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 Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:21 pm
But it was a goddess, right. Alrdhan also didn't want to be rude, of course. So he stood there, hands in his pockets, watching her, until she offered him a bag with a key tied at one end. He opened the bag, as he was requested to do, saying: "Ye shouldn't've, I didn't get ya anything," he protested.
And then the bag was empty, and Arldhan was as surprised as she was that the gift was empty. "Thank you very much for the gift," he was starting to say, when she explained that it was an error. Oh.
Well, nevermind then. He didn't have to pretend he was grateful. He wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea of needing to get a heart out of some lab she'd had, but did he have a choice? It was either do this, or nothing. Harland accepted the scissors, the bag, and then walked towards the opening.
What was that sound?
He stepped inside, and it wasn't hard to spot the doors he was supposed to pick from. The first one was pretty pleasant, and the third he didn't want to go anywhere near, so Harland settled on the middle door: a hooked spiral, crossed and scratched out. IT was pretty curious, and he liked curious things. He wasn't sure why he felt the need to investigate.
Arldhan pushed the door open.
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Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:43 pm
As soon as he pushed the door open, he heard voices:
"HEY man, I knew you'd make it!"
"Hey, Harland, love! Fancy a drink later, sugar?"
"Don't forget, Mister Belle, I'll be waiting for you at the finish line!"
Harland!
He didn't recognize the voices, he didn't recognize the name, and he didn't understand the flurry of images that filled his vision: some more recent faces, some blurred by the line between present and past.
HARLAND
He felt nauseous, suddenly. Why did the voices keep saying that word, over and over again? Harland turned to try to open the door again, but it was shut tight, and the corridor was pitch black. He groped his way down the hall with his left hand against the wall, afraid of what he might touch. The hall kept moving, coiling almost, around him; it felt like it was directing him always down one path, a path it shaped as it went. "What I wouldn't give for a bit of light," he lamented, running his right, clean hand through his messy waves of hair.
"Or for that infernal sound to stop," he added. The thudding sound was very distracting.
He came across a crate, and tried to move around it. He couldn't; it was completely obstructing his way. He saw something sticking out, and though he didn't want to, though he didn't understand why he'd do such a thing, he reached out to grab onto the object. Fabric slid away from between his fingers.
He shuddered, his skin crawling. As he reached down, he could see glowing, yellow and bright. Well, he had asked for a light, hadn't he?
Somehow, he didn't think this is what he'd asked for. It was a heart, and it was beating. Arldhan snipped the cloth away from the heart, cutting through the strings and severing each tie, being careful not to ruin the prize. As he slid the blades of the scissors underneath the last strand of threads, he heard a voice.
Harland. It sounded closer, more clear, than the others. It spoke alone. I tell you what, mo chroi-- nil aon leigheas ar an ngra ach posadh!
Harland heard the sound of laughter, and he remembered: "Mam, why would you say that! He's not so bad, now, is he? Tá grá agat Dad," he protested, and he could feel his smile widen. A language he'd long since forgotten, words he hadn't heard anyone speak any more. Voices that belonged to the rivers of Hades.
His mother's smiling face drew him forwards. He loved her, more than he loved the sun, and she was gone. But not any more. Here she was, locked up in this dark place. He reached to extract the heart, throat tight, eyes wet with tears he'd shed sooner than later. He couldn't bring himself to do it.
But he had to.
As soon as he cut it free of the threads, it stopped pulsing, and he reached in to extract the heart.
----
Tá grá agam duit, a Harland, he heard; his mother's voice, hushed. Low. Soft. She stroked a hand through his hair, and held him on her lap. Tá grá agam duit, she just kept repeating it. Do you know about the heroes, mo chroi? Let me tell you about them... they'll keep you save, even from the sidhe, she reassured her son. The moon's white belly shone through his window, and the cotton curtains swayed in the wind. They were staying in his father's childhood home, visiting HArland's grandparents, and he was afraid.
Texas wasn't anything like Connemara.
"Tell me about the heroes, mam," he requested, his voice a lot smaller. Younger.
Well, dear one... you can be one, someday. You can be a hero, she said, her voice strong: a promise of a brighter future. So for now, be brave, my love; you'll be our hero, some day, and none of the shadows will be able to hurt you. You'll defeat them all.
"Geall dom, mam," young Harland said, growing sleepy.
Geallaim.
---
"Am I the hero now, love?" he asked her, putting the dead heart into his bag. He sobbed once, twice, and then choked it back, tears streaming down his cheeks. The scissor handles dug into his skin, reminding him of what he'd seen.
