[Deceased] Youma General Bischofite // Alois Scholz | Page 2 | Journals: Powered Characters | Guild Forums

Strickenized

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Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 9:59 am

Amerika
Word count: 2058

Moonless. Cloudless.

A red haze swept across the blackened sky, punctuated with a single, pale bullet hole. A peering, filmy light that crawled and sprawled its way across the foreign landscape, peeling onto everything it touched without discrimination. The roiling field glowed with a hollow, sickly luminance, reminiscent of a twilight over a smoke-stained battlefield. Despite the stagnant air, fingertips swept across the land in an unearthly grace. They curled and spread like smoke, whispering up toward the sky before coiling up and smoothing out, riding a gust imperceptible. Each tree, like legs knotted with veins and ravaged with scars, bent and twisted toward the sky, compelled to spread its gnarled branches and weather the sickly, toxic light. This place, it felt more like a destination. It felt as if it witnessed the first breaths of the earth, mourned the deaths of a thousand stars, housed treachery and monotony and tyranny with the same unrelenting scenery.

For as bleak, as despairing as this place felt, its age far surpassed it.

He couldn't say what brought him here, he couldn't explain how he arrived. Only one solid fact pervaded every fiber of his being, burned in his ears and clawed at his mind - he would never leave. No matter the effort, no matter his cunning, this place sprawled limitlessly through valleys and rivers and cities - this nameless place was ubiquitous.

He stood atop a hill, crowned with gangly trees and overgrown with sinewy finger-like appendages. Every step he took yielded a sickening, wet crunch as the digits broke beneath his weight. Looking back, they soon rose unharmed and resumed their eerie dance in the wasted sunlight. Some even reached toward his feet, as if pleading for something words couldn't express. Yet, once he moved farther away, they jerked and popped as they were pulled apart by the others.

There was a certain wisdom to this place, one could feel it in the melancholic mists. The hollowed screams of the trees. The whisperings and goadings that, barely perceptible, teased his mind. He held a duty to this place. A duty so ancient, so guttural, so visceral that he was compelled to press forward. Answers lay between the trees. At his feet. Through the vacant fields and within the weakened breeze. Under the deadened sunlight. Across the cracked skin of the fingers. Within the putrid bark that lay scattered across the ground. This place... It reeked of knowledge as thickly as it did of rotting flesh.

Hours rolled off his shoulders and minutes dripped from his fingers. Years lay ahead of him, and decades behind. Time passed in distance, and with distance the old became corrupted and the ancient putrefied. Fingers that were once flesh turned to pearly bone, bleached by the sickly sunlight spewing from the bullet hole. It remained fixed in the sky, watching him. Measuring his progress in length of shadow, changing indiscernibly. He felt its gaze empower him, embolden him to forge a path that only closed behind him. He pressed forward and his progress vanished without a trace. Only curling fingers marked his wake. Only gnarled, withered trees marked his path.

He knew this place, as all creatures do. He understood it wordlessly, and it recognized him for all he was and all he wasn't. It knew his deeds without them being done, and it knew his past without witnessing a moment of it. It knew him as it knew all things, it measured his life in ways unfathomable. He slowly realized this solitary fact during his journey. He felt the unrelenting knowledge bleach his skin and sear the lashes of his eyes. Etch itself into the cracks of his skin. Splinter through his veins. In a harrowing way, it motivated him.

At that moment, that mere second of epiphany, he made a fatal mistake.

He abandoned the path his feet were taking him. He detoured via the whims of his mind, seeking shelter beneath the scarred and withered branches, to hide himself away from the unwavering scrutiny of the sunlight. He sought shelter from its ubiquitous presence, yet found it peering through branches and bearing down on him relentlessly. As he penetrated the thickening forest, the mists deepened and toxic sunlight gave way to a dim red glow. A foreboding glow.

Silence dug its way inside his ear canals. A delicate chill sloughed off the trees and layered its way across the ground. His feet soon became numb, and he knew not whether it was from trekking tirelessly or from the algid mist of the place. His search for quiet defiance led him deeper into the labyrinthine forest, which curled and snarled around him in dull whispers. It promised solace from the unmitigated gaze of the bullet hole, yet it peered through even the densest of thickets. It peeled away the gnarled branches and seared through leaves of stretched and dried skin. That same sickly light cast veiny shadows across the trees untouched by mist.

He plodded further into the bowels of he forest, his eyes straining against the seething mist for some glimpse of resolution. For some closure in a land existing beyond time. He wanted, yearned for his journey to draw to an end. However, the woods only granted him curiosity to fuel his compulsive trek. It ushered him ahead with glimpses restrained to his peripherals, of breaks in the trees and healthy sunshine. He felt the presence of life just beyond himself, just past the impenetrable fog. It lingered beyond his fingertips. It tantalized him. Drew him forward. Urged him on a blind excursion.

That ghosting of life coursed through his legs and pooled in his feet. He felt it, wholly, vividly, with every footstep. It slowly swirled its way up his legs and pervaded his being. He finally understood it. He finally realized his purpose in this limitless land. He no longer felt trepidation toward the bleached-out bullet hole or the toxic rays spilling from it. Rather, he welcomed it. Yet, buried deep within the woods, skulking below the boughs and quietly breaking disembodied fingers, he felt detached from its gaze.

Upon turning around, he faced a solid wall. It bore ridges of ancient veins and scars that rose like mountains across a desert. It felt vast and unmoving. He innately knew its material was far older than bone, and with every step it encroached upon him dutifully, predictably. In some ways, it was encouraging. With every step backward, he felt its unconscionably warm surface press against his back. It warned him and guided him simultaneously. It bore the same enigmatic timelessness as the woods, the valley, the sky.

He plodded ahead resolutely. With every step through the gnarled bone of the trees, he felt another whisper of life. It energized him while he walked, filling his extremities with a warmth that warded away the algid mist. He heard it sizzle as it dripped across the bony fingers of the terrain. He watched it melt through the bone in passing. With every step, those whispers of life strengthened. They were no longer just beyond his reach, but within it. Within him. They burned and bled and boiled through his skin, into his flesh, burrowing into his bone. They caused him to stumble through the path, to lurch and sway, as each step became more charged with life.

He had only to watch in abject terror as he realized the sole source of life in this limitless realm was himself. His skin peeled away, finally rotted and putrid, sloughing off onto the roots of the trees as he walked. The exposed meat shriveled and clung to his bones, only to crackle and melt into wet chunks. Blood flowed freely from deep pockets in his muscles and spewed violently when another slab of rancid meat rotted off his legs. Even the bones, once white and strong, crumbled under his weight. Soon he was reduced to walking on the splintering stumps of his thighs, still driven by the compulsion toward progress. Once his thighs gave way to decomposition, he crawled. And once his fingers wore to stumps and his palms were reduced to bloody mulch, he writhed across the floor.

Even as he lay, half dissolved, on the sea of endless fingers, he felt that nagging compulsion rally the remains of his muscle into movement. They twitched and shuddered, spasmed and seized, against the collapsing frame of his ribcage. Soon, naught remained of him but a spinal cord and skull. Not long after, nothing at all.

Alois woke with a start, drenched in sweat and panting furiously. He glanced about himself, looking for any signs of the otherworldly realm. Thick, full grass and blooming trees greeted him, offsetting the stoic stone of the graveyard. The sun shone brightly against the blue sky, casting nary a shadow on the ground. Several birds chirped from their nests, safely hidden in the filled-out trees. A small group of people huddled around a worn gravestone, lamenting over the loss of their loved one.

Despite his typical misanthropic nature, Alois was rather glad to see them.

He stood from his spot under an established oak tree, and a lone book went tumbling into the dirt. He picked it up and dusted it off; he remembered reading the novel before dozing off, but would it really have sparked such a vivid dream? No; even though Poe had a penchant for dark and gruesome writing, that dream occurred long before he'd picked up the book. It was no machination of Kafka, or Poe, or Stephen King. Reading from the horror genre didn't spark such a bizarre nightmare.

Alois began the long walk back to the street, through the winding dirt paths of the cemetery. He wove his way through ornate headstones and stepped over grave markers, sidestepped small vases of chrysanthemums, and rounded the mausoleum. All these signs of death around him... It was no wonder he had such a strange dream. Still, that same bizarre nightmare occurred long before he took a nap in the cemetery.

Ever since he moved to this a**-backwards 'land of the free', he'd had that terrible dream. It began the night of his move, after he'd finally unloaded the plethora of boxes into his room. It recurred relentlessly, ravaging his ability to sleep for nearly a month, then it tapered off and remained out of mind for the past two months. So why did it crop up again? What was the significance of it? Even if he didn't believe in dream analysis, he wanted to know why the same damned dream plagued him constantly.

Once he finally reached the street, he withdrew a much-needed cigarette from his pocket and lit up. He watched as the smoke swirled away from him, caught in an errant breeze, and dissipated only moments later. As he took a drag, the familiar searing sensation filled his lungs. He exhaled sharply. Relief crept through him tentatively.

He crossed the street, turned the corner, followed six blocks on the same street, turned right, unlocked a gate, and walked to his front door. All of the now automatic motions felt like they took seconds. Even as his mind wandered to the significance of the dream, he found himself standing at the door of his house. He looked up at its looming visage, taking in every detail from the fine cracks in its siding to the painted masonry around its corners. The windows, with their dirtied sealant, and the fine clouds where his sister pressed her hand against it from the inside, looking out at a land that remained a thousand miles away. They all felt it here, he knew that. They all knew that they resided here now, in this strange land, but their home was still across the ocean. They only settled here. He only settled here.

Slowly he pressed his key into the lock and turned it until the tumblers clicked. He pushed through the door without bothering to remove his key, only doing so after he made it inside. After slamming the door and announcing his arrival, after hearing the familiar reply of his sister, after watching Tschambes have a coronary over his arrival, things resumed their typical pace. He finally returned to the realm of the living.

The significance of his dream was to remain long forgotten.

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:55 am

Together We Will Live Forever
Word count: 876

For once in his life, Alois Scholz wasn't being a complete a*****e.

In fact, he was minding his own business. If someone walked in, they might discover he was actually doing something pleasant. As farfetched as it sounded, Alois was minding his own business in his room, not harming nor haranguing others.

That must've been worthy of a medal.

The tune he played bore a solemn tone, one that filled the room with a complex yet sobering melody. He felt it resounding in his fingers, resounding in his mind, resounding in his heart. He worked the keys gently before transitioning to a firmer play, following the dynamics on the sheet music without a hitch. He reveled in the tone of the piece. It seemed a simple affair, his fingers traipsing across plastic keys, but the end result felt complex and vibrant. Music was a miracle in its own way, and right now, he had the privacy to finally enjoy it. No one looking over his shoulder, no one listening from a distance.

Solitude.

His bedroom door opened abruptly, and he habitually hit all the sour notes of the keyboard. "Goddammit, Dad," he erupted. "Would it kill you to knock?" He shot an irritable glare over his shoulder at the man standing in the doorway. His father knew with absolute certainty that he hated being walked in on like that, yet he consistently did so, as if asserting that his needs superseded his son's need for a bit of privacy. It didn't matter; respect was hard to come by in that house. These constant violations of expectations were essentially as old and solid as some of the fixtures in the house.

