Chip: Yo, guys--I'm back again! Here's my first of (hopefully) many works for the CAHA account. I hope you like it. ((Dedicated, in most parts, to Dale and Peter.)) For this story, I recommend listening to the song "Me and the Moon" by: Something Corporate. It's what I originally intended.
Summary: I believed in fairytale endings, once upon a time. It's just me and the Moon now. My god is dead and I am a doll. I move without instruction, but I am lifeless without him. And soon, just lifeless, period.
"Fairytale Ending"
The room was all golden-darkness and no life, empty and devoid of all happiness and hope..and love. And her? She was a corpse lying on the bed, animated by some old instinct to keep moving, keep breathing—the forgotten toy of a necromancer who never saw fit to teach her how to live again; unable to live without him—without his guidance and his control—she falls, day after day, back onto this bed, a broken marionette.
And today is no different—and yet it is. The heavy curtains shutter the sliding glass door to her balcony from the inside, cutting off the brutal light of the sun before it can filter through and burn her alive; the air conditioner has been turned off since this morning—as it was every morning—leaving her to the stifling heat of the candles rather than the too-cold radiance of loneliness. And it served her well, the room's oppressive warmth, lending to her an illusion of life; it brought a feverish flush to her cheeks and a sweat to her too thin, too lithe body. She was disappearing wasn't she? The woman was dead and the doll left in her place, a replication to occupy space, was dying slowly of neglect.
A year since then—right? What was the date? What was the time? The doll rolled her head to the side, that simple movement seeming to take forever and hurting an infinite degree more than it should have. When her eyes finally found the shape of the clock—or rather the indistinct blur on her nightstand that she assumed to be her clock—she had to blink several times to clear the sleep and sorrow from her gaze.
Nine o'clock—night already? And the date? She had to blink again and again—and then she found the read out in its small red digits and stared at it impassively—was she shocked? She couldn't tell anymore.
Valentine's day—or rather, night, yes? How long had she been lying there? Didn't she have somewhere to be? She started to rise—or to try to, but then a cold harsh wave of reality crashed into her and shoved her back down into the blanket, the rapist of her will.
No, she didn't have anywhere to be. The doll was an orphan, yes—an orphan by circumstance and by tragedy. She had a name once didn't she—the body before the doll. Didn't she have a name, a heart? A love?
Misa, she recalls—my name is Misa.
A product of remembrance, her thoughts ground to a halt then—Misa had a love didn't she? Misa seemed happy enough, yes—surely because she had a love, right? Didn't all pretty, happy girls deserve a love? An eternal love? A true love? Didn't they live forever and ride off into the sunset, like the old stories her mom—and nanny after nanny—used to read to her?
"And they lived happily ever after"--wasn't that how it was supposed to go?
Maybe—maybe that was how it was supposed to go, but someone went and rewrote the script didn't they? Someone, she remembered. Ah, yes—she did, didn't she? She and him...her love—they rewrote the story once, maybe twice—rewrote the story for the whole world, for their own good, right?
The lover of a god—or she was.
Now, there was no god for her.
There was only the flickering of the candles against her eyelids and occasional, foreign sounds that broke from her like sobs—only sobs had no cause to sound so damned destroyed.
And that was it, wasn't it? The doll lived in a world of candle light and sound—and heartbreaks remembered like faded photos in an album, covered by dust and time.
So, no—her story didn't have a happy ending; there was no "happily ever after" for Misa and him. There was nothing for them—because they were both dead.
At least one of them was resting quietly in their grave; she had all but rolled into hers—maybe her grave would be an ocean of blankets? Maybe her obituary, if there ever was one, would say she drowned in their endless oblivion, peacefully gone to be with him. Would there be someone to write pretty meaningless words about the star that fell from heaven? An epitaph for the long-lost beloved?
Did demons get gravestones?
He got a gravestone, she remembers—she made sure of it.
She exhaled long and happily at the thought, loving the mad reasoning of this thought forming in her mind, even in this delusion she knew she was living. Her eyes opened for the first time in months—but that couldn't be true could it? Ah well—she looked around her with a clearer mind, a will. Beside her, lined up in neat rows and bunches, were those cuddly stuffed creatures she once cherished as much as her own life—and they stared at her, expectant.
She could understand their unspoken suggestion, glittering like daggers in their eyes.
In lieu of a god to whom she might confess—because she only had one god and he was too far away to hear her prayers now—she smiled at them, the image of a crazed angel.
