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Backdated to May 5th
When it came into focus, the wall said 5 am. The clock was a lone face floating on a manila haze. The wall was not on his side. None of them were- they were a cage too familiar. He could feel the stiff fabric of a hospital gown, also too habitual to ignore. I brought Penthe to the hospital. The arrow- I was shot. It is the leavings of surgery. Drained my lung and made it whole. More staples to ladder my body, but how much more do I climb?
It was a stupid question, youthful anxiety.
You climb until the end. Until you've reached that high, isolated place and set the screaming-silence there. A gift for later generations to ignore or open at their own foolishness. Until you've fallen before it or surmounted all. The Self is no Different than the Challenge it faces. You cannot stop of pain, no more now than before. Nothing changes that.
Nothing.
Dead and walking
Talking, stalking
Sulking, should be, wanted to be, could be would rather be
Flying. Soaring, sculpting.
There is only-always Noise
noise, around and the noise Noise was outside while no words or colours except red dwelt inside. Only silence.
Back to suffering.
Ribs gnawed out from inside of Quiet. Crawled it in and caged it there.
He could feel fingers at his sternum, whorled in tenuous grip at the edge of the cincher that was not there. A hand whose fingers alone showed pale beyond wrapping of faded, familiar blacks- fine bones and well suited to a piano. It must have been a night before already, but it felt more real than waking hour. Quenton’s hand curled like a talon-guard against bile or dry heaves over his mouth.
Human truths can be subjective, twisted, turned to fit the message. But Truth is rigid absolute. Anxiety mounting to anguish cold and hard, more cruel than any lie. ‘No use for the sweven of madmen.’ I wonder that we had met so before. That vision haunted then, but did not in the flesh. They were different, the face worn like masks between the names. But they were the same beneath. There is no lie, and I think we both knew it in some way. Alois Scholz was Bischofite. Alois
Who’s hands caused the innocence enclosed and reserved be guiltless loosed. The straight oar looks bent in the water. Not merely that we see, but how we see. Did we see each other right? Did we truly hear music at each other’s breast held clear and by no other- a bond of some sort?
Yes, I think that was a truth.
Slowly his hand retreated to lay cold and motionless again on the hospital coverlet. There was some brief reprieve from the worst of the tests now. He’d been in the hospital enough to know that it would be at least a week and a half before he was let out. A week and a half of not facing the full loss of standing in his apartment and knowing that it was empty. The stark difference of knowing the thing and feeling it in a moment. He will not be there sleeping, Faust on his face and indignant that there is no food. There will be no sound of piano. There will be no German lilted at me, demanding or acid about something he actually cares about- putting the serious lightly as though it were a shield. His things are on the shelves.
Is he really gone? Dead? That thing still had his face in the end, but how much or little remains? Will he be able to return to the city, from whence they keep their creatures? Is he a youma now? …
There is the certainty at least that something died there.
And Faust and I are the luckier for having kept our secrets. Knowing a thing and experiencing it are different- we all know our enemies may be our lovers, but we never expect it true. We do not wish it so. So many are crushed beneath that. That General and ...there was another scream. A girl’s voice. They knew him, pain clarion. Did they know as I knew? Is it past or present?
It was both, essentially, like 5am of yesterday or tomorrow. Alois Scholz was General Bischofite, was a man- a truth that would be rock to serve as a marker. The rest remained to be seen in the moments he could get back to the apartment. We must be so careful Faust. If he can return, it is so sharp a dance that we cannot disappear without revealing some involvement so soon. Nor can we open ourselves to such vulnerability by being available at unawares in that old life. I must think of it in strategy. I must think.
But the exercise of it brought tears in spite of the Silence. Motionless, but they were there and stained the coverlet as they dropped from chin as he curled up in spite of pain in his ribs and lung. It hurt, the conditioning that allowed the full breadth thought and logic through the instinctual haze of grief at loss had been product of both their hands. Petty rage that screams, ‘I do not want it now.’ What day goes by that some friend, brother, lover doesn't beg the heavens to trade some misfortune to themselves? It does not work that way. I cannot fall prey to that.
I must end this new thing. I must kill Bischofite. Alois. That hasn't changed in knowing the two are one.
“General, Du siehst schön aus.”
