Voiceless Screaming
as done by the Rachel of DOOM
Disclaimer:
I remember that she used to like it when I wrote, either stories of other worlds that would hold her attention for hours, or poetry I'd write in awe of the surroundings we would find ourselves in.
But as we grew older, the world seemed to lose colour for me. And my art became black, my poems odes to the unending cold of the grave. She never understood the appeal of the night, and I remember she'd watch me from behind the curtains, thinking I could not see her, as I stood outside in the gloom, waiting for my dark muses.
We've been this way for years; there was no sudden change from the cheery innocent I used to be to the jaded pessimist I am now. And yet I catch her looking at me with regret and confusion in equal measures on her face. As if I had been stolen away from her in the summer of my youth, and the cold heart of the winter had replaced me.
She doesn't understand me anymore, and I see her bite her lip as she surveys my latest painting. The canvas has become a reflection of my soul; she doesn't understand that, either. I know I shouldn't torment her for this failing, but I look up from my easel, and catch her eye.
I ask her if she likes it, smiling as I have no right to do. She is uncertain, but strives to return the gesture. Like mine, her smile never reaches her eyes. She thinks my picture is very nice, apparently, but a little dark.
I could tell her, then, at length that the picture must be dark. It represents the misery the stains the air around these parts, a cloying feeling so thick it forms bitter strands that bar my way to freedom. I shall never be free, and so my art is a message to all who might follow the same path.
But I take the easy way out. For all she's done to me, made me her slave unawares, refusing to claim me even as I flaunt myself before her, I still cannot hurt her. So I tell her that perhaps it will be a little lighter next time. She seems to accept this. After all, I still wear the red coat she brought for me, over my manifold layers of midnight silk and leather.
She'd be a fool to take that as a triumph of any kind, though. I wear that coat to prove her blind. I would have worn that coat even if it were pink as the peonies that grow amongst the grass, just because it was she gave it to me. But she never noticed that.
Around the time I felt my happiness slip through my fingers like grains of sand, I became aware that I loved her. More than as a friend, which is how she felt about me. I loved her so much, I wanted to express that in ways other than my dry writings. I longed to touch her, and to hear her calling my name in pleasure, whispering my name with need.
And so once the ink faded on page after page of ballads of adoration, I felt empty. Compelled to express my misfortune to have fallen in love with so unobtainable a creature with words alone. If I could make music, then I would play; for her, for myself. But I cannot. Instead, I painted what I could see with my inner eye.
Streams of jet black flowing like slippery veins of coal run like a vicious ribbon across once-pristine fields of white canvas. I drew a heart burning in black flames, and the blood that flowed from it dribbled her name in obsidian swirls on the black stone hearth I had drawn.
I don't think she noticed that, either. If she seems unobservant, this is because she does not have the time to fall into that pit of despair where I languish. In my fallen home, I can survey all that is set about me with a critical eye. Nothing will every satisfy me. Nothing will ever make me happy. Nothing but holding her tight in my arms, knowing I had her consent to kiss her.
Telling her wouldn't help. She'd turn away from me, and run straight into the waiting arms of the one whom I shall forever consider my usurper. I don't much care for his name, not that I care for much in these empty days, and take pains to avoid its mention. There are days when it pains me just to breath even her name, when I love it so.
A limbo - insubstantial void of longing and remorse! Is that then, where fate deigns I should reside, watching my belovéd from afar? I have few doubts now, as I sit here in the dusk, watching her return to the safety of the summer house I remember her older brother building a long time ago, when he was still here. He had help. I don't recall who.
I remember, in my earliest memories, gazing at that boy with a sense of awe. The way his hair, that same warm chestnut as hers, cried out for small fingers to run their way through that silky mane. I also remember, one night when I was supposed to be sleeping, seeing Yamato do just that.
The irony of my predicament always succeeds in the worsening of my humour, and gives me course to worry that I only love her out of some half-repressed desire for Taichi. Taichi who pined when the blonde charlatan they called my brother Yamato moved away. Taichi whose flowing crest of hair was cruelly parodied by the brash upstart I call my rival.
Reasoning out this dilemma, I was satisfied that Taichi no longer held place in my affections, however fleeting they were. Now, at this late stage, the only emotion I have left outside of the wall of pain the gnaws down upon my soul day after day is my unrequited desire for her.
Kari... do you feel my eyes on you, even now as you sit safely inside, away from the coming night? I too have felt the beady eyes of some phantom from another world rest upon me, and yet the intent of that creature was to prey upon my soul. Little did it know that my soul was pledged to you already. I will not die under the nightmarish pallor of its bat-like wings yet, not until you have acknowledged what I have given to you.
My love, Kari, my love.
