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 Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 2:53 pm
From dusk till dawn, they mortified.
They horrified.
They lamented and shrieked and petrified.
For every solitary stalk, there was a festering of leaves. A rustling of twigs. A fettering of breeze.
Alois understood these for what they truly were - a deceiving dervish composed solely for those just enlightened enough to witness their twisted tales. And in their dried out, gnarled delights, they beckoned with those same yawning, blistering smiles.
This forest must be the gateway to hell, he thought.
And so he lingered - lingered in its folds, in its relentless song and dance. This forest proved the perfect manipulator, the conniver of them all, the one to witch Alois failed to measure toward. And for that, he understood, he was perpetually sentenced to its whimsical devices. He would remain here, amongst the nature trails, for a lengthy cut of time until it deigned to relinquish him from its grasp. To confine himself to the forest and its strange machinations - surely this was no different from lingering within the Rift.
For in those
twisted spaces
haunted places
broken paces
he surely found some comfort in it all.
... Comfort.
Southern Comfort.
He wondered how Richard survived the day. If he ever identified himself in those confections he created, another deceiver planted firmly in his practices. And perhaps he practiced those motives so well that he tricked even himself, that he failed to understand on a conscious level how truly manipulative his tasks were. And for that, Alois admired him all the more, in a chokingly thick fog of pride and approval.
Yes.
Alois would suffocate the man in folds of reveling jealousy and scathing adoration.
He earned it, after all.
And as Alois lingered amongst these whispering trees, he sat upon a familiar bench to reflect on how drastically the world had changed.
And he understood, this punishment will break him one day. He would not survive.
For once, he would not survive.
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Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 4:06 pm
Finally she could eat apples and walk under the browning leaves and smell last-chance aromas of dying summer. Come autumn, everything aged in gold. What a wonderful way to die--instead of gray and shriveled, quilt thrown over one's lap, waiting before the TV. The red fuzzy sweater she tossed over an azure tee reminded her of the berries that grew along the riverside in the nature parks back home. The suburbs seemed so distant. Quiet. A car zipping past at midnight. A light turning off in the neighbor's home. The Old English Sheepdog they walked along the road, who sniffed at the dandelions and nipped at leaves and torn bits of paper.
The trees brought her back. The wind pushed her along. She drifted down the trail. the hood of her sweater brushing her neck. she brought the sleeves further up her wrists. When did she feel so cold?
Then, she saw him,
If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
and hug it in mine arms.
like a shadow, hanging along the path. The Bad Wolf. Her heart raced. Would this be the end? Would he even acknowledge her? She would cross his path. It would seem awkward not to say anything. Could she bear it?
No.
"Hello Alois." A faint smile. Tired eyes. "It's a pleasure to see you again."
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Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 9:11 pm
"You." He returned with a slowly welling smile. He eyed her with great intent, with thoughts chronicling prophecies and revelations and unfurling travesties resulting in his death. Yes, she was the key to unmitigated absolution, through martyrdom or transcendence or any manner of utter, whole, physical change. "You," he echoed with more emotion. More interest.
Alois remembered their prior meeting with ease - the power plant, the falling catwalk. A gasp, and that light suddenly grew cold. Given her curtness afterward, he surmised she held little love for him anymore. And perhaps that was what excited him so. She no longer treated him as someone worth prizing, someone worth keeping close, warm, treasured. And that ostracizing gave him a certain sense of freedom now - she wouldn't tie herself to those useless predetermined actions. She wouldn't refrain from hurting him, from chastising him or shunning him entirely.
That meant a far closer relationship than he ever would've hoped. And in that moment, he ventured to hope - that she may, one day, be the end of him.
End Alois. End eternity trapped within a sliver of a man, an ashen splinter of a man.
