a/n: This story is exclusively about the cat and mouse interactions between the sins of Pride and Lust. I did not think that this would be received well in the Bible category, so I'm loosely labeling it a bit of Christian Mythology. Rated a high T. Dark themes.
~o~
Deep in the abyss of the human spirit lies the very wraiths upon which we blame starvation and war.
They were the Seven Deadly Sins.
They existed in a world where the sound of trees and water lay dead, for in the void, there was nothing Mother Nature could offer a psychotic mind wrought with the pain of a never ending yearning of cursed unfulfilled desires. It pained them all, these desires, so uniquely ingrained within their decaying hearts and yet wonderfully and cleverly interchangeable. They all existed together in the void, despising each other, loving each other, whispering murmurs of sick contempt through each others ears, always hungry for something else to feed their resentment. It was a world of emptiness, a land of vacant night without anything to aid a humanized mind. Stars had been erased from the sky, the ground was smooth yet tasteless and flat, and hills and plant life were nothing but a far off, nearly forgotten dream. Their essence was built from shreds of the human condition, a guarantee for a miserable existence. Residing in a constant aching darkness, they were nothing but angry spirits hungry for a piece of sanctuary that would cure their starved cravings. And yet nothing came. Eternity within the bland obscurity of a wretched Limbo was theirs forever, a contemptuous gift they never wanted.
Time is irrelevant in the void. They all hated each other, despised each other, but without each other, deep down they knew the loneliness would swallow them up and tear them apart from the inside. For their hearts, while poisoned to the deadliest degree, were still hearts beneath the sodden tempests instilled within them like a bad gene.
They materialized in different forms; some were the ravenous animals they so utterly embodied, others took the form of human sentience, homo sapiens with decadent flesh glued to deceivingly fragile bones.
Their existence throughout infinity was long, as though a world of nothingness had swallowed them up and gave way to their incubation, the growth of their rapacious appetites for money, flesh, sadness, food, jealousy, enmity, and a ceaseless love for themselves. They died a slow, meandering death each day that passed, aging towards the end of a nullity they would probably never see.
Sloth kept to herself, her long bleached hair covering her tear stained face as she wasted away faster than any of them could ever imagine. Her skinny bones, some broken and pinned in awkward positions, showed through her skin, which was stretched across her grotesquely diaphanous body like the delicate skin of a bat wing. She could no longer speak intelligibly, but sometimes, between her incessant murmurs of nonsense and creeping madness, one could hear her speak of a lover she had destroyed with her endless grief. Happiness was out of reach for everyone, but it had abandoned no one as wretchedly as she.
Greed was dangerous. He shared the same passion as Envy for always wanting what the other had, but it was sewn so exquisitely into his savagely artful mind that it made him fatal foe and an even more hazardous friend. Handsome, ingenious, he cleverly scolded the others for never wanting to be caught in his grasp, lest they become a wriggling fish in his vicious eagle claws. He played the most beguiling games, leading his prey into the enshrouded home of his mortal muse, drenched in the blood of a ringmaster's elegant bewitchment. Beneath the subtle hints of lethal attraction however, lived a monster who ached for one's bleeding heart on a stick.
If anyone favored a more indulgent lifestyle, it was Gluttony, a lord of all things that made one's tongue and stomach twist in famishment. He was half insane, an animal of brute strength molded by the madness of a chained human being, a malnourished tiger whose belly had not been filled by sweetly prepared honey meats and the loving words of a woman who vowed to love him no matter how fat he became. He was the hunter, the gatherer, a yellow bellied toad of expansion once the illusion of food had once again decided to tease him beneath a veil of lunacy. A creature of tongue and cheek, his wit is unhinged, his tomfoolery nothing but a deadly game.
Envy was a pathetic beast with many burdens she hereby constantly put upon her delicate distressed shoulders. Her lament of having nothing in her grasp tortured her into a complete and arrant insanity, which consumed everything she once held near and dear to her anguished heart. Acrimonious, bitter, a snake's tongue behind her pearly white teeth so often gritted in pure overwhelming rancor, she wants, no, needs what everyone else possesses, even if she isn't quite sure what it is that her opponents have. She is a mindless devouring creature, her sweet voice lyrical like a siren's song, beautiful and lovely with a pinch of venom and foreboding significance.
