- - - - (author blurt): Fanfiction based (very) loosely on the characters in Othello. Set in modern times. Copyright belongs to the great Will (please forgive my meddling about in your wonderful play, though you are dead and cannot excuse me).

(side note): This is artsy-shmartzy and full of melodrama. If you are offended by either of these two concepts, please do not proceed to read. I'm human, and flames affect me (no false bravado here).

'this was beautiful'

part i: private madness

Sometimes she wants to burst out of her burning pale skin so she can melt into the night, into Oliver's dark hands and narrow limbs- his ebony eyelashes that lie so softly against the perfect curve of his smooth cheek. Sometimes, Charity wants to be anyone but herself. Ian understands. Sometimes Ian wants to be someone else too, to get away- make it all go away. Sometimes he wants it so bad he can taste it, the bitter rot that rises in his throat clenching all the muscles so that each breath he draws is a labor. Ian understands very well. But Cass knows better. Cass knows (because he always knows) all about Charity's delirium and Ian's raging claustrophobia. Cass is sure that he would indulge in his own private midnight madness, if he weren't already so caught up in their chaos already. These days his head is always spinning, and he gets so dizzy and short of breath- feeling like there are electrical storms inside his head, only, he's quite forgotten all about them now. Oliver frets about Cass. But he doesn't know what to do; Cass tells him lots of words, but they never make much sense (all in nonsense). Cass talks to Charity though, in straight lines and pieces of other (dead) people's words. Sometimes Oliver wants to reach through to Cass so bad that he wishes he could just jump inside Charity's skin.

part ii: charity, ian & cass

Charity met Ian when they were little. Charity was coming home after swimming and she smelled like chlorine and sun block and sun. Ian just smelled like fear. He was holding a dead kitten, he'd snapped it's neck and he was crying and crying and when charity asked him why he was crying he said it was because he couldn't put it back- the kitten was broken and he didn't know why he did it and he was real scared and he just wanted the kitten to get warm again. Charity gave him a hug and she didn't even wrinkle her nose at the dead smell and told him that they were going to have a funeral for the kitten. They buried it in Cass's back yard but Cass wasn't very sure about it. Ghosts, he explained, wouldn't like a dead kitty in their yard. Charity said they probably wouldn't mind another member of the family. Then Charity, Cass, and Ian went for milk shakes at the soda fountain, and Charity said the ghosts wouldn't mind this either, because they liked to watch live people living out their lives.

(to be continued)

(end note): For your reading convenience:

Oliver is Othello just like Charity resembles Desdemona as Cass might be Cassio and Ian is certainly Iago.