[Deceased] Youma General Bischofite // Alois Scholz | Page 3 | Journals: Powered Characters | Guild Forums

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Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 11:30 pm

Du Lügst so Schön (You Lie so Beautifully)
Word count: 1192

All the polished surfaces slipped beneath his skin, echoing through every pore and sinew and vein until they became indiscernible from himself. Like he petered out into a pool of perfection - of marble and glasses and cherry cabinetry. They spoke of their owner, who stood countless times in front of the mirror, parting his hair or brushing his teeth. They spoke of a few stray fingerprints, perhaps a hair on the floor, but never more than that. These were his chambers, his domain, and all of this lay before him at any juncture.

And Alois invaded it. Sieged all of it. He both melted into every surface and railed against it so violently that his deep contrast to the place physically hurt to consider. He didn't belong, yet he remained steadfast in the threshold, elegantly painted door at his back. He hated his presence there, so he stepped forward. He ventured,

into the folds.
into the creases.
into the undulating streaks.

It felt barren, in a way, and perhaps that was a mark of the candyman himself. All that pomp and circumstance, the expensive fixtures and marble slabs to indicate his worth, both as a person and an economic figure. This wasn't his home so much as it was a showroom, was it? Alois considered it while he brushed his fingers along the worn corner of the sink, smoothed out from the factory production. Idly he considered if anyone's skull had been broken open on the corner. Wouldn't the marble sustain such a blow without flinching beneath blood?

A candyman with an impeccable front... He'd flashed it time and again, both in their initial meeting with his jovial pet names and flashy yet formal demeanor. Both welcoming and icy in a way, via distancing his new acquaintances while bearing the illusion of warmth and interest. An interesting game he played... One that even fooled Alois for a significant length of time. Perhaps the misanthrope wouldn't have even considered it, until Richard exhibited his true colors earlier in the night. And from that he realized that the redhead held more depth than his shallow, brilliant eyes cared to express.

Alois froze before the counter, knuckles as pale as its surface. Nausea struck up from his core, jolting through him in its bolted fury. Yet he weathered the blow with practiced suppression, with distracting himself to distanced affairs, with transposing the sudden discomfort onto something far more capable of bearing the burden. A parasite, that's what he was. Alois was a parasite, and he found a perfect host.

For what was better than another parasite for the task?

Finally he drew his gaze to the mirror, to the pallid wraith staring back at him with feverish golden eyes. With terror and fury. With unmitigated emotion roiling in a blank stare. He witnessed depth beneath a frozen surface, forever impenetrable. So was this what Richard saw in him? Some shambling echo of a man, wholly succumbed to his own vapid fancies? Was this Alois in his truest definition? He didn't want to believe that; the misanthrope shifted his gaze to the sink. Smooth as water, it dipped into a basin with naught but a few cracks of black marble shuddering through it.

Three translucent droplets lingered near the bottom of the basin, staring back at him.

Taunting him with that equal portion of wrongness that plagued him for existing in this room.

No, they shouldn't be here either.

He didn't belong in this room, in this house, in this life. Richard didn't ask for a plague, and he didn't understand the full extent of the man he invited so readily to his condominium. As such, he didn't deserve the ubiquitous suffering that rode on Alois' back, a set of monstrous tumors warping his every action. Alois would fester within him when given a chance, and Richard didn't deserve that.

Because Richard lied.
Richard deceived.
Richard schemed.

And Alois only respected him for that.

His muscles stiffened and Alois jerked forward, just slightly, with every muscle in the back of his throat tensing violently. Another long, thin strand of saliva touched down in the sink and he finally realized the origin of the remaining three droplets, all equal in size and color to the newest arrival. These were his additions, his markings in a territory wholly unfamiliar and disdainful of his presence. He didn't belong here, but he would infect this place with pieces of himself. And why shouldn't he? To invite Alois to his home was to reign darkness upon himself, his property and everything he held dear. Didn't Richard understand this? Wasn't it an accepted fact when the man urged him to his condo?

Alois whined weakly and his lips threatened to twitch into a grimace. The room fogged marginally, but it didn't matter.

Why was he even considering such things? What did Richard do to warrant such consideration? It wasn't like the man consented to turning him into a youma, or promised death to him upon failure. Richard defied his requests, and promised to continue fighting them - he even sought to pry the remainder of the misanthrope's plans, if only to thwart them further. He knew his place, yet he sought every means within his power to stop Alois from seeking a transformation both permanent and desperately, painfully needed.

Another lurch of nausea paralyzed him, and Alois once more glanced toward the mirror. The emaciated wraith within it only watched him with nothing but an enigma shielding its gaze; it both saw him and saw through him as an intangible, irredeemable visage haunting the room. And that's all he was - some poltergeist threatening to hover over Richard's life, right? He remained as a dying breath of a man, searching for a countdown to expulsion. And he wanted so desperately for Richard to oblige that wish, to begin the countdown, to enrich those last moments before he respired

into the folds.
into the creases.
into the undulating streaks.

And the seething, scathing mass shot through his esophagus and tore through his thoughts with little difficulty. He now stared down a blackened, viscous mass that seeped its way into the dark drain. He watched it inch its way into the shadows cast by the sickly bathroom light. The sudden pins and needles of both fading consciousness and utter chill struck his skin next, and soon the bile running down the sink warranted little attention. Now he fought back a cold sweat, one that forced his muscles to shudder and shake under their new burden. He couldn't stand, didn't want to.

Instead he took a seat against the candyman's toilet, and rested his head against its smooth, cooling surface. In a strange dichotomy he felt both his boiling point and absolute zero, as if his flesh threatened to burn until it froze in fits and starts. He hated the feeling, rallied against it with every fiber of his being. He wanted to destroy it, to suffocate it and bury it and forsake its every thought. This wasn't supposed to happen again, he wasn't supposed to feel again,

he wasn't supposed to love again.

Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 7:38 pm

Lye Kissed to Water
Word Count: 2001

The words felt tinny, broken, oxidized and left in the deepest reaches of rain. Maybe they'd fade away, maybe the rust would reduce them to some shell of themselves. It felt like a curse, almost, stuttered and soft, to speak of such things in private.

But he repeated them. Splinters of bone sputtered out of his lips. Tired eyes reflected the misery. Nothing came of these words - no revelations, no overwhelming realization, no catharsis, no conclusions.

Just more silence afterward.

"Nineteen.
Piano.
Germany.
Reading.
Feelings."

Everything deteriorated. Everything degenerated. Like those words, everything rusted into its own private oblivion. He wanted to give up those breathless echoes, to forsake this pointless mission branching into self-mutilation, to leave Richard's life and the lives of all those around him. But... What would come of it?

Alois is gone. Time to move on. Rest and remember the way things were. Rest and rejoice in the fading scent of cedar and fresh laundry.

Alois is gone. Bischofite is gone.
Trepidation is gone. Disgust is gone. Hatred is gone.

But he only repeated those few words once again, each dislodging a little more bone in their recital. Soon there would be nothing left of his skeletal structure, of his emotions - dulled, exhausted gaze lingered on the page, on the ivory white sheet, which stared back at him with the same five words he'd been repeating all this time. His five curses. His five methods of damnation. His five most prominent, human traits.

This was what confined him to humanity. All these things he had to defile should he ever attain the visage he always yearned for. But could he become a youma now, so long after his promotion? Richard knew the answer, didn't he? It lay in the way he shied away from Alois, treated him like a plague, shunned him to the darker reaches of his apartment. Oh, Richard knew. So was he biding his time for a moment to unravel his dreams, or did he simply understand that Alois needed time to oxidize, to deteriorate, to come unto these realizations on his own and fade into death? Did Richard know he didn't need to intervene?

And what else did he know? Those exhausted, red eyes - what other secrets did they harbor? What prying gazes did they reflect?

Maybe Richard understood his weaknesses. He knew that in biding his time, Alois would most certainly peel away in sheets of rust, and soon, there would be no more cause for fear. Richard knew how to wait out the storm. And he knew that, in doing so, in denying Alois those fleeting, ephemeral connections now and again, he hastened the process. In shying away, in blanching at his touch, in denying small graces, he gave the misanthrope a handful of nails.

And like a broken doll, unwavering in its obedience, Alois would construct his own coffin.

Was he bleeding now? Bony, ashen piano hands curled against his chest. His shirt. Contorted the fabric beneath their grasp, the endless sea of black that barred his access to rotting wounds.

Sepsis.
Yes.
This was sepsis.

It felt no different than love.

He cringed. Grimaced. Frowned. Shuddered. Coughed. Sobbed. His grip tightened, the shirt contorted in its capitulation to his despair-fueled siege, and he purged his despair in the form of wordless agony. The walls stayed silent, no Baldwin came, no answer lay in shaken, yearning glances about the room. Not in the photos, not in his eccentric furniture, not in the tiles spanning the entryway. Richard was not here, nor would he be here, nor would he come to the apartment out of some misplaced, romantic notion of requital.

Romanticism was an affliction of humanity.

What bones he had left failed to contain his breaths - each one eked out through stunted groans and long, churning laments. Even with arms to reinforce his ribs, nothing helped. Within his own grasp, he crumbled, rusted, decomposed under the weight of such a haunting truth. Nothing recognized him here - not the sun peeking through lazy curtains, not the warm colors spilling across the walls, not the dog waiting patiently for the arrival of his owner. He barely existed here, barely warranted recognition which only rent further pounds of flesh from him.

Soon he would weigh less than nothing. But would it matter? Did anyone care? Did the Negaverse care?

Did Richard care?

Biting back another seizing jerk, he struggled to maintain some semblance of composure. It didn't matter what it looked like, as long as he could function. Wasn't that all he could ask? He couldn't force the confectionist to look, to come home or see him as anything more than a cockroach peeling into his kitchen. He knew where he stood, just as Richard knew who he was, how he was, what he was destined to be.

Sometimes he whetted the page with those stains of despair, but as with everyone, even him, they passed in time. Nothing lingered, not even his regrets.

He started on the page, normally meticulous penmanship shake with the realizations that rattled through him.

Quote:

Richard,

Oh Richard.

This note may not reach you
______________in time

I may be gone when you read this.
I may be dead

But even I harbor a few dreams, a few
trite fantasies
just like the girl in the forest.

Just like you.

Even as a last favor, even through

all those wrongs

I paid unto you, and I do not regret them,

please keep reading.

Do it because you know it will hurt me.

Do it because suffering is necessary. Because you want to pay me back in all the ways you never have. Because you owe it to Baldwin, who still looks to you loyally when you brought danger into his life.

When you brought anger and hate and sorrow into yours.

For he loves you, just like I did.

So please,
please
please
keep reading.

When we first met, the moon still peeled through the trees like a dying disease. Like a threat waning on the horizon. And you were there, you were ready to trounce Alois in that very power you were so sure of. And I liked that about you. You knew where solid boundaries lay. You knew, wholly knew that Alois could not surmount Buddingtonite's power.

And you were right.

But the one you encountered, the one who led you to a swift brush with mortality, was only Alois by proxy.

A new affliction, the dawn to the distant moon.

And maybe that's when it first fell into place, like a deadbolt sliding into its latch. Something fit there.

And that day you ventured your first roots into my life.

But this isn't a reflection of the past.
This isn't some
half-birthed revelation
to paint your heart colors anew.
This isn't a resuscitation
or a burial of sinew.

But would you believe me, a liar, a cheater, a deceiver?

Maybe in knowing yourself, you know me a little better.
Maybe in knowing me, you know yourself a little better.

But I digress.

You are a man with a facade unmatched, Richard.
Not by the White Moon.
Not by the leaders in the Negaverse.
Not by me.

You are of your own rank now. You are something so
glorious

That you have lost sight of yourself.

You must understand this. It is imperative.

It is my order to you,
from Bischofite to Buddingtonite.

You haven't seen yourself like I've seen you, in these short days
These few hours, spanned in sparse moments
When I could breathe you in some half-woken piece of time.

I took quiet solace in every touch you never made, all those words unsaid still hovering in the air like lingering static just after a lighting strike. Each breath singed, charged, electrified by you, no one else. And every thought unmade, every glance undone, every heart unbeaten spelled everything I wanted to say to you. All the praise I couldn't manage. Wouldn't manage.

Because I am a coward like you.

You may consider your facade a weakness, a curse, a punitive sign of your own impending demise.
But you mistake yourself here.

Richard, what you have now is your greatest asset. Your visage, that you covet so dearly, spells lies so naturally that it overwhelms me.

You don't know yourself like I do.
You never will.
And you will never feel what I've felt.
Not in these few passing days.

Maybe while you're reading this, I'm dying by your side. In your arms. At your behest. Maybe you found this while I was out someday, long before its time. Maybe someone passed it to you, long after its time. Maybe this message holds nothing for you. Maybe what I'm giving to you is your single greatest revelation, that final push you need to quit treading water and finally live in a way you've never known before.

Maybe,
someday,
you will be as free as me.

Maybe you will walk the earth in such comfort, in such assuredness, that you have the opportunity to enact all your ideals in ways you could finally appreciate.

I cannot wish for anything higher than absolute freedom for you,

Richard.
Buddingtonite.

You will take these words and you will move beyond me, beyond yourself, beyond everyone. You can change this world with your silver tongue, your golden smile. I can see it in your eyes sometimes. It's buried, faint, but still present. You haven't died yet, Richard.

But I cannot deny it now.
You're dying
And it hurts me as greatly as it hurts yourself.

Even while the tree withers,
the dirt at its roots succumbs to the same tired fate.

