* * *

R O R R I M
chapter three

"Where are we going and what are we doing with this handbasket?"

* * *

Two sets of membranous wings coincide with one another, cooperating for the sake of their wayward little passenger. They are very flimsy, easily broken by only the gentlest external touch, even while coated in chalky armor. The scales that layer the fore wings and their lesser companions dissolve into a fine, barely visible powder when brushing against just about anything. This is unfortunate, because this pseudo-mantle also supplies a mystic property of aerodynamics that allows flight to take place; rubbing it off is usually permanent and flying is never achieved again.

The hemelytra flare abruptly; hence, the little illumination slipping through the plated sliding glass door to the balcony causes opalescence to occur. Flashing flames lick along soft curves, blotting out the imperfections in the coloration of either sleek wing. It's a sterilization that smolders off the irregular brown lines crisscrossing each and purges the remaining sallow gray for the sake of exposing unblemished white. Angling just so, the wings act under the same principles as a hang-glider after the tremulous flitting has ceased. It breaks into a wide arc and glissades through the air, silent and deft.

. . . tunk.

With a single dead thump, the moth strikes the glass barrier, scrambles for a moment on the frictionless surface, and then effortlessly skulks away.

"That's a gypsy moth, if you're wondering," I whisper to the mirror.

I am surprised by my own coherency. I thought my mind had simply given up on me; just allowing me to believe my surrounding environment as all I want it to be. Have I really been talking, or is that only another gratification from my feverish consciousness? The words had been aural, but rang with a dull tone. A bell struck with fingers benumbing the metal's resonance has the same sort of sound. This proposition makes me ill. My eyes are probing, filled with mute questions and screams, soaking what light befalls me with the hunger of an insatiable blackhole.

. . . tunk.

The mirror, my familiar, regards me without prejudice or sympathy. A fellow audience member -- a stowaway -- glints in the upper right-hand corner of the silvery surface, reflected as a miniature star. A brief loathing fills me for that conical masterpiece, scrabbling futilely in search of an escape, probably having been indulging itself on my confessions of past sins in the meantime. Even so, it is mortified by what it has heard . . . caught in a maelstrom of pain, nostalgia, and the encroaching darkness that even milky moonlight can't ward off.

. . . tunk.

Working torpidly in my mouth, my tongue feels like bitter moss is growing from it. "Lymantria dispar is its scientific name," is murmured to no one in particular this time. My eyes remain fixed on the poor cousin of a butterfly, still clawing with useless limbs at its means of breakout. "It fed only at night as a caterpillar on various types of trees, and as an adult, its one purpose is to breed before it dies. Only the male is capable of true flight, while the female tends to hop along the ground in semblance of a chicken."

Charged with these accusations and denying none, the moth swirls like an impatient comet. It is caught -- he I should say, since it's obvious no female could shake the skies -- in this room, breathing this stale air, and hearing the autobiography of a lost boy. I wonder if I could be claustrophobic for a few minutes; I'm staring, staring, staring . . .

. . . tunk.

Suspicion swells within me and my arms curl around my knees more protectively. I can just imagine how he would announce to the world my fears and dreams, horrors and wishes, and everything else in between. Feathery antennae waving, he would collect the prize for being the one to Crack Ichijouji Ken's Mind Open Like A Melon while I succumbed to the psychologists that would eat my misery like dark fudge and write a million thesis papers. I want to take those pearly wings and rip each one off with precision enough to make the insect caterwaul despite his lack of vocal cords . . .

. . . tunk.

"Holy fuck," I curse breathlessly, rising upon ungainly legs to stand, "maybe I am crazy. It's a moth. A moth that will probably run down to the nearest lamppost bordello and find a few woman mates of its species to copulate with, in hopes of producing offspring before it expires."

The thin knife is suddenly weightless in my hand, but my wrist remains limp as though supporting the load of a hefty cleaver. I stalk to the balcony's door gracelessly, usurping the control webbing shadows had over that slice of dominion. The light from the heavens rings brighter as I wrench the lock open and slide aside the glass on its greased track, fingers on the cold black handle at the far left. The moth, nonplused by the sudden change of air temperature and pressure, hovers fruitlessly by my head.