"Would it kill you to be nice or respectful for once in your life?" He fired back. The man was slightly taller than Alois, with deep brown hair slicked back from old, wizened eyes. His half moon glasses sat forward on his nose, far and away to keep from interfering with his farsightedness. In a way that only he knew how, he swelled up to encompass the entire doorway, preventing any methods of escape, save for slipping out the window (which Alois was apt to do).

The Biological Brick Wall phenomenon only happened when someone landed in deep s**t, and Alois was waiting with bated breath to hear his sentencing. What the hell could it be this time?

"Alois, I just got off the phone with a gentleman down at the library. Maybe you don't remember what you did, so I'll explain it to you. You returned a book to him after you burned one of your cigarettes into the pages. Do you know what that's called? Property damage. Do you know why that's a bad thing? It-"

Alois interjected without thinking. "I'm not stupid. I know why it's s**t-"

"Don't interrupt me, young man. If you weren't stupid, you wouldn't have done this, because now we have to foot the bill for you destroying a perfectly good, and perfectly rare, book. Maybe you think you can get away with this s**t since you work in our bookstore. I don't know. But the truth of it is, you're going to have to pay him back every penny of that book, and you're doing so by volunteering there. I want you to see that your actions will make you suffer just as much as the people around you. Do I make myself clear?" He enunciated his final sentence with a penetrating glare.

Alois knew what kind of answer he was looking for. He knew his father wanted a dejected 'yes', or some kind of downcast expression to denote his superiority over the boy. It wasn't rocket science to figure that out. However, he and his father have had this vendetta for years now, and he wasn't about to give in and retreat. "Why the ******** would that affect me now? It's just bullshit for something I did over a week ago. How the ******** does that make sense?"

His father sighed in exasperation. "Alois, you're a worthless cretin. Do it or move out." With his ultimatum said, he left the room and slammed the door hard enough to cause the doorframe to shudder. Stomps denoted his continued irritation as they faded down the hallway.

"Great..." Alois sighed through his nose. It was either this or get tossed to the streets again, and he remembered with crystal clarity how well that went last time. He could hardly walk from the pneumonia he'd contracted from sleeping in the rain, and his father only let him back in after an extensive apology and a signed contract for a whole new set of rules. That wasn't a repeat affair.

The thought of volunteering made him ill. He needed a cigarette to fix that. After leaving the suddenly unappealing keyboard, he slipped the half-empty pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his hanging jacket and headed toward the window. He opened it roughly, with the faded frame squeaking against its tray, and he leaned out the window to light his cancer stick. After a deep drag, he considered the act of volunteering.

Sure, it was a s**t place to work for free. Then again, look at all the trouble he could cause.

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Posted: Wed May 01, 2013 9:15 pm

Die Spur der Gedanken [The Trail of Thought]
Word count: 2121

His chest ached with the burden of the death of a thousand stars. It was an ancient pain, spreading through his body like ancient, gnarled roots delving deep within the earth. He felt it as an innate part of him, as an inseparable, churning agony that somehow reaffirmed his existence. Tentatively he reached toward his chest, fingers barely brushing against the exposed skin. Nothing - no immediate jolt of pain, no wetness of blood, no gaping hole. How could that be? It was so contrary to his fractured memory. He could recall, albeit painfully, someone's hand buried deep into his chest, as if reaching for his heart. He remembered the sheer, grueling torture, which invigorated the dull throb that pervaded his body.

Slowly he opened his eyes. Twilight filtered into the room, sweeping across its stormy blue walls with deep slats. It chased away the shadows, and bathed the room in an almost supernatural light. He felt detached here. Even when bathed in the dying light of the evening, he felt miserably far from where he lay. This room, its unusual serenity, its turbulent walls... These things didn't belong around him. He wasn't meant to be here. His presence - it was inherently wrong.

Alois shut out the room temporarily, but the throbbing behind his eyes prevented him from drifting back into a state of semi-consciousness. He was awake now; he'd have to face that.

This wrongness filled him with a sense of dread, of foreboding akin to what he felt in that recurring dream. The ancient pain radiating through him drew a thousand similarities to the equally timeless realm he dreamt of in the past. Were they related somehow? It seemed a preposterous idea, but so was pressing a hand into someone's chest up to the wrist. Did he actually survive it? Perhaps this was some Kafkaesque half-world buried betwixt this life and the next. But would pain be present if he'd died? No - perhaps this was his brain's dying synapses rationalizing some kind of closure for what happened to him. Lying in a quiet room with only the monotonous tick of a clock to punctuate the silence - it seemed a fitting way to go.

With a strained groan, he sat upright and rubbed his chest. His skin wasn't sensitive to the touch, yet the ache beneath it surged onward. It palpitated sometimes, and itched as if something had been festering there. His shirt had obviously been torn; he was staring downward at the pallid skin normally hidden by an array of belts and pinstriped black fabric. What he remembered - that fateful night - was grounded in reality. However preposterous it sounded, his shirt's state of disarray suggested it was the truth.

That man, that short, lithe man. He recalled his face vaguely - blue eyes, light brown hair. Maybe blonde. He couldn't tell; he only remembered its wispy strands soaked by the torrential rain. He'd spoken to Alois afterward, but those words were long gone. Their memory was replaced by a seething hatred that sought answers for such a monstrous violation of his soul.

Alois watched his hand quake with weakness. He couldn't stay upright, not for long.

He laid back against the bed with a quiet huff. The pillow crinkled beneath the weight of his head, and the shafts of tiny feathers prickled the skin of his scalp. A lone feather brushed against the back of his ear, just behind his gauged lobe. It felt somewhat comforting, at least, to lay against something so forgiving. As he turned his head to regard his surroundings, he wondered who owned the room. Who would take the time to drag his lifeless body all the way here, to house him in their own lodgings rather than drop him off at the hospital? Was it someone who'd seen what befell him? He recalled the vague image of a man who confronted his attacker, but the stranger didn't pay him much mind. Then there was the other one, the one who thrust his hand into Alois' chest... But bringing him here sounded far too contradictory to the amount of pain he'd inflicted.

Tired gold eyes darted from object to object as he observed his surroundings. A well-crafted, ornate nightstand sat a couple feet away from him, close enough for him to sweep his fingers across its contents. He couldn't feel any dust - only the fine ridges of the wood's grain graced his fingertips, until they halted against a thick, glossy book. As his eyes fixated on the title, his mind set to work translating the vaguely familiar words. A horticulture textbook? It made sense; the cover detailed a plethora of different flowers and bushes, ground cover and trees, with eloquently printed letters embossed near the top. Not far from it stood a desk lamp, crafted from cherry and glass, which swirled together toward the top. A pale yellow shade crowned the fixture, forming a blooming square that encompassed the bulb.

Whoever owned this room was highly interested in plants, or took to some atrociously vapid nighttime reading. Still, it wasn't anything that explained who brought him here or why. It didn't shed much insight on the mind of his purported savior, either.

His gaze once again drifted about the room, past the antique baby ben clock that accompanied the lamp, and settled on a painting slightly obscured by a hanging basket of ivy. It reminded him of home, in a way - the painting clearly illustrated the streets of France, though with brush strokes sweeping as if blurred by rain. A handful of umbrellas scattered throughout the painting confirmed his thoughts. Saarland, his home state in Germany, sat on the border to France, and thus borrowed some of its familiar architecture. The streets were filled with cobblestone, which was highly typical of European cities. Had this person lived in Europe before? In France? Possibly, but he could just as easily find such outlandish paintings in a doctor's office. Perhaps it didn't indicate anything at all.

The hanging basket that obscured the upper right corner of the picture overflowed with what he assumed was ivy. It solidified his presumption that the owner of the room was interested in all things flora, and amusingly, that meant the horticulture book wasn't intended to put the occupant to sleep. The majority of the ivy grew on the side opposite him, toward the large bay window where the sun peered in most mornings. Curiously none of the paintings were positioned in the direction of the sunlight. Were they real, then? He wouldn't know - Alois lacked a great deal of knowledge about paintings, and plants for that matter. He was no closer to uncovering anything about the person who brought him here.

All these paintings of places he recognized... What a way to bring on the homesickness. This person either has a fascination with or has lived in Europe before.

A desk sat near the window, which matched the nightstand in elegance and craftsmanship. Next to it stood a riveted leather chair, which was situated astride the desk as if pushed back hastily. Did the owner leave in a hurry? Did something alert them? He could only stipulate. Several silver candle holders crowned the desk as well. The majority of them held candles, though all of them remained unlit. Still, a heavy fragrance filled the room, which he assumed was due to their continual burning. However, there was very little melted wax to confirm his extrapolations. What was making that smell, if not the candles? Perfume? Did a woman own this room? It would certainly explain the interest in horticulture and art, and the ornate style of the furniture set.

But if a woman saved him, how would she manage to bring him all the way here? 135 pounds was a lot of dead weight, over any distance. Though, if he even remotely thought about the events that transpired earlier, the ache in his chest only grew louder.

He sat up halfheartedly, propping himself up on his elbows, and peered into the doorway adjacent to the bed. The light was on, so he could make out the assortment of clothes housed by what he presumed was a closet. It seemed a little big for a wardrobe space, but then again he was still growing used to an area built into the house to keep his clothes. Even a row of Kleiderschränke couldn't compare to the sheer amount of space in this closet. It was also nearly full and neatly organized, with pants on the left and a variety of different shirts on the right. None of them appeared particularly feminine; whoever lived here was either butch in their appearance or male.

So much for his idea of being rescued by a beautiful French damsel. She may not be dressed in sultry attire, but she could still be hot. Then again, she could also not be a she.

As long as the man was relatively attractive, he could live with that.

Due to sitting up for too long, Alois felt weak and a bit dizzy. He refrained from gazing about the room in too much interest, as he still suffered greatly from the pain inflicted upon him previously. He ached in a way that caused him to subconsciously hold his breath, and only intermittently dispersed it due to the sharp pains from normal respiration.

Idly he wondered how his savior came across him. Was it after he passed out? Did they know the two who were present when it happened? Was it one of the two? he couldn't imagine such a room belonging to either one of them. No, it seemed much more refined than they did. Would someone with a penchant for horticulture and impressionist paintings be assaulting others by thrusting a hand into their chests? It sounded too farfetched to be true. As for the other man, he couldn't say. He seemed poor at corralling unearthly creatures; could such a person grow plants with any success?

It didn't really matter. Alois was still alone here. No matter how many assumptions he made about the person that brought him here, he was no closer to understanding the truth about what happened. It didn't explain what happened to him, either. The whole affair seemed impossible - dreamed up by a twisted mind, brought about by reading too many horror novels at night. Still, that warped, throbbing pain in his chest assured him otherwise.