Maybe you're not reading this at all. Maybe this letter's been burned to ash.

Maybe you died

And I am burying this letter with you. I want you to have it
Because I know you've wanted to hurt me all this time.

So this is it, Richard.
This is your chance.

With you, now, is the one weapon you will ever have against me.

This is your time. This is your power. This is your rule.

I give you the last of my humanity, the smoldering dreams of my youmafication. I give you my opinions of you, well-hidden in all the time I've spent with you. I give you permission to destroy me with my own weaknesses, given fully and knowingly.

Because I love you.

When the pens ceased, the hand no longer shook, the tears no longer stained the page, he breathed a sigh of welcome exhaustion. It was done - the mistake was made. But he would not yet pass it to the one to destroy him. Not now, and not for a long time coming. Instead he carefully blew against the page, urging the ink to dry,

or perhaps dispersing the words across his breath, into the confines of Richard's apartment as an incantation long neglected. But nothing left the page, no rivulets of ink spilled away like his sorrows, staining the table beneath or the floors stricken with fresh, crisp carpet.

For mistakes undone were mistakes never made.

So Alois folded the page into thirds, sealed it within an envelope. He signed his name across the back in practiced hand, in a bookkeeper's hand, with the tittle atop the i spreading its stains across the envelope.

And Alois stood with it, this simplistic, utterly plain representation of all things left unsaid, and he took it upstairs. The banister creaked, the stairs popped under his presence. Wood settled. Feelings settled. Dust settled.

And in the guest room, nondescript and bereft of any sign of his company there, stood both barren and ready to receive his burdens. So she shut the note in the top drawer of the dresser, still coated with a fine film of dust, still bearing no sign of use. Maybe Richard would never find it here. Maybe Richard would find it tomorrow.

But he took that chance.

Strickenized

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Strickenized

Garbage Cat

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Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:49 pm

Psalms for Qualms
Word Count: 1545

Corpses don't rattle breath through brittle bones, broken under the unyielding will of a man far superior to himself. Sometimes he needed a reminder, some meager hint that he was still alive, still capable of respiration, just still.

But stillness entailed stagnation. He recognized it in his own eyes, in the almost indiscernible way they glassed over with a finer film of tears, in how they grew dull and dismal from so many nights wasted on trepidation. So many hours... How long had it been? How many hours had he whittled away since his demotion, through mindless tasks or b***h work for the one who sought his fall? The dark circles told of days, many days, maybe weeks since that time. The near-permanent frown he wore hinted at the same story, along with his bony shoulders slumping lowly through decayed muscle or simply lack of motivation.

He looked dead. Gone. Buried. Lost to a time far beyond his own. He looked like his soul left him the day he tore out his own starseed for Persephone to see. He looked like he lost so much of his own life that day, when she returned it just as easily as he removed it from his body.

He looked like he discovered dejectedness the moment the blonde senshi released his hands from Bischofite's neck. The bruises blossomed beautifully across his neck, a black and blue butterfly lighted and ready to fade into death. And as he traced the marks with lithe fingers, he closed his eye with a popping sigh. Sometimes, if he let himself stray so far from his own thoughts, he could still find that glimmer of kindness in the man's eyes. Strangely, Alois never knew his name - but perhaps that was why they meant so much to each other in that ephemeral moment. No names, no pretenses, no good versus evil battle waged over generations and millennia long since past. Their encounter dwindled to victor and loser, prey and predator. The senshi won, and Bischofite recognized that. He sought his spoils and Bischofite honored that.

But even such a primal and truly beautiful way to die suffered its own death at the hands of the senshi's partner.

This only reaffirmed his belief that the senshi stood for a complete reversal of the natural laws of entropy, but even those convictions seemed frail and distant. How could he consider such concepts when he rotted away himself? Even in his dreams, he found his skin melting away and his half-liquefied viscera threatening to spill out, down his legs, onto the floor in a trail easily tracked by anyone passing in his wake. Alois was dissolving - and he couldn't stop it.

He didn't want to stop it.

The misanthrope measured the weight in his right hand, where a hefty Ruger 22 pistol hung like a heavy conscience. It looked entirely too simple and unconscionably clean - for all the time he spent exposed to anti-violence campaigns, a gun never held the foreboding ambience as it did in such commercials. Instead it looked mostly unassuming between its studded metal grip against the black anodized body. SR22 displayed on the side in white paint, with its caliber indicated just beneath the lettering. Strangely it felt like it fit his hand perfectly, and a quick glance back to the mirror, toward Alois in his dejected and miserable entirety, showed that he looked a little more complete with a gun in his possession.

Maybe Serpentine would be impressed now. Maybe Buddingtonite and his ******** friend could sit around on their asses, passing badly mixed drinks and telling horror stories of Bischofite's antics shortly before he died. Maybe they'll pat each other on the back for a job well done, for doing away with the Negaverse's greatest curse and perhaps gleaning a promotion for finishing what Benitoite regrettably started. Maybe his general would find shame where the others would find great merit and glory for their actions. Or maybe Serpentine, Krishna Dhawan, wouldn't bat an eyelash at the news. Maybe it didn't mean anything to him, or it simply wasn't enough to register on his unconscionably cold exterior. Maybe Alois never earned the rudimentary care shown by the senshi that night.

Maybe he should've defected, but... Persephone hadn't shown much conviction for the White Moon cause - in fact, she found it every bit as stifling as his lot in the Negaverse. And without even his enemy to receive him, where was he to go from here?

To hell.

Despite his best attempts to steady his shaking hand, the gun still rattled lightly as he brought it toward his right temple. Curiously he flinched, immensely and repeatedly even, as if just awaiting the shot blast. Alois felt a cold sweat creeping over his body, ubiquitous, when he pressed the end of the barrel flush against his skin. His trigger finger rested gently, but his heart yearned to escape his chest.

Tears leaked through his stoicism, through his conviction and his hatred and his saturnine determination to erase himself. Sobs shuddered through his teeth with crackling breath, with the fluid that still pooled in the bottom of his injured lung. There was nowhere else to go, no one to turn to, nothing to do to exonerate himself now. He suffered to full capacity - for no longer could he sustain the sheer torture forced upon him through insurmountable tasks and such a sudden, jarring warp to his typical life that he couldn't stop himself from drowning in responsibilities. There was no way for him to survive. Krishna stacked the deck against him.

But Alois had one final ace - his own life.

Corpses never suffered much.

Alois closed his eyes and considered the immediate repercussions of his actions. His mind spilling across the walls in a hash of vibrant colors - cogs, stars, animals, people, youma crawling up the walls through ceaseless symbolism and expanse. The room would soon flood with his concepts and they'd leak out the door, into the hallway where Alexandre might slip in his cynicism or tread through the very ideals that led him to this point before he realized what had happened. And when he burst through the door, frightened and concerned, he would kneel down to Alois' body and hold it gently - and in all that time he absorbed those very intents, those limitless feelings beneath his skin like needlepoints to the bone.

Alois would carry on in Alexandre - a better vessel for better tasks.

And for a moment, he thought of Persephone - how she huddled over the senshi who was skewered by Mica. He thought of how she bit back her tears so desperately, how she scrambled to tear her own clothes away if it meant buying her friend just another second of life, and how she practically bathed in her friend's blood before she passed. Who could he possibly affect like that? Alexandre, Richard, Porsha? And what would come of it but suffering abound? Would they carry the torch of his ideals? Porsha, perhaps, but she lacked the exposure to him to truly grasp the truths he held so dearly.

And Persephone - she didn't want to see him die, did she? She returned his starseed readily enough, even after he enlightened her to the fact that she had a hand in murdering seventeen people. But that didn't deter her - she faithfully returned his soul to his body, despite his iniquity. She could've let him die, she could've counted the seconds to the moment that his uniform melted from his body, but she didn't.

No one killed him: Persephone shirked inaction, the blonde senshi relinquished his grip, the fire did not consume him.

Alois' grip wavered due to acid eating through his arm, threatening the gun to waver further. And he feared that, if he didn't pull the trigger soon, that he'd shoot out his frontal lobe by mistake and survive as a vegetable. That he'd miss his brain stem and instead lead a life like Phineas Gage. Alois sighed as the sobs threatened to return. Now wasn't the time.

His gaze fixated on the cold, overly bright gold eyes that stared back at him. "When did I become so pasetic?" He asked aloud, to the short acoustics that didn't echo his sentiments. Slowly he drew the gun from his temple, though it still shook desperately. By locking his elbow he leveled the weapon toward his reflection, who slowly traced his golden gaze toward the barrel.

A deafening crack punctuated the silence in the bathroom.

Alois covered his ears desperately, wincing as the pain settled in his ears and punctuated his face in violent exclamations. But it didn't matter how he groaned, how he gasped and staggered past the bathroom. It didn't matter how painfully the ringing echoed in his ears, surreal and protracted. It didn't matter how he nearly fell out of the bathroom, or how his ears bled onto his fingers and he couldn't even notice past the jarring agony that cursed him. And it didn't matter how he slipped through the halls, into Alexandre's bedroom where the blonde sat awake and alert.

The shattered mirror lay scattered across the counter, flecked with blood and malicious determination.

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 10:48 pm

Der König der Katzen (The King of Cats)
Word Count: 1893

Alois waited months for this moment, and though he worked with Krishna, who had patience in spades, that virtue never rubbed off on the misanthrope. The act of discovering this location alone demanded hours of diligent searching, both by physically combing the streets for such an opportunity and combing internet ads along with local papers. More often than not he found the spaces offered either too large or arranged inadequately for his purposes, or even overpriced due to the zoning offered. But Alois found he didn't need commercial zoning, as his projects were to remain expressly hobby-related. Enough research into the prospects of occasional sales rendered the potential of a business as something still quite out of his reach.

Surprisingly he managed to locate a space of a modest 200 square feet for his purposes, and though it was zoned commercially, the price tag attached proved reasonably affordable, provided he could either recoup the money through taxidermy ventures or successfully land a new job. Stealing proved out of the question; he had no means to launder such funds right now, since Krishna demanded he sign a volunteer disclosure.

Now he finally held the key to his rightfully obtained workshop, all papers meticulously signed and properly filed to provide airtight legality to the affair. Considering the great deal of time spent finalizing the business aspects of the transaction, Alois hardly remembered the meager accommodations afforded by the space. But luckily, in mere moments, he wouldn't have to rely on memory alone.

The key fit into the lock easily enough, though Alois found himself hesitating. Too many times had he tried his key in his old family residence, only to find it stuck firmly in the lock. It didn't budge with ample force, which confirmed with icy accuracy that his father had indeed changed the locks on him, and no amount of blistering insults or break-in attempts would secure him safe passage. Instead, in those instances, the police came to arrest him for breaking and entering, no questions asked. Thus, for a smattering of instances over the span of his regrettably infuriating life, Alois found himself dreadfully duped, lulled into a sense of security offered by an open home - an open space. Yet it was those occasions that still haunted him now, even with the (now redacted) ability to teleport beyond frivolous locks and security measures.

But, to his visible relief, the key swiveled easily enough among the tumblers. With a satisfying click, the deadbolt released and he was granted entry into his (again) legally obtained establishment.

A quick blind search of the wall framing the door found a light switch, jutting from its fixture obnoxiously, but the misanthrope flipped it to confirm that the lights still worked - and surprisingly well at that. Fluorescent tubes masked by cloudy, textured panels illuminated the space well enough, though he harbored a strong dislike for the morgue blue that now tainted every wall and fixture. Not that there was much to taint - beyond the crisp white ceiling and walls, obviously painted recently, the stained oak floors stood defiantly of the deadening lights. Out of mild curiosity, Alois rolled up his sleeves and looked at his arms - surely enough, they looked like those of a corpse. It wouldn't matter terribly, so long as he worked on any potential saltwater fish replicas near the window of a sunny day.

Satisfied with his initial impression, Alois tossed a knapsack full of leftover supplies to the oak floor, near the wall composed of glass panes. Now relieved of his burden, he took to closer inspection of the place via running his fingers across the textured sheetrock as he walked the perimeter of the space. Unsurprisingly, 200 square feet felt quite large, given that space was a commodity in his native country. But as he eyed every crack in an otherwise pristine surface, every lopsided line where the wood floors hadn't quite matched up, he found the place of acceptable quality and embarked on envisioning the proper placement of his organizational tools, and larger storage areas.

When he reached the middle of the far wall, he heard it - a low, guttural growl punctuated by a sharp hiss. Recognizing the sound instantly, Alois sighed with disgust. Of all the possible defects plaguing the property, all the chances of structural setbacks and legal complications, the one glaring flaw in all 200 square feet of his new goddamned workshop was a cat. And, naturally, his first concern was that this imposing feline was a guardian cat. It caused the german to clench his teeth with painful force, and a quick click of his tongue confirmed the presence of a sneer on his face. A cat, of course - such damnable little creatures had to plague him given any opportunity. In fact, the only tolerable girl of feline persuasion proved to be human upon initial contact - and this one was, regrettably, still skulking around on all fours.

Alois surmised that the cat resided in the sole cardboard box present in all of the establishment - one that obviously sustained heavy use, given the chewed-out corners and a partially collapsed 'roof' that indicated far too much weight tried to climb the surface to no avail. Surely enough, sharp golden eyes peered back at him with pupils the size of dinner plates. And the cat had every right to fear and despise him, for the only individual worse than a taxidermist was one so enthralled with Korean food that cat tickled his taste buds. (Un)luckily, Alois was not of the latter persuasion.