Alois crossed his legs, folded his hands across one knee, watched her with more vibrancy than he ever belied before. "I didn't sink I would see you again. Surprising." Was it possible for her to secure a future for him as a youma? He doubted it, but she could secure death without a fragment of a beat. "What brings you to zis place? You could'f avoided me for a long time coming." He entertained a chuckle and gestured toward the empty space beside him, the vacancy on the old, weathered bench. "Sit."
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Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 9:38 pm
Not even his intensity could bring the light to her eyes for she felt tired, anchored to that spot. The leaves would drift soon and the branches would gray and her summer dreams would waste away like her dreams on the screen--those dreams of normalcy that she desperately sought through the l-blocks and t-spins, but every night brought her farther and farther, her rank dropping like her bag onto the ground. She sat beside him. Dark as always. Distant now. If she reached, it would be without kindness or thought or emotion. It would be unconscious--some lingering reason but never her will: Her promise to him. She said, "I'm taking the long way to the kayaks today, but what about you, Alois?"
A solitary place. It suited him. She wouldn't feel surprised if he drifted here to escape, like he resided in the abandoned plant. She met his gaze. Mellow. Soft. She couldn't like him. He would harm her. She knew it. This was a farce. She didn't fear him anymore. What could she lose? A friend? Certainly not. A bookkeeper? There were others.
And yet she sat still, waiting for him to speak, wondering about his psyche, if something broke him when he was younger to make him so...
"What do you want?" A stern voice. The birds sung softly. The kayaks swayed at the dock. She bit into her apple. She pulled another from the bag. Red things smell sweetest, she thought as she handed it over.
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Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 10:09 pm
It wasn't his place, but he shifted his gaze from her - toward the undulating forest in their midst. The underbrush and the peripheral wildlife that teased away his attention for fragments at a time. He spoke, but his voice carried a peculiar dash of vibrance he lacked on most occasions. The stars grew brightest, hottest and wildest just before they died. "Sometimes you find stories in places long forgotten. In zese little nooks in daily life zat never see much sun nor use. I like to trace zese areas, see what I can glean from a discarded napkin or a mess of freshly fallen leafs. But..." He grinned, though he still didn't raise his gaze to meet hers. "Instead I found you. "
The sky carried with it a steeled resolve, one unrelenting in its gunmetal uniformity. It formed an even texture over the ground, muting the air and light and color. In these moments, he fancied he stretched across vast expanses of space, and that for these times, those fettered slices of the world understood Alois in a ghost of a taste, a copy of a facsimile of an imitation.
And it felt good to taint the world, even if it was just a passing fancy.
Alois accepted the grey-red apple in kind, relishing its solid weight in his palm. Idly he wondered what held similar proportion - a heart? A liver? Perhaps even a lung?
"I want you to promise me somesing," he returned in kind. He asked for something empty, something vapid. Something useless and cold. Perhaps she'd glean the reasoning behind it, but he doubted it - not many considered that he placed people under duress to simply observe the actions following. And perhaps, not even that was the case half the time. But for now, he wanted to test her waters, to grasp her squeamishness when he entrapped her in a social snare. To promise someone she hated something so personal...
Or would she swallow her pride and vocalize her distaste? With no one around to witness the retching monstrosity behind those kind features, what did she have to lose in turning the tides against him? "Promise me you'll witness my conclusion. You don't even haf' to write it, just... Watch. Just let it wash over you. Like water." Like bleach. Like lye, mixed with a thin film of sweat. Even as he perished, he would ingrain himself into her, and in that instance...
Would he have died at all?
"I haf' high hopes for you." He rested fully against the bench, entrusted his weight to its ancient slats. And he eyed her with that unblinking golden gaze. Watched her. Surveyed her. Measured her into quantifiable units. "Am I to call you Eve now?" He asked with a budding smirk.
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Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 10:31 pm
No.
Noo.
