Portrait of a Feeble Knight
(Portrait Series 3/3)
He is not strong. He is not brave.
He is not a legendary white knight, or a powerful prince, and yet he is in their stories, full of danger and peril and fear.
He is cast in the role of the gallant hero and he is afraid, he is terrified, and can do nothing as the crawling, ravenous paintings claw at him, and the headless bodies tear at him, and his petals wither and wilt until he can only lay upon the ground drifting into unconsciousness.
And as he lay, in pain and delirious, he thinks he sees empty red eyes and feels the cold touch of ivory skin. Ethereal and light, it only serves to focus his thoughts for a moment before rational thought eludes him in a whirlwind of madness and fear, dancing to the broken melody of some hidden music box, laughing and crying at his predicament.
And then, without warning, the dissonant tune is in harmony, twirling with some sense of normality, and he feels correctness settle about his person, the touch now warm and gentle, nudging him awake. He wakes, groaning in protest, but gets up and looks at his little rescuer.
In some mixture of relief, terror, and pity, he realizes the little girl with blood-red empty eyes is not a princess he has to rescue, or someone to defend. She is an old soul; she is ancient and powerful in her strength and determination, fearlessly treading along a path of monsters and illusions. She is not really a child, he thinks, despite her round face and wide eyes, as she offers him a lush, blue rose with nothing more than a silent gaze.
He grasps it, of course. It seems to be his lifeline here in this broken world and he isn't about to lose it again.
But he is caught off-guard by the genuine smile blooming on her face, and suddenly, even if she would never need it, and he would never be any good at it, he decides to protect her. He smiles back, pleased to find someone else in this place. And where he was worried (and maybe still is—just a little bit—if he were being honest), he relaxes and trusts the girl in front of him.
He had brought some sweets with him to the exhibit, back when things made sense, and he realizes he only has one final piece with him.
And candy, really, always made things better, so when they get a small break from the endless running, he pulls out the only sweet he has in his pockets.
Her smile, as she tucks it away, is worth it.
He smiles fondly, until they are forced into action again.
When they meet another girl in the black marble gallery, he can instantly see fear and a primal terror reflected in her ocean blue eyes. He thinks he has found a proper child, young and vulnerable and lost, unlike his mature peer colored in sanguine hues.
Without asking too many questions, he welcomes her, tries to assuage the constant stream of unshed tears, building from the storm of emotions flying from this experience.
And if her journey has been anything like theirs, she has reason to be afraid. So he welcomes her and wishes for a moment he had another piece of candy, some token to help her be strong.
And then she calms down, and he can see the painter's knife, hidden behind smiles and tears and rosy colored cheeks. He can see the edge, far to sharp for its intended purpose, honed to perfection on stones of madness and emptiness. And then it vanishes, he shakes his head and wanders with the two—his partner and the knife-child—as they look to find the way out of the murderous galleria.
His paranoia, he thinks, might not be worth it.
He watches her anyways.
When he later confirms Mary's unnaturalness, he takes no joy in being right. He fears for his partner, who seemed to have missed the subtle hints of cruelty in the sunny blonde package, just as he almost did.
He, however, is not alone, back exposed, with the most dangerous thing in the nightmare world.
He runs, footsteps thundering across the floor, for all he is worth.
He worries he is already too late.
The little doll, a creepy blue thing with piercing eyes, laughs at him. He knows it isn't moving while he watches it, and it isn't making a single sound, but it is laughing at him nonetheless.
And when he enters the room, attempting to find the last of the paints, to get back and help her, he gets a sinking, terrifying, foreboding feeling that curls in the pit of his stomach and weighs heavily, like lead.
They watch him. The little doll, the thing he can hear laughing and chortling just outside the door, abruptly stops and then there is silence. His apprehension rises as he feels their smiles widen, his mind reeling at the unnaturalness of the quiet, stifled like laughter before the punch line of some horrible joke.
So when he finds the paint and realizes he is unable to open the locked door, he is not half as surprised as he should be. He feels calm resignation and mounting dread, and he begins scurrying into action as the toll of the bell begins.
He sees the monster loom as he fails to find a key in time, finally sitting in the corpses of the ripped fabric, with disgusting assortments of stuffing and goo and hair.
And slowly, he feels the madness creep into his mind, deeper and deeper, as his smile becomes wider and wider. He becomes less genuine, all his principles and thoughts and dreams wash away into a never-ending stream of instinctual desire and impulse and compulsion. The music plays again, familiar and painful, but with the echo of brutal chortles and haunting emptiness mixed with the waltzing tune of discord.
