I
Sometimes the Conditioning Fails.
The rust ragged iron breathed and shuddered as Rikan was flung against it, the impetus of his warm body dusting the elaborate, twisting metalwork of sugary ice which had lain raw upon the mansion gate. His shoulders and barley-hued hair were bejewelled for a fleeting moment with slivered diamond and melting blue topaz. The riches faded and became dew, gem-like spheres glistening, entangled amongst the down turned thickets of his eyelashes.
His blood was a hot gloss sticky on his uniform, his face. Rikan felt his stance weaken and his heart flutter. Firm and slender hands gripped his narrow waist whilst Vincent crushed his torso against him, lips grazing across a clenched jaw line.
Tears clotted in Rikan's throat. His dim, deadened blue eyes were doused with brine.
Fabric slapped at the air, and a firm, skeletal hand met his neck, tightening.
The Commander heaved an irritated sigh, pinching firmer around his officer's gorge. He shook his head sadly, even as the quivers of a swift pulse reverberated through his wrist.
"Do I have your attention now?" He drawled idly. "You need to learn to control that mouth of yours, Soldier-boy. Whose 'inferiority complex is fully justified' now? Who do you think is the 'laughable inadequate' now? "
"…M-me." He hissed, his euphony strangled. Vincent smiled in his small triumph, dementedly, staring down the gleam of raw steel in Rikan's eyes. He forced him closer, greeting his lips with a fierce, laughing kiss.
"Me what?"
"… Me s – sir."
Pain splintered in jagged scarlet through Rikan's brain, a drowsy paralysis hammered in his arteries. Red oblivion danced in his retina, crimson and white flares scorching searing scars onto his gaze.
"Precisely."
He slumped to the hoar frosted ground, gasping. He struggled to engorge his empty lungs with crisp air and then released a hiss of annoyance. A shadow of agony shimmered deep within his eyes as he found the ragged, crescent moon scars branded onto the pale lineaments of his neck.
The whispering air melted over Rikan's sharp scowl, breathy, lusty, vengeful promises dissolving in spiralled vortices of pale vapour. He glowered into Vincent's eyes, searching. Black ripples of shadow glistened over crimson waters, and he could drown in silence in that scarlet hell.
"Slit your wrists, Vincent, it'll lower your blood pressure." His eyes gleamed darkly, fixed colourless in a listless reverie. He spoke softly, his tone of gravel, of rust scraping.
Vincent gazed at him in quiet astonishment before a deliberate, scowling smile spread over his lips. "Pardon me?"
"I said – I'll cut you open and throw you in the river." He told Vincent, voice hollow with resent. And with a vague happiness he realised he had said it aloud. The cold breeze bit at his cheek like a dull-whetted blade as he gathered himself, standing.
The officer Turk recoiled and smoothed a nervous hand through his glossy black tresses. His eyes of bloodied ruby met Rikan's steely focus, ripping.
"That's it. You're finished in the Turks. You'll lose you job, oh, don't worry – I'll make sure." He smiled, jaw clenching. His rich tones held a taint of throaty yearning.
"...Come on then. Hit me...Hit me." Rikan pulled a butterfly knife, twirling it in his pale hand, a mad shiver of laughter escaping his throat. "I'll slice you. I'll pull out your veins like little ribbons." A chill stirred in the veins of the blood-eyed Turk and his breath escaped in a gasping veil. He pressed his back into the rust ragged structure of the gate until it heaved against the sweat-slick impetus of his body. Fear clawed at the sinews of his heart.
"You will hang, Rikan, hang with a broken neck, if you dare."
"You will hang, Ri-khan." He was a cruel mimic, and his Vincent was high and whining, upper-class. "Temper, temper, Vincent. Let's not get unpleasant. You know, I think there might be something wrong with me lately, maybe, because I look at you, and," The wind stirred the stricken leaves, sighed amongst the trees as they breathed and swayed. In the descending gloom the fair Turk's eyes flared in a disarmingly tranquil marine aquarelle. He was beautiful. But his beauty was frozen, un-dead, and Vincent shuddered when their gazes clashed. "I look at you, your anatomy, and I see where the prime cuts would be. See? I could skin you alive if I wanted to."
