Chapter III
I can't breathe in here. Ever since Weapon's first assault the air- conditioner has been offline. I keep coughing and seeing blood for half a second before blinking it away, as though malfunction dare rape the reputation of the most powerful man in the country. Have you ever seen the world in a second? I didn't think so. I did this afternoon, granted insanity at last by a ravishing she-devil forged of my own frustration. I saw a girl of no more than sixteen wandering the streets of the city, her hospital gown bathed in moonlight and whatever she last ate. The curve of her pregnancy matches the soft outline of the moon as she meanders barefoot, dragging some plastic umbilical prayer along with her. She pretends that the canula in her left hand and the transparent fluid bag suspended from a wheeled aluminium gallows loves her, that someone loves her. Tears splash the stone and she makes no attempt to stop them, mumbling over and over to herself the now incoherent spells, "It will be okay. I'm going home to my family. They love me", she hugs these lies closer as her child kicks, she does not curse it for the bile that blesses the rugged paving slabs, "We won't starve". It hurts her almost as much knowing that these things aren't true, as knowing that they're all she has to live on. I cried for that girl, so suddenly a woman, as I made love to Reno, corrupted as easily as an angel-faced child by the fact that this same deed was what destroyed her. It's the most crippling feeling in the world knowing that no- one loves you, that those who you associate with don't want you and those who made you regret it. And only love can break your heart. Reno felt it, just like I did, and now that we have each other's love we don't hurt any less - now we are besotted with the fear that it will end someday, and with our terrible impending destiny.
Can't every day be what it is, and not fettered to tomorrow's tomorrow with strands of snow-white greed that flail in vain attempts to escape the gutter. I need these comforts, and although I never actively seek them in Reno's arms I inevitably take the quick fix and find them there. Laziness doth perpetuate itself of course, and he does the same in me. We're blind orphans now, handcuffed together and stumbling toward the light. We always were that way, it's just that now we have the maturity to see it. Jessie's dead. The first girl I ever slept with, washed away and buried beside her dreams. A star-marked fighter though she may have been, she lay down for me and then for the collapsing plate all too easily. Reno and I aren't like that, I smile brashly. We'll succeed. Oh God. I'm doing it again. Just like that girl, I'm coaxing myself into believing that it's alright, not that I've lived in my office for weeks, that it stinks of hot milk and Reno's vomit, or that Weapon is coming, that I'm loved at last. Which of course is not true. Hopeless, now the truth is dawning, brilliant and so indescribably painful. I am dead. We all are. And I am that woman's child.
* * *
I scare myself, sometimes. When I force myself to exhaust Rufus and then watch him sleep. When I whisper things to him with my mind and hope that the sweet sins invade his nightmares. Let me be your drug, my love, let me penetrate you through a needle-point prism and fill you with the light of your own blood, and let the chains of two lifetimes of agony strangle you. You look so peaceful. I dreamed this time, Rufus. After I took you, and hearing you call me Cloud made my insides lurch with bitter jealousy, the lone candle obscuring the violet moth's flight. I dreamed until dawn. I saw the two of us making a pact so we might never be apart, even in the sinewed arms of Hades. You took a razor blade, and gently let the cool metal flow over your wrist. Like sex, first you then I took our turns at this refreshing mutilation, drinking in each other's life elixir through air so laden with the emotions we would never acknowledge. We lay together on your bed and embraced, preparing to doze for all eternity, should such a concept ever rear its ugly head. I was happy to expire with you until........such a murky detached veil was thrown over my eyes, I rose from our mutual pyre and decided I could not allow Death to simply obliterate us, before our love has left its treacherous mark upon this mock Freemasonry that masquerades as a corporation. We must live, I thought -there is money to make and people to kill. But I couldn't wake you, Rufus.
I steeled myself against it, but somehow I knew it was true. You are dying, aren't you? For a second I could see twin trails of naked garnet tracking down your arms, unwilling to justify itself and asking nothing in the way of redemption. A dream it may have been, although some ominous portend it will no doubt prove itself. The unmistakeable pheromones of semen and alcohol slashed the air, proud and defiant as it left my mouth and greedily sprawled across the carpet. Memories of all I drank last night flooded across the fabric pile and squinted back at me as I probed their limits with glassy, diaphanous eyes. It wasn't the drink that made me hurl. I shoot up between my toes.....that way no-one sees the scars - not like Rude, his hands are covered in little septic sores since the veins in his arms all got tapped out. I sighed, not wanting to taste the residue borne on a current of amniotic hatred incapable of loving its only son. All this anger has no medium of release except furious defiant ensconcement in Rufus' arms, or just killing things. I guess that's what Rufus loves about me; he knows me so well and I hate him for it. I can never hate him for long. But I will always hate myself for allowing love to permeate my shield, for rendering me so despicably complete and at the same time shocking seven shades of shit out of me. That's all I am, bare bones, for Rufus and anyone else to see. I'm just so fucking scared.
~fin~
Maybe there will be a chapter 4........Thank you to all who review.
Dark Nation is a hemaphrodite.