"It's a good day for a murder," she whispered.
She said it softly, as if it were pre-ordained, an order she couldn't escape.
They stared at her in bleak silence.
Still smiling, she shifted her weight right to left, rocking back and forth. Her vocal cords, long unused, were hoarse as she hummed off-key the tune of some forgotten ballad; her hands rose from their resting place beside her like pale, dead butterflies fluttering on a desert wind. Her hair, spread around her head like the shards of a shattered halo, caught the firelight but did not reflect it, too dim from neglect to sparkle the way it once did.
Demented, she continued to hum and then too fast, she was lurching upward and forward, her body rising to sit upright almost as if she'd propelled it by will alone. She was dizzy, she realized, the blood rushing in her ears and pounding behind her eyes; there was a sort of ringing that consumed all her faculties and she smiled, looking a little more insane because of it.
What a strange thing for a doll to feel.
She waited for a moment later or maybe more—because what was time to her when she knew she was about to end its meaning? She smiled widely and bounded up off her bed, either not noticing or not caring that her steps were precariously tilted and drunken, or that her calf muscles ached from the sudden movement. No, that didn't matter to her—only her goal, which now consumed what was left of her, echoing its insanity through every empty, cavernous cranny in her soul.
She tripped her way to the window, narrowly missing a step on the way there so that she lurched forward ridiculously, looking foolish and inebriated. Her hand caught the folds of the thick drapes—saved her and she righted herself there against the sliding glass door, her body clearly shaking, her mind clearly uncaring. Grasping fistfuls of the material, she yanked back, throwing the drapes wide—and for the first time in months, Misa saw the sky.
The stars, the clouds—the navy backdrop of the heavens. She remembered loving night-time once...once upon a time, yes? And wasn't there something about moonlight…sunlight…candlelight…
Light, yes? There was light in this life once…
Clouds drifted from around the edge of that disc in the sky and she stared up at it, entranced by the completion—the fullness. So round, so whole. Whole…
Not broken…
Why did that feel like a foreign concept now?
"It's me and the moon," she said rapturously, gazing through the glass at the full silver orb that was the moon, enjoying every texture, every dip and drip—did the moon drip, really? She wondered if it was made of milk or nectar or silver honey? Was it soft—did it feel like silk or satin—and if you tried to drink it, would the luminescence burn, or go down smooth like fine aged scotch?
Silver scotch, of course.
Anything else would just be...silly.
Silly. She used to be "silly" once too, right? Didn't someone tell her that—call her that? Someone cared enough to tease her, didn't they? Or was it really caring?
Teasing could be malicious, couldn't it?
She remembers that once—once upon a time—her name was Misa and she loved a boy...no, a man—No! A god! The only god, right? She knows that—and she remembers that there was someone who loved her...or was it two someones? She remembers sadness and death—and knowing that someone gave up their life to protect her own. She remembers being weak—and needing protection.
And then she remembers being strong—and powerful—a goddess for the god. Wasn't she his queen, his love? Didn't she deserve that love? Wasn't she a good little girl like all the other fairytale princesses?
Once upon a time...
But where was her "Happily Ever After"?
Lost, she supposed—lost in her transformation, yes? She was weak—and when she was a weak but pretty little girl, she was sure she had a happily ever after...
...but then she became strong and the goddess didn't have a happy ending, did she? Where did that goddess go—the one who was going to reign over a new world with her god, content in her love and her own strength?
Where did she go?
Lost, Misa decided again. Lost in the transformation like her happily ever after.
What else did she lose in her transformation, she wondered—what other little pieces of herself had broken off like chilled glass and disappeared into the annals of her mind?
Misa was transformed, yes?
Staring up into the sky, her brow crinkled a little but there was still an insane smile on her lips. "I am a butterfly," she murmured to herself, her hands rising to press against the cool surface of the glass, "I'm a butterfly—and someone let me die, I think." And then she shrugged it off, rolling her shoulders—a demented reaction from a woman who looked hardly sane.
"Off to the kitchen for me, friends," she said with good maniacal cheer to her stuffed animals, walking with tilted, crooked steps out the door of her little bedroom and toward the place where she used to...used to...
Misa made sweets, yes?
Yes, that was right. Misa made sweets and she enjoyed it—she liked to cook, didn't she? Entering the kitchen didn't bring with it any particular rush of excitement and she found herself a little disappointed by the lack of response in herself—what kind of cook was Misa?