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Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:52 pm
Harland felt the floor become sticky underfoot, and he held the bag tightly in one hand, the scissors in the other. The floor was sticky, and he reached another dead end. He wanted to give up, wanted to fall to the floor, wanted to give in to the pain of loss and the agony of remembering.
There were footsteps, though, and that snapped him back to reality. Well, whatever form of reality this was. These memories of who he'd been, of someone who had loved him: how had he recovered them? He had to go forward, into the water, and although he did not want to it was the only way to advance. "Give what back? I cannae," he apologized, to the phantom voice, forging on.
Hands grabbed hold of him, pushed him down. He couldn't breathe. He remembered this once, when he was a boy, but he had lived. And now he was being pushed down further, unable to reach the surface. Sweet, fresh air must be somewhere up there. His salvation. You don't need it any more, he wished he could say, begging for life, pleading with the creature as he looked into their glassy eyes.
You don't need it any more, but I do, Harland begged, mentally.
He remembered the smell of flowers, masking a sugar-sweet odour; his mother's face, surrounded by cala lillies as she lay in a coffin. Her father refused to have her cremated. His family wanted them to move back to Texas, and his family wanted her buried there in the family plots. Harland's father was many things, but he was not disrespectful like that; his wife loved her country as much as he loved his, more even, and he would never take her away from that place. He hadn't wanted her buried at all, in fact. She'd never liked the idea.
Harland was 20. His father disappeared days later, and he never heard from him again. Harland's hands gripped the side of his mother's coffin, and he tried to find the words in Irish to tell her he loved her, and that she'd be with him always. But he couldn't. He couldn't speak, couldn't find it in him to reassure her the way she'd reassured him, once.
He just turned away, the palms of his hands ridged with red lines from where he'd gripped the coffin's side.
Harland Leander Belle walked away.
--He walked straight out of his memory, and back to the dark water, where his mother's face flashed into his sight as the creature that was supposedly her tried to drown him. Mam'd never've done this, he thought to himself. Never.
And then he thought that maybe he deserved it, and he went limp.
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Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:55 pm
Moments after hanging limp in the water, giving up, it occurred to Harland: the woman who had raised him would never raise a hand against him. She'd spent her whole life keeping him safe, making him feel loved. It hadn't been a long enough life, by any means, but it was certainly better than this.
He wouldn't let this thing pretend to be his mother. Harland gripped the scissors in one hand, and for his mother, he stabbed the creature in the throat. A gurgled shriek, and it was gone. Harland found himself on dry ground, spluttering and coughing up whatever it was he'd been swimming in. The light poured in, from a door, and he realized he'd made it out.
From over his shoulder, he thought he saw the creature holding his scissors, staring at him with empty eyes. "I apologize for your plight," Harland said. It was all he could say; he didn't feel remorse. It was not his mother. Harland headed out.
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 9:50 pm
When the Goddess whispered in his ear, told him he was either the killed or the killer, he simply thought: Who could know that, until the end?
And he had a sneaky suspicion he was going to find out.
When he left, dagger in hand, he wasn't quite prepared for what would happen. He woke in a white room, on top of a solid metal table, and immediately felt as though he was an experiment. He felt as though he'd been exhumed, and they were about to operate on him. He looked up at the ceiling, one hand slipping up to shade his eyes from the brightness. He had spots of terrible brilliant light burned into his vision no matter where he looked.
Arldhan couldn't figure out when he'd fallen asleep, or where he was. The metal was cool on his skin, and he would have found it soothing if it wasn't for the sheer brightness of the lights.
"They could use a dimmer," he complained, squinting.
He wasn't alone. Or so he thought: with relief, he realized what he'd thought was whispering was, in reality, the lights and their incessant hum.
After a moment, his comfort turned into a nuisance as he realized he couldn't block out that sound, either. He felt a headache coming on.
He sat up, swung his legs down and pushed off the table, his boots clicking on the floor. He adjusted his jacket, secured his bandanna, and began to step.
He wobbled as he did, and he was glad no one was around to watch him. The door in front of him was unlocked, so he went to open it; the hallway outside was no better. So bright.
He heard a slamming sound right behind him, over and over again, but no matter how many times he checked that door was still open behind him.
He was half tempted to shut it just in the hopes that would make it stop. He left, though, kept on walking, and he found an exit. He wanted out, for certain; surely it would be less bright out there. Harland turned and saw the source of the noise: a spectre in black, hovering closer and closer.
Suddenly, the exit seemed even more important than it had been moments ago.
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Face your demons rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1
Total: 1 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 9:52 pm
O N E He closed the distance between himself and the exit door in moments with his long stride, trying to open it. Locked. He felt at it with his fingers, searching for any way to open it, any hidden keys or swipe-cards or something. Anything. As he panicked, his vision blurred. Not now, he thought.