"Get on with it," I hiss against my own will. The blade flashes as I direct it toward the summer sky like an anxious traffic signal, bathed in silver. What little certainty I have is slipping through my fingers and the moth seems only to contribute to reminding me of that. "Get on with it!"

* * *

It was so, so easy.

Decisions were usually determined conclusions about something. Audacity was a result of the process, portending to the courageous end of the spectrum where the choice usually meant life and death. It wasn't the breaking of earthly restraints one had when choosing strawberry jam over grape for their lightly toasted bread -- because it was
new and exciting -- after all. It was an entirely novel feeling, bringing pain if inappropriate and pleasure if correct. It's a game on the most base of levels, actuality permitting.

Ichijouji Ken was sick of that game.

That was why it was so easy. He had lost everything to ill-fated selections. (What wire to cut, what wire to cut? Red, green, or blue? You don't have much time.) His brother had been a victim of the dire circumstances that a select uncouth words tumbling from his mouth could produce. He had seen, first hand, just how lovely the unfolding of thick burgundy on dusty asphalt could be, sparkling in the dying sun's light. (Blue, you say? Are you sure? Think hard.) And this was only one example. Ryo was always an enigma -- Akiyama the family name, you know -- to say the least. After that last battle, he just up and deserted the defenseless boy. Ken never forgave himself for that, thinking it to be his fault
. (Go ahead, my boy, cut it.) Maybe he was right. He was sure he would find no absolution in anything he could say or do ever again. (Oh dear, oh dear, now you've blown us all up, Ken . . .)

Until he discovered the Dark Ocean.

If decision-making was a game, Ken was effectively taking a long break from the big leagues. It was a fair trade, after all. The Ocean promised him wordlessly that he would be able to never have to vitiate the lives of those around him, just as long as he provided one big
favor to complete the transaction. Thankful but callow, he fell to his knees at the oily waves' edge. As soon as his hand braved the freezing water, it was over. He had taken to the bench.

Ken fell into a deep sleep, stuck precariously in a corner of his mind without regard, and the clearings in his mind were where vengeful darkness was allowed to sow and cultivate. The only indication of this was the soulless pair of anemic mauve eyes. Ken wouldn't have any further choice in what happened from there. He didn't
want any. That was the beauty of it.

The Digimon Kaiser grimaced, gloved fingers rising to press against his temples.

But now . . . now Ken was waking up.

"Get on with it!" the tyrant barked explicitly at the monitor before him. The gathering of red-eyed Digimon, inky rings brandished around their necks, went unheeding of the harsh order. It must have slipped their master's mind that he had failed to turn on the lines of communications to dictate commands. "What are you waiting for?!"

The group of Tyrannomon snorted at one another appraisingly, squabbling amongst themselves, their subjugated brains so infused with blind hate just waiting to be reaped. They did not even notice the out-of-place formation of ground and aerial Digimon, a human child posted atop each one, however. One obsidian obelisk remained unconcerned nearby.

They're not listening.

"Fuck you," the Kaiser muttered, once silky-smooth voice betraying more and more hidden needles. The pounding of his head was making a full length of coherent thought impossible. "Just fuck you. Go away."

I can't go away. I'll always be right here. Always always ALWAYS . . .

He gritted his teeth, trying to blank out the disembodied voice that tolled with unsophisticated malice. Exhaustion tattered its edges -- it was limited victory.

"We had a fucking DEAL! We --"

"Ken-chan? Whom are you talking to?"

"Don't call me that, you feeble slug," he snapped waspishly, denoting that he had been washed mercifully with white noise upon Wormmon's first words. "I'll always be Master to you."

But now . . . now Ken was getting angrier.

"All right, Ken-chan."

". . . What do you want, anyway?"

"The Tyrannomon were freed by the Chosen. But the Mecha Norimon you sent to collect the rogue Kuwagamon in sector five succeeded while they were busy."

"Good," the despot replied, digits dancing over the manifested keyboard of various glyphs imprinted in ruby. The susurration was calming. The twine of his nerves began to slowly come back together. On the screen, the hacked bits and pieces of various Digimon slowly began to take shape. Arms with terrible ruddy pinchers joined in the fray. It was almost complete. Chimeramon was almost complete . . . "Wormmon. Go outside and await further instructions."

