Requies (2018-19)
[Angst, tragedy - tw: death, suicide, claustrophobia, suffocation, eaten alive]
"And now with my inner self I would commune, and dragging it reluctant from its depths, I dump it down and face it." (J.M. Barrie, 1904 draft of Hook's soliloquy)
-/-
No going back now.
Hook looked out beyond the length of the plank at the stars and Island speckled with fairies' lights. The rest—ocean and trees and sky—was blackness. In a moment of stunningly clear memory, he saw himself walking along the Wall the night before the Game. It had been similarly black, with a similarly sickening feeling of tense anticipation. As he had so long ago, he stilled the shuddering in his chest and steeled his nerves, then stepped forward into another chapter. The last chapter.
He did not sway or stagger as he boldly strode onto the plank to the muted tick-ticking below; he might as well have been a shade for how little it bowed under his weight. It only dipped when he reached the end, at which point he paused and looked down for the first time.
"Never look down, James.
Your feet already know the path ahead. Do you?"
Yes.
The crocodile was waiting, jaws agape in a toothy rictus that was at once terrifying and mesmerizing. Any other man would have fainted seeing that yawning hell, but though Hook sharply inhaled, his poise did not falter.
So he looked ("Never look down.") down and farther down, beyond the teeth into the throat. Though his eyes could only see so far inside, his mind projected further. In the seconds that passed, marked by the metallic clicks of the dying clock trapped within the creature, Hook's thoughts warred with themselves; the Wall Game and Speech Day fought for his focus with half-remembered nightmares of being devoured by the very beast waiting in the waves. His brain screamed at him to look away, to cut off the hideous images being presented to it. But he did not. He gazed down and down, fixed to the reality of that End below. Focused. Intent.
Will it bite? Crush bone, rend me to a bloody mess, thrash and twist and rip and.. what if it doesn't? What if it… doesn't? How long will it take for it to—
A lurching, sick fear suddenly gripped his heart and with it a jab of shame.
You are better than this, Iacobus.
(Am I?)
Go on ahead. Do not look back.
And so he did not look back. He looked up at the sky.
"Floreat Etona," he whispered to no one but himself.
Far away, reading a student's paper up for review, the headmaster at the College shivered despite the warmth of his office.
Hook didn't jump so much as fall off the tip of the plank, scarlet jacket fluttering behind him. And his tie was right, staying tight on his neck and not catching on the monster's teeth as he descended; and his waistcoat was right, flush to his body as it too slipped by; and his shoes were right, the last of him to see the light of day.
Unknown to all but the leviathan crocodile, the poise and dignity were short lived. The intended epitaph morphed into something of a choked cry as the man's thin body was forced into the creature's throat. All thoughts of boyhood and form and peace were undone by the claustrophobic blackness and sensations of being swallowed alive. He tried to draw breath and could not, tried to scream and could—
Heartbeat. A heartbeat all around in my ears and everywhere everywhere always everywhere every—
—not. The hammering realization that the crocodile had not broken his back or crushed his lungs sparing him the hellish tomb just ahead (how far ahead? how-) gripped whatever was left of his reverie on the past and snapped it like a dry twig. His entire body jolted – the crocodile flicked its head with the motion and shut him away entirely.
"Never look down, James."
He couldn't have looked down even if he had wanted, so entirely, crushingly black were his surroundings. It became his whole world – heartbeat never ceasing, always slipping downward, too tight and slick and airless and a spinning
Falling—
-/-
Hook regained consciousness to the sound of the crocodile's heart and a constricting, fleshy feeling around his neck, then collar, then shoulders; the sensation of being forced into a new hell.
He breathed in and choked. There was air – thick and wet and of a stench he never could have imagined. (But for how long? How much air until...) His entire being recoiled from it so forcefully that his body twisted around with a seizing jerk, the motion accompanied by a sharp, involuntary shriek-turned-sob.
The belly of the beast. His cramped, fated tomb. It had always been an abstract thing, something he thought on in the dark of his cabin or when rising from a nightmare; a thing that was certainly very real and eventual but never this. This was beyond anything his blackest thoughts could ever paint. His mind was not the only thing being forced into what he knew in his soul was to be his final resting place. His entire body knew it with each beat of the living flesh all around, the rushing of blood, the form-fitting, slime-soaked coffin rapidly filling up with him.
And always the click-clicking of metal gears. There – right there just beside his head.