"My...god...you've snapped."
He tilted his head, and wiped away his smirk.
And in his eyes was the maelstrom. A squall of perfect, neon fury.
A vision prelude to Death.
"Have I? I don't feel any different." His voice was a caustic and splintering whisper. "You make a game of me, Valentine. You'd force your little pet corporal down. You'd make me lie with you and you'd make sure I bled for it. Wouldn't you? Blood is the only way you'll learn Rikan, that's what you'd say. It's the only way you'll learn obedience, because you can't reason with gutter boys, pain is what they understand best. And do you know what Vinny?"
"Not so free with my name…"
Agony exploded within Vincent's mind. Rikan had punched him. Blood gushed in torrents and rivulets across his face and mouth, the taste headily metallic against his lips. He crumpled, hands drenched in thick, treacle-black pulse. Stunned, furious, anger began to dull the keen of the sharp, waspish little strike.
"…You'd be absolutely right! Ten fucking points to you!" The handsome and terrible corporal laughed hideously, biting down a smile. "Get a fucking haircut."
"Leave me alone. I hate you." Valentine rasped, lip bloodied.
"I can tell when you're lying." He smashed a scissoring kick into Vincent's chest and tried to persuade himself the voices murmuring in the reaches of his skull were imagined.
Valentine slumped onto the raw-frosted ground, spattered in thin streaks of scarlet warmth and spittle. Rage numb, he groped for the maple-veneer stock of his Colt automatic and raised it with an uncertain sneer.
A sick grin cracked on Rikan's features as he connected his knee with the aiming Turk's jaw, his nauseating, superior laugh crackling through the limpid air.
Vincent crashed onto the ground, heaving his breath, features twisted in wordless agony. With a suddenly deepening scowl Rikan kicked the pistol into the radius of weak darkness and stood woodenly, his sickly blue gaze grinding into the Commander.
"Do you know what it feels like to be ripped inside, Vin?" His glossy leather boots creaked as he stepped toward the stricken Turk in the living silence. He felt a heat rise and crawl over his skin, a sweat of anger.
"Answer me." His voice carried the uneasy high pitch of a doubtful command.
Vincent hissed, spitting the gore from his mouth.
Rikan's fists trembled and clenched, the twin ligaments jutting from his wrists as a tearful gleam spilled over those glacial eyes.
Silver light cast from the slim grin of the moon caressed Rikan's features cravingly. His lips parted in a wicked, candied smile and his dull phosphor eyes flickered under the lick of moonlight.
Silence thickened in the still air. Vincent was staring warily at his young inferior, the rushing rasp of his breath caught in twines of vapour between his hands, heart rhythm fluttering.
"You don't look so legendary now."
Valentine whined a sob. He raised his imperially thin frame from the snow-glazed concrete, shuddering from fear and pain and the gut-gnawing freeze. He took a handful of his sharply tailored suit and, gasping, patted the vines of blood from his mouth.
"How you got to be Commander I shall never know. But come on, you can say it. Always had a soft spot for me. You think I could become great – don't you? An Executive?" His voice was clotted with arrogance and he smiled unpleasantly.
He rubbed the blood from his face and smiled unsettlingly. "You can be stupid sometimes, Rikan, you're too irrepressible to obey, and too ruthless to ever command. You couldn't order a take-away." Vincent smiled sourly. "And stop that pathetic street whine, it's irritating. Slum cut. Cheap. You have the look of a gutter-slut all over you."
He met with a bleak, harrowing veil of silence.
"I do not."
"Don't get above yourself, Ri."
"Oh, I
wouldn't ever, Vin."
He flashed his canines, his
blood-stained lips curling into a sneer. Vincent's eyes glinted
with a dangerous lust, his voice harsh and snarling. "Your sugar
daddies spoiled you rotten, didn't they? You just can't
abide not getting your own way! You're a child, Rikan."