It would be unstoppable. And he would be God.

. . . He ignored the ice water that began seeping through his veins, breathing arctic fire on his nerves.

But now . . . now Ken was getting stronger.

* * *


I bite absently at my lower lip in concentration and hesitance, infrequent as the habit may be. The gypsy moth has since disappeared into the pitch night, liberty detected, and that had been help to providing a temporal satisfaction. Now the door is shut, chilly against my back as I observe the interior of my room, discreetly keeping purpure eyes from the cheval glass that stands opposite of me. My gaze wanders to the bed on a whim, rumpled sheets a telltale corpse of rhapsodical nightmares; twisted about a band of deep viridian I can identify as Wormmon. I could easily put the cap on the penknife, climb into my bed, and forget all of this ever happened.

I sit down in front of the mirror again.

I'm a mess.

A few fingers lift, albino in contrast to the surrounding abyss, and press gingerly through what knots I have acquired in my sapphire hair since having lain down in the earlier nighttime hours. Waking from suppositious demons is like eating copper; my blankets are in a death grip and my hair so matted and tangled from invisible tussles that it is a mockery to graves on which deserve a snowy rose. Then my heart calms; I truly know I'm still trapped, even without spidery cinnabar arms or squealing tires to imprison me. There's a cage of glass all around me, tiled mosaically in a mismatched rainbow: a cage of memories.

Ah. "Here is my room," I say tenderly, gaze quavering to the left and right, "with its tarnished curios and fripperies masquerading for deep-seated currents of emotion."

I've always been backed into corners: my parents, my brother, my school . . . Kaiser . . .

It was halcyon in a way unimaginable. Heaven and hell a notch above and below; it was the gap in the circuit, the misfire in the synapses, the endless space between the stars . . . the Dark Ocean, Purgatory, or any of a million designations. A quaint island in an infinite expanse of reasonably placid ashen waters was the only destination for those who found their way there; the population long since fled. The rotting fishing village, as silent as the tomb, was left in their wake, whitewashed and faded like an old photograph. Light diffused through the thickly overcast sky and hung incandescently. The intense heat was drawn to the sea itself, dangerously hypothermic, where the residual hum of a fog-shrouded whirlpool could be heard as the elements of air and water merged. Seven stone towers, their functions anonymous, rose from sylvan ebony that covered the remainder of the isle. Malevolently eroded crags jutted from the base of charred cliffs, whereupon a skeletal lighthouse sputtered decaying warnings to ships that would never come.

It was peace. It was Death. It was . . . quiet.

"And here is my window," I drawl, using a steady hand and the edge of my blade to graze aside what untamed bangs wish to veil my eyesight, staring a few heartbeats at the very tip when it's right there in front of my pupil, "glass polished and blinds up . . ."

The waters had their voices of crucified whispers, all on a wretched forked tongue. It felt like dry ice had replaced my heart, but I knew the bliss of journeying into the arms of Morpheus. No longer would I destroy contentment.

My memories are still pockmarked, even to this day -- an involuntary denial that gives me only small tracts about the Kaiser: his thoughts, his plans, the Digital World, and the Chosen he fought against. Little by little, a new awareness will surface, usually as soon as I awake in the morning. But there is the fresh pain as well: what I dealt him with psychic talons once the subconscious I was planted in began to activate. I was shredding him, but still drifting in and out of conversance depending on his deeds at any one time. The more malicious he was, the more conscious I became.

My fingers begin trembling. I quickly lower the slender knife, wishing not to carve out my eye-sockets by mischance alone. I need to take a breath, watching as my muscles flounder wildly. "My door is here, decked in filigree, reflecting a shattered soul without bias," I rasp, unable to find my voice adequately. "What a joke."

The coup de maitre was his digital mythos, this I recall clearly, the unruly pet where no proper spanking or dark spiral could remedy it of its spoiled behavior. I think Chimeramon hated him for bringing about Life as much as I did in general. It must have had such an agonizing existence, mentality unglued and fractured into a dozen pieces. Viral, vaccine, data . . . it was a living paradox and Frankensteinian conundrum.