Wrath was fire. Wrath was fervency. Wrath was the avid force, the boulder falling down the hill with a mind of its own, and the desire to destroy anything in its path. She was a hateful woman, so completely drowned in her sorrows that she awakened as a raging phoenix, the only thing on her mind being the retribution of all those who had done wrong to her, the taste of vengeance on her tongue so exquisitely. She is the one person army, the one whose stories consist of the most bloodcurdling tales forged in the heat of intensity. Her love is a tarnished brute, so her loathing is through which she speaks, her hisses breathing the fire of a grand dragon aching not for treasure, but for one's demise.
Weaving tantric spells of deceptive love and enticing concupiscence, Lust patterned the void with threads of obsessive adoration, domination, ardor radiating from her form like the sweat of a desperate pair of lovers' embrace. A twisted distortion of unbearably seething latria, she is a broken doll whose ruby red lips whisper of irresistible promise and a disdain birthed only by the ire of a woman scorned. Her incapability to tell the maledict deviation between her desires and true idolatry makes her a mordacious hound of corporeal delights, a scathing temptress made demoniacal from the effervescent pull of the winding braid of love and bodily thirst. Her possession is ephemeral, and yet her trance lasts forever.
The master in arms, he is considered the greatest transgression to ever appear upon the plate of a human's dual arousal, the calmest and deadliest monster of them all. Pride's world is the chess board, and everyone is a glossy pawn ready at his disposal. His manipulations appear harmless, his charms palpable and seemingly real as his faux respect and appeal is saturated with a taste for artistry. Tongue bathed in an icy flame he woos the world with his land of fancy, a fantastical place where dreams soon betray one in a fraying nightmare as he learns their secrets and greedily keeps them for himself. He deserves all, takes none but the praise and worship bestowed upon him like breaths of frigid zephyrs. He is cold, a covetous beast in sheep's clothing who fell in love but only once, his sole beloved nothing more than his reflection, serrated teeth contorting into a taunting switchblade grin.
So now that they are introduced, what should this excerpt from the chronicles of eternity teach us? Nothing in particular, after all we are but slaves to these emotions, these sins drenched in the storybook wrongdoing that humans are taught and conditioned from the moment they slither down the birth canal in a rush of red water. But perhaps, in some despicably absurd way, the sins have a piece of humanity within themselves. Their weaknesses are their strengths. Their desires are their downfall. They are the contradictions of a lifetime and yet they overcome every person like the intoxicating villains they so beautifully strive to be. They have no conscience or awareness, just simply the carnal urge to do what they were created to do.
The slot of time surged around him as Pride stood amongst the obscurity, glaring coldly at the nothingness, unsatisfied.
He was a man of enigma, his natural evil tracing along his frozen veins just beneath the surface of his skin, but never showing itself. Voice sharp, yet unused, it transferred what he wished he could say to the rest of the sins, who did nothing but mind their own ungodly business. He hated Sloth's constant disappearance. He despised Greed and Wrath's constant trysts. He loathed Envy's inability to take what she wanted. He abhorred Gluttony's tasteless sense of humor. In his opinion, narcissistic as always, he knew they all existed to serve and adore him, nothing else.
But none of them acquired his scorn more than Lust.
His superior thoughts believed that her beauty was marred by her fleshly urges. The candor of her urges was stifling, a devouring sickness that plagued his mind. Everywhere he went, she appeared, weaving her lies and deceiving him in that nonchalant way of hers, paying him the attention he so utterly deserved and yet so mockingly did she praise him. The worship seemed fake, and only he was allowed to wield and brandish such deception so masterfully. She was achingly beautiful, a classic bride who strayed from the normal path, as though she had once been human and left her darling groom at the altar, fleeing as she escaped her rigid future in a wine red dress and a black veil. She was a spider queen, winding the threads of her gossamer web to trap him. He hated her for that, for her quiet yet merciless teasing, the velvety voice she used only in his presence. The way she showed her wrists and ankles and collarbone so freely, the way she twirled her hair around each individual finger, around and around, until both digits were covered in her dark auburn tresses.