Still, today she would not need to cook—nor, indeed, any day after this one, right?
"I've got no trouble with that," she whispered.
Her smile still firmly in place, a harlequin angel, she swept into the kitchen, seized an apple from the fruit basket and then flounced back out, trying to avoid crashing into walls on the way back to her bed. She did not stop to wonder where the very beautiful piece of fruit had come from—no, that never occurred to her.
She very nearly collided with a stand of candles in her bedroom as she staggered side to side; with very little in the way of grace, she threw herself onto the bed and submerged in the blankets—she forgot to take a deep breath but she wasn't sure if that mattered or not.
Surfacing this time was easier than the first and she grinned widely, her eyes dull. In her hands, she held the apple, turning it round and round in her palm and holding it aloft by its woody stem, the tip pressed between her thumb and forefinger daintily. Her brow furrowed a little and she cocked her head—what a strange and disgusting way Misa had of holding things.
Where did Misa pick up such strange habits?
She knows its something Misa should remember—but she doesn't and so she doesn't try to look any harder. It hurt a little too much.
Her reflection in the perfect ruby skin of the fruit is distorted and funny-looking and she giggles helplessly—horribly—at the misshapen monster caught inside.
She pressed the apple to her chest, held it over her heart and tried to rub some of the color onto her wrinkled t-shirt; it wouldn't go and so she tried again, pressing it harder, hoping she could force it into her chest—a new heart for a resurrected toy, yes?
"My heart like a crystal," she said to herself, sing-song.
Is Misa insane, she wonders—and then shrugs, not sure that it matters very much.
She threw herself back into the pillows and cuddled the apple to her chest, holding it very tightly between her hands. Beside her, on all sides, her stuffed animals watched attentively, looking for any waver in her resolution—her determination must not fail her. She smiled easily at them, "Don't worry, little friends—I'm going to do it this time...no more dreaming for the dreamer, right?"
She didn't pause to consider how strange that sentence seemed.
Their tiny little eyes seemed to sparkle at her.
The candlelight in the room was dimming, each one burning low in its own glow, wax running over and spilling like molten rivers across her dresser tops and end-tables. Her eyes found each guttering lights and counted them off absently as she turned and toyed with the apple in her hands.
"It seems my mind has gone away," she whispered to no one in particular, "I am lucid...and departed, now." Outside the glass doors, the moon was proud in the sky, lighting all the world in neutral silver light. Did those mortals below know what it was like to see the world from that high—to be a god, looking down from Heaven to decide the judgment?
No, she supposed they didn't—and she didn't either, now.
There was no god for her anymore.
"It's just me and the moon," she said.
Tragic doll, she thought absently—poor tragic little Misa.
Grinning maniacally, she glanced over her gathered animal audience once more, "What do you say we go for a ride? I'm so tired of days that feel like nights. I just want to go up, into the sky," she sighed the last word, eyeing the heavy blackout curtains she had pulled back and the navy perfection of the canvas heavens outside the glass.
"Fly away," she whispered, her grip tightening around the apple, "Just disappear—like a butterfly on a breeze."
The stuffed animals feel compelled to remind her that butterflies have a tragically short life span.
"So I'm butterfly—just let me die." She smiles easily at them, feeling—maybe just a little—like the old girl, the one she used to call herself. Misa.
Misa had a sense of humor and a pretty smile.
This doll, her, had only a well-rounded sense of irony and a pretty death on the horizons.
Or so she hoped.
She glanced down, seeing her distorted reflection in the face of the apple once more--but this time she brings the reflection closer, ever so much closer; an inspection maybe, the last visage she'll see before the end.
Misa was pretty once, but she is not. Her hair is lank and her eyes are sunken and her smile is brittle around the edges. Too pale, too skinny—too wasted away to be human. Doll, a doll--she called it right, didn't it? And like a broken toy, she continues to exist--no will of her own, no life to speak of.
Just an existance in the shadows under the bed.
She closes her eyes, whispers word of goodbye to the only ones still listening--such steadfast little friends, her animals--and then she bites in, taking off her own head in that tiny distorted image. The bite is big—angry and overwhelming—and she chews it bitterly, tears spilling from the corner of her eyes to run down her face in a long trail.
Misa is disgusting.
She chews but the anger is bitter on her tongue and her throat, so unused to the activity of eating solids anymore, gags around it. She coughs a little, but the obstruction doesn't clear—it's lodged there, stuck like a sin on her soul. She sputters around it, unable to breath.
