Like many of the wonderful people here, I felt that TSTF was just so brilliantly executed, and written by the lovely Libba Bray, I could hardly sit still, away from the computer, not itching to add more to the experience that left us all so.. "WOW."
So I've decided to do for TSFT, what I did for Rebel Angels, which is to say, narrate the entire book from the point of view of a certain handsome, witty, and heart-stopping Indian. This first chapter will be a test chapter. If you like what you see, I will continue posting more chapters (because, really, one chapter takes a lot of time to write, and if I'm churning out utter rubbish, what's the point, right?)
So please let me know: the good, the bad, the ugly.
Anything that is remotely recognizable from the books, I do not own. They are property of Miss Libba Bray. ...And regarding that teensy swear word, I know they couldn't possibly have used it in the Victorian era, but hey, I did for all us. :)
I am beginning to lose count of the days.
My fingers, stained thick with the blood from an earlier wound, scrabble desperately at the faint, uneven cuts I've managed to gouge on the face of a random wall, one for after every horrid visit with Fowlson, with the point of a small, neighboring stone.
I run the tip of my tongue gently over the swell of my bottom lip. I can still taste the sweet stain of her kiss there like the stray, abandoned remnants of powdered fruit. This is absurd, of course. I've not seen, nor kissed the stubborn Gemma Doyle in nearly two months.
I find it regretful now, the distance I kept myself... refusing the magnificent pull of those startlingly green eyes that told you, whispered to you in dreams, secrets you wanted terribly to know... the strange, peculiar brilliance of her smile like the sunrise expelling the untoward darkness of night, that intoxicating, bubbling warmth of her laugh.
I am aware of how smitten I sound, and it is insufferable, disgusting. I am not foolish, or deluded enough—even with the considerable absence of sleep, and with only paltry helpings of bread and water to sustain me every night—to believe that I shall last very long in this foul, miserable hole. But I pray for it. It is enough to keep me breathing; barely alive, but still... hopeful, longing, even when Fowlson has kicked at my stomach so many times I have become cold, and numb with the immense agony of it.
It. I pray for it...
It is Gemma's tiny frown... that slightest, dissatisfied curl of her mouth whenever she is mulling something over, turning it over in her mind. It stretches slowly to form an infuriated wince. It is a wince she has pulled clumsily from the depths of her hammering heart; a wince smoothly employed to mask the true breadth of her excitement, her joy as she takes in the bewildering sight of me, this time, unlike the others, assured for certain that I am no momentary figment of her imagination, not a nasty, cheap trick played on her by the trees, by the dark... by that lingering ache in her heart.
She will be extremely furious with me, overwrought with concern. She will raise her voice to an outrageous pitch only audible to the likes of dogs. She will demand, in an angry, incoherent rush of words, why I've not written to her all this time. I will then pretend to be cool, flashing her a faintly amused smile, the art of which I've mastered to unprecedented perfection, and I will politely request that she lower her voice should her near to deafening hysterics catch the unwanted attention of her classmates.
But secretly, truthfully I will be happy. Happy to see her again, to have her worry, to have her fret so anxiously over me. I will be content to argue with her about the smallest things... overjoyed to have her laugh at the most ludicrous things that spill, too early let, from my mouth.
Happy to be with her again.
This is why I live.
There is the sudden, angry clop of footsteps just beyond my cell. A dim, watery light pools in beneath the narrow slit of the door, and I gaze at it blankly, almost coldly, the emotion in my eyes dry, and black as kindling. The door bursts open with a harrowing bang.
It is two of Fowlson's hired associates, their eyes unnaturally wide, and mad with the promise of blood.
They divvy, between the two of them, a bony arm each, and I am lifted from the merciless cool of the floor too easily like a rag doll. They pull me with very little effort to a room I have seen many times plague the shadowy interior of my nightmares.
It is a narrow, airless chamber with tall, sprawling walls starved of windows. A soft glimmer of light like a dancing halo flickers atop three fat candles dripping onto a sharp, high ledge to my right.
Tonight—or today, I can no longer tell—the chamber is empty of beating stones, fork-tailed whips, wooden clubs, and a jeering throng of barrel-chested, tight-fisted men. Instead there is a small tub of water, not unlike the sort laundresses employ to wash clothes... and Fowlson... a cold, exhilarated smile hidden beneath the broad arms of his foul mustache.
His expression is so expectant, so demanding of a good knee-trembling, that, despite the throbbing, and fiery pain of my battered limbs, I nearly fall over myself, guffawing madly like a lunatic.
"What's this then?" I roar out hoarsely, my throat achingly brittle with the lack of water, "The three of you going to give me a good, proper bath?"
Fowlson's affected demeanor falters a bit, but he recovers easily, his wide, beetle-black eyes glittering with all the undisguised malevolence of a cat ready to pounce.
"Can't say you don' need one, now, can you? Eh, brother Kartik?" He surveys my squalid appearance up and down with a happy, tottering malice, taking elaborate notice of the dark, wandering stain along the neck of my over-sized threadbare shirt, my trousers that are woefully in tatters about the knees...
"But no, no. There's still tha' 'ickle ma'er of miss Gemma, and wot she told you 'bout the realms," Fowlson gives the tub a small, almost affectionate kick, the eyebrow that is sliced in two by that prominent gash cocked in a ghastly, wicked expression of a dare, "Feelin' up to sharin' tonigh'?"
My heart is a caged, beastly thing eager to leave the hollow of my chest.
There is the minute, but arresting sting of a deep, and torturous ache if I move so much as an inch to my left or right. My dark skin has become a well-worn gallery of purplish bruises, and red-brown scars.
Standing before Fowlson, I am literally half of myself, my bones sagging in a skin that has become entirely too large, almost foreign, but my purpose begins to fill it.
