0. Nothing More Just and Comforting

"Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined."

Neitzsche's Aesthetic Turn, Friedrich Nietzsche

Expectation is the fallacy of those who have not realized the significance of their current being.

Routine's the same, although invariably with small alternations each day. Morning, bathe in the presence of a thousand paper cranes for a wish you want granted with absolute certainty, burn the rosemary scented candles and run your fingers through the unburning flames, that wet and warm liquid of rebirth, singe your hair and melt away the rust colored stains until only a pure fool's gold is left.

I love you.

Kiss her fervently in the light of a rosy pink dawn, in a virginal room dripping of cooled saccharine, jump out of the sky in your chromium armor, make your descent down onto a honey lathered earth packed with dirt, dirt, dirt, the very essence which life spins its harmonics and kiss the ground once, twice, three times before raising your arms up to proclaim your sins out onto the world. Decay, crumble and disintegrate to ash, to illusions, and surrender yourself into deception which you have spun in an elegant waltz of painstaking choreography.

I love you.

Let her strike your face, know that she shares the force of her small palm against her own tiny features, entangle your limbs together and nestle your chin on her shoulders and sleep the blissful death, die the endless death. Kiss her every daybreak, every twilight, every sunset, pin her down against the soft mattress and let her trace a stairway down the contours of your face, letting the tip of her finger shove against the soft flesh between your angular collarbones.

"Dead," she murmurs, a laugh breaking out from underneath the seriousness. You laugh with her. She wants you to laugh.

"Dead."

She'll be the one to kill you.

The mornings are the same, with only a small variation. Rest in the blaze of afternoon, catnap, stretch, and doze again with her piled on your chest like some newborn kitten. Dream of the night, where stars with an iridescent glimmer offer the allure of paradise, embroider the despair nestled in every fiber of your being with strength, and roll over and return to normalcy to the sight of her disturbingly pleased face. Fangs bared, femurs sharpened in ecstasy.

You know your expression mirrors hers.

It's a witch hunt, a hunt for prey, a hunt in darkness for weaker monsters to eviscerate, to gut and draw out secrets like an intellectual rapist. It pleases you, to see those weaker than you to flee; the chase is only pleasing if the intellect of the hunted can rival the executioners and the mirage coordinators, who seek only those who are outside the reach of the governing law. The game of masking and deception and toying, of quickened heartbeats and slight moans of pleasure stroke only the boundaries of unfettered delight at the sight of emotions outpacing reason, and of reason overcoming the human limitations of fear. It's only the kill that leaves you disgusted with the outcome.

It's always the same

It's always the same.

She has memorized the name of every person whom she had butchered.

Celestial beings, pagan gods in the universe of your own choosing, a universe which requires two to be birthed. Nothing defies your rest, nothing has more strength than you, here, in the paradise shaped by turbulent lusts. Your power lies within uncertainty; you cannot be defeated, for nothing is absolute but her love for you, your love for her. Every measured note of this operetta thrills with the hum of melancholy, and the final trumpet sounds its horn to the fall of velvet curtains. You would never have it any other way- this burning of the Phoenix is the only way to heal your corrupted heart. It's the only way to heal hers. Your Hades is perfect.

Spin more of those ambrosia illusions of yours, golden spun balm with the lingering taste of nectar.

Rest in peace.

Sic transit gloria of the fucking world.