And as this continues, he hears the laughter again, and thinks on how happy it is, (because laughter is always happy isn't it?) and he wants to be happy too. He wants to know what everyone in the room finds so funny.
You are, they whisper, tickling his ears. You are absolutely hilarious! They laugh again.
This time, when they abruptly stop giggling, superimposing images of fluffy pink bunnies and innocent smiles, he doesn't find the silence unnerving.
He lacks the ability to notice they laugh and hush their chuckles because of him.
He smiles into the quiet. They don't speak, but he chats with them anyways. He giggles and gasps at the appropriate times, their conversations still ongoing even in the shushed quiet and coy illusions, simply basking in the lazy breeze of carefree themes.
And suddenly, she hits him.
And the world spins and spins, as he can see clouded red eyes, swimming in tears, and her heated strike of desperation and fear becomes another, and another. The pain doesn't come from the small stinging sensations on his cheeks (because really, she is only a little girl, no matter how old she may act, one that needs to be protected, and he had already decided to be her knight), but rather comes from the frantic cries of the girl, growing more desperate with each blow.
When he wakes up, watching her cry and hug him as the silence around them drowns in malice, he wonders if he is worth it.
He hopes so.
When they lose Ib's rose in the fall into the crayon and chalkboard toy box, the feeling of dread returns. This time however, he doesn't let it overwhelm him, he sets his jaw, straightens his back, and smiles from the very bottom of his soul.
She is better for it, as she nods and continues onward with him; her spirits are lifted.
Of course, the entire effect is ruined when the muffled snickers and peals of glee erupt from the knife-child standing next to one of them, her tiny, pale hands and sharp, wicked nails clutching the red—painfully familiar—rose.
They speak arbitrary words and she holds back her victory leer, though the thing next to her does not.
"Well…hmm…"
She pauses for dramatic effect.
"Wanna trade for Garry's rose?"
And she smiles, a secretive, covetous, smile. As his partner turns to him, pleading for some guidance, the knife-child grins at him, like the cat that finally—finally— got to eat the canary.
Because he knows, just as the little thing next to the monster knows, just as the beautiful, insane fiend knows.
Trading his own rose, knowing willingly it would cost him everything, is worth it.
(I can't possibly refuse…)
As she runs off, plucking the first petal off with a skip in her step and joyous energy around her, he returns the pretty red rose to his heroine (she could only be the heroine in this story, and he her knight, but really, was it fair to make the heroine so young and the knight so feeble?) his last act to alleviate her worries and set her on the right path.
And as he feels himself coming apart at the seams—the tearing is nearly unbearable—he stops and tells her to go on, go home. He fumbles with the lighter in his pocket, his words tumble out of his mouth with no real thoughts behind them.
"I…uh…I'm sorry…I don't really know what to say…" he whispers, narrowly succeeding in keeping the agony of a crushed lung, bleeding blue, out of his voice. He can't grasp the lighter, can't gain a hold on it, why can't he hold it?
"…I don't want to lie to you…" Because there are so many lies in the world and she deserves nothing less than happiness and truth and safety, not madness and cruelty and them. He lacks the strength to rummage through his clothing, the lighter laying uselessly in his pocket.
"But I…" he blunders, "…don't want to tell you the truth either…" Because the truth is painful and she is so innocent, despite her maturity, and so young and so cheerful and so kind. She is the little girl that rescued him from the lunacy of the painting world, the one that set them upon the long road home.
He has nothing else save the lighter and his clothes, but he can't use his fingers anymore, they're already ripped and shredded, bone ground into a pulp of blue flesh.
"…If you need help…" he speaks, softly.
His femur is cracked, the marrow gnawed upon, and he barely gets out the next words.
"…I'll come running…" he promises, through torture, as his organs are pecked at by the cruel claws of the blonde child, dragging him into his own circle of hell.
"Go on…ahead…"
He lays down, as she disappears from sight, running up the stairs. He collapses, as chains of thorns drill into his spine and bones and skull. The shriek of the harpy knife-child is loud and full of mocking taunts, crescendoing with LOVES ME.
The music box plays a sad harmony, tinkling with the sound of innocent tears and burning with the destruction of inhuman loneliness, and he drifts off into a sleep with a small smile on his face, as the last stanza of the piece is a hopeful resolution in major melodic chords.
This, he thinks, was all worth it.
He watches her through lidded eyes, made of canvas and paint and magic, as she walks away into the world of safety and happiness and home.