"No, Fowlson," I am loathe to say, for I know very well that it would gravely disappoint the man if I were to comply, sweet as you please, with his threats without so much as the customary punch. I will be giving him what he wants by resisting, and it angers me so much that I am nearly shaking with the force of it. "So fuck yourself."
Fowlson monstrous grin grows impossibly broader in earnest, those wretched, despicable eyes disgustingly alight, and dancing with a twisted, demented joy. "I was hopin' ye'd say that, mate."
In two passionately brisk strides, Fowlson is a hulking, beast-like figure at my side.
With his fat, meaty fingers sinking hungrily into the flesh of my shoulder, he immediately forces me down on my knees, clutching the back of my ratty shirt hastily as he drags me forward, just inches before the small, steel tub.
It is at that very instant, both terrifying and surreal, that I realize what he seeks to do.
Before I can even struggle against the unyielding, vine-like cords that bind my two wrists together so tightly they are nearly the shade of chalk, Fowlson grips a fistful of my dark, overlong hair, and with a sharp thrust, plunges the whole of my head into the frigid water.
The water wraps itself about my face with all the stubborn reluctance of a sweater fitted far too small. The terrifying din of Fowlson's howl-like laughter is completely shut out by the pounding thud of the water. If I should even breathe a pint of this into my lungs, I would, no doubt, suffocate within minutes, with nothing more than a trail of fat, lazy bubbles plop-plopping onto the surface to indicate the release of my undignified scream. On the other hand, should I attempt to struggle, or land a blow—which would tickle Fowlson at best, given the deprived, pitiable state of my body—I would only be using up the oxygen left to me.
Should I make it through this extraordinary mess alive, I decide, I will most rightly take it upon myself to pay Fowlson a tidy, little compliment on the creativity, and startling effectiveness of his torture methods.
Supposing he's still alive, in perfect possession of his wits, and can hear, feel, and move by the time I'm done beating him into a bloody pulp, that is.
Don't breathe, Kartik. That's it.
Entirely too soon however, the once small, once appeasable hunger in my thinning veins becomes stronger, increasingly treacherous; a monster. It paints my lips a pale blue with its naked desire, my face deepening to the color of violets in bloom at the staggering intensity of its need...
My knees flinch suddenly in unison, my hands wringing now with an astonishing fierceness, a senseless desperation, against the aching fold of my spine. I cannot help it. It is my body, at its most basic, its desires and needs keenly primitive, finally taking over, and my mind is helpless to its bid for war, and ultimately... it relinquishes all control.
And then it happens. Red bleeds, and streams from the corners of my blurring vision as if someone has accidentally knocked an ink bottle over my eyes. I shake my head tearfully against the pull of this frightening dream, this all-too familiar nightmare, and Fowlson instantly perceives this as an act of surrender, yanking me none too gently out of the water by my dripping, tangled hair. But it is too late.
I am standing, cold, and unafraid, before a barren, desolate field watered thick with the blood of the fallen. The darkness, that hidden, deceptive pitch of night peeks at me from behind the pale, and sunken lids of terrible, mangled creatures who clamor about me restlessly, feeding the cool, wintry air their broken, strangled cries of fear, of hard, bloodthirsty fury.
There is an enormous, pulsing tree, its great, withered roots, black as coal, splitting the ground effortlessly with its god-like intent.
I am not myself. Against the smooth, white-silver plane of a partially blood-crusted blade, I glimpse the hideousness of my true reflection, the cruel flash of my milky white eyes, the sudden hollow of my dark cheeks, the new gauntness of my chin that could draw blood, pierce skin. The blade shifts suddenly, rising, then swinging in a magnificent, mesmerizing arc. My reflection is lost, and my eyes wander immediately to the sword's wielder.
Amar.
The shock I feel is a dreadful, consuming weight that bears me, on all fours, to the ground. Amar shares my wicked, discolored eyes, his broad back cloaked loosely in the festering hide of long slain animals.
"You will be the death of her, brother," He murmurs to me in a low, dangerous voice hideously close to a rumble, and my throat burns painfully with the threat of tears. I train my moist eyes on him, pleading.
I lift a hand to where he sits, glowering at me dispassionately from his impressive beast of a horse, and I am desperate to salvage some part of him, some recognizable piece of the brother I lost as if only yesterday, the brother who was the only family I've ever known, the one who gave me my identity. His love that made me so sure of everything, so unquestioning... not frightened.
But there is a new shock.
My fingers are dripping with blood. I immediately search myself for the impression of wounds, and with my heart suddenly caught in my throat, I croak, "Gemma?"
Gemma is as pale as marble, the beautiful, arresting green of her eyes half-hidden beneath eyelids that flutter violently like butterfly wings in order to stay up. Blood is blooming like a menacing flower through the white fabric of her dress. She lays crumpled, a broken doll on my lap.
"Gemma..." I gasp, horror draining the very little color from my face, "Gemma! good God!" I grip her sides hysterically, and almost drop her as she feels so awfully cold to the touch.
"Gemma, please... Gemma wake up... Gemma, I..." Love you. I love you. Tears leak thick, fast, and unstoppable down the warm, peaty slopes of my cheeks, mottling her dozens of tan freckles, her one, two sunspots from Bombay. With grueling, effort, she inches herself closer to me, gripping both my arms unbearably hard, wrapping them about her waist hastily, without too much care. Through my thin, insipid veil of tears, she is smiling contently, and with one last, savory breath of air, she shuts her eyes as if all is well.
She wished to die in my arms.
The grief, when it reaches me, crashes down upon me like a roaring, thundering wave. I shiver uncontrollably in the wake of it, and I do the only thing I can think of.
I scream.