"I haf' no problem flaying a lif'e animal, cat." Alois produced his switchblade during his veiled threat, and deployed the blade with a press of its spring-loaded button. The cat initially recoiled at the sound, but displayed no further fears. It seemed normal enough; Alois never met a cat possessed of the cognition required to understand the utilities behind a knife - not unless that cat suffered prior abuse from it. But even as he sank to his knees, ever closer to the cat's sole protection, the damnable furbag didn't even flinch. It continued to stare unblinkingly at its perceived intruder, occasionally emitting a low growl to ward him away.

In one fluid motion, Alois sank the blade into the top of the box, up to its hilt. He felt a distinct rumbling from within the cardboard's meager confines, and a quick slice across the center and down one side allowed him to pry the makeshift house apart and identify the ornery monstrosity within.

But as he pried the box apart, his only visual confirmation came as a hazy blur of black followed by sharp, burning pain across his neck and face, punctuated with painful punctures atop his scalp as the feline pushed off him like a springboard. The misanthrope (and now cat curser) hissed as the pain bled into his thoughts, temporarily glossing over potential plans of attack with glaring curse words spanning multiple languages.

Blood seeped down his face in thick droplets, but it received little heed as Alois hastily searched the nondescript space for some sign of the destructive little monster. And once he spotted it, pressed against the far corner near the wall of glass, he stared in wonder at how unusually large it was. From his estimations, the cat must've weighed nearly 15 kilograms, and with its fur splayed out in a respectable arch, it looked even more colossal. Were he not privy to the varying sizes of cats, he would've powered up to command it as a youma.

Again the beast growled angrily, though it exhibited bolder behavior, likely due to its successful attack. Out of frustration, Alois hurled his switchblade at the ornery vermin, but the cat scampered out of the way and the blade only collided with the freshly-painted drywall. Alois knew he had few tools at his disposal to effectively eliminate the intruder, and his only remaining chance now jutted out of the wall at an angle, so he settled for a regrettably humane alternative: by propping the door open, he might be able to herd the cat out the door and into the streets, where it could resume its paltry little life of mousing and stalking squirrels until it met a delightfully fitting fate beneath the massive weight of an eighteen-wheeler.

However, as he approached the door, the cat creeped toward it as if it understood his intent. It might've confirmed his suspicions that the damned feline was indeed a guardian, but Alois was far more fixated on defeating this unprecedentedly challenging foe. He attempted to kick the cat away, but it expertly manipulated all assumed fifteen kilograms of its girth to both latch on and tear into his boot. Thanks to quick thinking, Alois managed to wrestle the door open while the micro monstrosity shredded his pant leg and snagged his boot laces, but a swift kick toward the outdoors released the furry devil and it regrettably landed on all fours.

In a welcome turn of events, Alois slammed the door before his unwelcome vagrant could sprint back inside. Instead it sat directly in front of the glass door, nose nearly pressed to the surface, and Alois heard muffled growls enunciating the cat's displeasure for this newfound venue.

Strangely, the damnable thing wanted to get back inside.

Alois sighed out of exasperation; the pain radiating from his face and scalp bothered him immensely, and the cat's constant presence outside the door only antagonized him further. "Ze contract never mentioned an unwelcome visitor... Maybe zey'll pay for an exterminator to snap your damned neck and end my misery." In an effort to separate himself from the (potentially) resolved situation, Alois returned to his inspection of the property. Even after kicking the box away from the floorboards, he found nothing of note. Still, as he searched the ceiling for any potential problems, he discovered his gaze continually shifting toward the cat, who sat ever vigilant in front of the door.

Finally the misanthrope seized his switchblade from the wall, and brandished it toward the cat in hopes that it recognized the knife's inherent threat. No reaction. More accurately, less than no reaction - as the cat took the opportunity to shift its gaze away from Alois entirely.

The german nearly broke the glass out of frustration. With no available outlet for his brewing anger, he approached the door out of express intent to stab the cat before it could slip inside. With one hand resting on the handle, the two black-haired beings watched each other in a hate-filled stalemate, waiting for the moment when the door cracked open. Once that sliver of passage was offered, the final showdown commenced: one that would confirm the future for those involved.

And once that door opened, the cat shot inside, unimpeded by Alois' slower reaction time. "Kack," he cursed aloud, finally weary of his continued tussels with a mangy furbag that gravitated toward some disgustingly withered cardboard box. Fine - keep your damnable little nest. But expect to be charged for the square footage you take up, he thought bitterly.

In an act of capitulation, Alois tossed his blade to the floor uselessly. The clattering object roused the cat's attention, and in some twisted turn of fate, Alois saw the abominable beast wink at him.

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Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 5:32 pm

Die Krähe und ihren Spielzeugmann
Word Count: 3590

How many weeks had he spent dreaming of life amongst the swaths of broken starseeds, the posthuman counterparts to those that once knew the earth as he did? And how many of those weeks were met with seething rage, tempestuous mourning, and numbed inaction? How long now had he sought to live as youma did, skulking behind crystals dotting the Rift and hissing in disgust toward the newer recruits that passed by? As he mulled over his answers, Bischofite watched a singular, gecko-like monster coil its tail furiously. The beast's head bloomed to expose petals loaded with razor teeth, which shimmered in the milky haze of the Rift while it expelled one low, growling hiss. The sound came in two parts, he noticed, much like a car horn - they acted in harmony to produce an unearthly sound to deter foes.

But Bischofite continued to watch, and the youma soon grew dissatisfied with his marked lack of reaction, so it skittered atop the foreign, gravel-laden surfaces with ease. Soon enough it slipped into a pile of rocks that might've been a building at sometime - now home only to the youma. It took but a moment for the general to recognize it as a building he accidentally felled long before he suffered the frustrating tides of demotion. So it turned out that the Rift's native residents repurposed it... Such was their demonstration of feral ingenuity.

For that, he appreciated youma - they demonstrated no real attachment to their surroundings, no sentimentality. No handicaps to obscure their goals.

Now bereft of a meager show, Bischofite pushed off from the cloudy crystal he leaned against, and the residual humming in his hands only ceased when he balled his fists and stretched the tendons soon after. Surely the landscape here proved far more unique than any other on Earth, with a sprawling gloom unmistakably denser than that of a graveyard, strange violet crystals seemingly brimming with energy, and great, jutting cliffs that sported the last of some ancient civilization - long reduced to dust. And he remembered maintaining an interest in their creation for a time, perhaps as a means to establish himself in the Rift for more permanent residence, but that curiosity waned with the realization that he could not become a youma.

Buddingtonite refused, and his promoting officer possessed a dexterity with dark energy that prevented any mishaps. And, perhaps more strangely, following his demotion he suffered an aspect of youma life he thought he considered to its fullest extent: subservience. Curiously he found it far more infuriating than he ever thought possible, as his time as a lieutenant was rife with menial, pointless tasks or repetitive busywork that only served to further Serpentine's obnoxiously impeccable self-image.

But there was more to it than simple self-preening. The general started his trek through thinning, pale lavender fogs, across the languid hills that dotted the stark landscape within the Rift. As he walked, Bischofite watched his coat rustle uselessly against his boots. A gust parted the fabrics, revealing black military-issue boots beneath his grey and gold coat, but that sudden squall vanished as soon as he perceived it. A glance toward the sky confirmed an unusually large, birdlike youma taking flight toward the far cliffs. Despite its three wings, Bischofite realized that the creatures in this strange, nightmarish landscape were acclimated to their own broken forms. The general smiled thinly; to show too much emotion in these parts was to beg for the strong to cull the weak.

As he continued the long, winding trek toward the cliffs, Bischofite eyed a thin collection of youma progressing along a similar path. Great eels maintaining a steady foot above the ground, their rusted obsidian scales flashing with that same borderline aggressive sheen he once spied on the crystals, spidery legs attached to spine-bodies of another species of youma, and a gargantuan, overly-long humanoid body arched upside-down, with great stabbing tusks to drag it across the dirt all converged on the far cliffs. Mostly the general went ignored among the growing group, but a pair of felines whose backs opened up like venus flytraps hissed at him with disdain. Or perhaps it was acknowledgement. For all his interest in youma, he could not deduce their language to any working extent.

The air hung heavy with a thick humidity, a moisture palpable on the skin. The general wiped his face with his free hand, and the droplets formed great streaks that soon absorbed into his gloves. A quick glance toward one of the cat-youma confirmed that these creatures weren't entirely adapted to this environment - even their posthuman nature contained flaws. Somehow that felt comforting; even if he couldn't obtain their level of completion, flaws coursed through more than the human race.

Bischofite clutched his project beneath his arm and hastened his pace. A low rumbling sounded in the distance, and he didn't like it. The Rift was a plane far beyond human imagination - what horrors lurked at its peripherals likely put the eldritch abominations to shame.

Before he reclaimed his rightful rank as a general, Alois devoted much of his free time to recurrent drug abuse - but those few precious hours of sobriety found use in stitching together harvested skins for a youma crafted by his own hand. Given his position as a lieutenant, he hardly possessed the chaotic energy to form one himself as he had as a captain, but his vested interest in rogue taxidermy provided an alternative outlet. All the while, Krishna inadvertently taught him a slow acceptance in humanity, and work that once aimed toward recreating a host of different youma dwindled to the creation of one solitary beast - an imagining of himself as a full-fledged monster.

Created from vast assortments of organic matter, from insect carapaces to thin bird bones, Alois intertwined these seemingly unrelated pieces through the use of jeweler's wire and unwaxed dental floss. He devoted many hours to the project, lengthening a scorpion's tail through the use of millipede segments, and the introduction of a snake's spine to form the bulk of the creation's midsection, but once he finished, he held a foreboding, insectile creature arranged in a more humanoid manner. And he considered that, if Buddy took him up on his plea, he might've found himself at home in that very form.

Bischofite intended to keep it, but during the time he spent beneath Serpentine (and in recuperation from grievous injuries), the lieutenant came to understand that he could not alter this fundamental aspect of himself. But humanity had its merits that youma no longer retained, which was a jarring lesson he learned from time spent among other individuals. He hadn't initially enjoyed the sudden expanses of time he passed out of uniform, but his injuries granted him little choice - and thus, he learned a certain usefulness behind the sentimentality he so scorned before. His punishment progressed, and Bischofite established his own interest in little stories left behind on half-used napkins, in a hasty departure from a coffee shop, even in an adversary's eyes.

The general touched his ribs lightly. They still retained a soreness, but the bones healed together well enough. The senshi sought to destroy him, but the entire affair was steeped in the human condition - and Alois himself struggled with that saturation after the fact. He didn't realize it at the time; he nearly died to an adversary he never recognized.

Some of the youma he followed filtered into a dank cave at the base of the cliffs, while most of the larger youma peeled off in pursuit of their own solitary meanderings. Bischofite paused as he watched the elongated, nearly humanoid youma drag itself parallel to the cliffs, leaving behind some viscous, oily substance much like a slug, but a sudden gasp near his ear wrenched his attention from the sight.

The general spun around, but nothing lingered near his face. With a measured sigh through his nose, he skirted a great stalagmite and approached the cave's interior.

The lighting proved poor, nearly useless, as the general's eyes strained to adjust to the oppressive darkness. A host of different youma littered the cave: some crouched behind great, egg-like speleothems that cast looming shadows across the unusually smooth walls; others cling desperately to soda straws and stalactites to maintain their altitude, but often shattered the pieces in their overzealous grip and rained cave shards onto those below; and others still lounged atop thick helictites protruding from columns. Initially they stilled, and Bischofite watched the profusion of monsters, wide-eyed while he waited for his pupils to dilate enough to recognize their vague shapes. The eerie silence stretched the seconds into minutes, and a slow realization dawned on the visiting general.

They were waiting for something. But for what? A speaker? A Great Youma to rise from slumber? Something far more iniquitous than he could fathom?

And as he waited, frozen, measuring his breaths in acute hypersensitivity, Bischofite felt the hairs on his neck mimic the stalagmites jutting out of the ground. His gaze peeled across the waiting audience, expecting their attention to either shift toward him as one who overreached his authority, or something else that emerged from the deeper shadows within the cave.

Suddenly that very same breath spread across the shell of his ear, and the painted general shifted his attention in time to witness a lone, humanoid youma enter the cave. She stood significantly shorter than him, hardly five feet in total, and possessed remarkably few monstrous characteristics. A strange, black carapace overtook her arms and legs like boots and evening gloves, and more of the thick substance formed over her torso like an echo of clothing worn centuries past. Voluminous swaths of hair fell behind her shoulders, flowing out from beneath an ornate bone headdress that she sported like a crown. The youma paid no heed to him, and instead progressed toward the deeper reaches of the cave.

And at that point he recognized the feature that truly identified her as a youma - countless gaping mouths that warped the smooth texture of her back, nestled between two large, black feathered wings. Bischofite set his jaw unknowingly.

Perhaps dissatisfied, the youma slowly dislodged themselves from their seated positions and either mulled about the cave in mild curiosity or exited the cliffs altogether. Once again, he went largely ignored, save for the pair of cat-youma that yawned open with a hiss upon exit. The general was still unsure of their intent. And once the bulk of the crowd cleared from the eerie cave, Bischofite approached the lone humanoid youma that might provide answers toward the bizarre gathering - out of one mouth or another.

"Explain to me what just happened here," he managed through a roughly authoritative tone. A cold sweat still lingered beneath his uniform, and his nerves settled at the back of his throat. He swallowed, but it didn't dispel that sense of trepidation.

