and then my eyes got used to the darkness; bruise

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever He is easy prey, still. He likes to think himself hardened, no longer such a malleable thing, so wont to kneel. He likes to think himself changed, reshaped by his experiences, made into a more stoic creature. More normal. So it should surprise him more, to way he reacts, hurtled back into the ways of old – heart in throat, legs trembling to kneel, supplicant, wanting. Yet – Yet it feels natural. Slipping back into old, well-worn clothes. Everything he thought changed, gone in the moment when the monster’s hungry eyes befall him, read him for what he is. (Pollock knew it, too. From the moment the stupid boy crossed his path. It’s practically tattooed on his forehead.) The monster speaks and the voice, too, sounds familiar. Commanding. He smiles and Rapt shivers under the curl of it, so strange and desperate, so terrible. My name is Bruise, he says, and of course it is, of course, that he would be named for marks and hurt, and Rapt’s heart is in his throat. He, too, fits his namesake – before this creature, he is rapt. “I knew your father,” he managed to say, then clarifies, “Pollock.” But knew doesn’t do justice to their meetings. I knelt before him. I worshipped him. I loved him. “I served him,” he amends, “for a time.” His knees quiver. “My name is Rapt.” rapt caius x else