NOOO. She couldn't. She would...stahp. She wanted to push him away! To bury him! Anything! But that tone. Why did he address her so kindly? Stone heart. Stone heart. But she couldn't for she was Ruthie, and Ruthie always melted into fragments of the girl she hoped to be. Even when she recalled the collapsing catwalk, his nonchalance, she couldn't reject. Why couldn't she say it? NO. N. O. He terrified her. He didn't care about her. He would leave her like the others. Dissolve into memory. Pretend she didn't matter. It would hurt. She would cry.
Her gaze warmed like the sunset on that day--before captains and starseeds and youma--when she seemed normal, and maybe he could take her back? In his search for transcendence could he return her to reality?
"Okay," she said. There. She promised. The deed was done. "Alois, you are too good at this. You make me suffer." She rolled her apple between her palms. "And I like it?"
Wow.
This sucked.
She knew he would hurt her--KNEW--and yet...
"If you want," she laughed. "Though at some point it might be nice to hear my name."
Did she hate herself?
Yep.
She hated herself.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 7:41 pm
"Suffering tempers us," he replied as his gaze fixated on the gunmetal sky. "You understand it, maybe only peripherally. Es ist egal; wis'out suffering, zere is no such sing as happiness." Happiness was only a theory, one born from a hope affliction.
Alois grinned nonetheless, though only the sky witnessed the breadth of the gesture. "If you want to hear me say your name, you'll haf' to earn it." He'd make a game out of it, surely. As he always does. As he always will.
A game played with corpses, to feast and to rejoice. Wasn't that what he always wanted?
Whispering leaves echoed his sentiments. The forest was alive with his spurious notions, his superfluous emotions. And he loved these things in earnest - he thrived on them in the same manner that Bischofite thrived on death and mayhem. They were kindred souls born from a dichotomy of reality, weren't they? Bischofite and Alois... He hardly believed they were the same person sometimes. But lately?
He felt so... inspired.
It was a feeling exclusive to tirades as Bischofite prior, but now those curious emotions spilled into his civilian life. Ever since he recognized that he may never become a youma, that he may never transcend, this curious feeling pervaded his thoughts for days on end. Everything bore some kind of connectivity, something providing revelations for aspects of his life he never quite considered before. He couldn't place it, didn't want to erase it, and could never face it. Or was that all a lie? He couldn't tell anymore; Alois successfully deceived the deceiver.
"So Eve," he began, slouching back against the bench. He eyed her warily at first, before his stern countenance evolved into mischievous glee. "You haven't brought up ze power plant yet. I'm surprised you're not rebuking me for what I did." He laughed while digging his thumbnails into the apple in an effort to pry up the skin in long, winding coils. "I must say, it was a lot of fun - to know zat just for a second, you could feel your own mortality, like an echo of your soul. You didn't take it so well, zough." And for that, he cast her a sideways glance.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:19 pm
Ruthie swallowed."Earn it?" She brought the apple to her lips. "sexually?" She bit. Taking notice of his joy, she munched and shrugged. "I guess--" She sighed and leaned against the bench, stretching her arm across her forehead. "--I was wrong about you?" She sat up, resting her arm against the back of the bench, facing him. "I thought you would take me with you to the grave, you would hurt me just to laugh." A leaf drifted past the bag. "That it was wrong for you to endanger us if you didn't know we'd be alright." She smiled. A chuckle. "But now I know that it's okay, and that you were right after all."
Alois.
He would hurt her someday.
"My soul's pretty messed up, I think." She spun the apple to the red half. Half red. Half white. One is dead... Alois peeled the skin off his apple. Peeling skin. How familiar. "I let in too many people."
...One is light!
"Too easy for people to sink their claws in." She raised an eyebrow, smirking. "What about you, my dear? Pure as snow?" She laughed. "Or maybe well-disguised. You seem...knowledgeable about the ways of life. Certainly familiar."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 9:14 pm
Alois caught her whisper with avid interest. He turned his piercing gaze on her, accompanied by an almost enigmatic expression, and pursued her whisper relentlessly. "Natürlich. Kneel before me and suck me off in ze middle of ze woods. Taste. and swallow." He snorted, then graced her with a low chuckle. "You misunderstand me, but... I'm not opposed to ze carnal." Perhaps it was one of the few things human life had to offer - apart from the endless suffering, the tedium, the toiling tasks tailored to suppress his strange, all-consuming curiosity, sex was the one redeeming feature to sustain him through the torrents.
