The enormity of my desire disgusts me; pollock

[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 A breath held, and released: thus was Rapt. He is a golden boy, in color if nothing else. He reflects his mother, though she is something indistinct in his mind, both his parents are. Two forms, a twist of scars on the face, an aching cavity where there once were wings. He comes from a love story writ tragic across the years, and perhaps the story lies imprint in his bones and blood. (We carry in us a blueprint of every horrible thing.) He comes from a man who was once a prince and a woman who was once a prisoner, came golden from their loins and now he walks on legs that sometimes still wobble. He is young, too young to be on his own. But many are, because his story is nothing new, nothing special. The forest that unfolds before him, the towering pinnacle of the trees and the fecundity of the earth – none of it is new, none of it is special. But it’s all new, to him. He takes in the trees with a captivated awe that befits his namesake. He walks through the shadows like they’re sacred. He has no purpose here, only a moment of wanderlust breathed into his spindly legs that brought him here, in his copse of pines, a boy standing gold and alone. A breath held, and released, and thus he stood. rapt

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray


If the boy is a breath in full, then he is a sputter and a gasp.
A trickle of blood and froth coughed.

He was once a sharp inhale, held until uncomfortable and desperate in the dark. His ribs depressed and pulled inwards, hoping to make himself small and smaller still, curled away in some dark crook of pine and nighttime. Unseen, he still felt vulnerable – as if those blinking eyes he thought he could see from behind the bends of wood and stone could pick at his cloak of invisibility and reveal him, tangle-legged and alone.
Utterly alone.

He had been too young, but life finds a way for boys like them. He had managed to dig deep into his own blueprint and find something sharp to wield (not given to him by that bitch nor that faceless man; his ability had been drawn into that schema by a hand unknown – the same cruel humoured god that saw fit to sever his right wing and crack the other into a million, painful pieces; a trickster deity). He waved his ability to go unnoticed in one hand like a sharpened blade and in that space (all his own) he grew and grew darker.
(He would say he grew stronger, but that would a be a lie. Revisionist history. He grew angrier and bitter.)

Not so long ago, he would not have gone to her or him.
But that was before the snow and the northern times.
That was before he was remade – now he finds himself compelled to reach out to the young and unfortunate; to flagellate from them their odious fragility. To punish and reform. He watches the boy, with that ungainly gait, and grinds his teeth together. Wide-eyed and unsteady he bobs, as if in a dream, through the moss and pinkish-white spring-beauty.

And just like she (his Elve) had been, he is alone.
And Pollock knows alone. He knows alone.

He is standing near the boy without notice (invisibility and his supernatural speed made to catch unawares – he enjoys watching the roil of shock; he is given away only by the drag of his wing, washed clean from the previous night’s efforts in spring melt). He inspects the boy, slinking around to check both sides. Ribby and leggy. So terribly new. He clucks in mimic of concern, bending his brutish head to the boy’s level (the crust of day old blood still flaking off his bridge and cheeks and horns like old paint), “you should not be here alone, boy.” He pulls back and up, peering down at him and quirking the sides of his lip.
“How very foolish of you, child. How very foolish.”


POLLOCK
Lone Artist and Phina’s

[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 They could not love him when they themselves came from such tragedies. He knows his parents’ lives in pieces – the stories of their scars told in what they said (and what they didn’t). He knows their world is small and strange and there is little place for him. Sometimes this makes him sad and he wonders. He doesn’t have any scars. He doesn’t have any stories – simply the day when he tumbled into existence, slick and strange, and the days since. But those days are meaningless, hours of milk and a taste of new grass, learning to run beneath a desert sky too big for the world. So he’s here, and maybe it’s for a story and maybe it’s just because he never really liked the desert, anyway. (He dreams of their scars. The way his mother’s face twists from where she was torn from her twin. The way his father’s shoulders bear wounds that never seem to heal.) Somewhere, there is a noise, a twist of the wind. He hears something – someone – breathing. He holds his own breath. His heart speeds up, but inside his mind fear and excitement are so tangled up he doesn’t know which is which. You should not be here alone, boy. The voice is cracked somehow, broken, it is not the quiet dulcet tones of his parents. It is not the distant murmur of other horses he walks by. No, the voice is close in its brokenness, intimate in his ears. “Why not?” he asks, because he is not a particularly bright boy, and he doesn’t know fear the way he should. “Besides,” he continues, “you’re here. I’m not alone.” rapt caius x else