The youma did not answer immediately; instead, she busied herself with what looked like a close approximation to a plateau formed within the cave. But soon enough, she shuffled her wings out of impatience (or anxiety) and addressed him without turning her head. A series of high-pitched, tinny tones came from both her back and her mouth as he spoke. "Did you like the show, General? This happens once in a while. Sometimes I come by to see how long it takes them to realize no one's coming." Afterward the youma hoisted herself atop the plateau and crossed her legs. She cupped her hands together as if obscuring an object from the general, and flashed him a suggestive, mischievous smile.

Bischofite then realized she wasn't quite sitting on the plateau, but somehow floating an inch above it. However, he refrained from inquiring about her catch. "So you're saying zat zese monsters just huddle up in zis cave on a whim, and later disperse for no reason? I find zat hard to belief'." With his ebbing sensitivity to the ominous atmosphere, Bischofite stepped backward to lean against one of the columns. His boot found water, and the splash echoed with enough depth to confirm that they stood at the mouth of a vast cavern.

"I didn't say anything about why. Did you want to know the 'why', General? Maybe you should've asked." The youma giggled, and placed a single claw to her lips.

Her attentive gaze felt stifling. Growing testy, Bischofite crossed his arms and addressed the question she consistently danced around. "Tell me why ze youma come here in droves."

His command elicited a thoughtful hum from the crow youma. As that giggle resurfaced, she reclined just slightly toward the back of the plateau. Still, she never quite touched the surface. "I've been here a long time, General. Loooong before you were born, I bet. Your face betrays your inexperience. Look at all that smooth skin beneath the paint... You haven't seen much battle, have you? No, with that fresh baby face-"

"Get on wis' it."

She huffed, and ruffled her wings as birds do in the seasons of deep cold. "I think it has something to do with this." She opened her occupied fist to reveal a dreamcatcher: a host of complex indigo threading occupied the center of its circle, and a few thick strands branched off from the body of the object. Their ends hosted cut violet jewels, much like the great, imposing crystals protruding from the landscape outside. They gave off a faint, pale glow in the cave's dank darkness. The youma held it up and spun the dreamcatcher frivolously while she continued. "I always thought about taking it, ever since I first came here and discovered this obsessive gathering ritual. It's a little boring for my tastes, but I thought, why not? As you can tell, General, there's not much to do down here but wait for a captain to come along and spirit me away."

"I want to see it," came his clipped reply.

The youma offered another laugh, this one tinted with a hint of displeasure. She displayed her entire arm to the general, palm toward the ceiling and fingers outstretched, while the dreamcatcher hung from her longest claw.

Bischofite seized it without hesitation. Before he could solicit answers toward its creation, the youma requested answers of her own.

"What are you doing down here, General?" She hadn't lowered her arm. Instead she watched him from her arm's horizon, with her mouth obscured by her bicep. "Most officers don't stray this far. They like to keep toward the citadels these days. I think they sense they're made of weaker stuff than the officers before them." Finally she lowered her arm and leaned forward in a display of avid interest. "But you're a little different, aren't you? Inexperienced, maybe, but definitely different. I smelled it on you when you first showed up. You heard me, too, but you weren't. quite. fast enough to catch me," she finished with singsong tones. Afterward she giggled, with a rash of whispers stemming from her back.

It's none of your business, he wanted to say, but the youma possessed a certain charm he hadn't seen before. If he encountered such a personality among his own kind, he might've dismissed his company as too abrasive, but... Youma held a distinct difference from humans: he needn't worry about a tide of complex emotions behind simple phrasing. Youma were streamlined. Youma lacked an interest in biting the hand that feeds.

He started with words paced slower than usual, as if still formulating the proper phrasing, but he protracted his speech as a means to survey her, as he scrutinized her features. "I did not venture to zis place in search of a youma for my missions, as you might sink. I am certain you'f seen a host of captains and generals descend to ze Rift for zat very reason - but mine is more personal in nature." The general eyed her slightly swaying foot, metronomic in its rhythm, while he continued. "I spent several weeks dreaming of ze possibility to join youma - to haf' my starseed shattered by my fellow officers or by ze indelicate hand of my promoting superiors. But zat hope dwindled when I reached ze rank of general."

The crow youma waited silently, eyes ever fixed on him. Slowly her head tilted to the side, where it rested against one shrugged shoulder.

The general continued while he pulled the gloves from his hands, digit by digit in an expertly rehearsed manner. "I did not easily adjust to zat solidified fate, as I had run out of venues to pursue a more... posthuman visage. My intentions often met wis' failure on ze battlefield. My peers declined to youmafy me out of fear of ze consequences, and I lif' wis' ze one who first attempted it. As an example himself, he would not repeat his folly to assuage my festering interest in youmafication. Wis' ze addition of additional insult to injury, I recognized zat I would never shirk my humanity. I considered myself cursed wis' it. But after I was demoted for a time, I realized I lacked ze submissive nature to obey orders wis'out objection. Unusual, isn't it? A general wis'out ze inclination to lick his superiors' boots."

Bischofite bade the topic a dismissive wave. Strangely his hand looked tan compared to her pallid skin. "But zat's tangential. Ultimately I recognized I haf' a little more use as an officer, even if I dislike ze pointless song and dance behind living as a human."

Afterward he produced the replica of his projected youma form. "I intended to leaf' zis here as recognition for my humanity."

"I knew you were different," came her abrupt reply. Initially she reached toward the mounted sculpture, but she paused with one claw poised above the head of the horrific abomination. She offered a pleading glance toward the general, which was met with a slow nod. The moment she touched the sculpture, a smile spread across her face. Slowly she placed both palms against the object before finally pulling it from the general's grasp to examine it more closely, all the while cooing her interest in the creation.

Bischofite thought that smile looked a little hungry.

"What's this? I've never seen anything like it before." The youma proceeded to study the object at all angles, having instantly forgotten about the story behind its arrival in the Rift.

"An imagining of myself as a youma." In a subconscious inclination toward symmetry, Bischofite resumed his study of the dreamcatcher obtained from the strange, vociferous youma. When he pressed a hand to the back of the woeven craft, he felt a faint heat coming off its crystals.

Silence fell on the two for a time, occasionally punctuated by Bischofite's shifts against his supporting column and the youma's frequent ruffling of her feathers. Finally she broke it entirely when she sated her curiosity for the sculpture she held. "Can I have it?" She asked finally, practically coddling the object to her midsection.

It seemed somehow fitting to donate that last lingering inclination toward youmafication to a youma herself. Where else would he have left it? At the top of a cliff, next to the dreamcatcher in this cave, in the ruined house he toppled some time ago? Finally Bischofite nodded his approval.

"Good." Another ripple of laughter lilted out of her many mouths, some whispered and others nearly screamed. She appeared giddy enough, and hopped off her makeshift pedestal with unnatural grace. "And you can keep that dusty old thing. No one ever uses it. Now be good, General. Don't lose that baby face too quickly; you'll end up old and tired like some of the others that haunted these parts." As a parting gesture, she floated on the tips of her toes and ruffled his hair between her claws. One of the ornaments therein clacked against the thick, bony carapace. She smiled, but it looked hungrier than before.

Bischofite didn't appreciate the gesture, but found little reason to dissuade the bizarre youma. He watched her strut toward the front of the cave, where he called to halt her exit. "Tell me your name before you go." A simple command, but he had reason to demand such frivolous information.

Once again the youma paused, and some time passed before she answered him. What came from her mouth was a series of sounds wholly unnatural to the human tongue. Bischofite even wondered if the youma managed to reverberate bones within her body that formed after her introduction to the world of monsters.

A moment passed before he formulated a response. He started toward her as he spoke. "I'll call you Malicious." It was the closest approximation he could manage for her true name. "If I seek to find you again, you'd do best to respond to zat name." And in turn, he offered a smile of his own - all teeth. Perhaps it was a more feral greeting he learned from the cat-youma that acknowledged him prior. He hadn't fully digested it, but it felt right.

"And yours?"

"Bischofite," he responded in passing. Soon he reached the mouth of the cave, where he teleported across the vast stretches of wasteland toward the Hall of Shadows.

The newly-christened Malicious pouted, but the acquisition of her new decoration soon dispelled her chagrin. "Oh, I will see you again, Bischofite - I like you already." She giggled, but the mouths dotting her back hissed.

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 1:38 pm

Embark, Encroach, Engulf
Word Count: 1168

Sometimes the Rift teethed on the edges of his mind with such repulsive oppression that his jaw throbbed from clenching his teeth. Sometimes its iniquitous touch seeped behind his eyes to invoke headaches so dense he considered withdrawal symptoms as a relief. Sometimes that same, stark, saturated feeling of derision toward his very presence spurred him to plunge into its depths, to invoke the secrets of lives long lost to wretched, soulless husks. Asinine or masochistic, it didn't matter. Bischofite sank into the ceaseless wreckage of the Rift for a singular reason, one more than enough to whet his insatiable curiosity toward one particularly tantalizing treasure.

Inhuman whispers trickled down from the cliffs, forming a fitting backdrop to the seething, writhing lairs of youma so innumerable that that the distant hills seemingly shifted with their collective presence. Stark and barren as it appeared, the Rift was so wholly alive. Every breath bore a charged, invigorating sense to his very core, and it only grew with mounting rank. He tasted its acidic livelihood on the tip of his tongue, where it nearly numbed from overwhelming input. Bischofite closed his eyes to the seething scene and drew a long, steady breath - with it came a nearly visible humming sensation through his very bones, his tendons, his sinew, where it burrowed into the marrow and nearly changed him from the inside out.

As if, by lingering in the Rift, he might ascend to a monstrous state.

But the general knew he had no right to stay. He knew where he belonged, after agonizing months spent desperately reconstructing his shattered psyche, with splinters removed due to their utterly dark outcome. The whole of the Negaverse banned him from this idea of transcendence, this evolution into a youma. No - he was to command them, to reign over them like an unsung god, if only to fit the Dark Kingdom's greater uses for him. Even with the funeral, that aspiration festered weakly within his rotten guts. He knew it. He found it. He felt it.

The whispers grew in their quiet intensity. The Rift threatened to leak into his mind fully, to precipitate its presence inside his skull and burrow into every shallow fold of his brain to retain unanimous control over his person. It ached and pleased all the same - but soon he realized that those erratic hisses lingered just behind him, and full recognition of that fact came witih a pair of black, sticky hands sinking into the feathers crowning his shoulders.

"Found you," a singsong tone followed, along with the sudden addition of significant weight to his frame. She squeezed, and the general tensed to support that weight as she lifted herself into a handstand. Soon after, she descended before him, and her wings clipped his face. She giggled, but made no move to turn around. The mouths in her back wheezed and gasped in childish awe. "I was wondering how long you'd take to return to me, General."

"Malicious." His breath lodged in his throat like a knife.

But the bird of a woman paid no outward heed to his strange and starstruck tones. "Would you like to touch them, General?" A single clawed finger raised to her lips, the youma played with her cupid's bow. Slowly a small smile edged into her features, an intrusion. An infestation.

"... What?" Slowly, audibly, Bischofite exhaled. His scrutinizing gaze settled on a host of mouths, strewn about her back like wayward missile strikes on a beleaguered landscape. One stretched to mouth a wordless gasp, another flared its lip to expose a row of unnervingly long teeth, and another yet wheezed desperately, as if to speak in tones unknown to even itself. "Don't speak in riddles. out wis' it."

"My back." The youma leaned over, birdlike and nearly mechanical in her practiced grace, while heeled legs clacked and broke the smattering of pebbles to stunt the distance between the two. Soon she felt warm fabric brush against her upper thighs, and closer still, she found the resistance from the general himself. "You were staring, weren't you? If you like them, you can touch them."

But Bischofite immediately shoved her away, his hands finding great purchase in the taut, sinewy muscle just beneath her wings. She only laughed once more, and that broken glass smile she wore finally cracked the nearly palpable enthrallment she held. The very harshness that composed his demeanor shuddered to life, and once again his cold, sharp gaze settled on her bright, mocking eyes. His fingernails slowly ate into his gloves from his tightening fist, still poised at his side. "I didn't come here to play wis' your warped back, Malicious. Were I here for some trite reason, I'd find interest in engaging your tawdry little games. But," the general raised an index finger just in front of his shoulder, and he shifted his attention to scrutinize it, as if checking for sudden distortions or changes. "I did come here for you.

"I suspect you know what it is I seek."

"You want me," she answered dully, and her countenance portrayed her disappointment, her boredom, with his venture in such sharp detail that the general nearly lost his own rigid composure. "It always ends this way, Bischofite." Sullenly, the youma clasped her hands together and cast her gaze to the ground. She seemed to sit, but nothing beyond air supported her weight. "I discover someone new, and at first it's exciting, the way they take such an interest in me like I'm just a girl again, but then they realize I'm just a youma - I'm just a tool." Her eyes expressed practiced sorrow, but inwardly the youma recognized nothing more than opportunity in his implied goals. "I thought you were different. You sounded different. You looked different. But I-"

"Don't sell me some petulant sob story, Malicious. Name your price."

Slighted, the crow of a woman straightened in her invisible seat, arms locked and parallel to her torso. She eyed him with a piercing gaze intrinsic to a predator, to a stalking beast that long surveyed and crushed friend and foe alike in this barren, animalistic wasteland. "I want to taste our enemies, General. And I want to taste the salt air again. And I want to taste something sharp. Something odious. I want to taste your derision, General. I know you have it. If I'm going to be your youma, lay everything bare for me. Trust me, darling."

