Study on the Nature of Hope
By Irenadel
In you were the wars and the flights heaped.
From you were lifted the wings of the song.
Everything you swallowed, like the distance,
Like the sea, like the time. Everything in you was wreck
n Pablo Neruda, 20 Love Poems and One Desperate Song
Author's Note/Disclaimer: This goes right before the story for the benefit of those who are not familiar with the Clan Novel series of V:tM. The main focus and perspective of this story is a certain Parmenides of Clan Assamite working for the illustrious Tzimisce Sascha Vykos. He was flesh-crafted to resemble one of her dead ghouls and thus elude the Camarilla. Parmenides belongs of course to White Wolf Inc. as does Vykos. No copyright infringement intended. Vykos' childer are the sole property of my friends A.C.Mr and Mei Ikaruga. Do check out their stories… when they post some…
Honest, merciless, downright cruel critique encouraged. J
You close your eyes in a vain hope that the fragile membrane of skin will keep lights of glaring neon out. It is a fancy, a frivolous expense that you allow yourself to indulge in simply because you cannot do without it. Not tonight. You are waiting for the flicker, the last hint of palpitating red that will mark your eventual ascent. You wait for the elevator's shrill bell.
They will be waiting too, in a sense, two figures cut out against the infinite twinkling of Washington's night-lights. Their sharp profiles will be a black ink stain, a shadow, a hint. They will be beautiful profiles each complementing the other. A girl, a woman. You have forgotten their names and yours, you will not answer their silvery voices when they call you. You will not hear them at all.
The elevator stops, you feel its sudden motionless stance. It seems infinite, the time before the soft chime of the bell and the opening of the doors. It is a great gap, a gigantic chasm in which you seem to teeter before surrendering balance to a higher authority that pulls you, ever so slowly, upwards.
My philosophe
The words are not mouthed, they do not travel the emptiness, their soft vibrancy does not disturb air or breath. They exist only in your mind.
It is finally, with a strenuous exertion of will that you push consciousness back with the two tender folds of flesh that are your eyelids. No, and you must repeat this to yourself many times before you are to begin believing it, not my flesh. This flesh is not mine, this flesh follows another command, knows another name. This flesh is not mine.
She is smiling, most certainly not at you or at anything in particular, when you first focus her face. A hand closes painfully over the brass cane and you force your teeth to ease their sudden clenching. So long, so very long ago since control was denied you, as if you were merely falling, merely rising with an up thrust that you know no origin for.
"My young romantic"
It is not her voice but the other, less grave, less profound, younger in whatever angle one might wish to take it. It is the other lips; smaller, rosier, more inviting that pronounce it. You can curse them now, both apparitions, for they are tonight the epitome of humanity, they are made not of bone or secret tissue but of pliant white skin. They are one, mother and child, so very alike that you cannot tell them apart.
Affection goes deeper than skin, it reaches beneath, kisses the marrow and licks at the bowels. Affection is like a strange disease, because it spreads and it is faster, more silent and far deadlier than anger. Or desperation.
The eyes of the child are wide, infinitely blue, with a quality of reflection that you cannot quite account for. They are young, full of wonder, the sort that turns each gaze outwards, away from the core of oneself. You cannot remember ever having eyes such as those.
You do not reach for her when you present the fruit of your labors; one hand stretches out motionlessly, the glint of gold between the fingers. It is a strange hand to you, one you cannot recall and silently you pray to every master you have ever served, that they do not call your name by leave of that hand.
"The ring of Maria Chin," you declare without inflection. "Tremere witch of the Washington Chantry."
The child giggles and its monstrous mother reaches quietly out for her, pulling her into an embrace of white flesh and soft brown hair that it cannot escape; can never evade. The gesture, so eerily natural that it sends shivers down your arms, becomes an entanglement of limbs, while from the mess of quiet laughter and sharp smiles you can distinguish one sliver of light that is the sentient eyes of Sascha Vykos, beloved and abhorred.
You throw the silver ring unto the window seat and wince at the hollow, cacophonous sound it produces when landing on the cream painted concrete. It is perhaps a new failing, a new weakness that you had not yet perceived of this strange encasement of flesh that you must glower at the two loving things that now stare at you. You must hate them, you must show this hate, because if you hold any of it back you risk the danger of drowning in the deafening darkness of mauve tints that is your love for her. For Vykos.
"How rude of you, my philosophe." You try hard not to respond, not to answer to the unspoken call that voice entails. You try, if possible, to ignore the deeper, graver timber that so dissolves the feminine visage of Vykos. "You my dearest, are the only one capable of being so courteously rude. You are made of another age entirely. Perhaps I should save that delicious talent of yours for the edification of my childer. They could use it."
There is an indignant rustle from one of the dark corners of the hotel suite. It is the first hint, the first visible rise from the languor that had possessed the adolescent body sprawled over the sofa all through your brief visit; perhaps all through the night. The dim light of the suite seems to gather together in the folds of his cloak and to emit tiny hints of its presence. He possesses the same disturbing qualities of his sister; the piercing eyes, the white luminescent skin, the faintly oriental cast to their features. Their hair is the same color, naturally, unlike their sire's pretense.
