Title: Don't Let Me Remember-*-Jade with a D~i Am
Author: Naisumi
Rating: R
Parts: 1/4
Disclaimer: You've _got_ to be kidding...^.~
Archive: If you want, but could you tell me at least?
Warnings: Angst, symbolism, darkness, yadda yadda yadda
Notes: Wow. My first fic that isn't blatantly slashy or even subtly slashy. *teary-eyed* I'm so proud! *coughs* Anyway, Don't Let Me Remember is a series of short vignettes about the Brotherhood members' pasts--each part is one of them though their identity will not be revealed until the end. This is extremely dark and angsty (what have I written that isn't? well...Pietrance, but that one's on hold >.<). ^-^; You have been warned.
Additional Notes: This is _not_ betad.
Enjoy, and please give me C&C!!! Comments and critics welcome, flames will be posted and laughed at and then used for the litter box.
"blah." People speak
-- uh...scene switch
--
The world spins on its axis, day after day, never spinning slower because of the clutching hands of black that were of space. He often wondered what would happen if the world spun backwards, wondered if the stars ever gossiped about how stupid humans were.
God, he hated their world, their whole fuckin' society. He hated their distantly beautiful needlepoints that shot moonbeam ice and liquid insanity into craving veins, he hated their bottles of golden piss-yellow amber that stank of depravity, he hated their eyes, hollow and greedy, leaving nothing dressed, unscathed, unhurt. How he hated, hated them. But he was part of their world, their lives--and he hated himself, as well. He hated how he went down on them for a packet of finely ground powdered diamonds, looking as temptingly sweet as sugar-laced love might be. He never took a shot, though, just sold them in tiny used vials because he had no paper. Sometimes they'd take the drugs without paying and beat him with steel crowbars in musky alleyways for good measure, and he'd go sell himself again, ignoring the welts and bruises and ignoring the blood in his mouth.
He hated blood, too--hated the metallic tang it had on his tongue, the sheen of crimson dye on wrists, the dried, parched brown of it under his fingernails. He could feel it elsewhere as well, under his clothes, under his skin where he once fancied himself a walking corpse, eyes as empty as theirs, his flesh yearning for physical pain yet feeling none anymore. Life was terrible that way, dangling release, then snatching it away. He hated life as much--rather, almost as much--as he hated them.
The other day he met a girl in an alley, three men roughing her up for some "lovin'" with an f. He forced them away and helped her up. They laughed that the three didn't even have the decency to pay up.
He asked her if she was a prostitute. She looked him in the eye and told him that she was a princess. The two of them left it at that, and as the acid-gray rain began to drizzle from the flat, desolate sky, they sat and talked.
She asked him what his name was and he replied that it was underused. She smiled at that with her too-red lips and returned that her name was the same with 'over.' The rain continued as he then asked her what season it was, and she answered that it was paprika and the rain was ruining the whole damn soup. They never left each other after that.
A princess and a vagabond--sounded like a fairy tale, the stuff that little kids read about in golden-bound leather books with brightly colored stencils decorating the fine, parchment paper within. New York, inner city, L.A. version? A prostitute an a small-time drug dealer. He called himself her lackey; she called him her prince. She asked him how old he was. Fifty, he told her, and she said she was ninety-two. Looking into her cat green eyes, he knew that that was the truth.
They rented an attic room above a tiny pizzeria and managed to get the rent on time with their combined income. The son of the owners gave them scraps of food in exchange for small doses of crack, so their budget didn't need to cover that expense. However, money was scarce, and soon he found himself taking on the role of what his princess did more and more often. When she found out, she found out, it was the first time he had ever seen her so hysterically angry. Afterwards, she smoked a 'cancer stick'--as she called them--and joked that she had had a royal tantrum. He smiled at that and let it drop, even though later, he wondered about why she blew her lid about him doing people to get money.
They called her a blowfuck and flipped her skirt as she walked by. On the sidewalks, she winked and flirted back. At two a.m. above creaking floorboards and silent stoves, he held her as she cried, her electric blue mascara running down her rouged cheeks like navy tears.
He asked her if she ever feared for her life. She asked him back if he did, too. His answer was that he wasn't normal, that he was something defined by ugly words he had heard at the electronics store on one of the wide screen televisions they'd never even dream of owning. 'Mutant,' he said and she smiled sardonically at him with her cherry lips, saying, 'We're all mutants, honey.'
Later, upon further contemplation, he realized that her definition of 'mutant' was different from his. Hers was the twisted perverse wraiths stalking the streets, indistinguishable from shadowy demons, fashioned by gluttony and hate so that they were almost no longer human. His was that he was different; could do things--frightening things--could fight, even though he'd also be hated. When he told her that, she smiled and told him that everyone hated everyone else, except for princesses and their princes. He let her dream and listened intently, as if hoping to siphon off some of the hope that her hypnotic voice carried.
Sometimes they'd go to the mall and pretend they had money. He'd clean himself off as best as he could and she'd wear knee-length plaited skirts, ankle socks, modest turtlenecks, no make up. They'd window shop and imagine living the glamour life where syringes were banned and government gouged out men's eyes if they looked where they weren't supposed to. He asked her if that would happen to him and she replied matter-of-factly that of course it wouldn't, that he was clean. Besides, he was her prince. She told him that they'd have pillow fights and eat hot fudge sundaes with chopped bananas and nuts, maraschino cherries, whipped cream and gooey marshmallow. It sounded so good and true and real coming from her that he almost believed it.
Once she had confessed that she didn't think about the men she went down on. He asked her what she did think about, and she told him that she sang hymns in her head.
'Lord Almighty--Lord Almighty,' she breathed, her voice slightly roughened from smoke, grime, tears, but he could hear the melody behind the words. When he told her that it sounded beautiful, she replied that of course it sounded pretty; all hymns were pretty. He asked her if she used to go to church. She smiled and told him that she was a virgin priestess.
When she came home the other night, she was covered in semen and blood and everything else. She said she had had a rough day at work. She always called it work--called it one of those desk jobs that everyone hated but she had to do anyway. 'I had a lot of clients today,' she said, 'Too many at the same time. The phone lines ringed themselves off the hook.' Sitting down on their ripped old couch--the one with the stuffing falling out in chunks of weathered yellow--she whispered through her chattering teeth, 'but it brings home the money, y'know? Someday we're gonna leave d'city an'when we do, we're gonna need money to play the slots.'
He listened to her lie and lied back, 'Of course. Of course, we're going to leave.'
The next day, she didn't come home. The day after that, he called the police station and they hung up on him. The third day, he found a note hidden under the water-stained double mattress.
'I'll never forget you. Someday, everyone will see you as the prince I saw...but for now, your princess has gone to save our kingdom--the one up there,'
Todd numbingly read the shaking cursive, a stark finality in the trembling writing.
At the bottom, he stared past the dust, only to see in a hasty scrawl, 'Get out of Hell--for me?' Then, closing his eyes, he turned over the slip of tattered paper and opened his eyes to read the only steady words on there with a teary smile,
'I am an angel.'