"I'm old enough to kill, aren't I?"
Rikan edged toward Vincent, slowly, a terrible single-mindedness settling in his creamy-blue butcher's eyes, smouldering under silver pale lashes. Kicking him down, with a dancer's suddenness, he pressed a polished sole hard onto Vincent's windpipe and felt him choke and squirm. His breath toyed idly with moon gilded tresses.
A knot tightened in Valentine's throat, chains of forge hot agony wrapping and enveloping his convulsing chest. He thrashed, but Rikan was strong above him, and laughing idly.
"A little breathless, are we? Speak up, then. You kill me Vince, you absolutely do. You're a scream." He stepped back, pacing around the stricken man. "Disgusting."
Vincent choked back a sob, heaving. "…I always knew it – I always knew you were a traitor! You promised you would follow me until the end. "
"...Maybe, but only out of morbid curiosity. No offence, but you don't exactly inspire loyalty. People say I've got no taste, but I do like you."
The breath seemed to hitch in his pale throat.
"So I knocked you about, occasionally! They were love-taps. And you broke your word, which is truly awful."
"I know Vince, don't whinge, I know. I tried to love you. And every time you beat me until I couldn't answer back, I knew I'd driven you to it. That it was my fault. But it wasn't. You wouldn't play the game. And you were very unfair, Vincent. Very unfair. Yet, my love for you never died - It was killed."
"You'll always be a whore. You...never
loved me, you bastard!"
"Oh, do shut up."
He knelt, straddling Vincent's chest, his eyes glistening slits of savage storm-grey blue, radiating a nightmarish charge. He gripped the dark Turk's wrists, his fingers curling around tendons like tailored fetters, gently pinioning him from shoulder to ankle with his own body weight. His hot breath stirred over Vincent's lips, his voice a whisper of silk as he said, "I am a deceiver. A manipulator. But I wouldn't lie to you..."
He crushed his selfishly pouting lips to Vincent's mouth, hungry against his clenched teeth. Hard enough to bruise and flush a hot, wine-coloured blush onto the Commander's cheeks. His rusty eyes lolled back, a small moan of submission choked down in his throat.
Rikan grinned into their unholy
congress. Physically superior, Vincent was taller and easily stronger
than his counterpart. He could buck free and close his fingers around
the boy's neck and snap his windpipe, and that would be the last
time the charming turncoat ever disobeyed anyone's orders. The
last time he would ghost spidery caresses over Vincent's skin, or
fold into a jealous embrace on silent sheets, or kiss him deeply, his
bitter sweet flavour lingering in the throat and in the mind. Rikan
broke away, and from his pale, smiling lips he wiped away the sticky
taste of Vincent, stroking his superior's aching lip with a
manicured thumbnail.
"See? Now all I want you to do is
recommend me for promotion."
The world was hissing, hissing to
Rikan's tone. Rain moved over them, sweeping, a veil of sound, of
roaring, liquid thickness.
"It's ...raining, Rikan."
Desperation was a hollow note in his voice.
"Oh don't worry.
You're not sugar. You won't melt." Rikan twisted
his dark hair at the nape until the officer gasped and shot him a
stare blinded by tears. The rain had plastered Rikan's hair to his
face. Shadow lingered at his forehead, in the sockets of his eyes. He
regarded Vincent with the blackest, hungriest envy. "Well?" His
appealing, yet awful, viscera-tearing smile was fixed on his
restrained superior.
Vincent let his gaze touch Rikan, moving
slowly and deliberately across his body before staring ceaselessly
into seawater blue depths. "You want a recommendation? I recommend
you never ask me again, you renter."
His unsettling
smile faded, as he spoke, his voice was eerily tender, breathy.
"Fine. That's just splendid with me. So, the
answer's no?"
"Do you know what you are Rikan?"
"No. Ok, well, it doesn't matter. I'm going to fucking take
your job anyway, I'll just have to replace you when you die.
