Disclaimer: The nope-ing streak continues.

Author's Note: My thanks to Wikipedia for the legend of the spider lily.

Warnings: Dream sex, amongst other dreamy (purple) things. Spoilers for "Cassette."

XXX

He clears the last of the vomit from his gullet with a stomach-inversing cough. His bowels are in knots. His esophagus is raw. Acid eats away at tender flesh while terror eats away at rational thought, leaving pockets, scorch marks, and pain, pain, pain. He flounders in the surge of it. He inhales in wet gasps, light-headed and half-drowned. He floats. He sinks. He splutters around the bitter taste of truth that sours his tongue and his soul.

Something is rising. It is not the contents of his belly this time. Not this time.

This time, it is saline. Salt in the wounds, literal and metaphorical, and he can feel it, feel it intimately: the brine and the burn, wearing agonizing rivulets into the flesh of his cheeks. Scalding tears dribble from the deep wells of his eyes, as corrosive as the bile that continues to piddle from his chapped lips. He is being worn down, breaking. Loving. Loathing. He wants to scream, but in this moment he can barely breathe.

The weight of realization is crushing him.

Folded over his knees, clutching to the Machine, he gasps and he seizes, struggling to keep down his own intestines. They are rebelling against him. They are right to do so. They are as disgusted as he is, and are attempting to escape. He wishes he could do the same. He wishes they would stop. It is a sickening feeling, the squirm and the worm of his entrails, and their thrashing reminds him of what had lurked in the loam of presented cakes. Soil and seeds, centipedes and cockroaches. There is the sensation of spindled legs skittering up his throat and he is dry-heaving again, praying to be purged of maggots, of larva. Of caterpillars that will never be butterflies. Their chrysalises are lies, he realizes now: they are prisons, they are traps. Their brittle shells promise safety, but leave the creatures inside so vulnerable. So weak. And when a boot comes down atop one…

He is guilty. He is just as guilty of smashing that cocoon, of destroying the boy within it, as the Demon who had first trapped him there. Because he loves, he loves, and in so doing, he is part and parcel to this crime. The one that he adores has the blood of a child on his— Its?— hands, and that blood has been transferred to him in smears and crusting streaks with every affectionate touch. Looking back, he wonders how he had never noticed before: how he had never seen the suppliant, shrieking, horrified child trapped in the eyes of his smiling patron. How he had not heard the desperate pleading in the Marquis' laughter. How he had failed to see his lover's terror, even in the looming shadow of certain death.

He had noticed nothing. Not until the other shoe had dropped.

Quietly choking, he lifts a single fist, knuckles smudging away the fluid that has pooled within his dimples. It is slimy, and it is hot. It is not blood.

But he thinks it may as well be.

X

The Dark Box

Scolecite, 1843

X

Once upon a time, two elves are asked by God to watch over a flower.

There is no reason to assume that he is dreaming. No reason, except for the chance that he might be. Physically, Cecil has found that he has no need of sleep. Like the plants that cling to the rotting façade of his manor, he lives a tireless existence. Like the stonework statutes in his garden, he is humanoid without being human.

The first, Manju, is told to guard the bloom. The second, Saka, is charged to protect its leaves.

But he is human. He is. And because of this, he needs to sleep. He needs the respite. He cannot stand to be stranded, to be alone and longing in his jewelry box house, day in and day out and on and on into eternity. It is too much to contemplate, let alone survive. So instead, the Marquis submits himself to the labyrinth of his mind. It is the easiest way to stage an escape, as well as the fastest. The most dangerous.

These tasks are of great significance, for the flower is not only dangerous, but valuable beyond compare. Such jobs are not for the easily distracted or the carelessly frolicsome.