And then he remembered.
--
Wild roses were in full bloom, and Harland sat at the table outside. He was 15. He ate a plum, licking the juice off his hand. He was pretending to be normal, and his mother appreciated the effort. "Do you think it will rain soon, mam?" he asked, leaning back in the chair.
She looked older than he remembered. He knew she was worried, and trying not to be; today, they were both pretending he was well. And he was pretending she believed in him any more. Believed a single thing he'd said.
"Or maybe it's just the clouds," he said, "you never know when it'll rain, do ye?"
She was still silent as she started to wipe her earth-covered hands on her dress, and he saw that her cheeks were damp. She had started to cry. "It's not okay," she replied, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper. "It can't just rain whenever it wants to," she added. She cried silently, like she always did, when she did. Lately it was often.
Harland set the plum down, suddenly nauseous. He looked at the table, his eyes cast downwards. He hurt her, every day, and he didn't know how to stop.
Just existing was hurting her.
--
He came to, and heard the figure behind him whisper: It's not okay.
40 feet away, and then 35 away.
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Face your demons rolled 1 4-sided dice:
2
Total: 2 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 9:59 pm
O N E He couldn't stomach her voice, he couldn't bear to hear it again, so he searched harder. To his left, he found a piece of paper with four letters on it: ACEG.
Who had placed it there? Obviously someone intended for him to be able to get out, and that strengthened his resolve.
Searching was eating up his precious time, but if Arldhan was one thing, it was single-minded: he merely did what he did best, and focused on his task at hand.
35 feet away, and then 30 away.
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Face your demons rolled 1 4-sided dice:
4
Total: 4 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 10:01 pm
O N E Now he just needed to know what ACEG meant. Chances were it was a code of only 4 numbers, and no number should overlap. That was reassuring. It shouldn't be hard to crack it.
If only that figure wasn't bearing down on him, giving him a time limit. He searched again... just in case. Just in case was right; he found the slip of paper with the decode characters and solved the puzzle of the four digits, opening the door quickly, though calmly, and kicking it shut behind him as he ran into the woods.
35 feet away, and then he burst through the door.
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Face your demons rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1
Total: 1 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 10:03 pm
T W O At the end of the trees, after he looked behind him, the figure was still after him. He was between a spectre that ... sounded so much like his mother, and the bridge.
You're not my son, you're a monster, the broken voice said, It's not okay. You're killing me, don't you care? You're killing me, she said. Harland felt his throat constrict, again. The memory was so strong, it burned in his mind, a brand on his thoughts. No matter how far he ran, would he be able to escape the guilt he felt? It may as well have been a milestone around his throat, or a guillotine over his head. He had ruined her, and he remembered the fall.
Speaking of a fall, Harland ran until he came across a bridge; he had to stop there, thinking about whether or not he could escape if he didn't try to cross it.
He had no other choice, nothing but the bridge. A bridge that looked like it led into the abyss.
Which one was worse, he wondered? The spectre, surely; Harland ran. He heard her voice again, slicing through him; it sounded like it was right over his shoulder. Don't you want to make me better? it asked, Don't you want to save me? He made the mistake, halfway across, of pausing long enough to look down: into the abyss.
He would be lost forever, and he knew that now. Pain slumbered within him all that time, and he hadn't known. Of course he would fall, now, because he hadn't known the stakes, he hadn't understood the odds. He would have to suffer, to pay for what he had done.
30 feet away, and then GAME OVER away.
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Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 4:27 pm
Harland's shoulders drooped, and he heard the sound of snipping. He ran a hand through his once-sunny waves of hair, and tried to smile in the last few seconds as he turned to face the ghost head-on.
"Only once?" he asked, "Seems like it's worse to keep it, then,"he added. He was stuck there, unmoving, and he felt a snip. A sharp pain, as the figure walked away, holding his still-beating heart. The rusted scissors in its hand seemed to glow dully even in the grey light.
Harland could feel death upon him. He tried not to feel as though he deserved it.
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Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:16 pm
O N E Arldhan couldn’t say no to the Goddess, lest he risk offending her? Besides, she was being kind to him for now-- he might as well take whatever kindness he could get, even if it was false, or even if it would hardly last. Besides, the cookie didn’t taste all that bad, and why would he turn down an opportunity to sample a wide array of emotions? He was, after all, vastly curious about this endeavour.
He tried to chew his cookie before talking, so instead of replying to her, he hoped a tip of a hat he wasn’t even wearing would acknowledge his gratitude for the cookies, as he made his way to the long rectangular table. What emotions would he make, after all?
