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by: Ichigo
Leather wings that beat with my heart
Warm, kind arms will never let go
As we fly higher until all is nothing
And this that was nothing becomes everything
A power beyond that which I once knew
Throwing shackles from the Devil and up to the sky
A flurry of feathers like snow from the Heavens
In such contrast to these misguided souls
The past was a dream, hazed by tears
I thought He who I once knew was God
Behind a veil of blood and flesh the teeth gnash
A truth shines like a beacon from that beating heart
My religion is you.
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Part I
There is a book that sits on an old dusty trunk in my room. It's cover used to be a vivid shade of red, but has now become a dull and unlively hue of magenta. Mother once told me that this book was a fragile relic, and to be careful with it as it's delicate pages were like the ashes after a fire. The fire that consumes and destroys the mind. An obsession.
As a child, I was afraid of the book. Children seem to have a better sense of the supernatural and people's emotions, as if they are more connected with the moral and empathetic sides of human nature. I outgrew my fear, and my sense of the world around me grew numb. Everything became grey -- an endless span of monochrome that licked the colorless horizon. And then my eyes fell on the book I was once frightened to even disturb the presence of.
The air was tense that day. The rain outside seemed to hold it's pitter-pattering breaths and stand absolutely still. The music mother always played slowed to a creeking moan until it finally stopped completely. The world was watching as my hand extended out for the crimson book. My eyes widened, pupils dialated, unblinking. I touched the book's leather cover, and time held it's steadfast and unwavering mark. It was just me and this enigma that stood before me.
The book sighed as I pressed my fingers against it. A throb echoed from it's pages, like a heartbeat. My hand twitched against the surface, small droplets of persiperation forming on the skin. I wanted to pull my hand back, but my fingers wouldnt move; it was as if the book had something it needed to tell them. The sweat laced up my arm and snaked around my neck. With my last bit of strength, I wrenched my away from this mysterious object, and finally the bond between it and my body had been completed. It's pages breathed a conclusive sigh, and my body tumbled in the direction I had willed it to go -- away.
That day was so long ago, but the memories still burn like the embers of passion. My fingers never returned to the surface of that book, yet my eyes swept over it's binding lustfully from time to time, as if wishing they held the power to slowly undo the seals that held this mystery closed. The book is always resting at the back of my mind, it's visage striking in my dreams. But even in the sanctity of my subconcious, I have not the power to lift the book's cover and discover that which lies within.
People have visited, and noticed the sacred object in it's lonely encasement of dust and still air. None, though, have ever reached out to it or questioned it's being. It is merely there. An unchangable fact accepted and left uninterrogated by it's observers.
But I am different. The book's heartbeat still reverberates within the bowels of my very soul. Ever since the day it seduced my mind and drew me into this blissful insanity, I have wished to know of it's contents yet have been to afraid to approach the unknown. It is merely human nature to fear that which we don't know or understand. I cannot escape my fear nor my curiousity. They are two passions, constantly at war. Without one, the other could never maintain the state in which it lives.
The color has gradually flodded back into my world. It began first with the warmer hues -- orange, red, yellow -- until one day I noticed that which I once thought was a canary melted into an icy blue jay with with unforgiving eyes. It's cry was chastising and cold. Then I realized -- this world cannot exist without the contradictions that reside within it. Just as I could not exist without the book that watched from it's constant and noble perch.
I want so much to know what lies within those two leather covers, but that chilhood instinct from years ago keeps my hand ever so hesitant. The child within me cries out every day as I paint her with the tainted mud of knowledge. Her dove-white dress is soiled and stained. But that crimson book outweighs any other intrusion that has ever been presented to the mind of the innocent. The pages threaten the naive mind with a dagger of truth, whispering stories of torture and the spilt blood of children. Blood that can never be washed. Blood that will stain the white fabric of innocence for eternity.
I know those ashen pages have the power to cut the threads of a child's being, but the obsessive passion drives me further. It presses on from behind as my feet stagger towards a fall that can never be recovered from. Teetering on the brink of insanity, only one question dances seductively through my once colorful mind.
Dareth I reach out for a second time?
