The Four
By. Bento Box
09/24/01

The New Testament; the Apocalypse; the cleansing of the earth in the deaths of those who did not believe. Even those who had done nothing still paid for the sin of not believing. The payment in Death and Damnation.

The hands ticked on in the faceless clock. Time was counting down the days, hours, and seconds.

A flicker of a tongue over sweet, cold steel, and a single golden eye flashed dimly under the glaring light. The padded walls were slashed and everything was white.

Except for the stains.

They purged the white's symbolic purity.

A flash in the light and the tongue flickered out again, delicately and slowly to savor the blood that tasted like tears.

The pale skin stood out starkly against the tight, black bondage suit, and the blood that dripped down from the arm was dark in contrast. He was a living scar, never healing and not wanting to heal.

He began to hum a tune. A lullaby drifted out of him from his vague, shadowed memories of rolling green isles and crisp sea sprayed air. It was a nameless tune from a land he loved and hated.

The clock continued to tick silently and a thousand thoughts and a millions voices screamed continuously in his head.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They thundered downwards from the Heavens to punish the Sinners of Earth.

War, Strife, Famine and Pestilence they were called, but only one had a name. Death. But each of them were parts of Death, bringers of Death, and wielders of Death.

And yet...they were His.

So fitting the Four, to be either Black or White.

To kill, to starve, to maim and torture. They were His men. He whose claims and promises contradicted unto themselves. A distant hypocrite sitting upon his suffocating throne in the Heavens.

Black and white and the number four.

The colors that weren't really colors, and the number that actually meant Death in Japanese. A bad number. A symbolic number, a number that the black and the white had chosen.

Numbers, numbers, endless numbers. For good or evil, omens and foul curses.

Like the number of the Beast.

The number of the White.

The number of the Black.

The numbers of deaths, and the numbers that Time continued to count before the world would end. Until then, the numbers flew across a vast space, patiently waiting for its void.

And then there would be silence.

The world did not know though, that were two sets of Four. The Black and the White.

The White were considered dark vigilantes, the ones the world could feel sorry for. They were the ones whom people would support and give to and aid. Yet, they were part of the Darkness as well.

The other Four were the evil ones, the impure ones.

But none in the world were ever truly pure.

The Four came in darkness, in the shadows, in the pain of the silence.

They came with Death.

Each bore a tainted soul with haunted pasts and blind futures. The Oracle, the Prodigy, the Mastermind, and the Beserker.

Who were they? The people answered from their feeble knowledge of what is considered evil: Bringers of Death, Shedders of Light. Those who believed in them were spared, those who did not were destroyed.

They were the Harbingers, the Shadows of Death.

They were nameless and faceless. Cowards hiding behind masks of cruelty, with evil eyes aglow and glinting. The pale ghosts of nightmares wavering in the night.

It was all true and all false.

His blood continued to drip down with soft patters onto the tiled floor.

And the faceless clock went on ticking in the echoing silence of a broken sanctuary, in time to the nameless hum.

Notes: Please do not be offended by the religious references. ;^^ If you are though, I'm surprised because Farfie isn't what I'd call a three-star upholder of God. o.O;; In any case, also forgive me for the bizarre plotless of this fic. o.o I wrote it during my second period class in school, Spanish, and there was nothing else to do, so out popped this wacko thing. ^_^;;