Alois finally regarded the bookshelf sitting opposite the window. Some of the gold leafing on the books gleamed under the dying rays of the sun. It left minute spots in his vision, which lingered for nearly a minute before fading to discoloration. The books, from the titles he could make out, ranged from classical literature to more contemporary novels, with a smattering of texts on flora. This person read voraciously, and they chose novels that provoked a significant amount of thought. He even found some of his own choice reads among the shelves. A few of the titles he'd recognized from his parents' bookstore as well. Surprisingly though, he couldn't find any books about Europe or any maps of the sort. Were those paintings just for show? Was this French vixen really not French at all?

That was a little disappointing.

All this speculation, and still no answers. His ability to observe the environment didn't really do him any favors here. He was no closer to understanding what happened, or unraveling the mystery surrounding his savior. He hadn't even glimpsed the person yet. All he had to go by was a single, solitary room, filled with grandiose objects indicative of a luxurious lifestyle. Perhaps he'd hit the nail on the head with a few of his extrapolations, but he could also be infinitely far from the truth.

No amount of idle observations suppressed the fact that his chest ached badly. It didn't cover up his confusion, his misery, his sneaking suspicion that these fateful events had something to do with that bizarre recurring dream. He wanted to move, he wanted to ask his savior what had transpired, he wanted to viciously assault the insidious soul that nearly killed him in the first place. Yet, he couldn't draw himself from the bed.

Muffled footsteps echoed in the distance, slowly growing louder. He willed himself to stat awake for the arrival of the one who rescued him, but the weariness of enduring all that pain caused his consciousness to ebb. The throbbing kept him awake for this long, but his mind could no longer sustain the pain and turbulent questions surrounding the incident. Even as the door opened, he found himself sinking into darkness.

Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 1:39 am

Er Wusste, Ganz Genau. [He Knew, Wholly and Absolutely]
Word count: 3406

Alois knew that he'd been inaccessible to his family for the last several days. As a result of becoming corrupted and acquiring a taste for the powered life, he hardly ever spent time at home. He didn't consider it a detriment; his home life suffered long before he'd ever moved to Destiny City, and no amount of bending over backward for his father would fix it. Their familial roles were already cemented in place: his sister was the starlet, his brother was the responsible leader, and he was the rotten troublemaker. He couldn't possibly change his father's opinion of the three siblings, and he suspected his father rather enjoyed using Alois as a scapegoat for alleviating stress.

His typical sleep cycle had been altered greatly with his corruption. Alois now slept in two distinct periods: early evening and early morning. It left him feeling more tired than usual, and he occasionally slept midday through a particularly mundane work shift, but he found venturing out at night and exploring the limits of his new power to be far more rewarding than extra sleep.

His father, Brian, had noticed the change. He was quick to judge his commonly lethargic son, calling him a lazy good-for-nothing and a waste of a man. This didn't surprise him; his father constantly butted heads with him for many years, which he surmised was the result of two strong personalities vying for dominance over one another. He didn't hate the man for it. Despite what he's been through, and the exceedingly cold treatment he received upon being released from jail, he couldn't bring himself to despise his father. Maybe that's what they called family ties.

However, he didn't feel a damned thing when he learned that his father was struck down by a drunk driver.

There were no hospital visits. No crying. No concerned doctors waving around grief pamphlets as if they would dispel the insufferable atmosphere of loss and despair. He didn't even consider it a loss himself. It was just another change. It differed little from moving to America. It didn't surprise him that he couldn't feel loss or emptiness over the affair. Idly he tied it to the corruption, to Alexandre pumping unfathomable amounts of chaotic energy into his soul. Maybe it formed a healthy buffer between him and depression. If it did, perhaps he should write the boy a thank-you note. Would he? No, not a chance in hell. However, he'd send the blonde a cactus for certain.

Sitting between his distraught mother and sister, adjacent to the unfortunate doctor in the secluded waiting room, he considered the type of cactus he would purchase the young general. He didn't know too many types of cacti, he noticed, while he gripped his mother's hand absently. Maybe a barrel cactus? They were small and thorny, right? That seemed ideal. He didn't want the gift to be too nice, and one couldn't really enjoy a cactus. All you do is water it once a month and it grows, he figured, as he vaguely registered his sister resting her head on his shoulder. The wetness that spread on his sleeve mildly irritated him.

The doctor interjected, breaking his thought pattern. "Right, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. However, the procedures are much more complex than that, and have a middle-of-the-road success rate."

What the ******** was he talking about? Oh, right. The corpse. Back to the cactus. Should he get a small pot, or a large one? Maybe he should get a broken pot so Alexandre would have to replant it somewhere and waste quite a bit of time. Either that, or he could plant it in his garden and the damnable cactus would quietly take over, and spear the leaves of the neighboring plants. That sounded good. He'd decided on the barrel cactus, now where was he supposed to obtain it? He knew of a flower shop nearby, but not any real nurseries. Those were the places that had plants, right?

The spike in his mother's voice broke his concentration once again, further aggravating him. "Couldn't you have done something?" She asked pleadingly. Her accent showed through as she spoke, heavily masking the words in a guttural flair. "He was my husband! The father of my children! Don't you know? Isn't that worth saving to you people?"

Alois knew well that when his mother was under duress, he detailed minutia in the lives of her loved ones to somehow sway the people she was reasoning with. This doctor, for example, would learn of his father's habitual glass of orange juice every morning. No pulp most of the time, but he'd occasionally buy the kind full of pulp and sip it through a straw. He would learn that his father preferred his eggs sunny side up, with the yolks broken and slathered in ketchup mixed with horseradish sauce. He would learn about his affinity for leaving his pajama pants unbuttoned, and the plethora of times he scarred his children because of it.

He would, effectively, know Alois' father better than he knew himself.

"I'm not staying for this s**t," he muttered derisively, and stood up without waiting for his sister to remove her head from his shoulder. He passed in front of his mother, rounded the faded green couch, and approached the automatic doors that opened to an unusually bright and sunny day.

Alois made a beeline for the 'no smoking' sign and stood in front of it, carefully balancing his heels on the base of the post. He leaned against the sign's broad surface and fished around in his pocket for proper irritant relief. He found it in the form of a rather battered black and white box, bearing the label Marlboro Black 100's. He tucked one of the cigarettes into the corner of his mouth before withdrawing an equally abused book of matches. After striking a match against the bottom of his boot, he cupped the delicate flame against the light breeze and lit up. Alois didn't bother to shake out the flame; he simply dropped it on the pavement and watched it fizzle out.

There was something highly existential about watching a dying flame. It burned feverishly, with the same devotion and sheer willpower of the sick and dying, in their last moments before succumbing to their plagues. The struggle was uniquely violent - the flame thrashed and writhed against the breeze, which threatened to quell its last rebellion and wick away the fading smoke of its existence. In a way, he likened it to his father's life. Eventful, turbulent, as wild as the flame. Yet, as he stood outside the hospital, the world appeared remarkably serene. The sun still shone brightly. A pair of passersby discussed lunch options. Someone pulled into a hospital parking space too fast and cussed loudly when their tires hit the curb.

These people never knew him, and they would never learn of him. His life was simply inconsequential, even in this abysmally small corner of the city. Ripples purportedly spanned the entirety of an ocean, forming tidal waves across the globe, but he found human existence to have the opposite effect: any ripples, however small, petered out into nothingness in only a fraction of time.

Life was finite and entirely irrelevant.

He understood that with absolute certainty. What he didn't understand was where in the hell he would find a decent barrel cactus. It didn't matter; he'd find one, even if he had to pry it out of someone's garden. The thought of it roused a chuckle from him, and he took another drag before exhaling through his nose. He entertained such absurd little fantasies, even now, with his father's dead body nary sixty feet away and lying on a morgue slab below ground.

Perhaps his induction into the Negaverse was the greatest boon he'd received.

---

A couple weeks had passed since his father's death, and Alois found that his family only continued to deteriorate. His mother would no longer mind the bookstore, instead relegating the task to her two remaining children, and instead wallowed in misery whenever possible. He detested it. He detested the added responsibilities that were simply dropped into his lap without his consent. He detested watching his mother cry for hours, all the while failing to realize her tears wouldn't remedy his fathers permanent condition. He detested his sister's tendency to simply withdraw from the world, and widen the already precarious distance between herself and Alois.

Still, the world never changed.

The sinks still needed cleaning. The carpet still needed vacuuming. The floors still needed bleaching. The laundry piled up if no one put forth the effort to wash the loads. A plethora of trinkets within the small apartment only continued to gather dust. He didn't understand how they failed to recognize these things, how they only continued to assert that their worlds have drawn to a stop, and they couldn't find the energy or willpower to keep going. How they were stuck in quicksand.

And that comparison soon became concrete. Then ice.

Things were only getting worse.

Alois took on more responsibility than he would've liked, though most of it was attributed to being accustomed to a tidy environment. He lacked the knowledge to clean quite as effectively as his parents, and now that his father was gone, he lacked an authority figure to teach him the proper way to bleach the floor. In fact, he'd nearly passed out from the bleach fumes on his first attempt. Did it matter to his mother, or his sister? No; their guilt and misery wholly consumed them. One might call it grief, but who would grieve for such a man?

Death was such a pointless affair. No matter the person, it was simply a book remaining unwritten, and who would partake in a novel unfinished? Such thoughts only reaffirmed his belief in the inherent uselessness of mankind.

His sister and mother only exemplified this, as they refused to move or abstain from grieving long enough to recognize that the sun still rose and the world still turned. No matter what he said to them, nothing would rouse them from their lament. It reached the point where he gave up altogether, and his lift dwindled to work, chores, and the rare escape into the exhilarating night scene.

Alois tried to pick up journaling during this time. He tried to pen his thoughts and revulsions as a means of washing his hands of them. Perhaps if he spilled the vitriolic musings on paper, he could be free of their poisonous influence. He bought a journal on the day his father died, from the gift shop in the hospital. It was leather-bound, or so he assumed, though he didn't know if it was some kind of knockoff. It had an unusually shiny finish, which accented the black cover. A single snap held the book shut, and the pages wore gold leaf. It seemed a fitting choice: unassuming, unremarkable.

However, no matter how long he spent trying to write the surfeit of thoughts swirling about his mind, only a single sentence remained on the page, neatly scrawled and dead center.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

It was as if nothing else needed to be said.

He abandoned writing soon afterward, and considered simply donating the journal to Alexandre. It seemed the boy needed it more than he did. It would, in fact, make a better gift than a cactus. He'd decided days ago that the blonde deserved something better than a useless, meaningless plant.

While he was wrapping the lightly used journal in unadorned white paper, his sister entered his room without permission. It became a daily occurrence these days, much to his growing irritation. "Alois, Erik is here. Are you coming downstairs?" Though it was a simple question, she sounded drained and dejected. She looked like she hadn't slept in days. But, what was there to lose sleep over?

Alois hadn't expected his brother to come home. He enlisted in the German military years ago, seeking to make a career out of it. From what he understood, his brother rose through the ranks quickly and proved himself highly capable of handling his responsibilities. He commanded respect from both his family and his superiors. For a while, he became the star of the family, and even Katarin took a backseat to his success. It lasted for a period of months, until Erik's letters became less and less frequent. Eventually they dwindled to scarcity, as if his family was all but forgotten in the face of his ambition. Alois felt it the most; they were close before then.

