The Deadman Falls
Author's Note: The poem in the beginning is "Alba" by Ezra Pound. It is a dawn poem, indicating the person will leave after dawn and their love will only remain until the sun rises.
This story contains some implications of suicide and lots of blood, so read at your own risk.
As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.
The Snow
Blood drips between his fingers and down his arms towards his elbows in a steady flow as his nails scratch the bandages covering his eyes in a vain attempt to get to his eyes.
For he doesn't want to see anymore.
For it hurts too much to see the cell walls and see the food they slide in from the tiny opening and see the metal door being tightly closed all the time and see the bars and see the blood on his bed and see his hands and see his arms and see his chest and see his scar across his torso.
He just wants to be engulfed in darkness for the rest of his time in these cells, away from the reality of the room and away from the reality of himself.
He is useless and he is worthless and he couldn't save anyone and why is he still alive?
As his fingers tear at the eyeballs and pull them out of their sockets and blood flows between his fingers and down his arms towards his elbows he doesn't scream of pain or feel the pleasure of a cut across his wrist but the hollowness, mercilessness, loneliness of death itself.
But he can't die, not yet. He needs to live just a little bit longer until the wet leaves dried and the sun rose up in the sky.
The Anchor
Because nobody ever stayed long. They left, one after another, when their time came; and some left much before their time, for simple reasons and messy excuses.
The shield breaks and falls under the spear of a bird so strong it could make the invincible bleed. The bird so powerful, so vain, so proud the sky would shatter and the ground would whine and everything would go silent if it raised its wings and attacked its prey. The shield falls on the ground and still it covers the small girl with a black rabbit between her arms. Still the shadow of the protective, invincible, immortal shield keeps the girl hidden from the merciless eyes of the bird as it flew around them in hopes of finding its new prey.
The little rabbit hops down the cliff and falls into the ocean as she watches, far behind him, too far to reach him and she falls on her knees, clutching the fabric of her pants and cries into the howling wind. The rabbit is long gone, drowned in the red ocean and the girl is hopelessly crying, unaware of the bird flying over her head as the great owl put his wings out and around her small body, his feathers pulling her to her feet and pushing her back to the smell of belonging.
The antiques crack and break under the touch of the bird as it rests upon them and flutters its wings over the precious, old antiques and the pieces fill the ground and as they burn the little girl watches them. She sees the feathers of an owl, the cocoon of a butterfly, the tail of a monkey, the tooth of a wolf and they all crumble down the remains, burning into ashes, never to be burn again. This time she raises herself up and walks back towards the newly born butterfly, only to find her dead wings on the ground and an empty room filled with dusty books.
And the small lamb is never there, for the lamb is no longer the son of God and angel for man. The dust has found its way into his lungs and ears and painted its fur from black to white and his eyes are more red than grey when she sees him again. The lamb is no longer the lamb but has the look of a tiger, a bloodthirsty hunter, a creation that has no place in her paradise. But she takes him in, only to mourn after the tiger is killed by God. When the tiger comes back – years later, when she is no longer a girl but a woman with paradise in her eyes and hell in her hands – he is no longer the tiger, nor the lamb, but he is the crippled blind swan, floating on the lake of blood, unaware of the war around him.
She doesn't want him back, for the swan is too beautiful and fragile to break and force into a tiger again. The lamb is long dead and all she can do is keep the feathers of this swan as clean and white as she possibly can. Even the tear of a long gone lamb dropping on her paradise is no reason to paint them red.
The Snow
But they are dead and he has no reason to escape.
So he tears at the door and screams and cries and begs to be out. He has to go back, he can't be kept there, he can't be useless, he can't be worthless, he can't let them die, not now, not like this, not when he could help them.
He is running out of time. With each second another drop of blood falls on her hands, another person's dead body lies in the cell. His feet is buried between the flowers and they are red, red, red, so red he can't see the white anymore and he knows he has lost. He has lost now, there is no going back and he claws at his eyes and tears them out and screams and the flowers are painted red with his blood and he keeps clawing at them and he just doesn't care anymore.
They are dead and they are dead and they are dead and he killed them.
He screams and his yells bring the God to him, hovering above him and his hands hold his chin. The coolness of the touch makes him want to scream more, cry more, claw more, kill more but he doesn't know where this God is. His hands hold the air and his blood spills around but the God is there and he's clear and he's white and no matter what he does his red doesn't cover him like the flowers. And the God tells him they are dead, they are dead, he killed them. And he screams and claws and paints the flowers with the deepest red.
For they are all dead. God has killed them, but spared him.
The Anchor
She holds the hell in her hands, because everyone leaves and the only thing left to her is to grieve. The dark clothes of mourning never leaves her shoulders and the shadows of loneliness never let her eyes go.
But she still keeps him pristine clear, in the case forged by God and hopes he will never be tainted by the fire of her hell.
Of course he does, because nobody lives long around her hell, and she watches the swan's neck bend and bend and crack and break with a clean cut and the blood fills the case and the swan is drowned there. From there she sees the eyes of red and the hands of death and she knows another reaper is born from the blood of a pure creature.
Nevertheless she keeps the case safe, beside the rabbit's box, the owl's feathers, the butterfly's cocoon, the dusty books and the cup of paradise. Just in case the lamb wants to see the hell she held onto when he comes back.