The ambient music, strangely enough, made him begin to regret his decision to go along with this. IT seemed menacing to him, somehow, despite its innocuous nature. As he approached the jars, he hesitated with his fingers poised over the pink jar: it was soft, warm, but... knowable. It was predictable.
The blue jar felt as though it was waiting for someone, or something, so why couldn’t it be him? He selected the blue jar, drinking it fully, and felt concern wash over him. There was something he needed to do, an emptiness inside him he had to fill.
What emptiness couldn’t a cupcake solve?-- no, no, the cupcake looked... fragile. Lost. Small. That wasn’t what Harland wanted. He wanted something with substance, that would and could withstand the test of time. He wanted the chocolate. Immediately, he felt conflicted: what were these emotions? Anger, regret; passion, fear? He couldn’t isolate them. Trying to think of what he was possibly feeling, Harland searched the spread for something to drink.
The red and brown cup certainly had an odd, relatively unpleasant shape, so his hand hovered over it but moved past-- at first, he was about to accept the blue cup, until he looked inside. There was no way he wanted to quench his thirst with whatever the hell that was.
Back to the red and brown cup, then.
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Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:34 pm
Harland’s own breathing was heavy, sure; he’d been a smoker, most of his teenage years, and young adulthood had not treated him well. He was a paranormal investigator now, trying to explain the unexplained. Looking for answers. Mostly he just tried to convince people their pets weren’t possessed, that their spouses hadn’t sold their souls to the devil, that no they couldn’t get on TV for creaky boards in their attics and groaning pipes.
This was far from the supernatural, however: he was chasing someone. A person in a white gown, the back untied, a plastic pass gripped firmly in one hand. He knew this, because that was the only way he could have gotten out of the ward. Auberon, named (somewhat cruelly, he supposed) after the fairy king of Shakespearean fame, had fled the mental ward of the hospital using a stolen personnel pass, and was racing to the rooftop.
With a sickening feeling in his stomach, Harland worried Auberon was going to find out if he could fly or not. The beautiful young man with uneven black hair that he let fall around his face, so that only glints of bright green eyes were visible underneath. Green eyes that always had bruises under them, because Auberon couldn’t sleep when he was worried, and Auberon was always worried if he wasn’t medicated. It was a strange imbalance between mental health, medication, nightmares, violence towards himself... And Auberon was the picture of saintly peace, whenever he was in a good mood.
Sometimes, though, Auberon was in a very bad mood indeed. Today fell somewhere in between, the grey area of self-loathing or too much ambition, something Harland didn’t understand. It was his fault, he’d thought Auberon could take it, thought that Auberon wasn’t being hurt. Harland had visited him near-daily, trying to consult the young man about paranormal topics that Harland had previously never had anyone to talk to about. Auberon seemed to believe him.
Auberon was also quite possibly insane. That was the sound of bare feet, that was Auberon, a couple floors ahead of him. Harland was leaping and racing, trying to catch up, but no matter how fast he ran the stairs seemed unending. In the memory, it felt as though they were running that way for hours, with images of Auberon’s bright green eyes haunting him. His bright green eyes, his perfect irish, far more perfect than Harland’s had remained.
When Harland made it to the roof, the security personel still floors behind them, he found Auberon about to jump: he’d climbed on top of a spire, and was about to leap. He’d never been deemed a serious threat to himself, no one had watched him closely, and as he stood there looking like a fallen angel to Harland, he turned just once, looked at him, and said:
“Tá sé ar shiúl is cha philleann sé chugam go brách
Ach mar a bhuanaíonn an t-éan san ubh, an crann sa dearcán.”*
Harland, whose Irish had grown rusty from disuse since his adolescence, felt his heart break: "Au, say it one more time, slow down--"
But Auberon was already about to leap, and as Harland saw him fall, he ran to the edge of the building and jumped after him, throwing one hand out to catch the lip of the roof. In a flash, he snagged hold of Auberon’s offered hand, the green eyes smiling up at him.
Overlayed was another view: of Auberon’s body as it plunged to the ground, christening him a true fallen angel. Harland slipping, and the security personel hoisting him up, as he screamed, and screamed, and screamed-- and then finally, was silent, as he lost a part of himself for good.
*From the poem Samhain 1994, “Although he is gone, and won’t ever be back, I’ll guard in my soul the last spark of his love.”
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Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 4:45 pm
Tea Guest Log Colour of Tea Tasted: Brown Description: Light on the tongue, harmless at first, but with a bitter aftertaste that lingers. Your commentary on its flavour: It was hard for the child to understand it, the duality in the memory in front of him. It was tangled up with love and loss, and it was the pain that remained deep inside him. The face of that man with the green eyes, and his black and white personality, remained in the little child's mind for a long time.
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