And he would lose that grace as a youma, but all the endless drivel would perish with it. Already he determined the tradeoff proved worthwhile, and he hadn't yet embarked on that path.
"I don't see anysing wrong wis' what I did. You might sink movies or dinner bring people togezzer, but I found a very different approach." Alois tore one of the curling strips of skin from the apple and tossed it to the ground. Bait for the starved and seeking. "I found... In zat moment, we bos' suffered a shock of mortality. We felt ze same sing, and in zat, we could connect. Suffering, struggle and strife bring people togezzer in ways zat chicken alfredo or ze latest romance movie cannot. Zose sings... zey stifle us, limit us to ze shallow and vapid parts of existence.
"But sometimes people just want to lose zemselfs, and in ze process indulge in someone else and leaf' a few pieces behind. Scraps of zem linger in zeir lovers, and zey're always seeking to reclaim somesing lost wis'out even recognizing what it was zey lost.
"But some sings are better lost for good. I'm starting to realize zat."
Alois continued his work on the apple and focused on the task intently. Dextrous fingers honed by piano worked at the surface, leaving behind shallow valleys to fit the width of his thumbnails. The apple evolved from simple sustenance to a project, an art piece though which he might convey his own abstract notions of existentialism or something equally pretentious. Really he desperately needed a monotonous task to occupy his hands; since he quit smoking, he found himself searching for something long gone.
Perhaps he wasn't so different from everyone after all.
Alois sighed before he halted the task temporarily. He closed his eyes, studied the myriad of oranges spread across the breadth of his gaze. "Zere is snow and zere is black ice." It was all he elected to disclose to her in regards to his soul. "Maybe you're right, but I suspect you harbor a decent understanding yourself." Finally he opened his eyes to regard her, to coax an answer out of her.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 9:37 pm
"Hmm." She wanted physical contact. She craved it for it reminded her that he cared, thought of her, wanted to feel warm feelings, skin against skin. "Can I just lean my head on your shoulder for now?" She laughed, but it seemed silent. Soft. Like a broken sigh. "I'm so tired Alois." She studied the apple's, skin glistening like a ruby. "Maybe I am too knowledgeable, but then, why do I feel so weak? Do you know? Do I know? Does anybody know?" She sighed and set the apple on the ground. She wasn't hungry anymore--didn't mind an animal using it or the collapse of its atoms into the dirt. She smiled faintly. Alois. Did he understand? Could he understand...
Her?
"Knowledge is power, right? Why do people with so much feel so beat up inside?" She rubbed her eyes and yawned. "It doesn't make sense, Alois." She stretched. "I don't mind the rituals, you know. The dating game, I really don't, but you're right: It's much easier to get to know someone at the brink of death." She suddenly studied his gaze with great intent. "But you wouldn't hurt me, right? Not like that. Please?"
What a silly thing to ask. She immediately regretted it. She pulled back.
"I mean, you don't have to. It would just be nice not to worry about such things from you. I still want to trust you--to think that everything will be alright..."
She studied the apple on the ground. She felt like the biggest idiot ever.
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Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 10:52 pm
"We are what we feel."
The breeze chased through his hair with copious vigor, an excitement attributed to a coming storm. He listened to his own breaths, her minor movements and gesticulations through her speech, the slow shuffle of feet below the bench in some clandestine dance of discomfort and distrust. Alois didn't respond to her request, purely to gauge her reaction. Without confirmation or rejection, what would she do? Invade his space and chance rejection, or remain in the comfort of inaction? As he ran his finger across the lone metal claw adorning his index finger, he considered her potential actions.
And his potential responses.