I clear my throat. "Constantly feeling that you're a mistake is jading," I voice, unsure why I simply can't leave well enough alone and keep it circulating over and over and over in the privacy of my brain. "It makes reality feel not quite stable, even to an ineludible degree unreal, and in this abandonment you can't tell between truth and falsity. Life is muted, decolorized and hushed, and sometimes you . . . I . . . just want to feel again."

There are plenty of ways to do that. Solace is offered in various figments by the mind, ideas and theories that fuse together into a monstrosity that can at least make the day more vivid in all saneness of the word. When . . . when Daisuke drew his hand back and squarely cracked me across the face . . . there was that split-second image of Osamu at a time when I did feel alive; when walking out into the street held more meaning to me other than a book-learned definition for road, sky, automobile, and sidewalk. The pain was crisp in both scenarios, and while I relished in the resulting bruise, the siring of my obsession was well underway.

Blood was out of the question. My entire wardrobe didn't consist of long sleeves; coupled with that was the considerate horror such self-inflicted injuries usually produced, even upon the bearer themselves. I had seen enough shedding of claret and unhealed scars to ever even consider the possibility of pressing a biting knife to myself. There were still alternatives.

". . . And this is my key." The blade sparks with movement.

It was a fluke that I came across my current method. Osamu's portrait, still disheartening with the addition of a dedicatory ribbon, was on the mantelpiece before I transferred it into my bedroom. There was always a small shrine of tea-candles there, lavender and lily, kept lit in his memory by both my parents and me. It was an unsaid tradition; the roots lost. It was by error that I tipped one when snuffing its wick before bed, another rite, and my fingers were doused in liquefied wax. It hurt -- as to a flame it burned -- mightily, but it was to my relief then that this liquid fire dried almost instantly after contact with my skin. There was no scathe left aside from a slight rose discoloration from the predictable agitation it brought.

The feeling dallied with me, the euphoria of pain that made everything genuine again. By "mishap" this occurred several times more, no more daring than to subject my hands to this treatment . . . and then it became a permanent fixture in my life. Like an addict, I would steal into my room with a multicolored package from the store and a matchbook to experiment with other patches of naked skin. My parents, happy that I seemed to be doing better, remained oblivious. They thought my seclusion was for the best.

As though inciting a chemical high, it was this that I turned to when I couldn't deal. Nothing has changed, even now, where in my desk there sit pink, hazel, and olive medallions of wax . . .

But sometimes . . . sometimes . . . when I'm near Daisuke, I feel the same elation that makes the sanguine world choke and crumble without placing self-infliction into the equation. My heart thuds loudly. I wonder if he feels the same at this very moment, adopting an out-of-place rhythm that aches keenly in his chest, even while tucked safely away in his bed as I should be and not facing wraiths in the mirror.

And then there's my partner . . . Wormmon . . .

* * *

He felt dead inside.

It wasn't even an emptiness that gave him a void of emotion; that at least would have been marginally better than the lead and silver that made him feel cumbersome and cadaverous. Embalming fluid may as well have coursed through his body, shutting down each one of his internal organs, and caking his arteries with a preserving compound of solvents, because he believed himself to be a zombie. Something was missing. Or had it always been?

He was mindless of the sand that kicked up around him, lashing him with limitless amounts of razor-edged diamond dust. Mostly numb from all outside input, there was only the shambling of tired legs and scream of the sun's light in his eyes, but even that became obsolete with each passing cycle of leg after leg of the aimless wandering. A desert -- he was in a desert. Hadn't he been here before? Laughing azure eyes met him, foreign and familiar at the same time, before they quickly shifted hues into concerned sienna of apprehension and concern. He
had been here. It was where . . . with him and . . . he couldn't remember. He could not access his memories.

Panic flooded him, but it seemed unattached. Wrathful cid had gnawed on the ties to all sentiment; the bond was severed. What was his name? Did he know that at least? Yes . . . Ichijouji Ken. And he was missing . . . a piece of himself.

Oh . . .

Oh no.

Oh fuck.

Wormmon?

Wormmon!