For as long as he could remember, he always had trouble getting along with others. His brother recognized this early on. Erik had a special patience for him that he couldn't demand of strangers. Despite his volatile outbursts, his brother never alienated him. They shared a close nonverbal relationship; it felt unnecessary to express their thoughts to each other.

However, that relationship aged and crumbled from deferred maintenance, much like the tower of Babel.

Now he was blindsided by the fact that his brother was home, now, and he wasn't prepared for it.

"In a minute." He wanted to finish meticulously wrapping the gift before meeting his brother for the first time in years. Each crease was scrutinized before being flattened, and every strip of tape was sealed with a firm press of his thumb. It came together nicely, even though it looked fairly bland. It looked like no more than a package, a parcel from the post, albeit white. Somehow that seemed perfect.

Alois stood and followed his sister down the hall hesitantly. He didn't want to meet Erik again; he'd written his brother off as dead to him years ago. What would he expect from Alois now? That same dynamic relationship they had before? Not a chance. "How is he?" Why was he even here? It would've sufficed to write a sympathy card, since he never cared to devote much time to his family regardless.

"... He's okay." Katarin responded every bit as distantly as her brother.

"That's good."

When they reached the threshold of the living room, Alois immediately recognized his brother. He looked the same as always: his deep brown hair cut short, body firmly muscled and tanned, eyes reflecting a quiet understanding of the world around him. He looked solemn. He looked like he'd just watched a thousand mile journey draw to a close, without catharsis, without reason. DId that cut him deeply? Did it shake the foundations of his beliefs? Was he prepared to acknowledge the purposelessness of existence now?

"It's been a while, Alois." His strong tone carried through the apartment. He always spoke with a perceptible hint of power. "It's good to see you again."

When would these platitudes end? "What are you doing here?" He wanted answers, not empty small talk.

Somehow his trenchant question caused his brother to smile. "You're still very much the same, you know. Alright, I'll explain it to you, but this might take a while.

"When I was at the base in Frankfurt, Mother contacted me with the news. Initially I didn't want to go home; when things like this happen, I tend to dive headfirst into my work, but you know that. She called me again the next morning and asked if I could come home. It took a while to clear it with the higher ups, but when I was given leave, I took the first plane I could get. Now, that's not the whole story. Mother had asked me to come home for a reason.

"The reason was..." He paused and drew a steadying breath. "Since Father died, the bookstore's been a mess. She knew this, and it wouldn't take long for the whole business to just collapse. Now, I know you and Katarin have been working there a lot longer than I have, and I respect that - but you two have never lived on your own before, and you don't know the intricacies of finances. So, she asked me to run the bookstore in her stead and manage it for a while. I promise things won't change much; it'll just be me instead of dad doing most of the managing. I'll make sure-"

"This is ******** stupid," Alois interjected. He couldn't help it; all these singularly meaningless events were piling up on him, demanding energy and attention and emotional investment. They didn't care that the rotation of the planet remained unchanged after his father's death. They didn't care that the world never knew him, and thus isn't even aware that he'd passed. They didn't care that Alois suffered through the man's mercurial nature while they simply languished in his better temperaments. Didn't they understand that there was an entire world outside this apartment, an entire reality separate from this suffocatingly insufferable existence? He was part of something greater now, something they would never come to acknowledge.

Yet his mother had the audacity of relegating the direction of the bookstore to her oldest son, the one who knew the least about its inner workings.

Alois turned around and slipped through the hall quietly, without any obvious signs of his inner rancor. He knew his brother would follow him, as he undoubtedly wanted to play the reasoning game. He wanted to assert his superior wisdom and experience in a battle of the wits, like always. It was a certainty, just as the tide came and ebbed.

By the time Alois reached his room, Erik was nearly upon him with questions about his sudden vitriolic response. "Why are you acting like this? I know our father is gone, but at least we're reunited for the time being. I didn't want to say it while I was in front of Katarin and Mother, but I took my leave of the military permanently. I'm staying here with you guys now. So why are you behaving so irrationally?"

How could he possibly explain? How was he supposed to illustrate a world where an infinite number of possibilities existed in the form of wondrous crystals trapped in the chests of all mankind? How could he elaborate on the deeply ancient struggle between the lunar courts and the earth's natural occupants? What could he possibly say that would rectify his actions, cement these timeless facts into his brother's mind, and explain his increasing antipathy towards their family?

The answer was simple: it's impossible.

Alois knew this as well as he knew the futility of his own existence.

"I'm moving out."

Erik was stunned into silence. Alois found this a welcome change to his brother's typically overbearing nature. It was time to pack what few possessions still had their use, and he found it advantageous to do so during that period of quietude. Even with his brother looking on, he systematically picked apart his room and tossed various necessities into a battered old filing box. His Zune, his gift, and his keyboard were placed atop the rumpled makeshift crate. It only took ten minutes to pack.

No one stopped him as he left.

---

The street was largely empty, save for an occasional passing car. Most people didn't come this way. It was lined with older buildings, mostly empty with the exception of a few well-established businesses. The landscape remained neglected and filled with overgrown grasses and a plethora of blackberry bushes. This place didn't have much humanity left in it anymore; perhaps that's what drew him here.

At least they had something in common.

Nothing appeared watchful, not even the birds that lighted in the great ash trees lining the street. The place was at peace with its dwindling existence. The buildings only stood silent while nature slowly reclaimed them. Even the sounds of traffic were buffered by the ever-growing grip of forceful flora. He stood in the center of it all, his feet aligned firmly within the dotted yellow lines separating the two lanes of the street. It was a strange feeling indeed. Being here brought a sense of resonance, akin to what he felt when patrolling in the nights polluted with tumult.

Alois never thought he'd feel such a strong sense of connection, of peacefulness.

It was hard to believe that this was the place where he'd murdered his father.

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Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 10:48 pm

Smoking Cessation: The Possibility of a Reprieve
Word count: 484

Rain scathed the ground in unruly fury, battered the windows and scraped the roofs, leaving trails of dirt and turbulence. Alois stood beneath its scornful rampage, head low and jacket collar pulled upward, in a futile attempt to weather the storm. Mud pooled and unrestrained moss sloughed off into the continually deteriorating ground. Yet there he stood, amongst nature's self-mutilation, huddled under the meager protection of a half-busted rain gutter, as he sought even a shred of relief from the onslaught. If he didn't know any better, he'd call it armageddon.

If he knew better, he'd quit smoking.

He'd managed this clever feat a thousand times in Germany. Since he moved to America, smoking in the house became a possibility, and he discovered how quickly he lost touch with the little tricks that sated his quaking need for a smoke. Even as he knelt down and faced the wall of the house, with his back to the seething rain, he lit a match, cradled it from the ire surrounding them, and watched it weakly peter into oblivion, even its smoke carried away unceremoniously. HIs second attempt fared no better than the first, though it held out in one defiant pulse before the rain destroyed its determination.

Despite its plastic exterior, his pack of cigarettes was streaked with rain. It bore no dry surface on its scraped side, with which he could strike another match. Even though he concealed his matchbook, tucked it away like one final, desperate secret, it too hung heavy under the weight of the rain. And his cigarette fared no better; even if he could manage one fragile, nervous flame to the end of his cancer stick, the heat wouldn't be enough to chase away the dampness. Thus far, the storm quelled every attempt toward relief. Reprieve.

Respire. He needed that smoke, he yearned for it to crawl into his lungs, curl up and seep into the pockets before stealing outward into the night air. The heavy, dampened air.

Oh, how he needed to breathe.

This weakness that pervaded him, that hummed to the tips of his fingers and wracked his thoughts with ceaseless whispers of need, he couldn't fight it. Couldn't quell it with the quiet stains of nicotine. It would only grow and fester on his inabilities, his sensibilities, his possibilities. It would fill his stomach and retch its insipid, viscous bile upward until it encased his mind in its fevered trappings. He seethed with the need for respite, yet none came.

The unyielding rain wanted nothing more than his suffering for company. One infinitely pointless life to take solace in the eternity of a storm.

Every uneven breath bore the splintered pieces of a realization. Slowly, painfully, as each fragment crept into his body, he extrapolated its meaning. He understood its necessity.

He buried the crumpled cigarette box in the obliging mud, then sought solace from the rain.

Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 3:40 pm

Ein Näherer Platz als Heim (A Closer Place than Home)
Word count: 2356

He couldn't remember walking there.

This small strip of Destiny City seemed entirely inconsequential. It bore no influence on the surrounding areas, and held only a faint heartbeat from the dwindling businesses in its location. This sequestered little piece of reality was stained with the silent scars of his exceedingly blackened soul. The events he remembered appeared almost anachronistic. They were but minuscule memories displaced in time. Visiting felt appropriate, but it was as if he was present before the fateful events transpired.

Bischofite crossed the empty street. It greeted him without resistance, and he passed with an equal measure of grace. He was tied to this place now. A piece of him remained here as plainly as the trees, the cracked sidewalks, the abandoned buildings.

It felt good to be back.

He leaned against an ancient tree that arched and groaned under its own weight. It didn't seem all that different from the human condition; much of man's existence was spent struggling to cope with his cold realities. His conflicts were the boughs, inherently bound to him, reaching outward to connect to something greater than himself. They stretched with desperation until man buckled and bent under their perpetually growing inclinations. Strife led man to blossom, and strife led man to overdevelop and succumb to his own overbearing nature. He could collapse upon himself without catharsis. It reflected in the tree with quiet clarity.

This place was his connection, his single bough stretching toward an unknown goal. It felt good to nurse it with quiet reflections. Perhaps it would blossom into something worthwhile, something that wouldn't weigh him down with heavy repercussions.

Bischofite hadn't been to this location since he was a Lieutenant, still learning the boundaries of his power. He sought experience voraciously, and experience he received, despite the dismal memories they inscribed upon him. They were simply the rings of his trunk. He knew with certainty that this area held his fondest thoughts, and imparted a sense of self awareness that he'd never felt quite so strongly before. How could he explain it?

It was like a pair of twins sewn together at the veins.

What happened here before was worth revisiting. He reached into the pockets of his uniform and pressed his fingers against the smooth surface of his souvenir. It felt warm to the touch, almost as feverish as his newfound self-actualization. These minuscule trinkets brought immeasurable joy into his life. He could even share them with someone he held dear.

---

Not all patrols yielded senshi. In fact, very few of them did. Perhaps it was the routes he chose, or his increasingly caustic disposition, that drove them away. He didn't know what it was. At the time, he was still lost in the labyrinth of an unknown set of circumstances, of a reality set in the peripherals of dreams. But what did it matter? He was released into a world he found more suitable than the last. That was all he needed to find solace in his second identity.

He took to the streets with a brazen loyalty that he was surprised he could foster. He wanted to hunt through ceaseless city blocks for a thousand tiny revelations, anything that could change him. These minute opportunities were present in the hearts of every civilian, every knight, every senshi. He wanted to touch them all in a way they would never foresee.

Philosophically. Mortally.