"I suspect someone ******** up when zey articulated zat phrase. Knowledge is fire. It has ze ability to consume, to burn down obstacles in your pas', but at ze same time... You risk immolating yourself too." He watched the apple shavings cast upon the ground, writhing in the wind like maggots across rotting garbage. Maybe they shared the same character now. Maybe all of humanity did - for they simply toiled and writhed against an inevitability, and the fact that he understood that freed him greatly. But Ruthie - she succumbed to that very notion, that her words and actions might glean some change tailored specifically to her.
Hence the dating game. "Sometimes it's a detriment to get to know someone. Humans are predisposed to curiosity, Taube. Once zere is nossing more to learn, do you sink zey still waste zeir time on such sings? If you don't want me to hurt you, zen don't let me know you." He smiled to the shavings; they yellowed in their own wash of acid. Finally he raised the apple to his nose and breathed the scent into the deepest reaches of his lungs - still fresh, still pungent with its own ripened offerings. But soon it would yellow, rot, and decay, much like Ruthie should she pursue this impoverished path.
If not, then he would reap the last threads of life from her tired mind.
Finally he shifted his gaze to her once more, and half-turned atop the bench to face her more fully. "So sink zat everysing will be alright. Why restrain yourself? Do you fear freedom, or are you just content to limit yourself eternally?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2013 9:20 am
He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no. Would a head on his shoulder push her away, like when he turned from her hand on his cheek? Would it wreck her if he rejected her? She could still avoid him, but no. She learned. She laughed and said, "Alois. If I'm going to do this, you need to want it too." She collapsed against the bench. If he wouldn't help her, then, well, she would rest on this plank of wood fastened to another fastened to the ground. If they were attached to the bench, were they also attached to the ground? Were they attached to each other?
Ruthie...
She couldn't feel attached to Alois. Not with his claw or ear piercings. Not with his black shirts or bitter laugh. No. She couldn't. It wouldn't be right...? Staring at him staring at her, him facing her, facing him, the apple fresh, spring-like. One white. One red. Light or dead. Which were you, Alois? Both or neither? Some or other? Light or dead?
"I want to--" Which? "--know you, though." light or dead or light or dead or light or dea-- "I want freedom. Please. But then, who doesn't? Do you? Are you free?"
Down the road, the canoes swung back and forth. The manager handed his employees life vests. One said yes and one said no.
"Can I be free too?"
The manager shook his head. One took his canoe around the dock, while the other watched from the vending machines, waiting, wishing, he'd said okay.
One would stay and one would go.
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Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2013 9:54 am
"I am closer to free zan you." The wind carried his words, intermixed with shifting waters, blustering tempers, faded scents of girls long since departed to the lake. Was he no different, then? His ideas stretched across that stunted wind, indiscernible from all the detritus roiling about in its impartial dance. "I..." He sighed. Smiled. Laughed, lilting and unusually light. "I sink I can help you, wis zat." Too light. He lit his index finger across the bridge of his nose while he sank back against the bench. "But... I don't sink you really want freedom. To haf' zat sort of unfettered choice is... Damning to most. Zey're so used to walls, to floors, to ceilings and sky, zat zey can't handle zemselfs when endowed wis' such freedom."
She would destroy herself.
"But if you're still interested, I can help you." The smile resurfaced, and the light faded. Better. "I suspect you like where you are." Plato might've seen enlightenment as lifting oneself from the dark, from the shackles, but he never took into account the absolute blinding nature of light - he never fully realized the destruction it wrought on unprepared psyches.
She would destroy herself.
"Come wis' me. I want to show you somesing." He slipped from the bench and stood at his full height, beckoning her to follow without waiting for her acceptance. He needn't loiter for her; if she was truly interested, she would bend to his declarations. Watch the oily sheen against blackened feathers. Follow the sudden beats across the sky without questioning her destination.
She would destroy herself.
And he would only smile with that same brand of iniquity he carved into the apple.