The gears of his mind clank and spin in a series of roulette wheels, and they are just as likely to crank out images of tranquil hearths or of loving homes as they are of a gazebo swathed in ivy. It is like lifting an abandoned gun to the head and pulling the trigger. Will darkness come from a bullet, or merely the diaphanous curtain of his lids? There is no way to be certain until he tries. The unknowable past melds with the quantifiable present, and the tangled threads of fate pull the future back to meet them. Cradled within this woven web, the young man is rock-a-byed, the melodic click of his thoughts twisting tighter, and tighter, and tighter…

And so, upon accepting these positions of import, the elves are told that they must never meet.

He lets go, and the world around him bursts.

At the time, this seems a very simple stipulation. Flattered to have been elected, the two happily pledge to this single condition.

Tranquil hearths, loving homes, gazebos swathed in ivy. All of those, or none. Once he dreamed of the void of space, and a phantasmagoric kaleidoscope of butterflies that would be stars. He has seen visions of great beasts and great depths, sky and sea. There are sirens in his sleep, enchanting and formless. Not-so-formless. Tonight, he is pulled by unseen hands—hands dirtied by speckles of grime. Flecks and dots, like constellations on an inverted swath of heaven. The world up-ends itself as those dappled hands heave him under, into darkness and dampness and heat, and in the fashion of dreams, he is no longer sure where he is, but does not question that he should be there. Sky, sea, none of the above. Below, then. Perhaps he is being buried alive. Maybe he is being drawn into the Pits, dragged down like the palms that smear heat into his body.

However, elves are curious by nature.

Something is blazing behind him. It is soft, fiery. Red. It smolders against his shoulder, and he thinks it must be the infernos of perdition, because he burns. Everywhere. Guilt siphons oxygen from his lungs as conflagrations do from air. Mirages waver before him; heat spells alter his brain with a magic of their own. The burden of accumulated sin weighs upon him like gravity, forcing him down and down. He struggles to right himself, fingers clawing up and up. Up and down, up and down, and he is gored on a shaft like the criminals of old. Crying out, the Marquis slavers sweat and tears. He prays. He begs. Glutinous drops leave stains the color of suckled bruises when they land upon the earth, and he thinks that they might mark the end of his decent… But then he strikes bottom again. And again. And again.

It does not take long before temptation begins to fester in their hearts...

Cecil sobs, smoke billowing out of his nostrils. No, not smoke—dust. Plumes of powdered stone are exhaled from every gaping orifice, clouded and white. They are gusted into the dark on wafting, humid breaths. He gags on dry granules, on residue from developing cracks. From grinding plates. They grind like plates, and a fine trickle of sand dribbles from the gaps between their bodies, piling as if in an hourglass. It is a countdown. There is so little time; there is so much sand. He is kissed, and that same grit finds its way into his mouth. Their mouths. How much sand is there? There has to be a lot. Enough to form a desert, enough to hide their bodies, enough to hide so many bodies, and yet the one who clutches to him radiates a heat derived less from anger, and more from desire. From love and forgiveness, their arms ever-inviting to take him away from all of this—to welcome him to a shared grave. He is licked by a tongue made of fire, then of flesh, then somehow both at once, and everything sears as he nears a pulsing point of blinding light. Is it a star? The Sun? Hell? The young man thrashes, crawling towards that glimmer, fighting for salvation and damnation and release—

and the thought of never knowing their other half becomes too much to bear.

But then—

On their own, Manju and Saka hatch identical schemes.

He is on the banks of a river, palled in the pearly mist of daybreak. A gray haze rises from the horizon, from the waters, shimmering with the same ethereal gossamer as a dew-dropped cocoon. He is enveloped in the loose shroud of it, in the coolness of the pre-dawn air, and the chill of early autumn tingles pleasantly on what little exposed flesh peeks from between his cuffs and gloves. His forelocks ruffle in the breeze. The touch of the wind is hesitant with longing, but still manages to be playful. It reminds Cecil of the person beside him.

By the light of the moon, the two elves hide. They wait, hoping to catch a glimpse of the other. They watch.