Part II
It smells like cinnamon. Most of his furniture is redwood, and it glitters despite the dried rings of condinsation on the arm rests from his coffee mug. The lights are dim for he only has a few lights in the house. There's a table, big enough to seat two or three at the most, but at the moment it can barely accomidate one because of the piles of books and newspapers that are strewn hodgepodge about it's surface. Among these books is "V for Vendetta" (the copy that was released prior to the new movie) and lots of studies on weilding swords. The books are all bookmarked in multiple spots. The resident reads alot. He loves to read.
Buried within these towers of literature one can find the occasional coffee mug, for the books' reader has an unhealthy coffee addiction. It's the only thing that keeps him awake through long nights of reading and posting messages to his friends. Below the table is a laptop, closed, and a cord running from it's circuits to an outlet in the wall. The batteries were exhausted a few hours ago, and now a small green light next to the jack signifies its recharging. It hasn't been long since the laptop was abandoned, but it's owner is nowhere to be found at the moment.
The living room is small, and in it there are two large armchairs with the same redwood frames as the other furniture. The cushions are a shade of burgendy, darker in some spots than in other from the coffee stains. A T.V. sits on a stool in front of these chairs. It's an old model with a small screen and it's remote control has been lost due to lack of use. The cable box displays the channel of the news show the owner occasionally watches.
There's also a kitchen, though it is cluttered and screams its neglectance. The dishes are piled lazily in the sink along with forks scattered about the counter. The refridgerator is near empty, though atop its exterior is a menagerie of business cards from assorted resturants in the area. Among these cards is the occasional picture, many of them drawn by himself. In the cupboards, there is an abundance of coffee mugs and the only appliance plugged in on the counter at the moment is his coffee maker, brewing at this very moment.
There is a small flight of stairs, and two more rooms at the top. The door on the left is the guest bedroom, and aside from a small cot and a dresser, it is practically empty. The bed, surprisingly, is neatly made, and the bureau empty. No one resides in this room right now, but since he has guests so frequently, he decided that he couldn't be a good host without a spare room.
The other door on the right is closed. The doorknob is tried and proven to be unlocked. The door creaks a bit, revealing probally the largest room in the house. It's carpeted with solid scarlet, and on the walls hang monochromatic photographs from around his city. They are simple photos, but peacfeul at the same time. The bureau is half opened, and a pair of pants turned inside-out lays near the door to the bathroom. The lights are off, and not much is visible. A bookshelf stands against another wall, filled to the brom and overflowing onto the floor below it. Mugs are strewn about the room not unlike the rest of the house, and in the middle of it all is a twin-sized bed.
The sheets match the carpet, and the figure encased in the covers mumbles something in his shallow sleep, lost in an unpleasant dream of his highschool years. The grumbling subsides, though, and the room is filled with the soft sound of his breathing.
Then I realize that I am the intruder upon this defenseless prince's castle. Driven by curiousity, I step towards the man slumbering in the bed only a few yards in front of me. My hands reach out to the covers, but before I lift them, an image flashes across my mind -- a dusty old book upon a seemingly-prehistoric and equally-dusty trunk. It has never been opened before, it's pages never marred by my unworthy hands.
I withdraw my pleading hand, and suddenly, I awaken from this dream, breath fast and eyes a-flutter.
I ask my god when I'll ever get to perceive this enigmatic visage and read the pages of it's mysterious past. But, just this once, with his lips unparted and eyes unblinking, my god has fallen into an intentional silence.
Part III
There was the book, and, I, directly in front of it, hand outstretched and hovering above it's cover. The piano music from below me played steadily, my hand shivering with the notes of it's sweet cries. I was overcome with a nostalgic strength, my eyes fluttering a shower of tears on the floor below me as my hand swept a blanket of dust from the book's cover. A salty droplet brushed these soft lips, which suddenly turned up into a small smile as the drop fell onto the cover of the book.
I haven't dreamt for so many weeks, and this was another morning in which I had risen from that black abyss of sleep's cradle. I missed the smell of cinnamon and the warm red-tinted lights I had seen only once in an unknown house. I wanted to dream again; I wanted to frolic in a world I would never be able to visit.
