The Lying Smile
By Adventurous Putty
One
A smile and a kiss; that was all it had taken. Or had there been more?
It's difficult to remember the important things now: how life had been, what had happened, her name…
Her name. What was her name? The knowledge is so very far off; he cannot remember. He tries and tries, but he will not remember – no more than he will remember trying to remember once the sun goes down.
Perhaps this is how it is meant to be, he asserts. Yes, yes, this is how life was always planned: nothing but ecstasy and suffering. A cycle. Such a delicious cycle.
What was the cycle's name again? Was it love? Or war?
Or sugar?
Yes, that was it; it was called sugar. And then he cries hysterically, knowing that somewhere along the line that word had carried a connotation as complex as his broken mind. The sugar; yes, it was all about the sugar.
Or was it? It is so very hard to remember.
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It has just rained; he curses life silently as he stumbles through the bazaar. Under normal circumstances, desert-men would be dancing and parading throughout the city, screaming in jubilation at the fact that the rain had spared their harvest for the time being. Perhaps they are – he cannot tell, for everything around him is a blur.
He picks his way through the city by instinct, not really knowing where he's going until he gets there. And when he finally does reach his destination, his entrance is rather anticlimactic; he falls through the curtain doorway because his stumbling legs cannot support him any longer.
Why does he stumble? Is he drunk? Has he been hurt? He cannot remember, and yet he can.
He does not remember because the pain is too horrible, though he bears no wounds.
He does remember because he will never forget her face. Smiling. Lying. Killing him. Mocking him.
He wonders where she is now, and why she did what she did. Then he wonders whether he deserves it for loving her.
And then, finally, he wonders what exactly there had been between them. There hadn't been love between them, had there? No more than there had been kinship, or friendship, or harmony. No, he remembers: there had been lust; that counts, doesn't it?
No, lust doesn't count. It doesn't count because it is a physical need, a hunger, a thing of flesh, something mortal. Yet that was all that there had ever been between them; lust. Hunger and lust. Hunger and lust and seed.
Hunger and lust and seed…and sugar. It is always about the sugar.
He crawls on all fours, the hunger and pain unbearable, until he reaches a cabinet. He pulls out a pipe, and lights it hungrily, letting the contents fill his lungs, his mind, his being.
Then, realizing what he has done, he lets out a scream. It is a horrible thing, a shriek, a piercing blade in the coldness of dusk in Rimmen. Yet it is no more dreadful than her smile.
That terrible, ghastly, lying smile.
Two
He remembers a story about love, but memory is a relative thing. He gets the feeling it was more a tale of pain than anything else.
Betrayal. The word rings in his mind like the bells of the local chapel – those damned bells! Why did those Imperials have to move in with such noise and rancor? They ruined everything.
No. Not the Imperials. Not even the sugar. She ruined everything.
Betrayal.
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Rimmen was such a large place, a city full of culture and life. Khajiiti women carried their kittens around in baskets as they went about their business in the marketplace; the sun shined over businessmen from as far as Colovia bargaining in the hot sun; men in the bright and colorful armor of the Honor Guard escorted government officials to office.
It was in this splendor of life that he first saw her: gorgeous, as if from a painting. Her figure was that of a perfect hourglass, and her feline, almond eyes looked him over with a look that made him shiver in delight.
Without thinking, he met her.
Without thinking, he took her.
Without thinking, he fell in love.
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And all within the pits of Rimmen's deadliest and most nefarious redlight district. A final irony, the ultimate blow to his ego. He is no hero, no loveable rogue, not even an intelligent Khajiit. He is an imbecile, a fool, a man who fell for a prostitute and let her get him addicted.
Addicted to the sugar.
Addicted to her body.
Addicted to the thrill.
Tears well up in his eyes again; the memories are flooding back. Even though he's taken his dose, the memories keep coming back.
And as the rain begins to patter against his window again, he damns his existence for the second time today.