One day he would bury all those stars in the dirt.

His patrol painted the hours with uniform uneventfulness, and he resorted to examining the night in all of its quiet precedence from the top of an abandoned building. He surveyed the land. He peered into the blackest regions of the night, wondering what would greet him there. He looked for epiphanies in the dying lights of the stars. He used to only find such things buried in the annals of the bookstore, in no-name novels and authors long since forgotten. Now he could find a wealth of insight in the smallest detail: a wilting flower, a starving dog, a pool of still-warm blood. It was as if the language of the universe was unveiling itself to him.

Sometimes he tailed strangers, mildly interested in their mundane lives. They crept through their carnal verses, like roaches convulsing over rotten meat. Other times they simply darted home under the direction of an astute sense of paranoia. Sometimes he simply chased them back to their warm beds, though not quite as warm as they remembered it.

However, tonight provided an unusual guest for him to tail. Normally he'd scoff at the thought of following a single middle-aged man through the streets to see where his escapades led, but this particular man was different. It wasn't a discernible difference to passersby around him, to other Negaverse officers, to anyone. Even under the grim gaze of the moon, only he knew what piqued his interest so greatly.

The man was his father.

Now what would his father be doing, walking down this neglected street in the dead of night? What could he possibly be planning? Perhaps he was cheating on his mother, though he doubted it greatly. He much preferred a more interesting and exceedingly unusual explanation, like a compulsion toward nightly crime waves or something of the sort. He knew his father would never deliver on such a fantastical story. No, he was likely walking home from something as unconscionably boring as the hardware store.

Es ist mir Scheißegal... He thought to himself, confirming his complete disinterest in his father's affairs now. Still, he would follow. It wasn't out of a desperate wish for his father to prove him wrong. He wasn't doing it for fun, either.

He simply had to prove something to himself. His father was going to help him with that, whether he liked it or not.

Stalking him alongside the buildings yielded no response from the man. No errant glances, no pause in stride, not even a tentative greeting. He found it rather repulsive that his father was so oblivious to his surroundings, so he simply leapt down to street level. It wasn't subtle; in fact, he landed next to a street light. He needn't do much more than that, as the sound of his boots impacting the pavement should be loud enough to draw his father's attention.

And he was right. Brian turned around and donned a perplexed expression as he mulled over different explanations for the man simply appearing there. Was he being followed? No, he would've noticed on a quiet street like this. But what else would explain his sudden presence? The buildings were much too high for someone to land without injury. Aside from that, he was more concerned about what the man could possibly be doing there. Since the street bore few businesses, and the ones present were closed for the night, he had no reason to loiter in the street. However, his face paint clued Brian in that something about him was slightly... off.

Bischofite made no effort to approach him. He stood in the milky light of the lamppost and regarded his father silently, almost detachedly.

Brian found the man's lack of actions rather disturbing. "What do you want?" He called, unable to hide a mild edge of panic from his tone. "Leave me alone!" In an effort to look intimidating, he threw his ands out and stood up straight, hoping his silhouette would somehow deter the strange onlooker. The last thing he needed was to get mugged on his long walk home.

That was exactly the invitation he waited for. Bischofite approached silently, ignoring his father's dismissive tone. He crossed into the street and walked in line with the road markers. He approached at a leisurely pace, hands behind his back, and made no effort to respond to him. It wasn't quite appropriate to speak yet; he wanted to see exactly how easily he could make his father squirm with such unnerving circumstances. Would it provide some kind of closure to their volatile relationship? Or would it simply feel incomplete, much like life itself? Would a premature ending label it poetry, or pointless?

Finally he happened upon his father, who was edging away from him nervously. "You don't recognize me, do you?" He asked with a growing smirk. Perhaps this would be more interesting than he thought.

"No, why would I? Look, if I did anything to offend you, I'm sorry. I'm just trying to get home." As he spoke, he raised his hands up in a disarming gesture.

Pleading? How typical. The swap in power was highly alluring; he could get used to this. However, there would be no need. "Maybe I'll enlighten you. I'm feeling generous tonight." It didn't take much effort for him to revert. No, it happened rather quickly, unceremoniously. He still stood with his hands behind his back, and the smirk never left his face. He wasn't through toying with his father just yet; this was only the beginning, and they had all night together. "Recognize me now?"

"... Alois? I didn't recognize you before." Somehow the appearance of his son only startled him further. Perhaps he was catching on to his intentions? "What was on your face? And why are you outside this late? You should be at home minding the store. Does Karin know you're out right now?" As he continued asking questions of his son, his demeanor slowly shifted to normalcy. He was beginning to show signs of the overbearing fatherly figure once more, that same figure who patronized Alois constantly and refused to grant leniency on many an occasion.

"Costume party, obviously," he countered nonchalantly. "I sink we have a lot to say to each ozer, don't you?"

"It isn't safe to have a heart-to-heart in the dead of night. You should know this, Alois. I thought you were smarter than this." As he finished his statement, Brian turned his back on his boy and started down the street once more, since he had sufficiently assuaged his nerves.

Alois, however, wasn't finished. He powered up once more and seized a fistful of his father's shirt. "I haf' somesing to show you, Dad." Without waiting for a response, he tugged the older man toward one of the buildings. "Maybe you'll be proud, but you will probably say I'm full of s**t. But... I'f found somesing unimaginably beautiful. And it's present everywhere, even in someone as ugly as you."

"Alois, what's wrong with you? What're you talking about?" Despite his concerted efforts, he couldn't break free of his son's uncannily strong grasp. No matter how he struggled, nothing would liberate him of it. The growing realization dawned on him that nothing he said or did would deter his son from the increasingly bizarre path he'd set, and no amount of struggle and protest could return them to their rightful roles as father and son. No, tonight the circumstances were irreversibly upheaved, and he was subject to the (lack of) mercy of his son.

"Heaven," he answered simply. He pinned his father against the cold brick wall and leaned in closely enough that the older man could feel his breath. He continued, his voice but a whisper: "Himmel. I'll show you, since I don't trust you haf much imagination." He tapped gently on his father's chest, atop the sternum. "It's in here somewhere."

Brian didn't like where this was going. "Stop it, Schatzie. You're obviously unwell. Have you been doing drugs? Just come home with me, and we'll talk about this. We can get you he-"

Bischofite only immersed his hand in his father's chest wordlessly. "I could explain it to you, but you won't listen. You never haf'." His hand curled around his father's starseed. "I never found a drug zat could drown out your criticism. No, I found someone who could do it for me. You know, I found someone I like. She's shown me sings you would never hope to see. Sings you wouldn't be able to imagine, no matter how many shitty books you read.

"I know it's pointless to tell you. You won't care, you never haf'. Katarin and Erik are your favorites, and zat is how it will always be. I can't change zat, neizer can you. It is decided just as assuredly as ze Erde rotates around ze sun. It is almost beautiful in its finality, were it not a complete dismissal of my abilities. However, I didn't come here to find you, and I don't want to explain our life's dynamic to you. It doesn't matter anymore. I only need one sing from you now, and I know you can gif' it to me. It is a Gift as a present and a poison. A Gift zat will far outlive you.

"All I need is a present for her." He simply withdrew his hand from his father's chest, starseed included. He watched Brian collapse to the ground unceremoniously. It happened just as a tree would fall, or a ripple would peter out. He felt no catharsis for the finality of the event, no remorse for his actions. He had what he needed; he had no reason to stand over the body looking for some sort of closure.

No, he held an infinitesimally small piece of heaven in his palm now. Maybe he'd hang onto it for a while.

---

Bischofite considered having it crafted into a necklace. he considered placing it into a vase. He thought of carrying it around in his pocket as some clandestine memory. Each was a fleeting thought, yielding no inclination toward their fruition. No matter how he viewed it, the object held such inexpressible beauty that none of those means seemed appropriate. How could he possibly display such an inordinate amount of perfection? He couldn't.

However, he held one inclination close to his heart, one that may even do it justice. He couldn't stave his mind off the action for long, and staring into the depth of the starseed only agitated his thoughts of it. No settings or vases or mantlepieces could compare to it. That is...

Eating it.

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Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:12 am

Das Untaugliche Apparat (The Ineffectual Contraption)
Word Count: 2191

The moments passed in deep silence, broken only by the rhythmic dripping of the faucet. Each droplet shattered against cold, relentless porcelain. Apart from that single graveyard of water, the tub was bone dry. Empty. Devoid. Not even his emotions accompanied him in the vast, white expanse. He sat as blank as the bathroom, bereft of even a single blemish of dirt or soap. It was simple nothingness.

Simple, expansive nothingness.

Alois considered setting it all aside. He thought about how far he'd come, all the trials and tribulations he sustained, how far he grew since he first began this venture into the bizarre war plaguing Destiny City. He considered all the lives he touched, all the lives he forcefully altered on his own twisted whims. He smiled at the thought of how much enrichment he poured into every life he came across, and how much knowledge he gleaned in return. How much experience he reaped from chance meetings. Would it sustain him through this? Did he have a chance to survive these constant periods of long questioning, of fighting himself for answers he never possessed?

Or would he simply drown in his thoughts, here and now? Idly he wondered if he even had a chance, or if fate set him up to play the martyr. Would death yield anything for him, any last revelations to stain his turbulent life and put him to rest in some measure of grace? He didn't know; he wasn't meant to know, and he understood that wholly, with every shred of his being. This life wasn't his own, he only played a part in an age old act, one that stretched beyond the years of humanity and well into the past, into the primordial stage of all life. No amount of contemplation and speculation would change that.

Yet his choice of venue lacked all sense of personality. It lay barren, much like his life, but in a way that begot no sympathy. White walls, white tile, white shower curtains, white tub, white toilet, white sink, white floors, white cabinets. Nothing stood out to him save for the shadows of narrow curves and minute fixtures laden with brushed bronze plating. He acknowledged himself an anachronism in the room, a single bee perched precariously on the petal of a chrysanthemum. His venture there would yield nothing, yet there he stayed, awaiting some sort of sign to move onward. Some reason to leave the confines of the despairingly blank flower. Some means to move on.

In all his pensiveness, his eyes fixated on his switchblade. Though the majority of the hilt was black carbon fiber, the sides were framed in steel and it bore the heaviness of the blade. It lay in his hand like a rock, like the heaviness of his heart, and with the press of a button, a similarly styled blade deployed. Sharpened on both sides, the flat of the blade was adorned in that same black fashion, and a complex, elegant design was etched into the silver. He polished it recently, maybe in subconscious recognition of this event. Those imperceptible wear marks in the metal required unrelenting scrutiny to spot. If anything, the blade looked new, and only for this single, uninspiring, anticlimactic event.

A finale of sorts, to end a show that no one bothered to watch. A funerary rite, with no pall bearers.

He wondered how Alexandre would take it. Surely the blonde would fret over such matters, would cry and rally against the simple fact, but Alois knew he would adapt. He would change, surely, as any man would in the face of travesty or trying times. However, the boy held strong through steeper storms than this, and Alois recognized that quiet strength. He understood it in a chance encounter, in a minute, fleeting connection. Though it yielded nothing for him but a heightened sense of solitude, he finally found the means to recognize the blonde's merits.