Dreams, you see, are doorways to the impossible. These were skies where I could chase the moon across the horizon on wings of great silver feathers. These were the fields of sweet roses where I lay for hours listening to a sweet lullaby with an unknown origin. These were the seas where I could swim indefinately with fish of all colors imaginable. It was truly paradise lost when I lost my dreams, and I longed for their return. The dust fluttered away from the book as my hand swept across it.
Then, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I had a surge of lust-driven strength that jolted my hand to the book's fragile corner. I lifted the cover open as quickly and painlessly as possible. The book exhaled a dusty sigh as the virgin pages lay open before my hungry eyes.
The book was entirely blank. Not a word between it's two faded-burgendy covers. Not a single piece of truth nor a single lie. Then I realized that what lay before me was a future.
It was a future for me to write for myself.
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She needed an escape and he needed a toy.
His hands were like a lullaby and never ceased to fail.
Their breath is warm and opaque against the air
As autumn turns to winter, this frail tree is stripped.
Her branches tremble but the blizzard only bites colder.
She pleads for him to stop but frost is far too high now.
The small tree collapses lifeless;
A mangled doll upon the floor.
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[ Through the Window ]______
by: Ichigo______
by: Ichigo______
His eyes opened tiredly as a rough tapping broke the silence of his subconscious and tore him from the peaceful world of dreams. His sleepy gaze dragged across the plastered ceiling and crawled down the wall to the hotel room's nearly spotless interior. The bedside clock blinked the time monotonously, and the boy's eyelids began to slip closed once again until the noise echoed through the empty room again, louder this time.
He was wide awake now. He reluctantly slid his legs from under the sheets and into the bitter cold of the night. Grumbling, he stumbled over to the window where the sound had come from, the frigid air biting mercilessly at his bare chest and toes. His fingers were like icicles and crackled as he fumbled clumsily with the sliding glass window. After managing to open it a crack, he whispered out into the midnight darkness inquisitively, "Who is it...?" His speech was slurred and exhausted, raspy from a day of cheering and laughing.
"It's me." A girl's voice spoke shakily from below.
"Shouldn't you be in bed? It's well past one." The boy pointed out, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn.
"Yeah... I know... There was something I wanted to give you..." Her voice trembled.
An awkward silence followed. The wind sang softly of things neither was willing to admit. It was a melody long forgotten in the day's excitement, but suddenly its significance had re-emerged in the shadows of the twilight. The boy finally spoke as if to drown out the wind's urgent message, "Well, what is it?"
The girl started, "I wanted to..." But her voice trailed off nervously.
"Are you cold? Your voice is shaking." The boy asked quickly. He squinted from the window, trying to find the voice's owner, but he could only make out the dull greens and blues of the night.
"A little..." Her voice was barely audible through the rustling of the leaves.
"Come up here, then. It's not safe out there... not at this time of night."
He extended his hand blindly into the emptiness hoping it would meet her's. Finally, a cold palm grabbed desperately at his wrist, a figure clad in a torn white nightgown following it. He pulled the girl up a few feet through the window and she clambered over the sill with difficulty. She fell against him, grasping tightly to his naked arm and dropping something from her right hand.
"You...?" He stepped back, startled. She pressed her face against his collar with tearful eyes that provoked more questions then they answered.
She withdrew unwillingly, bending down to recover that which she had dropped. It was a small black book of weathered pages bound together by a contorted and misshapen metal ring. She pushed it towards him, biting her lower lip, until he finally lifted it from her persistent hands.
"What is it?" He blinked, flipping through the pages. The darkness made it nearly impossible to see what was depicted on the sullen gray pages, but he felt they must be important if she had come all the way here in the middle of the night just to deliver them.
"It's for you." She spoke quickly, her voice still a bit unsteady, "I'm going back now."
"Going back already?" He closed the book and eyed her carefully.
"Yes." She rounded towards the window determinedly. But before she could lunge again to the sill, a firm hand caught her by the arm and pulled her back into a familiarly warm embrace.
"No..." He breathed into her ear; his words were calm like a lullaby from a long-forgotten dream, "Stay... just for tonight...?"