The general laced his fingers together, his satisfaction apparently only in the lightening of his oppressive, scrutinizing gaze. "Drop ze pet names and you'll haf' your price. In time, Malicious - expect to see Destiny City again." His visage vanished, leaving only the sweeping expanse of the Rift sinking into the hole he left behind.

A pair of clawed hands strayed to her lips once more, where the youma pinched her cupid's bow in such delight that she drew black, viscous tar from just beneath the surface.

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Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2014 6:59 pm

Trümmerfelder (Fields of Ruins)
Word Count: 1083

Alois sat before a counter playing host to bones of differing sizes, coated meticulously in silicon to cement their form more readily. The misanthrope knew these remnants well, their shape and modified length both products of his collaborative efforts. And surely Quenton knew them in the same meticulous sense, if not more expertly given his background in anatomy. Even now, even after the countless nights spent coping with the reality of his existence, Alois came no closer to understanding the human form. If nothing else, the blonde proved a wealth of information, readily distributing it upon request or tangential relation.

Perhaps that was one of the strange quirks possessed of the man that softened Alois' caustic and coarse demeanor toward him. Despite their strange meeting and stranger subject matters spanning a host of mondays, Alois did not think poorly of the unusual and fiery man. Chewing the tip of his pen in thought, the misanthrope considered for a moment how their relations to one another stood - and how honest the label 'friend' sounded in hindsight. Alois never considered himself one for such paltry compartmentalizations of human interaction, but neither did he foster much interest in it. Even with Alexandre, their conversations often left him on the edge of irritation, be it through Alexandre's reactions or his maddeningly motherly disposition.

But Quenton? It seemed as though the blonde respected his stifling needs for standing apart from someone. He acknowledged boundaries, without reproach for stumbling across one. Additionally, he shared already a wealth of philosophy and information that Alois found worthwhile. And in return, the offered opinions from the misanthrope met with little outward resistance. Though he couldn't read minds, Alois suspected Quenton regarded his unorthodox views dismissively at worst.

Friend sounded accurate enough.

Quote:

Quenton,

If you're reading this, you're surely wondering why I could not meet with you this Monday. If you recall, I mentioned once that someone was trying to kill me. You've likely guessed it by now - they succeeded.

It is only fair that you know where your project stands, with my passing. I recently commissioned someone to design and cast the custom fittings for hinging the bones and applicable areas to yawn open for your entrance. This was done some time ago, so the package of fasteners should arrive within the coming days. If you visit frequently, you should find the package in the mailbox. They key hangs on a nail just behind the desk. I've already added the notations with accurate depictions of the newly-designed hinges into your drawings, as per his suggestions, so you should not find trouble with fitting the pieces together. As for the remainder of the project, you have access to any and all materials within the workshop to further your needs. I wish I could've been there for its completion, but... Fate got the better of me.

It feels strange to write of it in such a detached manner, like I should inherently understand some aspect of death to condone its harrowing reputation. But you would know better than I, wouldn't you? You always did.

I mentioned once before that I detested people, yet that didn't deter you from working with me. I suspect that initially you placed your goals above the irritation of working alongside someone so abrasive, but I liked you well enough after a while. But even now, when I think back to the time you said you missed me, I still suspect it was a lie. What I'm trying to say in my own distinctly repulsive manner is that your company surpassed 'tolerable' and I even started to look forward to it, and considered procrastinating on your project in favor of extending the time we needed to work together.

I didn't figure you for the type to stick around after my usefulness ran to completion.

Maybe you aren't. Maybe I'm regrettably right in that regard.

I wanted to see your project to its completion. I wanted to see what came of our collective efforts. I wanted to see you shed the dregs of your instincts to become a truer version of Feuer und Flamme. But, towards the end I realized I knew you could do it, and perhaps that was enough.

There are still unresolved issues - affairs I could not set in order before my demise. You could notify Alexandre, but he may well know what happened before you even discover this note. There's also the question of the workshop, which is paid up until the end of next month. I suggest reclaiming your project and all useful materials from the space before everything in it is liquidated by the owner. Lastly there's Faust - I was working on a collar for him earlier, and you can find it in the middle drawer of my desk. You could keep him, if you wanted, or give him to the local shelter. But don't put him on the street - I suspect you'll have a bird extinction on your hands by the end of that week.

I was never a good person, and death is such a common affair. If you wanted to discard this note and think nothing more of it, no one would blame you. I'm not around to berate you for it.

All I ask is that you persevere.

Rise to meet your potential, Quenton.

Wie ein Phönix.

Alois Scholz

After penning his signature, Alois blew lightly on the paper to dry the ink before folding it meticulously to fit into an envelope. With no love of wax stamps, the nondescript envelope lacked a respectable appearance, but did a shoddy death note to someone who he still barely knew demand such lengths? The misanthrope scoffed at the idea, laughing lightly to himself while he sealed the envelope shut.

Once he inscribed the surface of the envelope with Quenton's name, Alois used a length of tape to secure the note to the glass door, roughly at eye level. Satisfied, Alois left the workshop after setting out one last bowl of raw chicken for Faust's late night appetite.

Under the cool night air, Alois breathed a deep sigh. Somehow he felt weightless; whether it be in anticipation for the coming annihilation of the Dark mirror or the fact that he set his affairs in order, he didn't know.

Maybe he didn't need to.

"Goodbye, Quenton," he muttered aloud as he approached the dim street lamp marking the long walk toward Alexandre's house.

For once, he didn't need to smoke.

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 11:15 pm

Das Schisma
Word Count: 1100

With Quenton gone and Faust burrowed into some unseen corner of the shop, Alois sat alone in the midst of a barren workshop with nothing but the steady patter of rain for company. Hands still humming with the adrenaline lent from anger, he tried to sand to no avail. Nothing worked- not smoking, not sleeping, not toiling away at projects he suspected he'd never fully understand. His ignorance only stretched so far, and Quenton proved the catalyst that burnt through his reserves of avoidance. Burying the truth.

And he never even knew.

Simple correction. A simple ******** correction. A 'don't handle the cat like an a*****e'. Why? Why is that so familiar? Why is that such a ******** old and tired phrase? Why do you wear the lips of the dead, Quenton? And what's so damnably defective in me that I have to drive off my only chance at a functioning friendship because of simple correction? I've lived with it so long. I've spent years of my life on correction upon correction, countless people trying to 'fix' my unacceptable actions and it never stirred so much as a twitch in their direction. But you, you wander into my workshop like an old and broken ghost, barely maintaining a pulse, yet...

His throat tightened almost immediately, muscles along his mouth straining into a frown, and the tibia dropped to the floor as withered hands snaked into hair. A pained, wordless scream eked out of him, meeting no resistance from the walls and the rain and the barren flooring. Not even the cat stirred from its hiding hole. And soon afterward he drew hitching breaths while his grip pulled taut in an attempt to tear out handfuls of brittle black strands. Soon his grasp slipped away, too weak to make a difference, too little to matter, too late to prevent the culmination of all these old, trite grievances.

Curling into himself in his swaths of blankets, Alois saw only the cool darkness of the blue fabric pulled taut over his eyes. Still, he shook.

You don't know what you're doing to me. You don't care. I can't make you care, and I'm not sure I want you to. I'm not sure I know much of anything now, or if I ever did. You questioned everything I understood as fact, and in every inquiry came a barb aimed to stick beneath skin. And it did - are you satisfied? Pain is what you're looking for, and pain is what you get. You found your reaction, the one you've been digging for since the day we met, and now you left. You left me with your goddamned project, and a stranger's bones. You left me with a thousand questions about what I considered impossibilities. And worse yet, you echoed the dead.

For I've heard that same phrase a thousand-thousand times.

That's not how to properly handle a cat.
That's not how you hold a knife.
That's not how you talk to strangers.

I've long learned that everything I do is wrong. Inherently wrong. By my committing an action, I am committing a wrong. I don't limit myself anymore - not to laws, to morals, to ethics. None of those matter when even breathing is a wrong. But you wouldn't know, because you don't feel it. You're emotionally dead, Quenton, and this whole exercise to become death is an effort wholly wasted on you. You're forking over pointless undertakings, just like him.

Construct a hollow corpse.
Do your homework.
Come home before dark.

You would call me stupid, I'm sure. Accuse me of idiocy for showing emotion in the slightest, a shark smelling blood in the water. It's easy to attack, isn't it? It comes naturally. It always did for him, so why would it be any different for you? Fine - strike. Rend flesh from bone. Taste the product of your constant quips and sharp questions and jagged inferences. Doesn't it feel good to eviscerate someone? Bischofite always thought so. How are you much different?

That's not how to properly handle a cat.
They are thinking, feeling beings.

Every day my father admonished me about the dog. You haven't walked him enough. You fed him too much. You're spoiling him instead of training him. And you matched him tone for tone, Quenton. You mimicked a man long dead in my life, someone I strove to bury from thought and feeling nearly a year ago now.

Does it feel good to know you've ruined my progress? Ruined me?

All those years spent on finding a new place to live, on his wayward temper throwing me to the streets time and again... All those nights spent learning to fend for myself, to ferret out another couch, to worm my way into people's lives whether they liked it or not. You offer your home, and it's like he's letting me in again. It's like he's standing just behind the door, his arm on the knob, staring me down like he's not quite sure that he wants to commit to this. Like he's still trying to deduce if I'm worth letting back in. Like he's trying to assess the benefit of allowing Samsa to continue residence when he assumed the form of a revolting vermin.

I wonder if Kafka ever wrote about youma.

I don't like thinking about him anymore. I never did. I don't understand why it hurts the way it does - I had nothing more to say when he died. No eloquent phrases, no vehement actions would exonerate myself of my laundry list of sins regardless. The whole affair felt bleak and pointless. I don't regret what I did - I don't regret killing him, and I know you would despise me for that. So why do I miss him now? Why does the whole of it feel so empty? Was I simply tricking myself when I thought with such certainty that I moved on?

You have a habit of breaking resolve, Quenton.

I don't know myself anymore. I don't think I ever did. All this time I thought I was pressing forward, moving, changing, evolving but I've been nothing more than stagnant. I don't know what I want, what to do, where to go, who to see, how to live. I never wanted to know. I don't want to know myself. I don't want to know other people. I don't want to know you.

With fire comes light, and with light comes the harrowing, revolting truth that you never wanted to see.

Leave me, Phönix.

I think I'm burning to death.

And it hurts.

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Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2014 9:24 pm

Das Gift (The Poison)
Word Count: 686

"Malicious?" His voice met little more than rock and cavern. The Rift stretched for miles beyond his vision, sprawling into the darkness beyond. He found no reason to venture further; lately his youma reached him before the cathedral left his sight. "Malicious," he called one last time before seating himself atop a large, jutting crystal, erupted from the ground at an acute angle. Strangely, the surface felt far too smooth, despite the humming just beneath the surface. He never minded it terribly; the atmosphere of the Rift belied an ambient energy that invigorated all those who crossed its boundaries, in a somewhat feral way.

"General! I have news for you." The typically chipper, dramatic youma bounded up the crystal readily, wings flared behind her as if necessary to provide drag. Her heels clacked to a stop behind him, and soon enough, clawed hands found thin wisps of black hair. He learned to tolerate it long ago, between her and Quenton. "Remember when you asked me to help with your ambitions? You'll be pleased with what I found. It's a little complicated, but I'm sure you can pull it off. You'll have to."

Bischofite drew a long sigh, eyes closed to the vast emptiness of the Rift. He watched fading memories dance across his lids before he chose to respond. "Out wis' it."

"Your goal... It's possible. I didn't think it could be, General. I was wrong. Pleasantly wrong." Claws scraped through hair readily, marveling at the lightness of it. She found it akin to feathers, strangely. Her wings ruffled lightly as she shifted positions, and a sigh produced a small smile across her marble lips. "It's going to be a long road, but you'll be happy with the results." I know I will be. Afterward she leaned toward his ear, words a whisper while the mouths dotting her back gasped and respired in low, haggard tones.

As he listened a grin sprawled across his features, vast as the Rift. "Excellent. So it begins, zen." He stood soon afterward, cape drifting behind him in an echo of the youma's wings. Looking down toward her, he motioned for Malicious to rise shortly before his gaze returned to the far cliffs. "We'll need resources. Manpower, obviously. Zis feat can't be undertaken alone. Zere's ze problem of convincing ozzers to join ze cause, but I suspect zat will be remedied easily enough. Malicious - haf' you heard of RiftNet?"

The youma quirked an eyebrow, but offered little change to her default pout. "No. What is it?"

"It's ze means by which we amass a force wis'out giving away my identity. Given my history, I doubt many of my peers would follow me into battle. But if we take a page from Wolframite and his pretentious White Phoenix costume, and adapt it to ze digital age..."

"Everyone will know of it and no one will know it's you. But that won't convince them to join something like this." With a plaintive huff, the youma draped an arm atop the general's shoulder and leaned against his form.

Bischofite refrained from batting her away; the thought hardly crossed his mind anymore. "Who said zey had to know ze true reason behind my intentions? Given ze anonymity paired wis' a benign excuse for summoning a force, I suspect a majority of our officers signed to RiftNet will show up. And I know of a couple generals who still maintain some misplaced trust in me... I'd say it's possible."

"But time is of the essence. You can't josh around, General."

"I know."

"How are you going to pitch it to them?" Silvery eyes turned toward the far taller man, curious in her typical whimsical fashion.