In her subtle ways, he was made privy to the fact that she did not wish to worship him as he so simply desired; she wished to rival him. Surpass him. Perhaps even worm her way into his bed. Who knew, maybe she desired him as another lover to add to her collection. She would creep behind him, her ethereal bodice threading itself with the sharpest of needles to his body, hands creeping around his neck as she embraced him, murmurs falling from her carmine lips about the paleness smoothness of his skin, the near feminine curve of his jaw, how hilariously angry his face would become at her gibelike demeanor and that a face so perfect should not have such ugly creases.
He hated her, hated her.
And yet as he stared into the aphotic oblivion before him, a sort of solar wind within the void gently whipping his obsidian hair against his handsome face, he remained unmoving, and as mentioned before, unsatisfied. For he had made a realization of his own at last, a slow and churning revelation that made his stomach writhe with conceit and private anguish. It was never supposed to be like this. He was forever his own man, taking everything from everyone else and giving nothing back. His heartstrings strummed an angry tune at such an epiphany, and it was only then that he truly felt he was stuck in an infernal Limbo. The tie he felt to her was worthless in comparison to his regal independence, so he questioned himself, asked his psyche why he allowed such follies of a woman to make him stray from his beautifully beaten and selfish path.
The answer came to him, and his eyes narrowed in abhorrence.
He wanted her.
And he would have her, in bed or otherwise, for like everything else, she would bow to him.
He slowly turned his head to the side, keen ears catching wind of the soft loverly footsteps of bare feet treading upon the invisible ground. She emerged from the darkness like a fae from its tree, like a nyph from her lake, her sharp elven features softening in a deadly guise of tenderness at the sight of him. His stare narrowed dangerously, the reflexive distaste along with a secretive uneasiness aflame upon his visage. Lust was not put off in the least, her torn black dress trailing behind her in a flowing river of gothic elegance as she approached as she always did, slowly, a goddess thrown into this oblivion of theirs for trying to seduce the cherubs and even the good Lord, tempting them with her enticements of blood and carnal heresy. Her own gaze darkened, sensual vitality seething in her irises, and she parted her mouth to breath a soft sigh of contentment at the sight of him.
"Your silence grates on my nerves. Speak quickly." Pride said, venom coursing through his tenors as though his voice were a serpent aching for a lethal bite of her flesh.
Lust merely smiled, blinking dolefully at his hostile greeting. "Sometimes silence speaks louder than words." She cooed gently, her voice lyrical to match her sylphlike appearance. "Besides..."
She started, her baneful poison seeping from between her lips like sweet prudent wine as she appeared at his side, a pale witch of misleading warmth coiling her slender arms around his shoulders as an adoring wife would, but instead he felt the hot boiling breath of her falsities against the smooth crook of his neck. "...You already seem to know how to talk without using your lips, Superbia." She finished gently, gingerly pressing her lips against the smooth leather covering his broad shoulder to muffle her voice which trailed off into the ether.
Pride stiffened, but did not pull away. The gears were turning powerfully within his mind, knowing the struggle of their mights would be tested by each other, taunted and torn apart as though their autopsies would be of both flesh and psyche. He would not lose. He would not lose. He enjoyed games, but only when he had the upper hand. That was what was so perplexing and infuriating about Lust. Her treasures were of human pulp, not the contests cooked up by great minds. She was depraved, deplorable, and downright dirty. She played by no rules, something he almost admired had it not tread upon his territory, something he would consider worthy of death had it been anyone else. However, her sweetness lost in a facade of ardent desires squeezed its way into his wintry heart in ways he would never truly understand. Finally, his body softened, allowing her to embrace him, and yet a small whimsical smile suddenly appeared on his face, something that, if anyone knew better, equaled something hideous in store for his present foe.
"I suppose you're right, my dear Luxuria, I'm sure you have many silent visitors in your bed who need to follow your advice."
"Ohhhh...harsh." Lust murmured playfully, unhooking her arms from his shoulders and moving to face him face to face, her cunning features pulling together to birth a wolfish grin. "Though...I have always wondered what you'd be like beneath the sheets of my sanctuary."
She's turning the tables again. Bitch.
"Or how soft your lips are." She said delicately, biting her lower lip in faux bashfulness. "Would you ever let my imagination cease in favor of reality?"