That was it. Wormmon. Where was he? The desert . . . on his knees, crying tears of butchery into the crocus sands once the lamb had departed in a nauseating, fragmented evaporation. Wormmon -- the leavings of his soul gone on the wind as pixels. Wait -- no. That was before, when a semicircle of others was present, pitiless eyes mocking him (save for one). The second (third?) time around, there was no one to yell for his reconsideration of . . . of . . . a team, yes, joining a team. But he wasn't one of anything -- he couldn't be. He was alone; he'd always be alone . . .

His feet stumbled on the fringe of arid grasses, native to the region. Regaining his balance, glassy eyes lidded and moisture-deprived lips cracked, Ken noted dimly that he had entered some sort of pastel-colored hamlet. There was a prick of confusion at the sight of eggs, decorated in various designs and colors as though for holiday.

"This is the Primary Village!" someone declared nearby, proud and informative. Ken saw that it was a Fresh Digimon, but was unable to place a name to it.

He was distantly amazed that he was capable of speaking. "Primary Village?"

"That's right! This is the place where all Digimon are reborn and --"

The rest of the babble was instantaneously overshadowed by that one word. Reborn? Digimon had a form of resurrection . . . ?


Wormmon!

"Reborn?" He paused. Alien hope crept towards the cinders of his emotions, making his heart give one slumberous beat and sending shivers down his spine. "Wormmon too?"

"That's right!" the Digimon -- Poyomon, Ken realized suddenly -- agreed a second time, nearly bouncing sporadically from its private cradle. "Digimon never die! They just get reconfigured!"

Another pump of the fist-sized muscle brought
pain, but it was pain that made him feel as though he had joined the ranks of the living once more. His indifference was replaced by indescribable joy and the kindling of a smile was made apparent. He had his redemption -- it was right there -- and he was going to claim it.

But . . . Wormmon -- where was he? All of the eggs, disorienting in their randomness, and his mind yielded no knowledge of the particular pattern . . .

"You're the Digimon Kaiser!" a fellow Fresh form called Yuramon disgorged, voice condescending.

What? I'm not -- oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no why hadn't I stopped it sooner why was I sleeping I'm a coward and oh no oh no WORMMON! The pain; I've brought you so much of it and everything else because I couldn't STOP IT in time and I'm so sorry because I know that there's no forgiveness and there's just blood staining my hands and I want to die but I'm alive again and I -- the blood! Why is it still there?!

Everything was hideously wrong. A low moan escaped Ken's throat: the maroon liquid that spattered from his claw-like hands with as much regularity as his salty-tasting tears would not cease. It sluiced in a mortifying vibrancy, staining the peridot ground alongside less lethal salinity, accompanied by the onslaught of frightening wisdom. It dictated the phantasmal, metaphorical sight of red on one's hands was not to take on a realism such as this, to taint the ground like so, and that his wrists should not be stinging so badly and --

My wrists! It's -- it's coming from my wrists?!

* * *

I heave raucously, as if I haven't taken a breath in the past few minutes. Disorientation ties my stomach into a tight, throbbing knot of gastric discomfort and spite. That was . . . different. My lapses into my memories, aroused by stimuli that don't necessarily make sense, have never taken on a substitute ending of such a magnitude. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the culprit to blame, howbeit.

Then I look down.

. . . The bottom of my stomach drops out.

I must have unconsciously placed it there during my declension of thought. The blade of the penknife is bisecting my right wrist, stainless steel overexposed and blinding. My lucent, paper-like skin almost glows with an inner radiance that exposes every last bone, tendon, and circulatory vessel. A vein of austere peacock ore winds through the white clay. I know that if I apply just the right amount of pressure, I could free the deoxygenated blood of its perpetual cycle -- and what the hell am I thinking?!

I hurl the penknife as hard as I can away from me. A chasm opens in the umbra beyond my sight-range, engulfing it whole. Abhorrence occludes everything.

(Feelings, feeling -- the general state of consciousness considered independently of particular sensations, thoughts, etc.)

My plan . . . countless nights spent . . . told 'Nii-san that . . . I -- I was going to . . . to . . . with a knife and . . . I'd meet him soon . . .

Ruined, I bury my face in my shaking hands and sob loudly, bitterly.

My tears are hot like melted candle wax.