Tape record on, music from a world long gone, and a broken soul sits like a cracked actor at the edge of the present. Into the wormhole of his mind, unable to grasp the fissure within and pull the pieces together into a perfect matching scar, Liu Kang waited as his chest pounded and the heat of his breath threatened to explode within his maw until his brain shattered across the sheets.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never understand it.
Unable to understand the pressure that tore him apart, he pulled together a loose white button down and slacks. Slipped into his shoes, he was ready for the cold embrace of night again.
One last look in the mirror, where all he could see was the outline of a man he wanted to be. When you look forward, you see who you wish to become, and behind the man you thought you were, but never able to see who you are now.
Who were you just now?
Hong Kong had been a cold and empty shell to Liu, and in that, a welcomed gift in his path to remain hidden. Every day he feared the God of Thunder would magically appear at his bedside and demand to pull him into another murderous rampage, or like Atlas, slam the world upon his shoulders and beg him to walk a mile.
Now, only Shang Tsung waited for him and with such low expectations, he found cold comfort in this distant friend of his.
As always, the sorcerer met him above the rafters of the night club where Liu would sit and watch the crowd with him between drinks.
Night after night he would watch these happy or broken humans all collect en masse to forget the world the lived in under the harsh light of day to pretend that these fleeting moments of humanity were all that mattered. They lived wholly in the present with no regard for the past, nor the future.
How can I be like them? How do you do it?
"You're not alone, Liu Kang." Shang Tsung disrupted his thoughts.
The sorcerer looked not a day over thirty five as Liu Kang eagerly passed that. The eyes, always narrow as if suspicious of Liu and the world around him, bore holes into Liu Kang. Silly Shang Tsung, Liu Kang is nothing but a hole now.
"Why do I feel this way then?"
A knowing, smug breath forced Shang's up lip to curl into a grin he hid in behind the glass and his eyes returned to the crowd.
"Take her out then." Shang Tsung cracked through the glass.
Liu scanned the sea of people until he found the one girl in all the world under this roof with green eyes. They danced in the light, and shined in the darkness.
"Maybe it will help." Shang Tsung suggested, but Liu let it mull like the wine in Shang's glass.
No one met her, and no one dared accompany her on the floor. Alone in the light as all others coupled, tripled, gathered like moths to the flame of brilliant human nature. Is this what makes us human? The ability to live for the moment to spite time itself?
The night progressed and another came. This time, the girl was missing. A sea of beauty to see and seen below the wash of filth that trickled in young and old. His left knee shook as the drug coursed through his empty veins.
Blood.
Lust.
Need.
Connection.
Completion?
He couldn't pin down why his chest would pound and his body would freeze and heat, why he'd feel so empty even amongst hundreds of warm bodies. Ever since childhood, and strengthened since the tournament years ago.
Another night would pass and another night she was gone. Shang Tsung slammed his glass on the metal mesh table as Liu refused to stay the night. Their ritual was to flee into the hive mind of this place and feed off the humanity that bled before them. Of course, Liu Kang realized it was so that Shang Tsung could find the right souls to gather to maintain his own youth and crippled by his own torment, he would always be unable to stop him.
Night after night it felt as though the sorcerer was stealing Liu Kang's soul, what was left of it that he felt hid deep within the recess of his strangled mind. A silly thought, perhaps, or maybe the sorcerer had entrapped him in this ritual so that he would always have control over him.
Each time the thought provoked, he'd brush it away and go home. Tonight, however, on his lone road in the darkness as he would slowly return to the stacks of his apartment in the middle of the broken hive of Hong Kong's poverty line, he was shaken by another voice.
Entrapped by another's presence.
Hers.
Green Eyes, he began to call her. The girl he had only danced once with. It looked like she worked close to the night club in a family restaurant that would let out late, but this time, unable to go to the club, she closed the building herself. That's what he believed, the story he came up with in his head as all he saw was her walking past a family restaurant already closed and all he knew about her was her eyes and light.
He followed her.
Slow, then at some point bold enough to catch up.
Her turns were his. His lefts and rights mirrored by her ten steps ahead of him.
Could she live in the same complex?
Under the hidden moon, the dark blanket that shrouded the world from the stars barely creased to let him see her just beyond a broken street lamp where she stopped. His heart stopped too, because the jig was up and now all he could do was approach.
"Why are you following me?" She was annoyed, even scared.
Unable to come up with anything resembling appropriate for stalking her, he could only cough up an excuse.
"I wanted to see if it was you." Whoever she was.
"Do I know you?"
"We danced, that one night?"
He could see the blank expression in her eyes as she nervously snickered and then held the last breath in.
It was over.
Blew it.
She pressed her lips in a vague non-smile and backed away until he was distant enough for her to turn around, only to find his shadow still behind her.
"I think we live in the same apartment."
"I don't need an escort." She warned, the nervousness thinly veiled in her voice.
Nothing he could say to break that barrier without offense. He let her go until even her shadow faded from the night under the grim street lights.
Emptiness drained him further.
Unable to connect even to the world around him.
If he could see himself in the mirror would there even be a reflection this time?