The skin of his thigh looked soft and pale; it mirrored his life in its lack of nurturing and sunlight. It looked feeble, despite all those years he spent running and training. It wore no scars, as if it hadn't a single experience in nineteen years. Finally, at least, he had the moment to impress upon it a single, finite thought, one undeniable fact, before ending its tenure. Maybe that would be enough to make up for the neglect. Even as he considered the simplicity of the function of a leg, he couldn't suppress the tightening in his chest or constricting, burning sensation in his throat.

Was he to mourn now? And what was there to mourn? A fruitless life, or a possible end of tenure for a working leg? The leg had little feeling, other than pain and finer sensations. No - he mourned his lack of life more than anything. His lack of connection. His lack of feeling. Nothing and no one yielded the experiences he yearned for, and this was his simple answer to a permanent problem. He couldn't feel - nothing worked, no one helped. He couldn't fathom a life of stagnation; he would disown it the first chance he received.

And that chance was now.

With careful resignation, Alois pressed the blade to his leg. He knew its general path, could guess at its route. If he scrutinized the pale skin, he recognized its vague blue shape buried just beneath the surface. He traced that line with equal fervor, pressing deeply, prodding with all the drive and beauty and hate and scathing anger he bore the world, and soon his efforts met with some measure of success. He traced that single line as if it meant salvation. It didn't take long for that simple line to distort, to sputter and fray with all the imperfections that meant mortality. The aftermath of his actions sprayed onto the indifferent white bathtub, pooling and migrating toward the drain. It sought darkness, just as he did.

Perhaps it spelled a perfect ending. Perhaps this was as close to closure as he could muster. Perhaps this spelled a fitting end to his paltry, pointless tale. Yet now, with the knife still buried in his femoral artery, bleeding profusely and with no hope of stymying the flow, he recognized how absolutely alive he felt. Even as he lay against the frigid tub, soon mellowing in its temperature, still looking skyward at a blank and unforgiving ceiling, still reveling in his ceaseless philosophical thoughts, he understood just how mortal he was. And he felt it within every nucleus of every cell in his body, and it broke across his mind with the strength of a thousand lightning bolts. He finally understood it all, from the blooming of a flower to the swirl in a snail shell. He understood the galaxies and the nebulae and the million-trillion stars. He understood the volatile struggle of life, the perpetuity of human establishments, the inevitability of nature. Everything wove together in a singular epiphany:

that he was going to die.

Alois prepared himself for this moment, albeit unwittingly, on every day of his life for the past several years. He prepared when he spent many a lonely night on the streets, kicked out from a sour altercation with his father. He prepared when he prowled the streets of Destiny City in search of prey. He prepared when he slept with his roommate and general. All these events led to one final revelation, which bled through his mind at the speed of his demise. Even as the color of his skin matched that of the bathtub, he knew.

...Until he heard Alexandre's footsteps echo through the hall. Alois struggled to sit up, but he underestimated the numbness pervading his legs. He slipped, slammed against the tub in a surprisingly painless motion, and struggled against the slippery blood to rise to his feet. He attempted to provide clarity for his roommate, that he was fine, that everything was playing out as he intended, that the symphony of his life was safe in the climactic ending he wrote, but nothing came. Nothing came because he had no blood behind the words, no fury, no rancor to force out such phrasing.

And soon he arrived, drawn by the sound of bone against porcelain. The blonde stood, in utter shock, at the mess of a melody the captain composed for himself. Though his image faded in a sea of sparks, and his voice echoed through the tinny, half-broken speakers of an ivory radio, Alois recognized his concern. His remorse. His mourning. He mourned Alois, despite all his pranks and teasing and poor decisions. Despite his vices, despite his caustic demeanor, despite his equally acerbic words. That moment of tenderness was utter perfection.

Though he could manage nothing more than ragged gasps laced with voice, Alois willingly collapsed into the thin boy's arms. Strangely, he exuded a warmth that the captain found comfort in, and Alois recognized what little he could from the boy's soft t-shirt. For once, he entrusted the entirety of himself to Alexandre. It seemed a fitting end to this strange and turbulent story he starred in, this mortuary of hopes and desires. Perhaps, when he reached the morgue, his strange tale might mean something, if only to one person. That was all he could hope for, right?

No - the man who held him so close wasn't Alexandre. It wasn't the lithe blonde who endured his ceaseless pranks and tacky tricks. It was Benitoite - his corrupting officer, and savior of his infinitely bland and boring life - who held him so strongly, so warmly. And with the last of his strength, his ebbing will, Alois wrapped his arms around the general's neck. He savored that warmth and pressed his head into his officer's coat. He closed his eyes and

then the dizziness struck him. Dazed, confused, and infinitely weak, the wind teased his already cold and uncontrollably shaking body. In only his boxers, he was exposed to the outdoors. The onlookers. The strangers, partaking in this last, private piece of his life. These people, stopping and staring, were unwitting witnesses to the finale of a long and tried tragedy. Though, all life was a tragedy in its own way - everyone remained unresolved and unsatisfied when they met their end, it was just a matter of rationalization. Perhaps that was all he endured right now - simple rationalizations, formed to tide him over into the throes of death. Formed to ease him into perishing in the arms of someone he knew and came as close to loving as he was capable of.

A failed romance - that's all it ever amounted to. An aborted fetus, a convict languishing on death row.

How fitting. He would've laughed, if he still had the energy for it.

A rush of voices surrounded him, muttering in a language he no longer remembered to speak. Maybe it was kindness, maybe it was concern, but one thing was for certain: he knew not what they meant. All his life he couldn't recall a single instance of connection, of empathy, of even sympathy in its baser forms. Even lying in Benitoite Alexandre's arms, he knew not what it meant to have been touched by another soul. Alois recognized he must've been too far gone before he met the boy, otherwise it was inevitable that they'd strike a chord within each other. It didn't matter now; no amount of begging and pleading would reverse his self-imposed verdict.

He distinctly recognized the sound of his breath echoing in his ears, as if his hearing turned inward with his introspection. As if he shunned the outer world, save for his last wisps of touch absorbing every texture of Alexandre and his undoubtedly expensive clothes. Offhandedly he considered muttering an apology for ruining them, as he was certain that blood wouldn't wash out. However, Alexandre had access to a plethora of money - if he was so concerned, he could purchase a new outfit. Perhaps that made a fitting end to their strange story together. It would've brought a smirk to his features if he could manage that.

Despite his silent pleas to remain within Alexandre's arms, he found himself relocating at his roommate's behest. No amount of protest staunched the blood, or stopped the thousand hands from slipping all over his body, smearing the blood and scraping his pain across a limitless number of thoughts. Even as he drifted, cold and numb, uncertain and unresolved, through that sea of constant recollections, he couldn't shake the need to try for one last glimpse of the blonde. He needed to cement that image, to immortalize his fine features, though his eyes failed to focus through the ceaseless droves of sparks. Alois was going blind, and no amount of willpower halted its progress. He felt helpless. Helpless and alone. Helpless and unable to reach out for that last hint of connection. That final means of quelling the insurmountable depression coiled about his heart. He wanted Alexandre at his side. He wanted that final squeeze of his hand to signify he could finally let go.

Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:16 pm

Day One: Exposure
Word count: 942

Write a journal, he says. Write your feelings. Write your thoughts and aspirations. Write your pains. Write your plans. Write your own conclusion.

Write everything.

So I write.

I'll write about my thoughts and experiences here, while I pass my sentence. While I wait out a week of this nondescript location. And I'll endure all the ceaseless conclusions drawn about my actions, and I'll endure all the diagnoses, and I'll endure all the checks.

I will survive this.

Even if I find this journal wholly useless, and this exercise pointless, I'll use it to my advantage.

I'll use it to bide my time.

---

To measure these people against one another would be akin to measuring the color blue against the sound of whalesong. They're so entirely different from one another, it's like they don't even exist on the same plane... All these damaged people, housed under the same pretense. Surviving the same ordeals in wholly different fashions. I don't really know what to make of it right now, but it feels like something's here for me. Something I can grasp, something I can use to my advantage.

But is it the people here?

There's Alexandria, whose story is bitter to swallow. She sits across from me, two tables down, with her needlepoint legs crossed over one another as she rests her chin on a hammock of spindly fingers. She told me once why she was here, though I suspect she's ashamed of it almost as much as she's ashamed of herself. She explained that she couldn't shake the feeling of dirtiness, so once a month she bathed in bleach. It burned her, peeled her skin into some lumpy carapace. She explained that she felt simultaneously relieved and overwhelmingly frightened about the whole affair, but did nothing about it. She said she maintained that same routine for six months before it ceased to work. In her panic, in her realization of her horrific nature,

she drank it.

Tried to clean herself out from the inside.

Now she's here, baring her story to any who might listen. Like it's got some hidden moral waiting to be discovered. Like there's something within it that I should've gleaned by now, and I can feel it, I'm so close, but... Not close enough.

I guess I'm not ready to understand her tribulations.

Instead I told her

you'd look prettier if you were a little whiter.

---

I've discovered this place isn't filled with failed suicides alone. I hadn't seen him until this evening; one of the attendants explained that he spends the majority of his day in his room, and if I walk by, I'll hear the faint, tinny sounds of music. Sometimes the clinking of metal on metal. She explained he works out religiously, several hours a day, but he comes out for meals. She said he's requested creatine on numerous occasions but every instance has been denied for his own safety.

But he came out this evening.

He came out, and my, is he a strange one.

Without fail, he picks any entree sporting a lot of meat. Sporting nuts. Sporting fish. Anything that might supply his muscles with a little more reason to grow. So I sat next to him, pale and skinny and ten pounds lighter than I should've been. And we sat in silence at first. A long, deep silence full of more understanding than we could've managed when speaking.

More than we did, anyway.

He must've noticed my repeated glances at his tattoo, because he broached the subject without my solicitation.

But first I'll explain the tattoo: it was of the capitoline wolf, entirely rendered in tribal design, with Romulus and Remus beneath her teats. However, instead of suckling on her, they seemed to be giving her their strength. It was a strange perversion of a widely-known tale.

So he asked me what I thought about it. And I replied, are you from Rome?

He just laughed and refuted my question as easily as he could lift a five pound weight.

He said he used to be a breeder. He said he bred golden retrievers for over ten years, and that he had produced a few champions in his time. But nurturing a species like that, with such drive and instinct, leeches from you more than it nurtures you. It saps everything you have, and it keeps draining until it kills you.

Until it's won.

Realizing this, he said, he had an epiphany. This small, inkling of an idea. This sudden pang of self-preservation.

He said shortly before being admitted, he had twelve dogs on his hand. Three adults, nine puppies. He said they owned half the house and all the yard. He said they owned his heart and soul more than any woman ever could. And he said that, bereft of his heart and his soul, he had nothing. He had no strength, no drive, no sense of fulfillment.

So he did what he could to survive.

I asked him, how did you manage that?

