01-15-2020, 07:25 PM
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; He’d never once thought of changing his name – his adopted mother had called him something else, once, but it was long ago and he never really answered to it. You’re nothing, you’re filth, you’re garbage, Craft had spat (and the cruelty of this – what she did, to a child – never occurs to him, even as he has children of his own), and it had been prophecy, really. What else could he be? There had been pet names, tender things whispered by other lips, and he had liked those, of course, had drank down the affection like a man dying of thirst. But they could have called him anything, so long as the name stemmed from affection. He smiles, though, at her words. She is kind – too kind, maybe, and he worries that if she stays around him too long she will soak up his wretchedness, none of which she deserves. “Whatever name you wish,” he says, and dips his head a little, as if acquiescing to an order. Her second question, though, draws the smile from his face, as he thinks of what he’s seen – his own history, repeated and then warped, changed, a timeline created where maybe things were different. Where maybe he could have known forgiveness. “I…” his answer is too convoluted so the word stalls. I, I, I. I what? I saw myself kill her. I saw my life undone. I changed it. For a moment, I changed it. “I saw something,” he says, “I crossed a desert that wasn’t there and I saw a-…a different world.” He cannot quite confess to her the vision; it involves too much confession. He does not know he was not alone in this vision, that others saw him at his worst, and that some chose to save her. Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |