"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
11-29-2018, 02:43 PM (This post was last modified: 12-18-2018, 04:03 PM by Jackel.)
Oh, how things change.
How long have I been sleeping?
The creak of joints and bones is my life's tempo. Grating, so grating this eternal body. Stiff from unuse now, or overuse perhaps from before I'd folded into the black. How long has it been? Who the hell knows how long it's been. One step and another, this same old ritual, same dance, different day, different people, different circumstances. But still there are pops of protest when my formerly inanimate robe finds motion again.
Disturbed.
You're disturbing.
Cover your hideous face.
No one will talk to you again until then.
Don't smile like that.
She said, she said.
She said. They said.
They don't know, they never will. I could tell them, but I won't. Not now.
At least I stand, at least I move. My shoulders roll like the wild black of my eyes. Only if you're close will you see the white there. Oh, but then you're a brave dear, living boldly, aren't you? Coming closer to such a beautifully haggard thing like me? Good for you, sweetling.
Good for you.
And when you come closer you'll see the dirt that dulls my vibrant gold, where there was once sleek raven strands there is now matted, tangled brown. But that smile, that brilliant flash of white set against the black of my cracked lips will let you know, let us know, that I'm still very, very much awake.
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
He half remembers her.
The way that he remembers a dream. The way that he remembers the edges of his evening wanderings, the places that the Krampus takes him when the moon is high and his lids finally close. He remembers her and the taste is rich on his tongue, rich in the back of his throat. Like summer wine it simmers there and he savors it for a moment as he watches her, the black of his eyes flat and unreadable.
There is a crazy within her that stirs something within him, something that rises up to meet it like a phoenix from the ashes. He can feel the reverberation of the Fear as it stirs from restless slumber, his fingers dancing along the edges of it and a hum beginning in the back of his throat.
She was one of the ones who craved it, he thinks.
One of the ones who nearly begged.
His tongue touches the tip of a sooty lip, a smile curving ever so slightly as he sends the tendrils of it low and slow through the meadow. It rolls like fog, dancing to his desires and bending to his wishes. Once, he struggled to control the Fear. Fought it. Was overwhelmed by it. But now, he is older, more mature, and it is easy to send it slipping through the shadows and over the nooks of the land. It is easy to command it.
He feels the edges of it reach her and begin to crawl up her legs, its tune sickly sweet.
Let it sink into her.
Let it find purchase on the ragged edges of her.
Let her look for its source, the shark-eyed, crocodile-smiled stallion in the shadows.
Let her come.
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
I don't feel much anymore, except for the extremes. Pain, joy, fear, humor are my strongest potions. Not sorrow though, no, never sorrow. Or anger. Useless and unproductive emotions with no rewards to reap when their elixir wears off. It's too easy, so easy to suffer in sadness and anger and be sucked backward. Backward and downward. It's so easy, would happen everyday if I let it; like a cat I've lived a million lives with a million left to die again. I have my reasons to be sad and angry. But I am reckless and stubborn, and that blue bitch won't sink her claws into me again. I let it happen when I was younger, let her manipulate me into something I didn't want to be, something I didn't want to feel.
But I am not that broken, useless thing anymore.
No, I am mended and sharp and reconstructed, just as my body weaves itself together again now.
I am the person I want to be.
Cursed, damned, but alive--I am a regular, fucking lady Lazarus. With nothing to do but rise time and time again.
Life is so much easier when you accept it for what it is.
Beautiful, just beautiful.
But this. I feel this.
That hot, prickling, flushing, sensation that makes the dirty gold along my spine stand on end. I know it, this thing I felt before I saw black. And I know it's source. Wickedly divine, this thing, this feeling, this stirring and awakening. This fear. And if I didn't feel fear's strengths and influence and implications, then I'd surely know the blue dame again all over again.
A twisted cycle, I think, and warped. Confusing, maybe? But look whose mind you're in, darling. You knew what you'd be getting into.
Or not. Haide is rolling her eyes.
With stiff joints, I do my best to pivot towards where the pulses are thickest. But my body still hates me, and she protests loudly with creaking joints. Each step gets easier, more fluid in motion as I work to smother the space that lies between. In the shadows where he lies, the black halo is like an old friend of mine. Sharp then warm, just like the lady of Black. My head is low, still angled peculiarly from where it had last lain against its earthen pillow. But that smile of mine is telltale and I wonder if he'll remember the strange contortion of my lips from before. It had slipped, I had slipped, and I am not sorry. And I'm not sorry for carrying on into the wrap of his shadows, pressing into them as far as I am allowed to.
The force of my grin causes my dirt-stained lips to break and bleed, and I exhale a wheezing giggle when the voided black of my eyes reach for his. "Death does not want me today." Never. Death never wants me, I'm the pretty outcast. "His loss."
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
She comes, of course she does.
He has spent many years sunk into the deepest pieces of the Fear—learning how to manipulate, learning how to weave false realities, learning how to carve out the emotions into the hearts of his victims—but the part that had surprised him the most had been how some hungered for it. How they craved it. He had not expected that, but he had found it. They were like junkies. Broken things who enjoyed the way it felt like swallowing glass. Who came to him for a hit of it, just a taste of that razor’s edge on their lips.
And he was oh so happy to provide it for them.
His crocodile smile splits his handsome face when she walks into the shadows, as he watches the way her fractured mind jumps behind her manic eyes. “Hard to blame him,” he says simply, his voice blunt, his hands never stopping the languid way they pluck and pull on the different threads of Fear. It is a fucking symphony around them, and he wants to throw his head back to breathe it in. Wants to bathe in it.
What a masterpiece.
“I don’t mind Death’s scraps,” he presses his lips together, considering her, studying her, wondering at all of the different ways she might be pulled apart. He takes a step forward, letting the Fear swell around them, letting it send a trickle of it down the back of his own throat as he hums. “Do you always come back?” he asks, curious. “Or do you simply stop before you hit Death’s doors?” He makes a low sound in his throat, wondering at how she is able to constantly elude death, constantly pull herself from its depths.
“It doesn’t matter,” he dismisses the question, waving a metaphorical hand in the air.
“Shall we begin?”
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
