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 Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:18 am
Lingering
He thumbed back out of the Twitter app, disgust curling across his face briefly. Disgust that was, for once, not directed at Taym's less-than-subtle digs and attempts to instigate s**t. And Taym did seem to pop up on Twitter lately only to poke at his words, to reply back to him with ellipses and meaningless exclamations of disapproval. This disgust wasn't directed at America either this time (though she'd left him alone as late - maybe she'd given up: an almost cheerful thought, that). No, this disgust was reserved purely for himself. Even then, it was muted, much like everything had felt recently. He tucked his falling hair behind one ear, closing his eyes against the light; it was getting long, Horace thought dispassionately. He should cut it but he couldn't bring himself to really care.
@theshaggydawg It's ok - I think I wanna keep my old one for now. I'll get a better one later.
His reply to Dawson hadn't been a lie. Horace did want to keep his old mattress, though it was small, though it was old and had probably seen hunters before him. It was just... just... the reasoning behind his decision made him feel weak, guilty. Horace could've chalked it up to laziness or an unwillingness to move. Instead, sometimes, he could imagine, or rather, remember the feel of someone else in his bed, the scent. Jan was gone, for now, and Horace shouldn't want him back, shouldn't want anything. But it was nice, sometimes, to remember.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:28 am
There is no solace here
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And they had loved with a love that was more than love. But poems were only words written on a page, romantic notions of death and pre-destined meetings and a thousand hundred other things that weren't true. Still, he paused and set the book against his chest, feeling the ridges of scar tissue that decorated him there. And Horace thought - hadn't Jan said this was more than love, more like a thing that existed, that bloomed in the space where love had been excised, cut away? Inside his eyes, there had been the hollow of an uncaring universe, something beautiful, something better. What Horace wanted, wasn't it - what he deserved. The words tumbled around his skull, clanging against everything he didn't want to think about.
Horace wondered dully if he could even try to quantify or identify the parts of him that had begun to die in that deep cave, in that tomb by the sounding sea.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:11 am
Written words are only words
Very precisely, very slowly, Horace made a list for himself. He regretted then, not bringing a planner with him to the island. Of course his phone held one, each phone did, in the calendars. But the feeling of writing on paper helped organize him. Lists were order.
1 - Dylon: mall, Christmas, shopping.
xxxxHe'd bought the cigarettes then - Jan's lip had curled with disgust at the scent. Horace had thought he'd never be clean. But he'd also bought the shoes, secreted away from Dylon, something good.
2 - Harley: pet store, aquarium, houses.
xxxxWith Hattie he'd talked about minipets, and fish, and not thought and had felt like a teenager for the first time since coming to Deus. He didn't want a minipet.
3 - Melvin: body wash, hotel.
xxxxAlways in the back of his mind was Jan's sensitivity to smells. He wanted to learn to take care of his skin, be a better person outside-in.
4 - Dawson: beer, backwater town.
xxxxThey'd talked and he'd carefully avoided telling Dawson about Jan, about how much he hated when the other man flirted with Maebe. About how he was afraid he wasn't enough.
5 - No one: nowhere, nothing.
xxxxAnd here, on his leave day he'd done nothing, simply sat in his room making lists.
The list was short - he hadn't been here long enough for it to stretch to more than a few items. Leave days, days off, times he left the island and times he did not. Abruptly, he pulled and the page tore from his notebook, the sound surprisingly loud in his concrete room. Horace balled it up and dropped it neatly in the wastebasket. Pausing for a moment, he stared down at the page and chewed his lip. Then he sighed and began another list.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:36 am
Magnetic poetry
I hope d time would be a sweet er neighbor than any one
but still i scar r ed
It didn't matter that Horace's desk was wood or that he had no refrigerator to stick the words to, he had wanted the small magnetic poetry set. Some hunter was probably upset - he'd collected each word off of the counters and freezers in the kitchen, stuffing then haphazardly in pockets. Horace wondered if he'd trailed words all the way back to his room. He shuffled the words around again.
I believe ed I could build a house that you had no key to
but between day s I live together with you r rest less memory
He felt a little silly, but it was a gentle kind of ridiculousness that almost made him smile, as though he were some teen-aged, emo poet finally expressing himself. He rearranged the words into nonsense again, foot tapping underneath his desk. An alarm went off on his phone and Horace glanced at it, brows knitting together. Scheduled duty. He made one last phrase before swiping his palm across his desk, sending the words scattering.
a fascinate d faith never received through delirious scream ing
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 12:36 pm
Alternate destinations
The talk on Twitter about alternate universes had sparked a sort of fatalistic curiosity in him. Fatalistic because he knew it would be a sort of destructive wondering without end. According to the theories tossed around like so much dinner table chatter, there could be somewhere, some other him that was enough - some other Jan that loved as ordinary people did.
Horace wondered, fingers tapping along the edge of his bed, if someone had ever thought to seek out an alternate place, to stay there, to take the things he couldn't have here. It was an appealing thought, a dangerous one, one unable to be realized.
Pipe dreams he had no business dreaming.
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Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 6:27 am
in the process your body is subsumed piece by piece
Laugh louder, he thought. Try harder. It was easier with the barrier of technology between him and others. There were moments, of course, that were geniune - both for him and for others, he imagined. But there were more moments where he wrote what might be expected rather than what he thought. Twitter became another front and still, sometimes, he wasn't careful enough; he let something slip and like some ragged skeletal vulture, Taym swept down to comment on i t with all the smug self-assuredty reseved only for the most chief of assholes.
Horace hated him. It was weird. He hadn't really hated anyone very much before. He disliked Rep, found other people irritating, but he hated Obediah Thompson. And, he realized, lips quirking down into a grimace. he didn't trust the other hunter. There was a sinking sort of certainty that even professionally, Taym would betray him. Or at very least, lead Horace to some sort of near-death, then 'save' him only to hold it over Horace's head like some sort of ill-conceived lesson. He resented Taym and he hated him.
It was not a comfortable feeling, but at least it was mutual.
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Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 7:00 am
creatures of flesh & bone
{you forget I can see in your mind - I am inside, horace.} In her voice there was the cold uncaring of a desert night when the sun sinks and nothing is left to trap the residual warmth. {I can see all of your thoughts.}
{So tell me what I'm thinking, Doctor?} - a mental sigh. He was tired, so tired of trying to dissemble, to re-organize his thoughts into some form of normalcy. His eyes were open, though he saw nothing, staring unblinking at the bare concrete of one wall.
A hiss of censure coiled around him. {there's a slick sort of guilt in the corners here, horace, and a small kind of satisfaction you've taken from being marked by him. for one brief shining moment you were enough you love it and you hate it. I know,} she whispered and he did not argue. Jannisari's voice took on a harder edge, something very like rusted metal. {do not forget yourself. I do not have time for lost children.} But she did, and she would make time; Horace could feel it. Even as she was in his mind, he was in hers, dry as old bones.
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