There is a person beside him. They are a pair perched upon large rocks, knees cocked at odd angles and boots shuffled into piled pebbles. The stones beneath them are wide, and cold, and naturally auburn, but have been painted black by earlier tides. Moisture is seeping into the back of his trousers, but Cecil pays it no mind. It does not matter. Very few things matter in this scene, except for himself and his companion. Himself, his companion, and the flowers that he indicates, growing in flaming stalks across the way.

They meet.

Like the one beside him, Cecil cannot see the flowers through the smog. Not clearly. But he can see enough to know. The vivid crimson curls of both companion and blossoms are telling in and of themselves, and he is telling both a story of the other.

And they fall deeply in love.

Spider lilies. Hurricane lilies. Resurrection lilies. There are many names for the spindled torches that flare through the fog. There are just as many names by which he might refer to the one beside him, but what those names are have been lost somewhere between the Marquis' heart and his throat. The drifting vapors of this miasma flash in the fashion of thrown embers as the sun begins to rise, igniting the heavens and casting a blazing aureole around the florae. It is eerie, and it is beautiful. They shine like rubies in a furnace. Nature sees fit to bequeath a similar circlet to his companion: a halo of ruddy dawn and burning blooms, crowning the other as artists might saints in holy tapestries.

But God is not pleased to have been defied.

The glow of that corona casts an early dusk over the contours of the other's face. Cecil knows this person—he knows them—but he does not know that face. He cannot see it. All he can see is the sweep of a smile, rueful in its magnificence, as the other turns towards the Marquis and murmurs:

Infuriated by the elves' betrayal, He places upon the pair a terrible curse:

"We must have had something, you and I."

Nevermore will the blooms of Manju grow beside the leaves of Saka.

His companion had twisted in order to see Cecil. The movement jars the blossoms; they are surrounded, suddenly, by verdure. In an instant, the graveled shore has been swept away by a crimson current, and the two are plunged into the tide of haematic lilies that has bloomed in sanguine froths around their knees. The other's locks are the same hue as those pinwheeling flowers. Half-submerged in sinuous cinnabar, the familiar stranger tilts their shaded face. They beam, sunnily. They say nothing more, and their head slips clean from the base of their neck.

For the rest of their lives, whenever the leaves of their flower would sprout, its bloom would shrivel into nothingness.

Blood often spurts in patterns like pealing petals. There is no blood here. The decapitated head tumbles, soundless; the ring of lilies mimics that loss with a soft sigh of mourning. Buds and blossoms sheave themselves of their stalks, sliding silently sidelong and into nothingness. Flowers no more; the shoots become towers. Towers. Cecil, startled, leaps to his feet with a garbled shout, enclosed by the accusing fingers of endless stems. The echo of his outburst is swallowed by an ominous rustle.

And when the time would come for the bloom to bud, the leaves would fall away.

Leaves. Vivid and obstinate, leaves are spearing through the soft of the ground like swords, stabbing at the Marquis' ankles as if they were weapons of the dead. There is truth to this. They aim to murder him, he realizes: to cut him down as he has cut down others. Bouquets, bunches, garlands, posies. Lovely, shriveling corpses. The blossoms are gone, and his companion gone with them; heads and bodies vanish, lost beneath mounting waves of greenery. Foliage hisses, giggling. Cecil screams, petrified. Moved. Unmoving. The lead in his stomach and the rock of his heart have become like ball and chain. He is shackled, and in so being, cannot escape.

Even after their flower wilts and the elves succumb to death, their love is afforded no sympathy.

He cannot leave. He cannot run. He can only spin 'round. Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, simpers something inside of his head. Alarmed, Cecil whirls to that jangled tune. Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, so early in the morning. The song strikes against his gnashed teeth. His face is grim. His fists squeeze. A shadow is pooling around his feet, and his eyes are drawn to the source of it. He turns, shoulders stiff with the anticipation of facing his lush and looming adversary. He turns—

Amidst fires that spread and curl like petals, the elves find one another once more in the netherworld.

