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801 words for his 108 scalpels.
Blinded by Darkness, will you be my Light? By Zan
The first snowfall of winter, feather-light and soft, flutters down from the deeply dark night. The white flakes illumined by streetlight like a shimmering of diamond dust. Footfall almost silent, if you are not listening for it, taps out a cadence, slow and measured. A man makes his way through the city, approaching a forbidding fortress with its towers clawing and tearing the fabric of the canvas of black sky. He does not need to see the flashes of light that spark here and there in the upper reaches of those soaring walls. He knows they are there. He does not live there anymore but memories whisper softly underneath his skin. The red river of life courses through him and his mind remembers even when he refuses to see it anymore with his eyes.
"I am sorry." A shadow of his past, it hisses sibilantly in his mind's sense of hearing.
Boredom with the routine of living masks something like regret over his face. The weapons he uses can save lives, but he chooses them to spill life. He can choose the mantle of healing green but does not wish to. For life does not hold meaning anymore, except that next challenge. Always forward looking to the pleasure of the next kill. He goes on in life the day-to-day-ness of it all makes him sigh and wonder why it is that he is still alive. He wonders why he bothers with life at all. He will die one day for the Lady Death will come and take him as no one can evade her forever for her brother Fate who will write his name down in that great big book of his. He may be a guide and guardian to the underworld but that does not exempt him. Another will simply take his place. Today is not that day and it will not be for sometime to come - at least not yet anyway. For now red is his colour. The colour of his work and his life he drowns in it that sweet smell very rarely his own.
He is familiar with the smell of his own life force. The scars that adorn his body sing with the remembrance of it like a choir of honour, along side those sigils that mark him. Like a thousand souls crying for mercy. He knows he is beyond that howl, but is no pretender and will not take on any Heavenly cloak. He is not deserving of it for the one failure, his first transgression against life. It is now a habit akin to breathing.
That slow walk deceives the eye to the fluid and perpetual motion inherent in this marked soul. There is the belief that there residing in the subtle body are lines of energy converging to form intersections of power. According to this, there are one hundred and eight of them. Perhaps, this is how his will calls upon the instruments of death in a stream of bloody rain. His body is the furnace where he can bend his will to fold and fold again as if to weld metal. His heart is the hammer to the anvil. Fold, beat, fold, temper and the blood in his veins quench it. This is how he forges a bloody sword with thought.
He covers it all with layers of courtesy and politeness. He appears almost prudish with his crisp white shirt tucked neatly into his black trousers and necktie neat under his collar. His long black coat swirls in the cold air about his legs. Deceivingly rail thin. His power hums and simmers underneath it all. He hides under the wide brim of a hat with a jaunty slit in it angled just so. He looks at you, at the world from under his bangs and the brim. He may see all of you but all he will honour you with is the curl of lips in a sardonic smile. There is no inner circle will see the smile that touches the eyes. Splendour that is light …
The light that will show him all thought and form. As it crackles with energy, it preserves all that goes before in after-images, like a mirror reflecting past worlds as it collides with sketches of the world to come.
He willingly continues this strange dance of life … and death. To strains of music, only he can hear. He searches for that perfect partner. Will it be he, who mirrors him and his moves in stark contrast? Will it be the one, who can show him his perfect dream in a minuet? Perhaps it will be into light he will trip to the tune of thunder.
"I am Darkness, dance with me." He will hold his hand out.
Will you ever take that chance?
Fin
Author's note: Please do forgive this ramble. A musing into psyche of the good doctor and I may have failed at that. Even so, I hope someone somewhere likes it.