A/N/Di: Nonsensical rambling at three a.m; an exercise in futility, compounded by my unknowledge of the difference between apathy and cruelty. Read at your own discretion.
Warnings: Mentions of abuse; pretentious references to mythological figures; a smattering of unpoetry; largely unedited.
--edge of apollyon
When they [the two witnesses] have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the Abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them…
--REVELATION 11:7
He bruises easily; a condition that befits his physique if not his level of ability. Come light of later morning his responses to her inquiries are brief ("You know me, I'm a wimp that way…" "…Yeah, I've always had kind of an iron deficiency—you should have seen me when I brained myself on a tree limb back when I was fourteen, that bruise stayed around for months…") and whatever hand that is not busy making breakfast or mopping the floor or fixing the broken hinges on the guest bedroom door will reach up to pull whatever fabric it can down around the marks. Capitulation comes only with the progression of the day, and only with a turned back and a reluctant mumble, "S'all right, doesn't hurt much…"
She can no further read him than she can truly understand him, though she is certain he makes no conscious effort to mislead her. His manner is unpretentious; hurt rolls across his shoulders and buries its own tracks, and only a faint smattering of lines hint at guile, nearly two decades old and long since under-utilized. It is only when the blows land –backhanded, mostly, and rarely intentional—that the quick intake of breath and the sharp pang crumple his face; always brief, with an apology for a misdemeanor that is not his already on his lips. In the morning it is always the same –"Ran into a door, hon," and "Fell down the stairs—Kami, you should of heard Master Roshi rag on me, I thought he'd never shut up…" as if she herself cannot remember the true cause.
As time goes on Juuhachigou wonders if she should feel—not cruelty, necessarily—but a kind of responsibility, or guilt, brazen and shameful, like the cross of pain that stretches down the center of his brow and the deepening crimson burned across his cheek.
~^~
He scribbles absently, on warm wet sand before the rising tide, Apollyon.
When Juuhachigou dips her toes into the water she can feel the weight of centuries; in fog the sun does not rise over the ocean as much as it spreads, like a sickly yellowish bruise, unwarm to the winds and uneasy on the water. These days more than any are the ones that make her feel like she is simply existing, listless like the puddles of sand on the porch and the hazy line between sky and sea.
On these mornings he is expansive; wearing t-shirts garnered from the city and from the excretory piles of semi-clothing at the bottom of Yamcha's closet. Usually these are bright spits of neon green and orange and yellow, sprinkled with grotesque depictions of screen-beans, lewd phrases, and a smattering of wise sayings perched between the inked-out breasts of serving girls in varying degrees of indecency. "Not bad for a cloudy day, huh?" he would chirp, oblivious to her apathy. "Of course, these aren't the loudest ones I have, but, you know, I don't want to burn anybody's eyes out…"
Come the evenings, however, he grows quiet, shrugging on a jeans jacket and settling on the rail of the porch, pencil and battered notebook in hand. Though he never confides she knows he writes frequently—scribblings in the steam on the bathroom mirrors and left on the notepad by the phone, or scrawled in the margins of the telephone directory. The ones in the bathroom usually consist of an odd noun and adjective combination: 'aggressive foliage', at one point, and 'sullen upholstery', 'gleeful smudge'. When it comes to the dictionary he is insatiable, leaving post-it notes with new vocabulary above the thermostat and on the handle of the refrigerator. More than once Juuhachigou has heard Master Roshi grumble, "If that boy used even half of the words he knows in his everyday conversations he wouldn't go around sounding so damned stupid all the time."
Juuhachigou can sense rather than see his energy decrease as the day progresses, like a candle slowly suffocated in the oncoming gloom. It is his hand that begins to move, rather, as if freed from the confines of the light, allowing eloquent clashes of words and phrases to march between the lines like tiny blue, stiff-backed soldiers.
she lingers, jumping
sun-struck rivers; spitting
epitaphs like stone on stone
while mountains reap what
seas are begged to sow—
thunder-eyed,
and cross-bound; an
abstraction of Apollyon
In the morning she digs the evidence of his ramblings from the rubbish bin or rescues them from the lip of the sea, spending the minutes before he awakens to examine them. Oftentimes they are damaged and unintelligible, but what she finds intact she keeps, inexplicably, in neat piles where he cannot get to them: a sanctuary for the discarded pieces of his soul.
Some nights he falls asleep on the rail, hand curling and uncurling around a pencil wounded by hours of the nervous trembling of teeth on wood. As he relinquishes consciousness the world is given free reign of his works, resulting in the sea air nosing at the edges of his paper and her pale fingers slipping in though the jumble of organized chaos, flickering over words turned unfamiliar with creativity.
for listless pale-eyed dreamers travel
quick-toed, o'er faded lines
to swallow the darkest part of light—
do you follow alongside me,
white horsed,
unweary of obscurity
like blood-soaked dawning hazes
in the heart of Apollyon…?
Juuhachigou finds herself likening his thought processes to a slipstream of broken images, tattered from the reel; the ideas that come forth are tentative and rushed, as if he is afraid he himself will lose faith in the middle of the proposal.
~^~
Come the weekends anything goes, the result of this often sending them on a catena of eclectic misadventures that wander into the latter parts of the day. A movie, he says: or dinner at the fancy restaurant by the corner of twenty-third, or a salon, you like having your hair done, right? He receives beauty with clear eyes, undaunted by the presence of decay, at the window of an antique store or in front of a cluster of gardenias ("They sure are pretty, huh?") or in the weeds bordering an obscure lake, watching the fireworks from distant carnivals explode like echoes of sunlight. With every cool dismissal she feels him hurt; with every sharp reprimand she feels him bleed. He is as sensitive as he is jaded: quick to weep over an ending of a book and quicker to hide the scars of his own experiences.
It is not enough, she finds, that he flinches when she raises her hand; it is not enough that with every wicked lash of syllables there is another turn in the night; he sleeps as restlessly as he does soundly, unawakened by the weight of her gaze. The same part that does not feel attempts to indulge him, however, commenting on the play of colors and his own fascination, and in turn he tries to make her feel it, with banal discussion and cold fingers and a silent entreaty on bitten lips (can't you can't you won't you…?) and it is for his benefit that she curves her own in a pale mockery of a smile.
Still there is something—and something again—that flutters deep within her chest with every grimace, as if by making him suffer she can somehow nullify her own pain.
~^~
She is confident he will not leave, and does not mind shifting the burden of the golden bands onto him. He bears it with shadowed eyes and determined cheer and yes, he is as exhausted as he is failing, like a star tumbling to earth. Juuhachigou has learned to count on his smile—it is only through his enduring optimism she can justify her own indifference. Counter-scales, maybe; eastwest northsouth.
She allows him to turn his back under the covers and pretends not to notice his restlessness, because all traces of unease will be gone in the morning, carefully concealed, like the scattering of bruises on his wrist and at his jaw.
For every morning is the same, patterned with mumbled assurances: "I know you never mean to…" and every response echoes the last, unladen with remorse,
(oh my is something the matter kuririn)
and every cringe and every forced smile drives the stake that much deeper, like clockwork, scattering blood like tears.
She feels…
(fin)