"You'll see," he muttered toward the cliffs. "Your job is simple, Malicious. You know your part. Leaf' ze rest to me."

"As you wish, General." With a teasing wave, she leapt from the crystal and started the long, trailing path toward the cliffside.

Bischofite stood alone for hours afterward, marveling at his great fortune to finally grasp the chance to reduce Destiny City to a state akin to the Rift.

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2014 11:14 pm

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Cold Hair and Lightning
Word Count: 1048

Midnight splayed across the sky in heaps of darkness, far too clouded with errant pollution to permit the stars to peer through its folds. Alois watched it many a time, gold eyes fixated on the spread of oppressive black across the horizons, with each defiant splotch of brightness illuminating portions of the city. He recognized street lamps, headlights, fluorescent bulbs perking up in response to coming night. Even now, he leaned against banister coated with hanging boxes, plants aplenty, looking out toward the darker alleys of the city. Quenton's apartment offered a unique vantage point. And as he sifted through the darkness, he spotted living shadows roiling amongst the solitude - youma, searching for prey among a city wise to their tactics. A berth of futility.

With a sigh, he retreated indoors, away from the small pockets of chaos erupting across the city. A different shift took shape at night, one offering bodies in its wake to greet the morning sun. We turn to ash by dawn, he thought to himself in the heat of inspiration. Our circadian rhythms match the tide, match the sinusoidal nature of our obligations beyond the dark. Do we change in the twilight hours? Do our shifts run short and long, overtime accrued when our missions push us far past the sprawling fingers of morning light? We thrive in stagnation, all of us. How can that be? What tempered our existences into such a whittled, wasting form? No - we never thrived in this unmoving war. We festered. We festered in sores we carved across the city, a body forever dying but never dead.

What do you think of this, Quenton? I want to ask, but I fear both sleep and silence prevent me from soliciting your opinion. If I broach the subject with you, overtly ignorant to the intricacies of this war, will I give myself away? Will you deduce that my loyalties lie deep within the earth, where buildings crumbled to the wilder side of man?

The cool dregs of night air filtered in with the misanthrope, riding along at his footsteps as the slider closed behind him. He made little noise whenever possible; Quenton slept soundly enough, but his schedule brimmed with activities heaped upon obligations that demanded small reprieves like these to maintain his undying devotion. He knew how to push himself beyond limitation, and Alois appreciated that. However, during the blonde's impromptu slumber, Alois felt wakefulness more keenly than before. Finally he retreated to the bed where his lover slept on exceedingly rare occasion, clamoring to remember whether encouraged to retire for the night or simply tricked into lounging for purposes of watching a prostrated companion succumb to dreams. Idly he wondered if Quenton even dreamed anymore. Did he need to? Want to?

Cold fingers brushed across the mans back like mist upon the ground. His threadbare shirt capitulated easily enough, rippling toward the nape of his neck to expose pale, unmarred skin beneath. Slight ridges raised in protest, jutting towers of rib and vertebrae marking small monuments to his adamant determination. For a few moments, Alois favored these features, nailed fingers circling about the more prominent bones before coasting across his ribs in sweeping gestures. As a taxidermist, skin is my specialty. I shape it to my needs, whether it be an echo of the viscera once lost or an entirely new design befitting creatures of nightmare. I've touched opossum, ferret, deer, pheasant, and all manner of fish both saltwater and freshwater. I know the touch of scales to my fingers. I know furs, I know hide, I know pelts. And now I know your skin, Quenton - I know its give and its pull, its elasticity and its resistance to damage. I know how much strength my bite needs to pierce through, and I know how reddened it becomes from nails raked across its surface. I know how high its swelling rises when heavily irritated by my touch. I know how best to stitch you back together.

I could study you a thousand times and still know nothing. It's peculiar, but fulfilling.

Closing his eyes, the german's hands found a position well-memorized from years of studious pursuits. Middle C lay not far from his final visible rib, touched by the side of his left thumb. Afterward his fingers ghosted across the surface of the blonde's warm skin in quiet recital of scales, both major and minor - small exercises to brush the rust from skills so far abandoned. As his fingers danced across the surface, working to a tune wholly imaginary, his touch grew firmer but not yet harsh as bone against ivory. A pianissimo tune, perhaps, came a thought half-suggested as he opened his eyes.

Sometimes I fear that you're not even real. His playing slowed to notes quartered, occasionally halved. Soon he adopted a cyclical nature to the frequency of notes and their division to fit a measure - clustered, spaced, sharpened, flatted, staccato, legato. Sometimes I wonder if I lost my mind long ago, shortly after this induction to the ranks of the Negaverse. Ida was right - this corruption is rotting out the last of me. Were it not Thraen to end my fate, this disease would surely follow. Even so, I don't regret it. Some lives are meant to be turbulent, just as others are meant to be peaceful.

Would you be my anchor point? This ocean is too vast for me. These storms will snap my sails and reduce my hull to tatters. Without direction, I seek them out. I don't mind drowning, but I don't want to do it alone. Stay with me.

Even if it's just for a little while.

The last of the notes petered out to his touch, ever softer until his index finger hovered just above the surface of his lover's skin. "An elegy," he whispered to the cold still of night. Finally palms smoothed across his companion's back, followed by forearm braced against shoulder blades as Alois rested his head against Quenton's lumbar region. His legs found comfort in curling up near the sculptor's side. The steady rise and fall of breath produced a pendulum predictability that lulled the misanthrope toward sleep. He didn't fight it this time.

"But I don't need to mourn anymore."

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Posted: Thu May 01, 2014 8:46 pm

The Ruminations are Mine, Let the World be Yours.
Word Count: 1296

Alois woke to the rhythmic, grating horn of a car alarm echoing across the street, coupled with a wailing siren alongside its monotonous tone. Mind in a daze, he slipped from the sheets and approached the large window, hands steadied on the sill as he looked out toward the glossy spheres of lights not yet in focus. And once their vast radii pared down into pinpricks, Alois searched the scene below for any indication of the source - a skittering youma, a bounding senshi, an escaping Negaverse officer. However, he saw nothing more than the police car's red sweep across a university building down the T intersection that Quenton's apartment faced. Soon his mind caught up with his location, and he surmised that the activity stemmed from a fraternity party exceeding its allotment for drunken antics.

Sighing, Alois shut the window to stymie the flow of cool air. For a moment, he closed his eyes' something felt amiss. And as he about faced to scan the apartment, he realized the source of his unease: Quenton was no longer in sight. Not studying at his desk, not reading in one of his chairs, not in the kitchen mulching peeps for Faust's insatiable appetite. Nowhere.

"Where could you haf' gone at zis hour, Quenton?" Yet the empty apartment offered no answer to his inquiry. Instead the walls stared back blankly from behind their burdens, broached as shields for secrets long kept. "You don't haf any classes zis late at night, do you?" A glance toward his battered cell phone confirmed the late hour of one in the morning. No - the campus shut down long before then, with the soul sources of life stemming from the very cause of the commotion outside. Considering that Quenton found such activities as an affront to his sensibilities, Alois doubted that the man chanced venturing out into one of those charnel houses of ubiquitous debauchery and idiocy, though Alois caught himself considering a quick visit to confirm the blonde's absence and swipe a few beers.

Another curious absence drifted to mind as he started toward the kitchen. For once, he heard no grunt or meow from his irritating feline companion, Faust. Perhaps Quenton took him to the vet? No, not at this hour. Alois figured he shut the cat outside when he closed the window, and troubled himself no further over Faust's whereabouts.

But Quenton...

The misanthrope's eyes darkened in contemplation. Where are you now? When we agreed to this, I told you that I thought you'd scamper off on me. And at this hour, I can think of no other reason beyond the fantastical. Are you cheating on me, Quenton? You are, aren't you? That has to be the reason... But you're never one to hide behind a lie. I don't think you know how. And the alternative... You can't be living as I do, idling between lives while making progress in neither. No - that shouldn't be your fate. Please... Even if it's a delusion to write you off as a simple civilian beyond all this, let me believe it a little longer.

You're supposed to be my anchor point.

The haunted husk of the boy drifted from one space to the next, from the barebones kitchenette to the bathroom still invariably rooted in the 1920s. A clawfoot bathtub sat against the wall just beneath a brass fixture that jutted outward intrusively. The walls around its fixture points cracked over time and sported years of puttying over the holes. Chocolate tiles sprawled outward beneath his feet, set in herringbone uniformity as some lukewarm attempt toward adding depth to the room. To his right stood the sink, and above it the medicine cabinet he rifled many a time looking for secrets, satisfactions, salvations.

Even now his eyes drifted toward the mirrored cabinet, only to catch sight of the swaths of black looming over his pale, sunken face. He looked away before recognition coaxed a sneer of disgust. You could cheat if you wanted to, Quenton. I am not your keeper - nor would I want to be. I can't place a bell jar over flames, not without starving them of life. I couldn't - not to you.

But I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to stray. Even anchors pull beneath the tides.

Alois' gaze strayed toward the tub where a plastic curtain curved inward behind his recently added white cloth overlay. He remembered avoiding the shower relentlessly until he managed that scrap of overpriced fabric. Yet, even now, bathing held little appeal. He found hardly any motivation toward it lately, and he cared too little to find out why. Perhaps Quenton's assertions toward his lack of acceptance of, but expectation for, death still held true. Perhaps he was just worried, as he always was when he woke up to the deep of night alone.

On every night he woke up near the sculptor, eyes upon him or arms about him, he remembered skipping patrols.

Finally Alois crossed the threshold where he stood indecisively for many moments, and with great reluctance, paused in front of the mirror. What he saw revolted him in the same manner as always: sunken eyes traced by fingers of lackluster sleep, cheekbones too prominent through terrible dietary habits, gaunt cheeks, thin lips, an inability to smile toward any appreciable capacity. And his eyes - always they shot between utterly dull and overly feverish. Had he no middle ground? It didn't matter; regardless of how often he studied the visage in the mirror, his conclusions always amounted to the same - what he saw held little in common for how he knew himself.

Was that why Quenton left? Was that why he studied half to death before he passed out at his desk? Was that why Alois often woke to the man making breakfast while lingering traces of glasses indentations wore on his face? With a seething sigh, Alois parted from the mirror and headed back into the living space, where Quenton's sketchbook sat atop a shelf otherwise adorned with books and cat prints. He usurped it from its resting place easily enough, and thumbed through the pages to settle on the single sketch he loathed above all other works completed by the blonde.

Even now he found the figure loathsome in its twisted languor across the bed, all bones and sharp angles - like his personality. After plucking an HB pencil from the wood vase nearby, the now fully-awake misanthrope seated himself in one of the chairs facing the window and set to work sketching furiously across the page. Soon bones withered and wilted to sprawling appendages, warped and bulbous depictions of organs nearly bursting beneath skin stretched taut to the point of cracking. What was once hair became a blackened pool, utterly devoid of sheen - a veritable hole. And from the back of the now-deformed monstrosity sprouted numerous elongated hands, all stretching toward the top of the page - yearning, scraping toward some undepicted salvation just beyond the edge of the paper.

You see me for what I am, don't you? This human skin isn't fooling anyone. No wonder you leave me at nights, Quenton. I don't blame you, but next time my arms will hold a little tighter.

And tighter.
And tighter.
And tighter.

And once I feel your bones snap beneath my grasp, your organs wear thin and tear beneath my grip, I'll know you won't leave me next time.

We could become one, you and I.

I could crush you into me.

We'd be perfect.

Flawless.

And we could burn together.

Satisfied, Alois returned the sketchbook and pencil to their proper homes before slipping back beneath the sheets, mind temporarily assuaged of the sculptor's lack of presence in his own apartment.

Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 10:23 pm

Housecreeping
Word Count: 2239

We never dated, he thought as he laid atop the rumpled bed. A thin hand, fuller than once before, splayed beneath his cheek. Black haloes of hair sprawled out across the pillow, curling down its edges before dancing atop the white expanse of bed. Even now, he lay half-tangled in the sheets, the simple white fabric stretched across one leg before coiling around his hop toward his stomach. His clothes still laid in a heap on the floor, a reminder that he fell asleep before he could reclaim some modesty. He suspected that his roommate never minded. I know nothing about you. The thought came as tired gold eyes peered through the filtered morning light toward the privacy blind separating the kitchen. I know little more than this bed and topics discussed while we worked in tandem on your project.

You're a welcome stranger - little more than a one night stand. I want to change that, Quenton. But... I've never been very good at the twenty questions game. My methods follow a different path. Finally he pulled himself upright from his position on his stomach, and the sheets soon pooled in his lap forming taut spikes of material framing his figure. Afterward he slipped out of their embrace, bare feet touching old carpet. Faust meowed but he paid the cat little heed. Initially he considered dressing again but ultimately settled for wrapping the sheets about his waist in a tight knot. It held firmly enough against bony hips.

What can I learn from your home, Quenton? How does a sculptor like you live? Surely there's some near and dear portions of past littered about. You're not as cold as I first thought - my impressions were invalid. His search began with the shelving just above the bed, which featured little more than a glasses case, phone charger, and strange tooled leathers. Upon closer examination, Alois turned over some of the leathers in his hands before the purpose came vaguely familiar - hair ornaments, restraints, decorations. He knew not the name, but the function stood vaguely familiar. Most lacked dust, so they likely found use relatively often.