He laughed a little, told me that I was too curious for my own good. Told me it would kill me one day, as it almost had already. Then he explained himself, and explained his epiphany in such cold detail that it felt I was accessing a textbook. Chilling, to be certain.

He said he fed his dogs as he did every morning, and soaked the wet food in cyanide. He said he set out their water like he did every morning, but instead he gave them propylene glycol.

He said there was blood.

So. Much. Blood.

And I had nothing to say.

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Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:17 pm

Day Two: Piety in the Sink
Word count: 794

I wonder if Alexandria dreams in bleach? I remember thinking that as I laid there, sharp and clear and so awake, while I considered

every
single
possibility

that she might be thinking of me in that very same moment.

---

I normally wouldn't mention this, but every day we have a patient-run announcement period. And every morning, we shun or engulf our breakfast, and we listen to the next nearly comatose voice drone on through the mandatory drivel before they lurch to a stop on the most interesting exercise in morning announcements: sharing our feelings.

Naturally I wanted to know what Alexandria said, so I waited with bated breath.

And I waited.
And I waited through lies.
And I waited through lies and self-imposed punishments.

And then someone surprised me - someone said they felt they knew the world, every petal of every flower and every hair on every mammal. Every etch in every rock. Every droplet in every waterfall.

And they felt

so
connected
so
beautiful
so
inspired

and I knew I couldn't escape talking to him.

---

Every time I sit, I count them. I come up with a different number.

25, 26, 24, 22, 28.

I can't tell if it's my eyes.

Every time I move, I count them. I feel them pull, I feel them strain against me.

12, 13, 14, 15, 16.

I can't tell if it's my skin.

Every time I slip, I count them. I feel them sink their teeth into me without mercy.

∞, ∞, ∞, ∞, ∞.

I can't tell if I'm alive.

---

I got lucky.

Sometimes if we behave, if we ever behave, the staff will ask us to help with menial cleaning tasks. It's supposed to inspire us to take pride in our work.

And so he stood facing the wall, arms stretched high like branches yearning for the sun. Back gnarled with bone railing against pale skin. A spindly frame providing meager support for clothes. He looked no different from a light post. A flagpole. A clothesline.

But I guess we're all not so different from those things.

He told me his name was Spencer. But, he said, he had a lot of names. Thousands of names. Thousands of lives. Thousands of voices, thousands of kingdoms, thousands of passions. He understood the world in so many ways that the world no longer held meaning. He understood so many tongues that words no longer held merit. He understood so many actions that protests no longer held reason.

And that's when he told me that the universe was only composed of entropy.

That makes sense, I conceded.

He said he's seen who I've been, and I have so few lives under my belt. He said I haven't even developed the simplest understanding of transcending lives, of borrowed souls.

I didn't.

His laugh sounds tinny, mechanical. It lacked any mirth. It sounded more like a series of stunted exhalations of anything. It sounded like he'd managed those same noises out of habit for so long that they deteriorated into something monstrous, something that no longer held the same meaning.

Like a deaf person's words. They simply degrade into something indiscernible.

---

Once upon a time there was a slip of a girl, with bones the width of a thread. When she smiled, her teeth bore her yellowed bitterness. Her breath smelled sickly sweet. When she brushed her hair, the brittle strands fell to the floor in droves, like the sickly during the time of black death. The tangled mat on her head was somewhere between brown and grey. When she walked, her limbs operated mechanically, as if they lacked all sense of being human. And maybe they did.

And maybe she wasn't.

This little girl was once a beautiful princess, back when payphones weren't so unusual. Back when metal was king. Back when Columbine was just a school.

She even still clutches the photo. An old, damaged polaroid depicting an unconscionably beautiful girl enjoying the fruits of life. Goethe could not adequately describe her striking appearance.

Yet now, her spell unraveled, her stay far past midnight, this princess withered into a shell of herself. Her flesh unraveled, leaving only skin married to bone. And though I never saw the transformation, I found it difficult to refrain from mourning her conclusion. Happy endings don't exist anymore; they're a thing of the past.

So instead, I asked her why.

Why would you do this to yourself.

And she explained to me, words sweetened by her rot-breath, that it was a way of life.
That it was her religion.

And in that moment, she patiently introduced me to her religion: to the garden nurtured by twins Ana and Mia.

And words burned in my throat like fire.

Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:18 pm

Day Three: To a Prophet Darkly
Word count: 868

These halls are filled with ghosts.

I live among the dead. The nearly dead. The mentally dead.

And I'm finding
I can't
justify
life.

---

What Spencer said plagued me like maggots on a corpse. I couldn't comprehend what he so easily grasped. I couldn't discern all the minutia that he found simplistic. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, or what was so right with him.

I needed to know, so I found him again. And when we spoke, his affect was so far removed from how he behaved before.

I asked him, can we talk about yesterday?

He said fine.

So I continued, can you explain how I could attain that sort of understanding of the world?

He stared.

I asked, do you remember talking to me yesterday?

He agrees.

I think we might be getting somewhere. So I say, you told me that you understood the universe so easily, like you were a part of it. Like you were connected to it. It almost sounded like you manipulate the universe on your own. I wanted to know how you managed that kind of realization.

He said it's hard to explain.

Well, can't you start?

No.

I didn't want to waste my time, so I left in search of answers.

---

I found the dog killer again. He looked sickly, pale. He told me he might not be here for much longer.

That didn't matter to me.

I asked him, have you met Spencer?

He admitted he had, and that he didn't like that type. He said that man will be here for far longer than any of us. That despite Alexandria's obsession with cleanliness, or Susan's idolization of Ana and Mia, or my morbid search for an understanding of mortality, Spencer surpasses us all.

I said I know. Isn't he enlightened?

I was wrong.

He said I was wrong, he said enlightenment has nothing to do with a mind that's been shattered, and lost a few pieces. Lost several pieces. No, he would never achieve enlightenment, not when he's buried beneath all the stranger aeons swirling about his mind.

Aeons, I said. What do aeons have to do with anything.

Didn't you know? Spencer's schizophrenic.

---

Sometimes
_these
__people
___just
____creep
_____along
______in
_______their
________strange
_________machinations
__________without
___________understanding
____________their
_____________desire
______________for
_______________irrevocable
________________punishment.

---

I just want to burn the world and everyone in it.

I've been lied to.

I've been led to believe that someone could ascertain a sense of the universe. And I thought someone had. I've been gullible enough, stupid enough, to be blinded by a schizophrenic mixture of word salad and positive symptoms. I thought I was talking to someone who has seen every facet of reality,

but I was talking to a lie drowning in his own mind.

I know now that my desires are impossible.
Machinations of hubris.
I can't hope to understand the world,

so I'll understand the human mind instead.

---

I met susan again.
We sat down and discussed Ana.

She said before she was admitted, she weighed 87 lbs. She laid out for me the extents of her rigorous exercises. She explained, in excruciating detail, the 100 sit-ups, and the 50 push-ups, though she could never bring herself past 47. She detailed the route of her three-mile walk. At that point, she said, she earned her first hundred-fifty calories and a glass of water. Sometimes, she admitted, she caved and went for two hundred.

Afterward she went to work. She sat on a stationary bike at work, while she answered customer service calls for a cash-to-gold company, and she pedaled away four hours. Lunch came, and she allowed herself a 90 calorie bag of chips. More water. Water has no calories. Water is her lifeblood. And so she worked.

And pedaled.
And worked.
And pedaled.

When she came home, a final 110 calories wrapped up her allotted budget. By that time she was too tired to call her friends. Too tired to listen to old messages she saved from her ex boyfriend. Too tired to write in her personal blog about accomplishing another day with a reduced diet.

So I asked if I could interject.

She gave me the go-ahead.

I said I was skeptical of 450 calories. I reiterated her morning exercises, her walk, her hours of stationary pedaling. Afterward I said 450 calories for all that sounded undisciplined. She should be able to accomplish that with 250 calories. I asked her if she was even trying to lose weight. I asked her if she just treated Ana like a false god, like all that she stood for meant nothing.

She started to cry.
She said I didn't understand how hard it was to maintain such a strict regimen with no one to help her but herself. She said she only had online guides to rely on, and constantly feared collapsing from exhaustion and going to the hospital. She said she was now living her own nightmare, all because she tapered to 450 calories too soon.

I said bullshit.

She yelled at me in a splintered voice, rife with sorrow and guilt and a creeping understanding that I may just be right.

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Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:19 pm

Day Four: To Attest to a Perfect Form
Word count: 858

I have always walked in the rain.

I have always been ancient.

I have always been proud.

But as the rain stops, and the vapors linger just before the hours of dawn

I realize
my hunger
my thirst
my pain

for such endeavors.

I have always walked in the rain.

I have always been stoic.

I have always been patient.

But as my hundred foot-lengths draw to a close

I wonder
how far
how deep
how strong

are my aspirations?

I have always walked in the rain.

I have always been unrestrained.

I have always been atrocious.

But as these twisted spines conjoin in timeless celebration

I find my limitless contempt for walking in the rain.

---

Certain things feel like fingers

prodding at your skull your mind your motivation to resemble something worth knowing.

Something to admire on a pedestal, out of wretched hate or pious devotion.

And I'd love to be admired, but
that
isn't the point.

These fingers, they claw deeply into my skin. Penetrate the sinew. Pervert the bone. Scrape at the pores of the marrow. They're like vultures, searching for the better cuts of flesh. The better fragments of man. Of me. And I don't mind.

If i can carry on in the system of a vulture
then I will spread throughout the land
and I will grow as a tree
and I will entrench myself in fauna
and I will spread like wildfire
and soon the earth will know only me.

But I digress.

These fingers stem from the hands of change. The arms that shape and guide them. The mind behind this whole endeavor issued a decree, a position, a statement irrefutable. And like proper viscera, we bend and shape to that will, and we function as another misshapen organism. And that organism will exist in a turbulent, pointless life. It will fragment and shatter. It will return to dust.

And then we'll be free.

At least
That's what I told her.

You see, she finally took my advice to heart. She finally decided to push her limits, to transcend boundaries once coveted. She wanted to know what she could achieve, and who would blame her for that? Lost in the depths of her religion, she has no other choice. No other path. All I did was steer her toward salvation. She wanted absolution in the eyes of her gods, she wanted dimensions she could only attain in another life, she wanted acceptance in the form of liquefied salad. And she found that salvation, grasped it for a few precious moments before those fingers pried it away.

They knew what they were doing. They understood the ramifications of abolishing her only hope for a proper transition to a better form, a more complete version of her former self. And I liked it, for what it's worth.

I liked watching the unabashed pain and pleading in her eyes.
I liked hearing her indiscernible moans of anguish.
I liked watching that meager weight meter slowly climb in number.

To her dismay.
Always, always, always to her dismay.

---

We talked about it for a while.
Her, I mean.

Susan.

Alexandria related nicely. She can identify with pain. And pain becomes her, in a peculiar way.

She understands the monotony of a painless existence.

She has a tragically beautiful view of spirituality. She grasps the concept of transcendence. And she's worn it, a thousand-fold, across the smooth contours of her hands and the taut line of her mouth. The shoulders born from protruding clavicles. The tapered, ashen legs. All these things are touched by some semblance of absolution.