Another breath, another spasm, and, finely-polished shoes last, he slipped all the way inside with a squelch. Finally, a small voice in his mind whispered. (Finally, what? Suffocation? … digestion?) He was a flurry of motion at that last thought, all squirms and thrashing, as much as the small space that was the crocodile's stomach would allow. The place was alive with action of its own, counteracting and squeezing against every motion the man made.
And for every squirm there were a score of confused thoughts—
Slash it! Use the claw and rip your way out! NOW!
Won't work. Won't work. Won't—
Yes it will! Do it! DO IT BEFORE THE AIR RUNS OUT!
No room for that. See?
no light. I can't see I can't see there's no light here thank God there's no light here no—
Why can I still breathe? Why isn't it… where's the aci—
SLASH IT! PLEASE ! PLEASEDOSOMETHING—
acid ?
Where's the—
No room to move no light no .. no no noNO N O
Another squeeze. And another. Regular and insistent. Hook craned his neck, pushed his head against the slick wall, only to be bullied back.
His breath hitched in his throat when the clock skipped a tick. The man curled into himself.
Requiescat in pace. Whatever peace THIS is. Peaceful for the crocodile, maybe. Finally full with … finally with … full of … me—
His right arm, lethal iron claw attached, suddenly jabbed outwards in a reflex born of animal desperation. He could not die like this—he was human! He was alive! He was—
Birds screaming as they fled the trees.
"Control, James! Control your blade!"
The hook caught on his sodden jacket. With a cry he fought to extricate it and could (nonononoNoNO NO! GOD, NO!) not force it free. The space squeezed tighter and tighter. The clock skipped two ticks. Be still, his mind whispered in those two mute seconds. The air was poison. The blackness leaked – a living place that was no place for the living. He squirmed like an eel; just as slick, just as trapped. (Just as … base?) Shutting his eyes against the dark, he felt the prick of shame again and the sting of tears.
"Lacrimosus, lacrimosi, lacrimoso, lacrimosum…"
No one to see them. No one. All so far away.
The clock skipped four ticks. The fifth came late.
Is it…weeping for me?
(Wait.)
Like the hand?
-/-
A garden in Autumn. The smell of wet leaves and small deaths.
"Never look down, James."
"I understand."
"Your feet already know the path ahead. Do you?" Questioning eyes. Was he taught this way, too? Long ago…
"I… think so."
A frown. Silver glint of a foil in the dying sun.
"Know so, James."
Falling stars were always such a sad thing to him. They weren't really stars, his father and tutor said, and he accepted that in the logical part of his sometimes too-active brain. The feeling part, though – that part of his mind mourned falling stars.
And falling leaves.
Falling.
'T were best at once to sink to peace…
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
-/-
Old Etonian. Oxford Man. Headmaster.
Captain. Hook.
James.
The man in scarlet could feel his mind falling away, his titles and names with it – all to dissolve away—
No more ticking.
"Time ever flowing, bids us be going…"
I know.
—with the rest. All except "James;" that remained even as he tried to breathe and found no air.
Now with my inner self I would commune…
Air! Air please I need—
"… far from thee."
mercy.
Gasped, twitched, curled closer. Tighter. No more tears.
Where am I? Where am I where …what am… I… ?
Wait.
Calm. Still. Letting go, letting go, down—
James…
—all the way down no more falling down no more—
"James. I am so—
… Iacobus…
—so proud of you."
"Floreat et—
Author's notes
"Requies" (Lt. "rest") went through a number of drafts - spanning nearly eight months - before reaching this terminus. It is based on the end of "Act V" of J.M. Barrie's 1918 proposed silent film script (first published in the 1950's, twenty years after his death), in which Hook, threatened by Peter with a cat-o-nine, decides to walk the plank to the crocodile himself. Strikingly, he is "in his last moment as brave a figure as any Sydney Carton on the scaffold."
Besides Mr. Barrie's 1905 draft of Hook's soliloquy, I also referenced "In Memorium" (pub. 1850) by Alfred Tennyson and the Eton College song "Vale" by Joseph Barnby and Arthur C. Ainger.
Influenced by "Silencio" from Tabula Rasa, "Kyrie" and "Veni Sancte Spiritus" from the Berliner Messe, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, and Trisagion by Arvo Pärt.
Written with innumerable thanks to tragicbeauty1991 and floreatetona, without whom I couldn't have finished this.