Dissatisfied with his findings, Alois wandered further to the bookcases on the opposite wall. he froze for a moment when he heard the sheets drop unceremoniously to the floor, the light weight tugging against his body now slack. Suddenly he realized he wasn't breathing. A state of half-dress shouldn't be this difficult. Just don't look down. Consider it borrowed skin. Focus.

Finally he set his sights on the myriad of reading material that the sculptor kept most meticulously. Alois touched various spines with hands well-acquainted with novels of nearly every binding. His books stood in varying states of preservation, with some spines weak and torn while others stood strong with very few creases. Likely he bought all his books used - if nothing else, Quenton led a frugal life. Authors ranged from the familiar John Locke, Descartes, Plato, Machiavelli, and Yeats to more unfamiliar authors like Vladimir Nabokov or Yves Marchand and Romain Meffr. Alois suspected that Quenton was wholly unfamiliar with casual reading or flippant stories. Just as well - they never quite suited him.

"And music..." He mused to himself as his fingers touched varying books on music theory and composition, though largely in medieval histories. "I'd ask if zere was somesing you never studied, but I'm fairly certain zat answer is no." Out came the scripted Gregorian chants, resting heavily enough in his hands as he thumbed through the pages. Though he recognized several Latin words from a rusted background in Christianity, several more remained unfamiliar - simply phonetics set beneath the staff.Afterward he replaced it on the shelf, noting that no outline of dust remained to outline its proper home.

Faust finally padded toward the misanthrope before sitting in a petulant huff. His bored gaze strayed from Alois entirely. "If he has copies of chants, Faust, he must know how to sing. I wonder if he practices; I'f never heard him before. Perhaps it was an abandoned pursuit." Fingers strayed into the cat's black fur, received neither warmly or coolly; he may as well have never touched the cat at all.

The remainder of space on the bookshelf sat occupied by various art supplies: from watercolor pencils to oils, conte crayons to charcoal, and several papers both handmade or weighted appropriately. Always an artist... But why would an artist demand total control over his body? I thought surrendering oneself to whims was often considered 'inspiration'. I never understood them. Maybe that's another reason why you're such a puzzle, Quenton V. Marinus. I'm not even sure what the V stands for, either. Electing to avoid disturbing the pile of art supplies, he turned his attentions to a shelf not terribly far from the bed, though Faust found little reason to tag along.

All the better for my sanity, he thought dryly.

Still more books sat atop the shelf, including a sketchpad Alois recognized well enough, and a stationary set with a cup laden with pencils sitting atop its surface. After pulling the sketchbook from its proper place, he paged through the first portions to discover unfamiliar faces, rather clean work bereft of graphite-laden fingerprints or stains from food or drink. Pressing further, he came across a sketch of Alex. I wonder if you drew him while you were dating. You must've. Did you date these others, too? Or are they friends? Family? Are these people important to you? There's no notations - no clues to determine who they are beyond faces that demanded some measure of your time.

Did you love him, Quenton? Am I some constant, bitter reminder of his loss as his old roommate? His foil? Fingernails slid down the page, directly through the sketch's eyes before framing either corner of the mouth. Alois sighed, seething. Would you cry if you knew I ******** him? I'd tell you if that outcome was a certainty. But... I suspect I wouldn't be here if you considered him so fondly. What am I compared to that boy, but a wretched cockroach? I bear none of his qualities - I'm not nice, not considerate, not obsessed with art and elegance and aesthetics. I'm not generous or proper. We're nothing alike - so why pick me? Because he's unavailable, and I'm an easy lay.

Alois whisked the page away, gaze falling next to the sketch rendered while Alois slept the first morning. Dirt, he thought bitterly. you drew dirt atop your bed. Detritus complete with crumpled wrappers resembling bones. It's not idealized - you're not deluded. You know what you've invited into your home, to an extent. If this is how you see me... Stifling the thought, he turned the page. Still more sketches followed, some concepts for sculptures complete with dimensional notations and materials, while others more detailed renderings of other work. None divulged much about the blonde save for his enthrallment with art and expressions.

The sketchbook returned to the shelf in exchange for the stationery set, after carefully removing the supplies covering its lid. Upon popping it open, Alois discovered a collection of photographs and letters among miscellaneous pens, stamps and paper. He took a seat on the floor directly in front of the shelf to rifle through the contents, and a thin, crooked smile seized his countenance once he stumbled across a particularly telling photograph.

The picture itself sported nothing of interest to an unaffiliated passerby, as it lacked particularly cunning angles or subject matter that provoked awe. An estate stood in the background, an old house set in an unfamiliar land. He found little of note in its landscaping or architecture - just a particularly large house. However, in the focus of the shot stood two familiar, albeit young figures along with a stranger - presumably a relative of theirs. Quenton looked quite youthful, less tired, with hair of a more manageable length (Alois consistently questioned how he survived the night without that monstrous blonde mane coiling about his neck and choking the life out of him). The other figure... Stroud? Her hair looked different - darker. The mood of the photo spoke enough about their relations with one another, as they all appeared ostensibly pleased with each other's company.

There's no father figure in this picture, he surmised sharply. That woman looks too old for a mother. Grandmother, perhaps? Great aunt? I can't quite tell. Where are your parents, Quenton? Where are Stroud's? A quick rifle through the remaining photos provided no evidence of a couple. They might be dead. Wouldn't be a surprise in a city like this. Perhaps orphaned, estranged, foster care, simple disdain. I never kept a photo of mine either. Alois frowned slightly, a sudden crestfallen feeling pervading his mood. Finally he retired the photograph, only to peek through the handful of letters. Again, nothing terribly telling - the correspondence indicated that the sender was his grandmother, and cared (as expected) about his well-being. No mention of deaths in the family, of Quenton's parents, of truly anything dramatic or life-changing - nothing to indicate the origins of his current goals.

With a sigh, Alois replaced the letters in their envelopes and shut the stationery box. You're almost as good as I am at keeping secrets, Quenton. I'm left with far too little to learn more about you here. Must everything be discerned in your company? How troublesome. If I had to guess, your current course came from philosophical studies, and those alone. How... Huh. This is ridiculous. Here I am pawing through your apartment, nosing around for some scrap of treachery committed by or to you, like some bored busybody. Why? What's the point?

Or am I just doing this because I miss you? How deplorable.

There's nothing here for me - no medications indicating a crippling illness, no photos with faces scratched out, no urns full of ashes. You carry your troubles with you, don't you? Breathing a sigh, Alois stretched out next to the wooden box. Fingernails traced the thin gap beneath the lid, almost tenderly. You live here alone, and yet this is all you choose to surround yourself with. This, and me. All these things... What do they mean to you, Quenton? Are these fond, cherished memories? Are you keen on those people? Or is this place just an isolation point for study and practice?

Maybe I'm nothing more than an assignment to you. Screw Alois, due on the eighteenth. Glean fondness from a misanthrope, due on the twentieth. Don't be late - we don't accept late work here. I don't like it, Quenton... But I do. To be used - I am useful. Repurpose me as you like, or I'll find my own ways to fit your tasks. I've always wanted to see your success, though I viewed your failure in equal interest for a time.

You are the last person I will ever be with, Quenton. I won't survive this a third time.

An idea struck him soon afterward, and Alois straightened up to crack the box open once more. Inside he removed a calligraphy pen and scrap of parchment - which he noted as terribly like the blonde - before using the surface of the box as a makeshift writing desk.

Quote:

Quenton -

I don't know how often you open this box. I don't think it matters. Someday you will discover this letter, maybe in the middle of March, when the sun lingers high in the sky and an uncharacteristic humidity plagues the campus from the rains just prior. Maybe you've holed up after a long study session on the earliest art movements, and some bizarre instinct urges you to check this box. Maybe you just needed another pen.

I wonder if I'm long gone by the time you're reading this.

If I'm still alive, still around, still asleep in your bead as you read this clandestine correspondence, I have a task for you. No - a test. If you still find even a scrap of attraction for me left somewhere in your body, some heartstring that plays a weakened tune by reading my words or mouthing my name... I urge you to undertake this trial. It is every bit an honor to me to complete the task as it is an unconscionably painful tribulation for you.

Since we first met, you involved me in a curious project - one intended to assist you in bringing your body wholly under your control. This project... It's the basis for our continued interaction with each other, isn't it? You're not one to waste time on trite fantasies, Quenton - I suspect I hold little more for you but a few new experiences and the capacity to complete your project. Once it's finished, my final task starts:

I want you to kill me.

Alois hesitated soon after penning the last phrase, the cap of the pen pressed to his bottom lip in contemplation. Though half-written, he found little reason to continue the note. Instead, he capped the pen and replaced it to its original spot and crumpled his note soon afterward. In a last fit of consideration, he tossed the paper inside before shutting the lid and setting it atop the shelf once more, crowning it with the cup of pencils.

At least I keep a lock on it, Quenton, he thought before following Faust into the kitchen.

*Note written in German

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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 11:17 pm

Traumschwere [Heavy Dreams]
Word Count: 884

"I find it a little unnerving to admit zis, but... I'f always been apprehensif' toward finishing zat project. I sought... Once we complete it, once you can wear zis corpse about your shoulders like a well-worn cocoon, I would never see you again. You'd haf' no furzer use of me." And I suppose you truly don't, he thought bitterly as he stared into the pot of simmering water. Bubbles collected at the stainless steel base, with few rushing toward the surface. The tinny popping noise intrinsic to its heating murmured as a background. The hair on the nape of his neck stood on end.

No response filtered back from the blonde.

Sighing, Alois snapped a handful of spaghetti noodles and rested the lot against a paper towel. He plucked one from the pile, examining it meticulously before he bit into the raw noodle. It tasted chalky, like nothingness. Flavorless, insubstantial. "I was surprised when you didn't kick me out afterward. You... remind me of my dad, sometimes. Maybe it's nossing more zan a few mannerisms here or zere. It's not important." His shoulders dropped, mouth creased downward in quiet morning.

The water rose to a low boil.

"I'm talking to myself, aren't I?" Alois tried to laugh, but only a hollow sound crept from his throat. It left his nerves on edge. "You'f never been one to say much, but since you donned zat shell of a corpse... You'f spent a lot of time in meditation, Quenton. I haven't seen you eat in quite some time now. It's been sree days - no food or water taken zat I'f noticed. No classes attended. No domestics, no dates, nossing at all but unending focus. For days." Finally he dropped the dry noodles into the boiling water, which ceased its frothing rage for a few moments. Seemingly satisfied, he adjusted the heat appropriately before departing from the kitchen, toward the pair of chairs in the living space.

"I'm sad." The statement came with more weight than he would've liked, a weight resting in his eyes and throat. Finally he regarded his lover, as always perched in his chair, outwardly a corpse while inwardly fully alive. The blonde hair found no containment, yet no other strip of the sculptor's skin showed - his true corpse, bent to a will unwavering. Even now, he offered no response.

Alois found it somehow comforting.

Finally he crossed the distance of the room, which stretched to an uncanny length that left him feeling unconscionably far from his lover despite dedicated pacing. he'd counted the steps before: 12 to suit the room, depending on stride. In haste, though...

Once he reached the chair, Alois took a seat crosswise in Quenton's lap. The blonde offered no response, not beyond the simple shift of body beneath new weight. Each hand sat slackened against the arms of the chair, while his head rested against its back. His throat bore a choker of sorts, fashioned and painted to resemble the skin of the dead. He remembered hand-painting the pale blue veins that ran through the length of it. Carotid and jugular, now wholly empty beyond thought.

His only clue to his lover's continued life was the steady course of air from his nose - the rhythmic sounds of breathing lending their own anchor to his frayed nerves. Alois ceased grinding his teeth, though he knew not when he started - only that he did. "You'f been in zere long enough, Quenton. You need to eat. I know you'd chide me all ze same if I skipped meals as I did before. Consider it role reversal at its finest." Yet no laugh came from his wit, and Alois found no reason to hesitate further. Considering that his lover remained as unmoving as his sculptures, Alois suspected he lacked all inclination to strip the makeshift corpse from his body.

"Come on, Quenton. It's been too long since I'f touched you're skin. I'm starting to forget what it feels like." A quaver crept into his voice toward the end, but Alois busied himself with unlatching the custom fittings holding the stomach of the corpse together. Each clip came unclasped readily enough, the brass glinting beneath lamplight. "I never sought I'd say zis, as I'f always found great comfort in solitude, but I'm starting to get lonely. You'f ruined me, Quenton." A pause, and gold eyes searched the closed lids behind the mask pleadingly. Laugh, quip, sigh... I don't care what it is, Quenton. Do something.

Finally the last fitting came unclasped and the hinges groaned just slightly in their newness when he peeled back the layer of synthetic meat. The wet shine of red on soft tissue gleamed back at him, and he saw something shift just beneath the abdomen area. Puzzled, Alois reached toward the mess and tugged a coil out for examination.

It felt warm. Soft. A shudder struck him suddenly, and his throat closed in a

Alois shot bolt upright in a cold, clammy sweat, breathing rapidly through his parched mouth. Immediately he looked toward his hands, scrutinizing them for any flecks of blood or hints of viscera once looped around his fingers. Nothing. Only the cold moonlight struck across his skin like irrevocable stains on the psyche.

Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 8:59 pm

Gelobtes Land [Promised Land]
Word Count: 1339

"Quenton."

The bleary haze of morning sun filtered through the window, unobstructed by curtains. It lit near his cheek, illuminating the rumpled sheets to painful brightness, as the lone occupant sought to adjust. He grunted softly. Alois pressed the heel to his hand to one eye before fingers slipped through dark hair, disentangling the mass that lay across the pillow. Finally he sat upright, a thin curtain of black to obstruct the scathing sun. Already the morning felt too bright. How long had he spent in the Rift? He couldn't remember.