Coronis
I can't breathe in here. Ever since Weapon's first assault the air- conditioner has been offline. I keep coughing and seeing blood for half a second before blinking it away, as though malfunction dare rape the reputation of the most powerful man in the country. Have you ever seen the world in a second? I didn't think so. I did this afternoon, granted insanity at last by a ravishing she-devil forged of my own frustration. I saw a girl of no more than sixteen wandering the streets of the city, her hospital gown bathed in moonlight and whatever she last ate. The curve of her pregnancy matches the soft outline of the moon as she meanders barefoot, dragging some plastic umbilical prayer along with her. She pretends that the canula in her left hand and the transparent fluid bag suspended from a wheeled aluminium gallows loves her, that someone loves her. Tears splash the stone and she makes no attempt to stop them, mumbling over and over to herself the now incoherent spells, "It will be okay. I'm going home to my family. They love me", she hugs these lies closer as her child kicks, she does not curse it for the bile that blesses the rugged paving slabs, "We won't starve". It hurts her almost as much knowing that these things aren't true, as knowing that they're all she has to live on. I cried for that girl, so suddenly a woman, as I made love to Reno, corrupted as easily as an angel-faced child by the fact that this same deed was what destroyed her. It's the most crippling feeling in the world knowing that no- one loves you, that those who you associate with don't want you and those who made you regret it. And only love can break your heart. Reno felt it, just like I did, and now that we have each other's love we don't hurt any less - now we are besotted with the fear that it will end someday, and with our terrible impending destiny.
Can't every day be what it is, and not fettered to tomorrow's tomorrow with strands of snow-white greed that flail in vain attempts to escape the gutter. I need these comforts, and although I never actively seek them in Reno's arms I inevitably take the quick fix and find them there. Laziness doth perpetuate itself of course, and he does the same in me. We're blind orphans now, handcuffed together and stumbling toward the light. We always were that way, it's just that now we have the maturity to see it. Jessie's dead. The first girl I ever slept with, washed away and buried beside her dreams. A star-marked fighter though she may have been, she lay down for me and then for the collapsing plate all too easily. Reno and I aren't like that, I smile brashly. We'll succeed. Oh God. I'm doing it again. Just like that girl, I'm coaxing myself into believing that it's alright, not that I've lived in my office for weeks, that it stinks of hot milk and Reno's vomit, or that Weapon is coming, that I'm loved at last. Which of course is not true. Hopeless, now the truth is dawning, brilliant and so indescribably painful. I am dead. We all are. And I am that woman's child.
* * *
I scare myself, sometimes. When I force myself to exhaust Rufus and then watch him sleep. When I whisper things to him with my mind and hope that the sweet sins invade his nightmares. Let me be your drug, my love, let me penetrate you through a needle-point prism and fill you with the light of your own blood, and let the chains of two lifetimes of agony strangle you. You look so peaceful. I dreamed this time, Rufus. After I took you, and hearing you call me Cloud made my insides lurch with bitter jealousy, the lone candle obscuring the violet moth's flight. I dreamed until dawn. I saw the two of us making a pact so we might never be apart, even in the sinewed arms of Hades. You took a razor blade, and gently let the cool metal flow over your wrist. Like sex, first you then I took our turns at this refreshing mutilation, drinking in each other's life elixir through air so laden with the emotions we would never acknowledge. We lay together on your bed and embraced, preparing to doze for all eternity, should such a concept ever rear its ugly head. I was happy to expire with you until........such a murky detached veil was thrown over my eyes, I rose from our mutual pyre and decided I could not allow Death to simply obliterate us, before our love has left its treacherous mark upon this mock Freemasonry that masquerades as a corporation. We must live, I thought -there is money to make and people to kill. But I couldn't wake you, Rufus.
I steeled myself against it, but somehow I knew it was true. You are dying, aren't you? For a second I could see twin trails of naked garnet tracking down your arms, unwilling to justify itself and asking nothing in the way of redemption. A dream it may have been, although some ominous portend it will no doubt prove itself. The unmistakeable pheromones of semen and alcohol slashed the air, proud and defiant as it left my mouth and greedily sprawled across the carpet. Memories of all I drank last night flooded across the fabric pile and squinted back at me as I probed their limits with glassy, diaphanous eyes. It wasn't the drink that made me hurl. I shoot up between my toes.....that way no-one sees the scars - not like Rude, his hands are covered in little septic sores since the veins in his arms all got tapped out. I sighed, not wanting to taste the residue borne on a current of amniotic hatred incapable of loving its only son. All this anger has no medium of release except furious defiant ensconcement in Rufus' arms, or just killing things. I guess that's what Rufus loves about me; he knows me so well and I hate him for it. I can never hate him for long. But I will always hate myself for allowing love to permeate my shield, for rendering me so despicably complete and at the same time shocking seven shades of shit out of me. That's all I am, bare bones, for Rufus and anyone else to see. I'm just so fucking scared.
~fin~
Maybe there will be a chapter 4........Thank you to all who review.
Dark Nation is a hemaphrodite.
Coronis