Her words came out choked and inaudible. Actions were all that could speak now; it was a conversation without dialogue -- only hands and eyes and lips that met in timid necessity for each other. The frozen night turned to daybreak yet neither was cold. Dawn's radiance showed brightly through the window, agape and damp with morning dew. The sheets were ruffled and seemingly empty aside from the corner of a familiar black book.
He opened the book cautiously, as if wary of the content's potency. He gathered his courage page by page, and a clutter of sketches and drawings slid from between the pages of the otherwise blank book. And finally, a small note fluttered out from between the kiss of the last two pages. It read:
There have been so many words my lips were afraid to utter
But the ink and quill were never hesitant in the least
I hope these can give you some idea of what forbidden words I long to speak
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It was the biggest performance of the year with nearly ten thousand people in the audience. Everyone on stage was nervous, but so far, their skit had been flawless. And now, every eye in the room was focused on the figure, veiled in light that poured from the rafters above. Her figure was gaunt and under-developed, but her passionate voice rained a touching soliloquy out onto the audience like a blessing from Heaven itself. It was her moment to shine -- the chance of a lifetime. No one could take it away."Unkindness may do much; And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my--" The last sweet word of prose fell dead. For a moment, she was flying on wings of crimson that exploded from her back. And then she was sleeping, motionless, empty. Her white dress stained and her body lying lifelessly in a pool of her own blood.
*
space*space*Her eyes fluttered open to the sound of a soft but steady beeping that reverberated over and over through her head. Her wrist stung sharply with the pain of life. A month had passed since her big debut on stage, but in her sleep she hadn't felt the burden of time nor consequence. She rounded her head slowly to the right, suddenly noticing a silhouette contrasting the ivory brilliance of the hospital room.
"Feeling better?" The shadow inquired. She recognized the voices owner almost immediately.
"Mr. Director...!" She gasped softly, trying to reach out for him. A burst of pain shot up from her left arm, and the white sheets slipped from the hospital bed onto the sterile floor below.
"Careful!" A familiar pair of arms caught her, cautiously pushing her back into the cold hospital bed. He was closer now, but her hands still couldn't quite bridge the distance between them. Her eyes had finally adjusted to the bright interior of the room, but a flood of tears obscured her vision sooner then she could make out her surroundings.
"I'm so sorry! I messed everything up!" She sobbed, small rivers of guilt trickling down her pale cheeks, "It's all my fault, please, forgive m--"
"Shh..." He leaned closer, pressing his index finger to her tear-stricken lips, "It wasn't your fault by any means, I don't want to hear you talking like that, especially in your condition."
"But--" She started.
"No." His voice was insistent and decisive, "If anything, it was my fault. We should have had tighter security that night. I never thought we'd have someone in the audience like that. I'm the one that should be sorry."
She opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off once again, "Not only did I put you in danger, but our whole company. If the ambulance had arrived any later, I could have lost you forever. We should have screened for fire arms knowing that it was going to be a large production like that -- I'm terribly sorry for putting you in such a situation."
Avoiding his earnest gaze, she looked away, searching for words. Finally, she spoke, her voice still shaking, "Is there anyway I can make it up to you?"
"I told you--"
"Please!" She shook her head, meeting his gaze desperately, "There must be something." She could feel her eyes burning with tears again.
There was a silence, and suddenly the beeping that had awoken her became clear once again. It's pace quickened noticeably. Her heart was racing, but she didn't know where to.
"If you insist..." He drew closer, his breath warm on her neck as he whispered into her ear, "Won't you smile for me... just once?"
His presence withdrew and he brought himself to his feet once again, now speaking in a normal tone of voice, "Please?" A grin blossomed on his face as if he hoping that her expression would suddenly mirror his. She stared back at him, blankly at first, until soon the tears from before had been forgotten, and the usual color returning to her ashen cheeks.
"Is that all?" She chuckled, allowing a warm smile to paint itself across her now-rosy lips, "Of all the things you could have asked -- you want only a smile?"
He collected his things from the bedside table, nodding. He gazed once more at her, lying weakly in the white hospital bed, innocent and naive. His black coat tails trailed behind him as he rounded for the door and took his leave, "Just a smile; I couldn't imagine asking any more than that. Keep your wings for tonight, my angel, you'll need them to fly another day."