Which will be quite soon," He rounded on Vincent, flicking
open his switchblade with wet, caressing fingers. They both stared at
the blade's lethal, corpse-grey glittering. He spoke softly through
a clenched grin. "Because I'm going to run you through like a
slab of meat the very second you turn your back to me. Got
that, Vince?" A savage superciliousness was on his sneering
face, as he arose, stepping away, swivel-hipped, from the palling
form of his superior.
The rain was tinselly, its breathy hiss
hollow. His shirt was greying and lines of water were glistening
ribbons falling from his jaw, his ivy-league jacket, trickling.
"Rikan, do you know what you are?" Vincent repeated,
icily, wiping back his sticky hair.
"Enlighten me."
"You're a psychopath." Came his moneyed tone.
"Oh,
well observed! Tell me Vincent. Do I look insane to
you?" Rikan was jerkily glancing behind himself constantly,
willowy, the grey of his shirt stretching over his rippling stomach,
slipping over the juts of his ribcage's architecture. The gently
mocking pitch of his voice hitched, faltering. His expression was
suddenly feral and desperate. "Well," He began, confessional.
"I'm... on a lot of anti-psychotics. And...can I tell you
something else?" Rikan bent to stare. He was fashionably lean. "You
look marvellous wet. Really...What? What's the matter with
your face?"
"I'm angry at you Rikan." He
arose, to the full extent of his height, shivering with rage and
giddy with adrenaline, his dark lips scowling. "Corporal.
And, although you are an ungrateful little wretch, you ought to thank
me for what I am about to do. It will save your career."
"You want to fight? You want to fight? Good.
I like to fight." He gave his hideous, schizophrenic smile,
breaking into a high, unhinged laugh. Vincent's leaping knife
whipped over his cheek, a sighing, fluting kiss, from his aureate
lip, catching his face in an that awful expression, a grin-like
ribbon of blood painting a cruel, perpetual simper on his flawless,
ghost-pale skin. His laughter caught in his throat, the shivering of
the rain a roar in the gasping silence, as he touched the curling
butchery on his face, stooping, staring emotionlessly at the blood
spattering below, his own red death dripping with the dirty rainwater
onto the concrete.
Vincent backed away, the black blade held at
his side melting into the velveteen darkness. He smirked, his smile
grim and tempting, purposefully hateful. "Not so pretty now,
are we?" Sickly notes of lust and envy were a poisoned undercurrent
in his rich tone. Eyes fixed warily on Rikan, he knelt, haunches
quivering, to pick up his vicious Colt, and springing up his deadened
aim fell on the practised liar, the pitiless joy dreadful on his
handsome face. "You're vile to me, Rikan. But you're not
sniggering anymore, are you?"
He fixed dead, chemical
eyes on Vincent, blood smeared over his arrogant, beautiful face like
an urgent red kiss, scarlet drooling from his parted lips, teeth
white. As he straightened, throwing back his head, pinkish bloody
water arced from his brow, his loose, greasy hair plastering back
with a slap. The hideous scar-smile was a painted theatrical mask of
false glee, a jagged knife grin. His true expression was of unholy,
concentrated calm, of dim sanitised analysis. He regarded Vincent
with milky, disease-blue eyes, swaying in his idle stance. His
rasping, grinding voice was infected with terrible, taunting, lyrical
hatred. "Oh, so, what's this? Vincent doesn't like his
bit of rough any more? The slum-boy is getting a little
too clever, a little too ambitious? Now you have to cut
me to make yourself feel better? Take a diazepam. You're
jealous of me Vincent." An expression of listless distaste
crossed his lips, blood running onto his collar like a cheap lipstick
smudge. His swaying body, its musculature working, was forged for
passion, he moved like a dancer, sighing as he found the scabbard at
his slim waist, hip jutting, drawing his thin, tempered blade with a
lazing, flesh-smith's arrogance. "But I'm more jealous of
you."