"Only if you admitted how pathetic you are compared to me." Pride hissed, leaning forward as if he were about to kiss her, or perhaps to bite her neck and suck the liquid spurting from the wound.
"Oh m'dear...these challenges of yours are beginning to grate on my nerves now..." Lust sighed in a melodramatic fashion, pouting slightly as she pressed one of her palms against her smooth rouged cheek.
"Then leave me in peace, far away from the maggoty haggis that is your presence."
The moment the words left his lips, they were suddenly covered by another pair, soft and supple, flexible and capable of oh so many treacheries. It was short and so painfully sweet, nothing but more lies and possessive motives being passed on from she to he through such mild conduct, and he despised her all the more. When she tried to pull away, obviously expecting to see his laughably shocked face that someone had dared to stride on his turf, he violently grabbed the back of her head, clenching tightly the silky threads of her hair between his fingers and savoring the frenzied cry that she emitted as she was now at his divine mercy.
He leaned in close to her, so she could feel his minty breath hitting the side of her face. "You think you can please me in such a way? You know nothing."
And he kissed her. It was not a beautiful tender kiss which she bestowed upon him. It was vile and dominating, malice spiraling out of control as he forced himself in and out of her mouth, tearing her lips apart as though they were in the way, seemingly attempting to suck out her soul from her very throat. When he pulled away, he licked the spot of blood from the corner of his mouth to taste his retaliation in full, and his eyes widened in a brief stupor as he viewed her, smiling, her pretty face split in half by a jackknife smile. Even while wounded, bleeding from her lips and grinning with crimson stained teeth, she laughed that melodious laugh of hers.
"I hope you know that this is exactly what I want." She said between bouts of deep dark laughter, lies and trickery leaking like black boiling oil from the depths of her voice chords.
Still grasping her hair in a pestilent tight grip, Pride reached with his other hand to touch her, hand running gently down the smooth sinew of her graceful swan neck, stroking the flesh there, worshiping it for but a moment before grabbing her throat and squeezing as tightly as he possibly could. Lust let loose a strangled moan from the depths of her throat, and her hands seized his face, still ever so gently as he began to strangulate her without a smidgen of guilt or emotion upon his face. He was Pride, the calm, the calculating, the king of manipulation and he would not have such a harlot of a woman break his glacial wall of scornful majesty. Leaning down again, burying his face in her hair as she heaved desperately for breath, he whispered hatefully into her ear, calmly asserting himself as only a prince cultured in a garden of vindictive computation could.
"So what is it you want, Luxuria? Do you want me to kiss you again? Do you want me to rip off your clothes? To pound you into the ground and lay buried between your thighs like a drunken prospector?"
A glint in her eyes confirmed his sickening accusations. Yes, she said with her stare, yes.
He said nothing else to her for some time, watching as her pale ashen skin began to turn blue. Just before the light left her eyes, he released her, letting her fall to the ground, sputtering and pathetically vulnerable before him, something he loathed but at the same time fancied so utterly that he almost lost his ghastly patience and ravaged her body like she so desired.
"Now go, Luxuria, I will have none of your nonsense any longer."
The color returned to her face, and she stood to go, saying nothing to his dismissal. But in her wake, she left him with nothing but yet another one of her decorous expressions, a look that prompted him to be contemplative once again. She then turned away, unharmed by his outburst, retreating into the darkness as though she was walking away with a victory he could have sworn he pocketed. They were both bred from the pools of iniquity, and yet she seemed to possess even more evil than he as she seemed to disappear into wind. Pride calmed himself, finding his existence akin to how it was before Lust had even intervened, restless and aloof as ever, insatiable in his overwhelming calculations of the woman he had just assaulted. Narrowing his eyes one last time at some invisible contemptible object in the distance, he turned away from the drifting focal point he had been staring at before Lust had come to him, retreating to the stygian abyss from which they all came.
Vanishing as though his existence was devoid of quintessence, he ached for their next meeting, hoping her pain would equal his hidden anxiety, that her punishment would exude his love for cruelty for having been made privy to such disdain on behalf of his person, that she would learn to pick her battles. But above all that scratched at his psyche like a rabid animal desperate to flee its cage, he could not help but feel a single sentiment, one that was displeasing, rancorous, an insult to his ingenious specter of a soul.
He won the battle.
But he lost the war.