Asphyxia
A Short Music-Inspired Interlude.
You're in my web now – I've come to wrap you up tight before it's time to bite down.
- Cursive, "The Recluse"
Connor wondered why he had an alarm clock when he never bothered to set the time. It blinked, a dull green light in his tired eyes, a flashy lie of 8 am, when clearly it was only 2. Angel was in his room, large and obtrusive – restless. Sitting at the side of Connor's bed. Then leaning against the wall. Then staring out at the night sky – a black mass tinted orange by the careless L.A. lights. Then he was outside the door. Then downstairs.
Then he was back where he started, brown eyes on Connor's lethargic face.
Sometimes he would ask, "Not asleep, yet?"
And Connor would shake his head and reply, "Why don't you go somewhere else?"
Which incited a suspicious, "Where else would I rather be?" from Angel, before settling on the bed next to Connor and running an agitated hand through the brown hair.
In the dark, his father was pale as a ghost and Connor imagined those white hands going right through his skull, fading into nothingness inside his head. He wondered what games those long fingers could play with his brain. And those eyes, with that concern; those arms that held him so, so tight; and those legs strong enough to walk upright, bearing guilt and worry and fear; he wondered about this illusion – the masterfully heinous vampire contradicted by his goodhearted heroics, and loving concern for his misled son.
"I can't sleep with you here," Connor mumbled, moving his head to rest on his father's stomach.
Connor had been able to feel Father's pulse this way. He had been able to hear the sputterings and gargles of Father's digestive system at work.
"Promise me you'll stay," Angel quietly ordered.
Blink blink blink, went the little digital alarm clock. Eight in the morning. The sun's up and the worst is over.
He heard his father sigh softly, and it sounded high-pitched and gentle, almost like a woman's. So Connor thought about Cordelia - beautiful Cordelia and her clever, little entrapments. The way he laid entangled in her arms, smelling sweet because that's the way she smelled, and how she stroked his hair just like this – like Angel. With careful hands and concerned eyes.
"No promise?" Angel's voice asked distantly.
Cordelia had been dead then, because the dead weren't real. Or real people weren't dead. Either one. Cordelia hadn't been real; just an illusion, a fleeting dream of flowers and kisses and first love; a noncommittal passerby and the thickest of thieves.
"Not going then," Dad said, as Connor closed his eyes.
It was 2 in the morning.
The clock was blinking 8.
More soon.
Other songs that inspired this interlude:
Cursive - Bloody Murderer
Cursive -Driftwood: A Fairytale
Bright Eyes - Center of the World
...and I think the clock blinking 8 thing might have come from some Dashboard Confessional song at the back of my mind. I might be wrong.