I didn't know if he was still invisible or not so keepin it vague

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray


A disappointed sound purrs from his throat. Or grumbles, like something metal being raked over gravel and spitting angry little sparks into the air.
And he peels back his invisibility, his face hanging over the boy’s, closer than he might have ever realized. A great, golden moon looming, with craters of blood and horns curving back like great galaxies from his skull. “Why not?” He echoes, spitting out the last word and shaking his head.

His breath smells like blood, or something that wants blood, maybe.

‘Besides, you’re here. I’m not alone.’
He jerks his head up, snorting and slipping back into invisibility. The boy could run but never fast enough. And amusingly, Pollock imagines he won’t even try. Neither had Elve, until he let her. He shifts around him, the snakebelly-drag of his wing stirring up the litterfall and dust around him in tight little rounds, “tell me, truthfully – I do not like being lied to – does that really make you feel safe? Hm?” He stops again where he had been.
And he, with nauseating, smooth control, can be seen again.

He tilts his head down to look him in the eyes, to see if he will hold it. It would be impressive, as impressive as it is unlikely. “Do you know what happens to boy that are left alone?” He does not let him answer, but his head tilts far too fast to look at him through one brown-black eyes, blinking and far from dull. Alive, with an erratic sort of glint – he sees bone and blood and twisted limbs, and this boy could so easily be remade in his style. But, lucky for him, Pollock feels only pity tempered with irritation. With them, there had been only chaos; with them, there had been the repugnancy of femininity…
– and then there had been the welcome of her hips. But that had come later, and had been something of a revelation.

“I think not, otherwise, you’d be on your dam’s tit right now.” He shifts his weight and sighs, and without a quirk of a muscle or a wink, he slips his claws inside the boy’s skull, fishing for the tail of his dread amongst the loose ends of all those pesky emotions.
Something new. He pulls its out of its hole and lets it unravel, just a bit.
A twinge of anxiety. Fear. But only a little. “Where is your mother, anyway?” He asks with a crooked grin, an unkindness gyrating through – lewd, devious and violent.


POLLOCK
Lone Artist and Phina’s

hope the fear induction is all good! if not ignore :]

[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 The head appears – materializes, really – like this is all some wicked dream in the boy’s head. It looms there for a moment before him, a specter, enough time for him to observe the curve of his horns and the stink of his breath. And then the man slips back into invisibility, nothing but a stench of breath and a stir of the dust between them. He asks a question - does that really make you feel safe - and this is when Rapt should run. Instead, he says: “I am never safe.” Who knows what he means – neither parent was cruel (intentionally, at least, he is raised in a sort of benign neglect, both of them too wrapped up in their own odd worlds to acknowledge him overmuch). He’s never known a stranger until now. The pair of eyes, dark and fervid, meet his. He stares back as long as he can but then something crumbles inside him and he casts his glance away like a stone. Another question’s asked, but he doesn’t answered, muted in the weight of the stranger’s gaze. Something else comes, a tendril unfurling in his brain like a wisp of smoke. He feels it, living and dead at once as it creeps amidst neurons. And with the feeling comes something else, a bit of fear uncurling in his belly, something leaden and strange that makes him feel heavy. He shudders, as if cold. The stranger asks about her mother. Rapt recalls her face, the twist of scars, the unplumbed and somehow tragic depth of her gaze. “I don’t know,” he says. Else often wanders. Sometimes he follows. Often, he does not, for she won’t respond to him when she’s like that. “What are you?” he asks then, looking at the strange man with the horrid eyes, noting the wing laid broken on his side and the cleave of his hooves. rapt caius x else