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As he lay in the small apartment with her at her side, the smell of her fur filling his nose, he began to dream. The sun was shining ever so brightly through the windows of the room; though sparsely lit and decorated, the sheer beauty of the balcony and its view of the city made up for it.
And it was just as he was wondering how his little plebeian kitten could afford such a beautiful home that the clouds began dimming that marvelous panorama.
She fed him the sugar.
How sweet its taste; how delicious its hallucinations; how marvelous the strength it gave him. Strength that he could use to impress her, to tease her. But she loved him still, loved him all the same, wanted to give him more sugar, more love, sugarlove, lust.
The smell of her fur had been so delectable.
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The rest is just droplets in the rain.
It comes to him differently every time he tries to remember it.
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Sometimes her masters came and beat her, trying to take her sugar money away, and he stopped them, but they chased him away.
Sometimes he couldn't come up with that sugar money, and she drove him off herself.
And sometimes she just left him, and went to find someone else to feed her sugarlove.
That was the worst memory of all.
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And now he is all alone. The bitterness is overwhelming, and he goes to get some more sugar in the cabinet. There is no more. Of course; that is simply how the rain works.
Because now the rain had come, and washed over him, and left him.
And she had come, and washed over him, and left him.
And the sugar had come, and washed over him, and left him.
And now he has nothing left.
Three
Once he thought that the sugar would make him see his world clearer; now he realizes that they are one in the same.
He sits up, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, then lays back, then sits up again. Realizing that he is an idiot, he laughs at himself. Laughs…smiles…
…hysterically.
And he remembers.
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They had always dressed him in the finest of garments, he and his brother. His brother…his Other. Always present, always a shadow…always the favorite.
It irked him to no end.
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It still does. It irks, and stings, and makes him cry. Maybe even more so than the sugar…or maybe just the same.
For they are the same, he knows that – his brother makes him know that. King and Country. King and Country and Other.
King and Country and Other and Sugar.
He is dizzy now, so he rolls over and curls up in a corner. And, again, he remembers.
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He loved his mother.
He always loved his mother, her milk, her stories. Yet they were all the same, for the Khajiiti took in their stories with their mothers' milk, and he was no different.
How wonderful he was, she told him, how proud he should be of his heritage. For such was the heritage of Rahjin the Thief, of all the great Manes since the days of Kiergo and As'hita and Pa'alatiin and Ne Quin-al, and all the kittens since who were blessed with the countenance of AZURAH and her judgments.
And he took it all in, smiling, slurping. His milk, his knowledge, his passions, his identity.
Milk, not sugar – that was the lesson he should have learned. The lesson his people should have learned, for it was always right there in front of them.
For they all took it in as kittens in their mothers' milk.
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Yet he hasn't learned his lesson – they haven't learned their lesson. Damnit. Damn them, for being so idiotic, for taking the sugar instead of the milk.
Even the sugar isn't sugar, for the tales have said that the Old Sugar was sacred, perfect, a gift from the gods. This sugar is something else, wretched, corrupt, enhanced, destructive. Sold at the highest price to the highest bidder. A tool, to feed a dying people with another country's coin.
And he cries again, for the sins of his soul, and the sins of his people. Cries because they are all like her, and she is the sugar, and they are his nation. Cries because they have forgotten their heritage, their identity, for they have chosen the sugar instead of the milk. The precious milk, their lifeblood, which had been given to all of them by their mothers when they were kittens, never hidden, in front of them the whole time like the lost knowledge in a rotting ancient tome.
He wakes up.
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It was all a dream, his mother assured him, a thing of his imagination, something AZURAH fed her kittens when they hadn't had enough milk. He smiled weakly, turning from her embrace and laying back on the bed. It had been such a gruesome dream, of monsters and magicks, of pain and agony and torture.
He stayed there, stiff, stubborn, intent on not showing his true feelings. But in spite of him she hugged him, reassured him, told him it was just a dream.
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Just a dream…and he falls asleep again far deeper this time, where none can awaken him, dreaming of sweeter things than sugar and blood.