Misa senses the irony of it, understands it, even as the doll clings desperately to her ocean of blankets and tries to swallow around it. Memory surfaces—a moment, forgotten by the doll, orchestrated by the ghost in her mind.
This apple, so perfect and plain--bought in a corner grocery store; bought by Misa. And Misa, standing over the sink as she soaked the beautiful red apple in a cookery pot—but what was in the pot? The doll could remember, with horror, the putrid scent of boiled arsenic, liquid and rank—and her own hand...NO! Misa's hand as it dipped down with the apple and let it sink to the bottom of the pot.
Murder, she wanted to cry—but hadn't the strength or the breath. The bite of apple was lodged in her throat—choking her, holding her to this course even as she shook with the desire to be rid of it.
The teddy bears on her bed nodded with approval, happy that she would—finally—keep her own word. In silence that beat loudy in her ears, they called steadily for her death—death for the doll and death for all.
Let the madness cease.
Her rasping breath was coming too short, too painful—a stitch in her side and a swelling, pounding pressure behind her eyes and in her cheeks. It hurt to die, the doll thought frantically.
It wasn't supposed to hurt, remember? That was the doll's plan, wasn't it? To go in sleep—with some pill or some drug.
Misa, that scheming harlot.
Misa ruined everything.
And finally, she understands—she comprehends—that she is the downfall of herself. Once a goddess, now the destroyer...of herself. She understands now that it was all planned, wasn't it? Misa, Misa—bad girl, Misa.
Look at what you've done to us now!
She wanted to scream—found that she couldn't—and struggled helplessly against the vile irony of it. She stumbled from the blankets, finding in her clarity that she could see the path to the glass door—to the balcony. She threw herself at it, yanking the handles back with what remained of her strength even as blackened edges swirled into her vision. Those stars, she thought, those stars aren't in the sky.
They were racing across the sky, those stars—one was arsenic, the other suffocation. Which would win she wondered dimly, her hands clammy, her step unsteady.
The cool night air hit her and she stumbled forward, free of the support of the glass, but she couldn't stop herself from falling—and when she hit the concrete, she was already unconscious, slipping into the blackness as her breath slipped from her body.
Her last sight--of the moon, high above. Stars gleamed, the moon shown with all its promise and pride--and for the life of her (because that was all she had left to give) she couldn't remember when it had been more beautiful.
Her sight failed her then, and her voice was gone long before that--at last, she could hear again, free of the rush of starved breath and blood in her ears. And in that sudden silence, the wind whistled along the balcony, bringing with it the sound of something long-lost, familiar and damning. She might have cringed had she any life in her.
The sound danced over her corpse like a cruel jester and then spun away into the sky, carressing the pale face of the moon as it twirled about, fanatical.
Insane, mocking laughter.
The laughter of a god.
((OOooOO))
Against that same beautiful moon—made all the more beautiful by the fading sight of a dying maniac—a sihouette stood out starkly, sitting at the highest point on the needle-tower. Impossibility, yes? The mind said so—no one could sit up so high, so comfortably, so casually...and yet...
Long, inhuman fingers tucked a feathered quill into the binding between two lined pages, even as the inconspicuous black notebook closed on itself; the end of that story--finally.
He wasn't the emotional type and so he chose not to analyze it overly much—his method, his means. The apple, the death by poison—she was a poison to herself wasn't she? It seemed fitting enough in his mind. Still, even knowing she had it coming, he's thankful—quietly—that old-spongy Rem is dust now.
The Deathnote went into his holster and he rose carefully, balancing on the edge of the precipice—the whole of Tokyo spread out under his feet, a city of a thousand flickering, glowing lights and lives going on and on in their mortal movements.
One more extinguished by his hand, he thought absently--that last loose end tied up.
No more gods, no more goddesses—no more hero detectives and no more intersting surprises.
He was really beginning to miss that—the apples and the intrigue.
He was bored.
But now was not the time for that was it? He gathered himself and spread his wings, taking off as nothing more than an arching shadow in the sky, invisble to all but present in the darkest reaches of their nightmares. Death on wings. He sneered down on them.
Stupid boring mortals.
He hoped none of them got their fairytale endings.
Author's Note: Sooo...what did ya think of that? ((smile)) ...Pretty please, be kind and review. I'm starved for your special brand of love, don'tcha know? Go on...review for me? Please?
-Chip.