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray


He sees himself in the kid. That is the most dangerous thing of all.
It is beyond his control, of course. Beyond either of their control. It is the violent randomness of recognition and projection. The more Pollock looks over the colt – breaking his gaze, a mistake to be paid for; faintly golden, like himself; unattended to – the more he feels his gut cramp as the rotten, old sediment is churned up into dirty memory. Shadowy investigators, claws raking old parts of him and searching the banks of his brain (a slop of meltwater and pond scum) for the bones of a boy.

The bones of what was and what hope felt like once.
What silence sounds like when stars stare back blankly.
That thing was meant to stay buried.

‘I am never safe.’ He smiles, “smart boy.”

His father is a perpetual irrelevancy.

His mother was a woman made of whore’s things. Painted and pushed up – the night he found his first bit of inner strength (damp and wracked with newborn shakes) was the night she curled off into utter darkness to taste the hips and ribs and groins of excess and had come back many hours later haggard and hollowed out. (At least she had come back?) 
She was leather and bony and wore her wings like old rags (a waste).
She left him to feed herself full on dark little morsels. Not a kind neglect.

If neglect is ever kind.

“She mustn't love you much, hm. Very irresponsible of her to let you off alone. Very uncaring,” his voice feigns a sort of compassion and he clucks his tongue, shaking his head. It has come to be a great pleasure in life for Pollock, the way one can feed animus and sorrow into a child like a Trojan horse through willing gates, ajar. “Mothers are cruel.” His words fall (he hopes) like soft, understanding strokes across his smooth, pliable young body.
Such fun, to make things out of blank nothing. To weave resentment and bitterness and wounds from silks of parental disregard and captive naiveté.

“On second thought, you’re probably lucky to have found me, boy.”

‘What are you?’ The palomino shifts his weight away from the ache leftover from yesterday’s exertion. “I was like you, once.” That was before the invisibility. Before he grew into an errant lunatic. Long before he had been human… “Little and alone. And scared. With a careless, irresponsible mother.” He had been all of these things as if they were all he had been, the cloth he was sewn from; stitch by miserable stitch. “And then I decided to become mighty.” He runs his tongue over his lips, bending his head low to meet his height.

“Would you like me to show you how to do that, too?” He dark eyes fall on the young boy’s face, “it’s not easy. And it takes some time… You will have to trust me. But, then you’ll never need your wicked mother, or anyone, again. Wouldn’t that be nice?” He pulls back a bit, his eyes feverish, “of course, it will only work if you do what I say and prove yourself worthy. In the end, if it does not work, I promise it will only be because you did not try hard enough. That would be a shame.”


POLLOCK
Lone Artist and Phina’s

[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 It is dangerous. It is dangerous because he does not realize he is a mirror, that he – a pale gold boy (they even look alike) reflects a monster. Who knows what it is, exactly – the wide eyes, the tendency to stand alone and say I am never safe to strangers even as fear blooms in his stomach like flowers in springtime. But mirrors show the worst parts, sometimes, and they shatter all too easily. All this, and he should run. The basest part of his brain cries it out, whimpers it as his heartbeat stares up and he thinks about the gaze he can’t meet. He thinks about the smile he sees on the horned man’s lips, a smile like a wolf in a fairytale. (I’ll eat you up, I love you so.) He speaks of Rapt’s mother. Calls her irresponsible, which he supposes she is. (When he is older, he will know this for sure, will wonder why some hint of motherly instinct did not cry out inside her.) He calls her cruel, which she is not. She is the making of cruelty, if anything. The twisted scar of her face, the flightiness, all of it like a beacon of things she once knew. The man’s voice is almost kind. I decided to become mighty. Rapt is not mighty. He is small and strange and left alone. (A mirror.) But here is a choice. Here is the snake with the apple. Here are the pomegranate seeds spilling juice down the chin. Just take a bite, they all say, think of the possibilities. A smarter boy might have questioned such an offer. Might have fled from a cloven-hooved thing, thinking him for what he surely is: a devil. A smarter boy would know his mother is miles from wicked. Rapt is not a smart boy. Instead he steps closer like he wants to touch him. A false idol, and he, the hapless believer. “Yes,” he says. He bites into the apple, the pomegranates. “Show me,” he says. His heart pounds. “I’ll be so good,” he promises. rapt caius x else