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Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2013 10:54 am
"You'll help me?" She trailed after him. Leaves fell. Wrapped into her hair. Crunched under her feet. She chased the shadow into the woods. "You'll show me how to be free?" The trees seemed darker, taller here. "I don't even know what freedom is--that's how not free I am." He seemed further and further away. She felt as if she chased. "You, though! You seem to know!"
The bag fell onto its side. The apples spilled onto the earth. She forgot about them. A sparrow picked at rotting flesh. Follow him into the woods. Close your eyes, Ruthie. Forget the apples, the twig-arm, your good friend Alois. Just follow him deep into he woods, under the branches, where no one could find you--hidden and safe with your yellow-eyed pal.
"Where are we going, Alois?"
The man paddled around dock, the other bit his candy wrapper. The paddling man laughed. Geese flew overhead, honking at the sun. She couldn't bear it: The thought of Alois leaving her again. She would walk faster toward him, into darkness--away from danger. Somewhere safe.
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Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:25 am
Alois lingered between the trees, watching her with feral delight. To play this slow game - it was a guilty pleasure he sought on many an occasion. Would she understand it herself? How would she react to it? What would she do, in the coming circumstances? And he beheld such enthrallment in the fact that he couldn't know, couldn't predict the coming resolution to the situations he sought to put her through.
In times prior, they lingered atop a catwalk. She cut the rope. And he resigned himself to his fate - that forever that half a cable would hang, useless and neglected, from a ceiling that bore it no purpose.
And she left.
"I will show you what freedom is, Taube." He waited. Lingered among the trees. Lost himself to the endless, meandering forest that concealed them from the rigid, unbending nature of man. Here they had the flexibility to become the baser parts of themselves, to backtrack without hesitance or hearsay or heresy. And he liked it here, among the shade, among the trees. Among those not quite adjusted to the dark.
And they would find solace in that ignorance.
"Freedom is a tricky sing, and you might find it's not to your liking. But to be free... If you can stand it, if you can tolerate it, zen you will know nossing but an absolute departure from guilt. Come," with another beckon toward her, he took off through the remainder of the woods.
The lake wasn't far from here. it was bright. Its minute waves reflected the sun with such ferocity, as though the heat didn't threaten to burn it away slowly. Would it remain nothing but a basin in a thousand years? Ten thousand? Inevitably, it would succumb to this strange relationship.
Alois petered to a halt just outside the bathroom building. The last establishment of man in this bastion of nature. The forestry crept upon it, evidenced in the cracks of its foundation, the weeds steadily parting the concrete.
Ten thousand years.
Alois leaned against the building, felt the siding slats groan beneath his weight. He rolled his shoulders against them; silence stemmed from his actions. He sighed, but watched Ruthie catch up. He watched in interest. And when she emerged from the forest, into the light, her shins barely shaded by the building, he pulled his switchblade from his pocket. He handed it to her once more.
And with it came a strange explanation: "To know freedom is to know no repercussions. No inner guilt, no outer punishment. It's a hard sing to swallow, I know zat more zan anyone. It doesn't come easy, and it hurts at first. So I will introduce freedom to you slowly - take zis knife, and cut a name into zis building. Any name. Yours, mine, it doesn't matter. Carf'e a phrase. Endow it wis' your soughts."
His gaze softened. "Ze hardest part isn't ze action. Press hard, and nossing will bar you from your task. But... To quash ze guilt, ze fear zat you might be caught, ze apprehension toward ze repercussions... Zat is where freedom lies. For ze act alone does not beget freedom at all - it is simply a stepping stone to train your mind to look at sings outside its cell. To know zat..." He respired while he glanced toward the sky. Blue. Bright. Painful in its absolute disclosure. "It doesn't matter if you get caught, if you get fined, if guilt tries to strangle you wis' its ingrained notions of morals and virtues. For even if zat occurs, it would'f occurred regardless, for any action - whezer intentional or not."
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