back.
I had made it to my home long enough to change, long enough to slip into the clothes he knew me best in. I wept as I slipped the cloth against my flesh, feeling the comfort I had stored in this thick wooden chest. Golden earrings found the holes in my ears, rings slipped along my fingers, a chain around my right ankle, taking on the colors of the fine world. I stared into my reflection's eyes, noting the crimson tracks that refused to cease their path over the hills of my cheeks, some meeting the corner of my mouth.
My fingers grasped its side and pushed it over, listening with quiet satisfaction as it shattered against the wooden floorboards and littered the room like rain. I felt nothing as I padded across the shards, as they embedded themselves into the tender soles of my feet, driven in deeper with each blind step I took. I needed to walk, needed to get away from the empty feeling that had manifested itself inside of me at the disappearance of my maker, of my God.
It was my father, in vivid flashbacks and memories, brought to life to be sacrificed once again.
The shoreline is attractive when one wishes to be alone, and the tide can carry the remains away. I was savage and hardly myself, but part of me basked in the feel of it, in the power over my destination, rather than the simple bystander I had always been. This was my episode in church, only with a new graphic twist.
The other is coming; I can feel his age and presence somewhere to the north, lingering beside those discarded bodies. He has not spoken yet, and I am almost afraid of what he will say, but I have settled to the point of acceptance, making me bearable of many things.
After all, what did I do, but trade one religion for another?
The End
Just testing the layout. Nothing to be alarmed about. 'Nee-chan, you can delete this later on... although I hope you like it. ::looks around.:: I still think it looks kind of funny.... maybe it's just me. Oh well if you need help editing anything you know where to reach me. Love and peace! ::blows kisses, and scampers off.::
copyrighted 2002 spork nazi productions