this got weird

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

(Somewhere, in a land far, far away, he had been refashioned.
He had been made mighty.)

The gift giver has slipped under and over the barbed wire of his multiple lives too many times. He has indulged the pull of dreams and has begun to suss out the queer facts nestled amongst.
...decided to become mighty. Candied words; half-truths – it is easier for Pollock to acquiesce to his own illusions of grandeur than to try and understand how he had come to slit the skin of his former self and rebirth. It is easier to spin this web. It is easier to catch them with it. It is far harder to wade through the suck of his own memories and try to put the puzzle back together.

One day he had tucked himself to sleep in the pine needles and the next morning, he had woken up with head heavy and hooves split.

He had woken up with an ache in his chest and bones and yet he knew…
(it’s time – the boy must be buried, bones and all)
—he was better. He was mighty. (He had cracked open the hard protection of some Norwegian breastbone and had come up with a heart of darkness clutched in his fingers.)

In some part, he had decided to become mighty long before he had become human. Except he had been manacled to a body found wanting.
He had reached the end of the rope that knotted his neck and had found himself in shadows. He had found himself in the ragged breaths of those who could not see him, tasting their fear (but not their blood). He had found himself in the heady mixture of arousal and disgust as he watched their autumnal feasts. He found himself excited by their trickles of sweat… In hindsight, he had been pathetic. This boy does not have to be. Though in truth, Pollock cannot decide what he finds more appetizing – the boy finding himself in his shadows, or the boy finding out he has been found wanting.

(But he had been small and strange once, too. Before he had been buried.)

‘I’ll be so good.’
“That’s a fine lad.” He nods, his eyes brightening was the boy sticks in his honey. 
Like a neurosurgeon, he delicately wraps a finger around a curl of fear – it is small, but he changes himself. His mouth corners draw unsettling back, his sneer splitting his face to his cheeks, just below his eyes. The crocodile smile reveals yellowed and crooked teeth. This is just for him, a transformation only the boy can see.
“Tell me something boy, what do you fear most?” strings of saliva droop and criss-cross when he opens his too-wide mouth. “It's important to face your fears, you see.” The gifter lets go and allows the boy's chemicals to sort themselves out and his lips to slink back to place.

POLLOCK
the gift giver and guardian

[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 Maybe he wants this – to grow stronger than his parents. To become something, slick muscle, terrible, looming. Something to make them look. To make them wonder. (Maybe he just wants to please this man. This monster.) He doesn’t know, because he is not a particularly smart boy. He is clay, begging to be shaped, and monster’s hands have long been maestros at shaping such things. So good, he promises, so good. There’s still fear, a thing needled in the space in-between his ribs. The last dregs of warning sirens, howling to the tune of his zipping heart and fractured breaths. Ah, but fear and excitement exist kissing distance from one another, and who is he to know the difference? (Such a stupid boy.) Fine lad, the man calls him, and he preens. Fine. He watches intently as the man’s face changes, splits like a wound. He is scared but he doesn’t move. He knows the man doesn’t want him to move. Not yet. (so good) And then, the question poised - what do you fear most? He thinks of a dozen things – natural disasters, plagues, his own death – but none of them are quite right, they are too shapeless, unformed. No edges to them. More concrete, is this: “being alone. Not being enough.” A pause, then, “I’ll do whatever you want.” Such a stupid boy, yes – but such a good boy, too. rapt caius x else