The Raven

The most famous poem of Poe's works combined with the madness and regret (and I mean regret) of Beyond Birthday, both of whic I do not own. Enjoy! Also this is a partner story to "The Bells", so if you want to know who D is, you should read "The Lake" and "The Bells" to get a feeling for her.

Birds are troublesome creatures, they defecate on any object, moving or not. Their annoying chirping and sweet melodies just send me over the edge; I remember when they let me out for exercise one day.

Now I'm not allowed outside or near any type of rope/metal/glass/ and rubber bands. Ha…I wonder if they ever removed all the ground glass from his eye.

I am sorry, I have no control of my mind now, I suppose, it wanders here and there but always returns…eventually. You must get bored coming here, listening to a lunatic ramble or maybe you have all the time the world, just like me.

There is one type of bird I that I hate the most, one that bears death and destruction on its wings, "Corvus corax" or the raven. Its onyx wings gliding in the night sky as its low call awakes the vampires and wraiths of the dark.

It was on the night after D's…death, I was in my room, eyelids threatening to close, the faded words on the frayed yellow pages beginning to swim. The book was about the history of madness…Haha, and the famous murders of the world. I wonder if I would be in there and if I am, I had betterbe next to Jack the Ripper.

As my head began to droop, there came a tap-tap-tapping on my door; I whispered, "It's probably Watari at my door, only he and no one more."

The only presence I could stand at that time was Watari, who would always knock before he even dared to speak his name. He did not speak when he was in my room and always preoccupied himself in cleaning my windows and bringing me meals.

If only I had stopped her, maybe calling her by her real name …but it is never healthy to hang on the past, now is it? Your meetings have really begun to annoy me, with each visit I reminisce memories I thought I had destroyed.

I guess I was wrong.

Her name didn't even start with a D, it was with an A, but I think he wanted to make it easier for him to acknowledge them.

I remember it was in the dark of December at the time, the roaring fire failing to remove the chill of death from my bones. I wished for the morning, reading the books I had hoped to cease the sorrow of the vanished Akane*. To stop the yearning of whom the Gods had named the magnificent Akane, gently erased from my mind bit by bit.

Then the gloomy gray silk curtains shifted in the air and filled me with dread, filling me terrors unspoken in my head. So that I stood and repeated in time with the pounding of heart, "It's probably Watari asking to enter at my door, old and worrying Watari asking to enter at my door; it is this and nothing more."

Then my heart began to calm, and waiting no longer, "Watari…I ask for your forgiveness, but I was napping and so silently you came tapping, that I didn't hear you," and with this I opened the door wide.

Only darkness greeted me and nothing more.

I searched into that darkness, red eyes wide with fear, for long I stood there marveling and panicking; hesitating and dreaming nightmares no human ever tried to envision before. However, the silence was as thick as cotton and there came no movement in the night, and the only word to be heard was one whispered, "Akane!"

This is what I murmured into the dark and only received an echo back "Akane!", only this and nothing more.

I enter the room spinning, my soul within me burning and then I hear a tapping louder than before. "Why," I spoke aloud, "isn't that coming from my closet door? Let me go then and stop this nonsense, let my heart be still a moment and end this game, only a hanger and nothing more!"

It was here that I opened the cabinet door, when with a trip and wobble, came walking in the saint of saints, the one man I despise the most, L.

Without a glance to me, without an empty question of feeling, he crouched upon my bed like a king. No, not crouched…perched is a better term for it, on my bed and nothing more.

This raven-haired man brought me to smiling, talking delight in his grave and solemn face, "I what do I owe this meeting L? Your hair looks longer and chaotic than normal, is that a coward that sits upon my bed?

Ha! A ghastly grim and broken man are you wandering round these halls, tell me this, what does the God of Pluto call you when three** of your subordinates have died?"

I chuckle at this, waiting for a sharp remark or even a blow to the face, but all I receive is quote the man, "Nevermore."

As much as I enjoyed conversing with this worm so openly, his curt answer held no meaning. Because you can agree that living human being has never been exalted so high as to talk to a failure of a genius now named, "Nevermore."

However, that man, sitting in is lonely stance only spoke that word, as if the significance of his being was inscribed in the phrase. Nothing else he said and not an owlish eye blinked, until I grumbled "All the others have left before me, by the morning he shall be gone, just as my wishes have been broken."

Then the man said, "Nevermore."

He startled me out of my reverie with his quick reply, "There's no doubt what he's saying is false and hollow, running away from his misfortunes, which followed fast and held like a vice, until the funeral hymns became too much for Never-nevermore."

Nevertheless, his depressing mood sent me into to fits of laughter; I wheeled a chair in front of the man and bed. Then within the chair relaxing, I began to link dream-to-dream, imagining what this poor, empty-hearted, grim and gaunt man meant whenever he uttered "Nevermore."

There I sat presuming but no sound left my lips to the man whose obsidian pupils burned into my wretched chest now. As I sat reflecting on the hard oak cushion the lamplight shone so brightly on, but on this chair with the lamplight shining over, she stroked so lovingly, ah, nevermore!

Then the air grew thick, perfumed with the incense carried by the cursed smoldering angel Seraphim, whose footsteps glided on the marble floor. "You bastard!" I screamed, "The Gods sent you, with the horde of demons to follow! Stop! Stop and renounce my memories of Akane! I shall drink this dream away and forget about Akane!"

Quote the man as he stared, "Nevermore."

"Forecaster of evil!" I wail, "Waste of sperm and egg if still heavenly, man or demon! Whether Death sent you or remorse dragged you to this isolated hell, yet you come calm and carefree to this room by Satan owned! Tell me the truth, all this I ask, is there comfort in Gilead?"

The man only whispered, "Nevermore."

"Mystic with your heart-wrenching tricks!" I screech, "By the heavens that floats above us, the idols we both worship, tell my soul full of misery if in the distant Valhalla, it embraces a lonely woman named Akane, it clutches an extraordinary and glowing woman who the Gods named Akane!

Quote that damned man, "Nevermore."

"Let this be your symbol for closure and depart, man and enemy!" I cry, jumping to my feet as I do, "Go back to your dark little room in the realm of the underworld! Leave no midnight tress as a reminder of the lies you have spewed! Leave my heartache unbroken and abscond my bed! Take your claws out of my soul and your shape from my bed!"

Quote that despicable and disgusting man, "Nevermore."

Moreover, that man, never blinking, is still sitting, still sitting! On the untouched bed in that space and his eyes appear to have all the cunning of a demon that is hallucinating.

And the lamplight shines on him throwing his shadow on the floor, within that shadow my soul lies stuck on that marble floor shall be lifted nevermore.

Well now, I think this topic of D has gone far enough, if you ask me anymore her I swear I will kill you!

*Akane- a Japanese female name, it means "deep red" and since BB's eyes are red, I had to do it.

** Three - I included C into the death toll…yeah.

Also for anyone who has the question 'What the hell is L doing in a closet, especially BB's?' The answer is that if L came hopping out of a window and onto a statue, the story would make any sense and I felt that it sounded better and made more sense for L to be in his closet.