You hate this one too and yet you look at him with the infinite compassion of one that knows the plight of the other. You think, only by instants, by fleeting moments; this one has been here longer than I, this one has known what it is to be reformed, renewed, remade in pain, in the raw cast that is physical agony. This one, perhaps better than anyone knows what humiliations, what strange secrets of the body, of the spirit Sascha Vykos has in its keeping.
It is in the eyes of this one that you can find yourself. Name, skin and bone; all whole.
Vykos rises from its seat, kisses the brow of the girl-child and glides, with a sweep of dark thick fabric to you. You avoid the sight like you avoided the sound, because the one is as addictive and venomous as the other. Before you notice, it is the feel of those long, slender fingers so brutal that it lifts your face with no effort.
You interchange attributes, you dispute the use of one 'he', 'she', 'it'. Within your minds laboratory these are all one and the same, for Vykos is all things, beauty and ugliness at once. It is the movement of this body, breast-less and woman-slender, this body that has no use for a blouse or a cloth, because it contains a maidenly chastity that could even discard with the dark woolen skirt. You reach out for it, letting the brass cane fall raucously to the carpeted floor. You reach out for the slender hips and you feel one knee hit the floor painfully, you feel the collapse of a half-constructed body and the disruption of all thought.
Again and again and again. Every night you bury your face in this skirt, in these soft legs. You surrender all hope and dignity and you ask only for an embrace.
"How silly you are my young romantic," she purrs, laying a hand on a head, a hair that is not yours, stroking it with infinite tenderness. You cannot feel this affection, you cannot feel this love. You are so far away. "Should I have sent Corven, my sweet child Corven, instead? The danger, oh the dreadful danger, makes me faint."
Affection molds, affection transmutes the object of interest. Affection is an oblivion of all that ever was… before. And its affection is like the motions of living, too brutal and complex to ever decipher.
The child, still spread over the window seat plays with the ring. She holds it between two fingers and makes it spin. The blur of silver seems to sing, seems to emit one high whistle that dissolves amidst the darkness. You watch the child intently, your fingers clenching the cloth; they contain the urge to tear at it, to indulge in a violence that is not precise, that is not purposeful, that is not… you.
You do not ask forgiveness for it, though your whole being trembles with the need. You do not accept for one instant this toying, this game that is so like the child's bored handling of the Tremere sigil, because of its deliberate and frightening quality. The other one, the brother recoils within himself, begins a game of his own, turning his gaze from the figure of Sascha Vykos petting her faux ghoul.
You come to the realization that Vykos is not speaking to you anymore, however much the pretense endures, but this does not free you from the pain, from the humiliation. This does not destroy her hold on you anymore than her possession of you destroys her hold on the other two. It is simply that she is mistress of many hearts.
"You think, entirely too much," she whispers, fingers tangling tenderly in the black hair of the ghoul Ravenna. "It is a flaw that enchants me to no end, my philosophe. I cannot seem to keep you from wondering."
The boy curled up in the sofa does not flinch, indeed does not move a muscle, seems to be frozen or held into place by the words. Perhaps it is his own private course of resistance as much as yours is the act of the kill. An act, which in itself belongs to Vykos.
"You resent this… intrusion. How can I keep you from jealousy if your thoughts run from me?" Her fingers are on your neck; they travel the heat of the ears, the jaw, the lips as she kneels before you. The sight of her face entrances you, maddens you. "You are precious to me, my young romantic. The arrival of my children changes nothing."
Her words are not words but a single flow of sound, they are pounding, transmuting, they are entangled with the faint note of the ring as it spins between the child's fingers. She smiles, a brilliant half-moon that cuts you, with the tempered precision of a surgeon's scalpel.
"Come my philosophe." She rises, hands on your own trembling ones. She guides you, step by agonizing step to the window seat. "I forgive you."
The focus digresses, your eyes are wide open but no light seems to penetrate them. The simple occlusion of her words does nothing, because your need to negate, to postpone the acceptance can never be greater than your need to embrace it. You cannot struggle forever because you are not accustomed to the struggle.
"Kiss my little girl goodnight." You hear the hot lips breathe in your ear.
You do not wonder any longer what game Vykos plays, your conscious mind belongs elsewhere tonight, as you bend delicately taking the child's lips in your own. You do not care for the hating brother that glares at you, at its sire; you do not care for the softness of the child's skin because however alike they are she is not Vykos, she has not yet grasped the subtlety of the horror. She is closer, but not quite there.
Once more you are a piece, moving ever forwards, ever upwards towards a destination you cannot quite conceive. You, with no name, no strength, no will that can ever wrench you from this tangle of beasts. You are another brick, another nail, another unheard cry in the dream that Vykos builds. This is the masters' will, you repeat to yourself, we move over the same obstacles, but only that. And you repeat that like a mantra, till you convince yourself of a truth that has been constructed for your convenience.
Not my flesh, not my name, not my will; but it will do, for now only it will do.
The sound of the boy's furious rising is heard; it drowns away Vykos' own cruel laughter. Then there is silence.
And you Parmenides, of clan Assamite, ask yourself silently, how long can he stand before the elevator's door, holding unto his truth.