Rikan's trembling disharmony made Valentine
shiver. "I have this gun, you know. I could shoot you. It would
blow your head off clean. Easily." Vincent snarled as he took aim,
forcing a hopeless, haunted laugh. A dark, hungry flame languished
with torrid black lustre in his eyes when he drew his slender fingers
around the trigger. "Just come at me, Rikan, I dare you."
Stillness.
Rikan took
the whining blade and pressed it to his lips, in a glaring mockery of
a salute. Torrid. Ablaze. Evanescing quicksilver blue. His eyes were
awful, spectral steel pyres of flaming aquamarine. They flickered
with frosty pleasure.
"See, now that's really funny."
Vincent smiled uncertainly. "What?"
"Oh, it's probably
nothing," He shuddered against the cold rain, shoulders writhing
pleasantly. His ridiculous laughter was high and dripping with
malice, the cracking note of artifice. "I won't interrupt. Go
ahead."
Vincent feigned laugh was mirthless and irritated,
his gun dipping. He stopped abruptly, eyes searching, his practised
smile falling. "No, what's so funny?"
Rikan edged toward
him, smiling cruelly. Vincent hissed a breath and refocused his
perfect aim, halting his amused, creeping officer in his feral prowl.
"Do you really want to know, then?" He drew a pale,
clasping hand from his blazer pocket, holding out six glistening
cartridges to Vincent, blue funeral smoke eyes studying as his
superior buckled slightly, crushed by realisation.
"Recognise
these, do we?"
He sniggered as Vincent recoiled,
horrified, his slippery fingers snapping open his empty revolver, and
with desolation slowly breaking over his face and body, he slumped
against the high gate, gun gripped listlessly at his side, useless.
Whisperingly, voice broken, toneless, "Why do I have to
die?"
"That's a hard one. Pass."
"But...I
think I love you, Rikan."
His expression was of ghastly
mutilated glee, grinning in the rain.
"Everyone loves
me."
Vincent paled, overmastered by sickness, with Rikan
leaning to analyse his agony with staring, lustreless eyes. His
laughter was slow and mechanical. "I really do wish I could have
had you one last time." He slapped Vincent into alertness
with an open palm, nonchalant. "You listening?"
The
Commander smiled slowly, leering, an intense clotted silence pressing
down, the inky reservoir of the night smothering, clasping. Rikan
instinctively backed away, flourishing his sword, breathless with
fear.
"You little coward." Vincent stepped toward
him, hissing. Rikan jerked back, wiping the hair from his raw-boned
face, from his rain-reddened eyes. "You vicious little bitch.
Come here. I want to do something to you."
He was
guffawing, shivering, hunched around his sword, lowering his body,
high shouldered, ribs visible through wet cotton. Teasingly, he
offered the bullets to Vincent, snatching them back, his high laugh
abrupt and ridiculous. Again he offered his pale palm, sneering,
bending forwards, grin ragged.
"Oh my god Rikan. Tasteless."
Vincent staggered to a halt, expression a portrait of distaste and
horror. His eyes were downcast, lips a disgusted pout. "What were
you thinking with the tie clip?"
"What? What
do you mean?" Rikan, mortified, stared down slowly. "I like it."
Pitching forward, Vincent lashed at his officer's palm, dashing the
bullets to the cold ground. His joy was cruel, his smile a terrible,
ravening promise. He chambered a cartridge, pressing the brutal
muzzle under Rikan's jaw, between his thin cord-musculature, easing
his head up. His sword clattered, released from a deathly hand. The
treacherously fluttering wings of fear beat in cacophony deep within
him, quivering in his tightened chest. He stiffened, and merely
stared, the frightening glazed glare of the caged vengeful. Vincent
was as pale as the moonlight and laughing monstrously.
"Oh, I
can't wait to tell the others about this. I'm sure our mutual
friends can organise a little...corrective therapy for you. Happy? Oh
god, I want to kiss you, because I know what they'll do.
Anything to say? Anything you want to say to me before you have to
say goodnight?"
A breathless silence.
"Did you
mean what you said about the tie clip?"