And I respect her for her devotion. Dedication. Determination.

Her words are worth savoring, drinking in and assimilating.

The spirit needs its sacrilege.

I love Susan, but she doesn't know how to hide her private practices. Even I could tell, and I wasn't even looking for it, you know? My heart goes out to her. After all that time and effort she put into it, and how beautifully thin she was, the peanut gallery would reverse it in a second. Look at her - she's so obviously unhappy. She's strapped to that horrible chair, and always being pumped full of food. The poor dear... I want to do something for her. I want to help her get past this, however I can.

I've decided I'll try to give her a gift. Nothing too noticeable, I don't think... But I was thinking she could use something else in that tube, you know? Something to help her clean herself out and feel a little more pure on the inside. I know what it's like to feel bloated and dirty, and I think the method I had going works just fine. There's nothing wrong with it. So I'll get her some bleach. She'll appreciate it. At least she won't have to worry about her stomach anymore.

To achieve salvation through desecration.
Through self-destruction.

I wonder if the same could be said with the destruction of others?

---

These veins are not a part
of a whole; they retain its
petulant graces.

---

One day

____I will

______________eat

________________________________________________the weak.

Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:20 pm

Day Five: A Long Dissertation on Death
Word Count: 710

Some things are meant to break
in little shards, in little splinters

and they lodge

into your tongue
into your throat
into your skin.

_____It's happened before.

When she broke, she painted her sorrows across the sky
in minute loops and whorls and strange designs
that I couldn't navigate myself.

It's a visceral matter.

Her pain ravaged all the spectators, perched atop her
wiry carcass
and it didn't matter to them;

_____it's happened before.

So when she succumbed to all these
petty little schemers, these
arbitrary tigers, these
strange musings once called man

she wept and writhed and splintered.

It's a visceral matter.

Each gangly, gnarled vulture bore the mark of
her sin, of
her heartache, of
her failure to follow scripture
to follow its tongues of pure inspiration and purer
vomitoriums

but that was excusable.

_____It's happened before.

---

I found propylene glycol again. I found him in such an
altered state
that I hardly recognized him.

And I admired him, more than I admired the ever t_____h____i___n__n_n er girl, that shambled coathanger of a girl, though she captured my heart in the viscosity of her sputum.

It's almost too hard to describe.

He never answered my knocks, my calls, my pleads. My inane attempts to make conversation. This was nothing new. This was nothing bearing response. But every time I would seep in, cross that threshold like the roach that I am, find him engrossed in activities preventing all vocalizations from being perceived. And maybe that's why I liked him.

I visited so often, after all.

With the impeding silence, unmarred by his tinny speakers, I entered. And I found him. And I found him so passionate and so blunt and so deliberate that I could do nothing but shut the door behind me. I couldn't grasp the scene in a single breath. I couldn't understand it in its wordless, visceral glory without venturing just a little closer.

Only a little closer wouldn't hurt.
Only a little closer became a little more close.
A little more close became quite close.
And quite close became a simple touch.

It never ceased until I laid my head against his chest, at the bottom of his sternum. Against the bone, so defiant and harsh upon my skin. And I heard it. I heard the quiet whisperings that I sought before, the clarity to a scene that so escaped me.

Before the staff arrived, I heard it clearly, and he responded in kind. I heard the very core of him, without its rhythm. I heard that discordant sound so easily now, that it almost became a part of me. Maybe it did. Maybe he splintered into my ear and lodged in my cochlea in his last actions of un-life. And I knew I had to find out. I had to discern his intentions. I had to make my own inquiries.

---
I don't know how he died.
But I know him now.

I know all of him.

DAVIS, JARED LEE______E76903448
DOB 02/17/1976_______M
DR LUCI CAMPBELL_____E0094588

I'll hold onto this for a while.

---

They said no one knows.
He said he could feel it in his bones.
He told me earlier.

Said he would die soon.
Said it with certainty.
And I felt it absolutely.

His death became a part of me.

---

Steven.
T
E
V
E
N

Seven with a T. That's his name, I hear.

He looked yellow to me.
Yellow and shaking, and clutching his guts.

I was waiting for them to spill onto the floor.

He smelled sweet. Sickly sweet. Sickly sweet like Susan's vomit sweet.

He asked me for mouthwash, and I obliged. I always oblige. I told him he smelled like he needed it. He didn't smile. Guess he didn't think it was funny.

But he drank the mouthwash, and he drank it with such barren desperation.

I watched his features with interest. Anyone else would have. He wore expressions so well. His countenance changed from relief, to confusion, to fright, and I couldn't help but intervene. I couldn't let such a pinnacle moment go to waste.

I told him it was non-alcoholic.

He lamented, but I smiled.

I love this place more than anywhere else in the world.

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Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:21 pm

Day Six: Turpitude in Turpentine Minor
Word Count: 618

I would build a temple for you.

Oh, I would toil
until my skin withered to dust
and my blood bore amaryllis
and my bones traced the sky with chalk

And I would build a temple for you.
Out of my own body.

For you.
Only for you.

And you could weather its walls with bleach
Eat out of its inner sanctum
Eviscerate the halls

But I will endure
For you.
Only for you.

I would build a temple for you.

---

She left me with the taste of bleach. With this finite shell of an experience, with the buzzing of dragonfly wings and the sweet, viscous odor of orchids clouding my lungs. Clouding my senses. Clouding my lips, punctuated by the acrid odor of bleach.

Chlorinated, she tells me. Oxygenated lacks the same effect.

She would never live in Europe.
Chlorinated, not oxygenated.

And those legs.
Those ivory legs roiling beneath the stormy seas of summer cloth, those same spine-thin legs that left me without answers and without a single breath to expel them. They whispered past me, and the ebb of dishwater followed them without protest. I could only watch, watch her bracketed shoulders and her bony arms and her bruised hips as she left me to yearn in an uninspired hellhole of a room.

And a single cap.
A single blue cap.

She pressed it into my hand so hard it cut into my skin with the harsh realities of our nature. The inevitability of this sole tryst.

We were two keys - keys to a lock waiting to be unlocked as we unlocked ourselves.
As we fused ourselves among lengths of dishwater and bleached whispers.

All I had was that taste of bleach
and the blue cap.
She kept the empty bottle to herself
clutched it to her chest
curled her fingers around it with the strength of a thousand pythons
and she seethed when I touched it.

She never left the room.

But the bleach left her.
It peeled down the sides of the bed
pooled on the floor
eked across the tiles and traced the grout.

Blood echoed the bleach.

---

Sometimes if I close my eyes
I can feel the dark hair coiling against my skin.

356
her room number.
3:56
her time after death.
E76903356
her patient number.

Sometimes if I close my eyes
I can feel her words churning against my ears.

Chlorinated breath.
Oxygenated thoughts.
Corrosive actions.

She felt so real.

Sometimes if I close my eyes
I can feel her respirations echo through my chest.

They rattle and hiss
and boil my lungs
and scald my mind

but that pain means nothing to sustain a lasting experience.

---

I couldn't take her tag.
I couldn't take her tag.
I couldn't take her tag.
I couldn't take her tag.
I couldn't take her <********> tag.

---

Sometimes
if you stand just right
and you hold your breath
and you crane your neck

you can smell it.

You can smell what they do with the failed ones.
It stains your teeth with ash, melts
your skin with licentious violations of the flesh.

Violations by flame.

You recognize it. You breathe it in and never breathe it out.
You love it, succumb to it, or you allow it to taint you.

I recognized the smell.
Veal, freshly cooked, married to acrid sulfur and marinated in heavy iron. Wrapped in overcooked bacon. Boiled beef, but not beef. Sour, but sickly sweet. Like Susan's vomit, but far more putrid. Far more deceitful. Far more iniquitous. It drew me in, ensnared me in its thick, throat-burning grasp, and smothered me.

It smelled faintly of bleach.

I swallowed the cap to keep from screaming.

Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:22 pm

Day Seven: Resignation without Notice
Word count: 583

I understood him through his mindless platitudes, his
damning insensibilities and his
need to seek guidance from the superfluous sides of himself.

But what I've written here are his words,
his wisdom
his secret machinations.

And I love him all the more for it.
And I want him all the more for it.
And I hate him all the more for it.

And I
want him
dead.

I've seen every strip of time, tatted and woven, draped upon each other like a thousand-thousand bodies of the holocaust shoah. I've seen them perforate the edges of perception. I've seen them drown leagues of men in the swaths of ages. I've seen them churn amongst each other like a dance between drowning fish. Despite all these things, I am here - in this present time, in this very place, to relay the wisdom from my million lifetimes.

I am the blood-caked leopard that wept for the kill.
For the finale of a play enacted far more times than any written piece.

Each tear bore a shred of wisdom, and that wisdom gnarled and coiled into a tree, into a rickety old man, into the ancient bones of the planet. All these things are the same, all these things have some measure of grace to their existence.

Even my secrets skitter up the branches. I will share but one with you, if you can withstand entrusting your head to the leopard's bloodbathed mouth.

That secret:
Everything turns in tides. Everything swirls and flows with the flotsam of memory and the jetsam of sense. Yet all these pieces are subjected to the clockwork sea, and every moment of our lives is spent amongst the jetsam, standing tall against waves that will inevitably swallow us in their undertow.

Surrender to the waves.
Turn in tides.
Flotsam and jetsam.
Erode with the sea.

If you can manage this tribulation, you will transcend transgression. You will absolve yourself of mortality. You will understand the core of the universe.

You will be as me.
You will take my place.

You will see.

---

His words churned, burned, turned against me.
I guess you could say I wanted it.

Maybe I did.
But I know what I did.
Maybe I'll share someday, but...

Not today.

---

I must confess, I
can't quite
feel
like I used to.

Maybe
these s t i t c h e s
are a little___________too
_______________________________________________tight.

I don't have a mind.

---

Volumes speak through blood and bone
and visceral demand.

He woke with such suspense.

He remembered my name.
(What a sweet surprise)

And with every____passing____breath
we exchanged our turning towers
of thought and broken speech.
We built our ceaseless spires and dug our secret pits
we entrenched ourselves in these makeshift mischiefs

and for what?

A simple request.
A simple mistake.
A simple lie.

So we took our measures of time
Pressed into the ages
Encircling all our ceaseless travesties.
Now I look
Closely at his
Eviscerated
Remains.

Or so they say.

---

DEAN, SPENCER E______E76903291
DOB 05/24/1985_________M
DR LUCI CAMPBELL_____E0094588

---

I still smell the iron on my breath.
It soaked my pores
stained my flesh.

I never envied the dead.

I just watch them transcend from their endless purpose.
Like a crow, perched atop church bells.
The landscape is my carrion; I pick apart the skies and rip through the seas and tear the mountains asunder
if only for a fleck of blood, an inkling of meat.

Oh,
do I hunger
for______________ meat.

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Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2013 2:54 am

Turnstile Philosophies
Word count: TBA

Reserved for a conclusion about the Perdition events.

Welcome to Gaia! ::

Gaia Guilds

♥ In the Name of the Moon! ♥

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