—and there he is. Him. It is him—himself— reflected in a single sheet of glass. A mirror. Antiqued and gilded, the mirror is ornately mounted upon a foreign wall. Cecil is almost as foreign, even to himself. He does not know the shirt he wears, or how he styles his hair, or what he currently clutches within his hand. A… box? It is a dark box. Something inside of that box is spinning. Recording. Cecil looks from the box to himself in the mirror, young and gaunt and pale and frightened. His toes catch on the crumpled remnants of a sheet beneath the frame, the fallen fabric splayed in such a way so as to resemble a crushed rose. His doppelganger stares. He almost fails to recognize himself, even as—

They swear to meet again, to be together in their next lives.

There is a flickering. At first, Cecil thinks it is the fire. The fire had followed him. Then, he thinks it is the greenery. That is not it, either. He thinks that he is going mad, but he is wrong to do so. He is wrong, because he does not need to think at all. He knows this flickering. He knows. He knows

But like their promise to God, it is a vow that neither can keep.

The Marquis gasps, breaking free of cobwebbed illusions with the sound of shattering stained glass. His feet kick; his arms flail. He jolts upright in the darkness of his study, air wheezing through his jaw and rattling the grit in his lungs. Sweat has crystalized upon his brow, studding it with liquid diamonds. Cobalt eyes are wide and sightless. In the darkness of the room, he can feel the ghosts of spidery fingers synching around his neck— the outline of a grip that his own hands lift to mimic. For an instant, the past, the present, and the future are as overlain as the young man's palm over the imagined imprint of a demon's.

Their flower— out of pity for its star-crossed protectors— now thrives in the presence of the doomed and the damned.

Cecil whimpers. Spits. It is difficult to tell the blood from the rubies in the gloom, as both glitter with equal splendor beside the moonstone patches that have made a mess of his trousers. Ruddy residue clatters behind his teeth, slicing into his gums. He trembles. Chokes. Marble knuckles clench around the camber of a long, throbbing throat, and in the tender twinge of the gesture the Marquis can feel seeping bruises. He doubts that he will see any. He doubts much of what he sees. But in the echo his aches, he can hear something ringing.

It is a blossom that flourishes in Hell, along the shores of the river Styx…

His voice. It is his Voice. Through timelines and dreamscapes, the pulse of its confession resounds, underscored by every panicked beat of Cecil's heart as something within himself—without himself— coils into his ear and sweetly, softly whispers:

And on Earth, decorates the path of those fated never to meet again.

"I do not love you anymore."

XXX

From crystal-cure:

Scolecite: A shimmering white stone, scolecite is most frequently used to "awaken the heart." When exchanged by lovers, it encourages "more spontaneous expressions of love" and "creates heart-to-heart connections." However, it is also a powerful dream stone, and as such helps a person to realize the nuanced messages contained within their dream, whether those messages are from their own inner selves or some higher power. Additional powers of scolescite include enriching one's dream state, the promotion of dream recall, and the encouragement of lucid dreaming.

Ruby: Considered to be the most powerful jewel in the universe, ruby is a stone of "passion, protection, and prophesy." When worn, it inspires vitality, health, sensuality, friendship, and love. As a love stone, it encourages closeness and commitment, while additionally helping a person experience every form of love—from a more passionate sexual love, to a discovery of self-love if meditated. Beyond their role as pseudo aphrodisiacs, rubies sharpen the mind, hone one's ability to concentrate, and imbue a sense of courage. In so doing, they are said to reduce fears of evil or paranormal things. Rubies further safeguard one's mind, one's family, one's children, and one's home.

Moonstone: Already hailed as one of the ultimate stones of protection for travelers, moonstone is also famous as a gem of love and eroticism. It encourages passion, an understanding of one's self and others, and helps to reunite lovers who have parted. Additionally, it is said to be the definitive fertility stone, enhancing femininity and promoting the ease of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-growth.

From Wikipedia:

Red Spider Lily: Never to meet again, lost memory, abandonment.

(Note: This meaning comes from "hanakotoba," or Japan's "language of flowers." There is no Victorian-specific meaning for this flower, as this flower is not native to England. The legend used in this chapter comes from China.)