"Quenton..." Alois twisted toward the pair of chairs near the window, but they sat still and unoccupied in the day's silence. A glance toward the kitchen confirmed more of the same. No bustling activity emanated from the bathroom. Has he left already? Leaning back, the misanthrope regarded the shelving above the bed, scrutinizing the platforms for signs of the sculptor's daily necessities. Wallet and keys sat in their typical position. The glasses case remained untouched; a simple shake determined Quenton's superfluous eyewear sat inside. He knew not to leave without his cell phone at bare minimum. Something happened. This isn't like you. You know better.

Finally Alois drew himself from bed, bare feet touching worn carpet. What drove you from your home, Quenton? And where would you go? You never spoke of family to any meaningful capacity; you declared that people are not fond of you. Where might you retreat in these times? The workshop? Your studio? As he glanced toward the floor for his pair of boots, Alois sighted a tattered hem that whispered across the tops of his feet. A deep charcoal, torn as if by bare hands alone... Hands retreated to his waist, where he found a red sash to meet his grip. Further up, most of his chest stood exposed and pale to the naked eye. Loathing recognized his uniform long before he did - a cold fury that festered far beneath his ribcage once run through with Iscariot's bitter blade.

Yet as he reached toward his shoulder blades for the recently familiar weight, he found nothing but air. Nailed hands held in front of himself fostered no warped visage, no claws sprouting out of the nail beds. No mask lighted on his face. No oily black carapace crusted over the nape of his neck. Human, he thought with some measure of relief.

I have to find him.

Urgency carried him out the door, beyond the washed white walls that reflected the summary of trysts, of tussles, of transients within the battered compound. He fled down stairs, feet meeting concrete with no thought to damage incurred. The streets stood largely empty; in morning light, he often found these roads nigh empty of the students who often traveled their paths. It didn't matter now. Down the street he ran, past the rare individual frozen in action unworthy of his attentions.

The clusters of motionless individuals thickened as he approached the art building.

Finally he sighted long blonde hair, stretched to the hips of the lanky individual sporting it. Alois knew every angle of the man, every strand of hair and the way it curled about the German's fingers in the midst of slumber. Alois knew the way his shoulders curved, how his neck tasted, how his eyes felt when they skimmed over the top of the misanthrope. And Alois knew the way his throat strained in frozen screams, often tainted by breathlessness. He knew tones, phrases, praises.

He knew the very elasticity of the man's skin from sleepless nights spent scrutinizing his lover to painstaking degrees.

Alois' pace slowed to a light jog until he found his proper position at the man's side. The skulls and masks clacking together along his hip never mattered much anymore. "Quenton," he called breathlessly, yet no answer came from scarred lips.

Looking toward his lover, a numbness paced with the bitter frost of morning (mourning?) ate through his veins to his very extremities. Eyes dilated at the sight; for a moment, he could think of nothing more than the blatant state of horror spanned across the stoic sculptor's visage, how the scar cracked in half with lips parted to a gape. This... Can't be real. Finally he reached toward his lover's countenance with the intent to brush away what fallacies lingered in stern features. And the moment he touched that frozen skin, cold as stone wrought into sculpture, he realized the gravity of the situation.

As he turned, the Saarlander found a coursing, wretched column of veritable derision pouring toward the sky. It writhed and seethed in thick stretches, taken by silent screams. It drew breath from all around it with each life form stolen into hollowness. Everyone stood petrified. Everything looked toward this rotten, blackened mass seeking to rend the sky in half.

The tower of Babel, he thought in quiet awe. A warm hand found the stony shape of fingers beneath his grasp. We could've reached the stars, you and I. We could've razed heaven with every last scrap of insight we wrenched from the hands of life. This... This is our tower to climb, is it not?

And soon it burst. The blackened flash struck through all that stood before it. Buildings shaped in steel and reinforced concrete crumbled to ash in a matter of seconds, and those stony figures offered no further resistance. Pavement stripped from the earth in flaked and chunks, but soon even those dissipated beneath the heady power of the blast. Even as Alois blanched, even as he rose palm ineffectually to block its incomprehensible chaos, he somehow remained rooted to the spot with nothing more than breathless incredulity to credit to the blast.

As his gaze swept his new surroundings, only one word fit appropriately: nothingness. He stood amongst a wasteland now, a mimicry of the Rift without youma or crystals to mar its perfect ruin. At his side, a sweep of ash rendered the last of a love that rotted through his heart. Overwhelming pain mixed with overwhelming awe as the lone living figure collapsed to the ground, tattered cloth pooling around his legs.

A realization came with wracking mourning as he pressed a hand to the gnarled scar on his chest. This wasteland knows the wretched dead only as dust riding the fading tongues of wind. You would not thrive here, Quenton. Your pens would never taste the vision of trees in full bloom, of lovers prone across your sheets... If it would taste paper at all. That blackened column painted this world with the finality behind chaos - when every state of life meets entropy for its limitless stretch of nothingness. You were meant for better days, Quenton - moments spent in lovers' arms, in studios with the earthy scent of clay to offer company.

It hurts no more to lose you a second time. How... Trite. I feel cheated. Is my own mind so divested from our parting that it cannot comprehend a greater pain? Am I so broken?

No.

To see all endeavors meet fruition produces a joy as great as sorrow deep. Pride to match pain. Relief to match regret. I would devour your ash, Quenton, for you to know this dichotomous position, but so paralyzed am I by its sheer power that I cannot bear to tear my eyes from this scene.

There's nothing more perfect than this.

Bischofite woke slowly, the faint whispers of air teasing his senses while swatches of color slowly took shape. He heard the faint cuts of consonants hanging on breath behind him, and a small smile teased the corner of his lips. "Quenton..." Breathing a sigh, relief flooded through the very core of him; his muscles visibly relaxed with the departure of duress.

Until he discerned the words themselves.

Hate. Pain. Rancor. Vile. Seethe. Hurt. Harrow. Blank.

Yet the last word borne on toneless breaths coaxed a scream so strangled in rage and sorrow that he curled his own hands about his neck to cut it off.

Quenton.

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Posted: Thu May 29, 2014 9:05 pm

Nur ein Sandkorn [Only a Grain of Sand]
Word Count: 1582

The creature sat with knees pulled loosely to chest, arms draped about their scrawny bones while he rested forehead to knees. His wings splayed outward slightly, just enough to keep the tips of their fingers from scraping across the floor and agitating their fresh tenderness. For hours he sat in that posture, thoughts awash in turbulence over his fate well-earned through nights upon nights of treachery.

I am at an impasse. I know not which path to take. The left bears a broken path, rocky and stern, stretching over miles unseen with the naked eye. It sports treachery as its one comfort among so many sheer cliff faces and jutting, rickety bridges to mark progress. Nothing grows on that long and winding road but the buds of the most tenacious plants toward the end - and even then, they grow thorns to cut the weary passerby. The right offers everything I've always known - Saarland trees in fullest bloom, snow underfoot without the cold that bites the wanderer. Streams to cross lightly, lilting over a winding path. Icicles stretch from the branches with long fingers, reaching to brush coats and scarves and locks of hair from those who pass beneath. And from there, the path grows to a most wild and wondrous proportion, limited only by the imagination.

I ache so terribly now, standing here at the crossroads. Where am I to go, Quenton? Where will I meet you one last time, Phönix, where I can see you birthed anew?

Jarosite approached me with palpable derision, with his words cut to deadly point and boots polished for broken bones. He knew only seething anger at my presence, and in those silver eyes I found no interest toward my continued existence. He cursed my very morals, my ideals, my intentions as a megalomaniac's passing fancy. He knew me only as an ant - no, as dirt. He cited aims far beyond my reach - longevity, a world safe from senshi, protection of allies. Things I don't have or privileges far out of my reach. I don't belong to that world anymore. Would he want me dead? No - his words invoked suffering.

He would choose the Left Path.

Persephone I found on an overwrought walk, some misbegotten journey meant to calm my festering nerves. She slapped me out of sheer disgust toward my actions - toward the intention to reduce her home to a second Rift. Everyone's home lingers there. Jarosite. Persephone. Buddingtonite. Krishna. Orah. Quenton. Everyone lives there - beneath the sun, in turning seasons and cycles. They find their inspiration there, their love there, their deaths there. Far above me is a living planet... one that precludes my presence. She agreed to bring me pieces of the life I once had, to recreate Iscariot's last gesture toward my life.

She would choose the Right Path.

And Quenton... God, how many times I could scratch his name into these stones until I had but bone left to these atrocious talons. What might he say, if he saw me now? Would it even matter anymore? Quenton is gone to me, as I am to him. We agreed to be together so long as our paths aligned, and here they broke away to lead me to this fork in the road. And his? I am certain Quenton still travels it. He's far stronger than I - has been christened as such from so much time devoted to conditioning. Purging his pathogen response, quelling instinct, surmounting pain... This is the last test I could give. My utter absence, without explanation beyond a single note. An ineffectual apology. A petty 'I'm sorry'. It's all so wretched.

I want to reach through this half-healed, sickening hole and tear out what remains of my heart. Jarosite was right - I am an ant, and Iscariot offered the Negaverse proper respite in impaling me on her sword.

Quenton deserved so much more. He deserved a life a thousand times better than anything I could offer. All my petulant, pointless efforts to assist him... How much of it amounted to any real progress? Or was I simply a massive obstacle he allowed to cross paths so that he might use me as a challenge to surmount? And what did I offer to Richard, who even now wears some practiced smile to draw in the breathless and brainless? What did I offer to Krishna, who operated with such prideful stoicism as he took to his arts? Nothing but a stint of smoke to cover the eyes, to obscure the mouth and cloud the lungs.

Hands retracted from his shins to curl against the bare skin of his chest, no longer obstructed by a pristine coat. A single, pitched noise emanated from his throat in thorough suppression of sorrow. His lips peeled back to reveal teeth in a strained grimace, as he felt every muscle in his face, neck, arms pull taut to restrain misery once again. His breath lingered in lung without escape. Nothing but darkness assailed his eyes, courtesy of dark charcoal cloth and kneecaps that fit so perfectly into eye sockets. The volume of hazy whispers at his back grew to borderline alarm, yet found no further enunciation.

I can't do this anymore. I can't. I can't survive this. I don't have Quenton's strength, or Orah's complacency, or Richard's denial. My peers find me utterly vile and wholly unredeemable, yet I can't find the wherewithal left in me to care about the state of the Negaverse anymore.

I just want to dream.

I want to dream of a world left desolate. I want to dream of all my careful intentions wrought to completion, of the myriad ranks of Negaverse agents seeing my ideals for truth, of true Chaos finding hold in this wretched city I once resided in. Buildings should stand as hollow shadows of a civilization that met its end, with living shadows flitting through windows no more than open holes. In the streets will grow foliage, nature's last bastion against the inevitable, before all dies away and rots into the broken streets. Even then, crystals sprout in their wake to house the energy to charge the atmosphere. It'll taste sharp against my tongue, clear my sinuses as a heady draw of smoke, dance across my skin like the wet atmosphere after a rain. And in the streets we would gather, all of us - the captains, lieutenants, generals - and rejoice in our collective efforts as soldiers of true chaos. With our battle won, we have but the rest of the world to steep in rampant anarchy.

And I want to dream of Quenton. I want to dream of how his hair whispered through my fingers, the many tones in which we kissed and the octaves of our sex, the scent of sandalwood that followed him everywhere. I want to dream of his ridiculous glasses and the many instances where I caught him wearing them for no more reason than aesthetics. I want to dream of the way he walked throughout his own apartment, how his gaze adopts a different measure when he studies me for all those lazy morning sketches, the smell of chai that haunts his breath before he leaves for classes. I would tease my fingers through all those worn holes of shirts he should've thrown out long ago or repurposed for something more effective. I would dream of every last breath spent against the nape of my neck, whether in wakefulness or not. I would dream of all the little moments we never had - of years spent as souls in tandem, only hours between flesh.

And it hurts.

Taloned fingers found the edges of a wound half-healed and once broken, where he prodded the rent flesh inside to taint his senses with pain anew - pain he could stomach to some appreciable degree. Fresh blood clung to his fingertips, both thick and sticky. Tar, yet not.

I would choose the Right Path, then. I could dream away the ceaseless diatribes, the surfeit of losses I sustained over the course of my disgusting career. I could whittle out hours, days, weeks in the dreamscape. I could know any path in the stretches of my imagination. I miss the taste of morning frost, how it burns just slightly to groggy sinuses. I won't have to anymore. I could dream hours of frost on the windows, of how Katarin used to press her face to the glass and leave prints of fog and moisture in her wake. All these memories... I could revisit them. Recreate them.

Slowly Bischofite lowered himself to his side, in a loose echo of the position he held once before. Hands still pressed to the healing cavity in his chest, legs still curled inward, head still tucked toward knees and wings still outstretched to afford movement. His throat pulled taut in barely constrained mournings, and the glassiness that pervaded his eyes soon leaked out his nose toward the stone beneath.

This body can rot while I dream. Soon these wings will turn to dust, these talons no more so. My body will shut down. First the fat will waste away, then muscle, then organs nonessential until only the lungs and heart still find hampered efforts. And once my heart goes, what will they find? A human, or a creature?

I suppose it doesn't matter in the end, not when I can sleep.

It's been such a long time now; I'm exhausted.

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