Button.
Button.
Button.
Zip.
Rustle.
Rustle.
Button.
Zip.
My uniform, stiff and shining a lacquer black was now in place.
Another layer of skin, for I wore it almost as long as I had been wearing my true pale skin, in place.
The black and white, and the cross that adorned my left breast.
My life.
My second skin.
I am an exorcist.
Protected by God, to cleanse the world of its abominations and record every single, gruesome event.
To commit the sordid and often grotesque crimes of the Demons and of the Sinners to mind.
Page after page of hastily-scrawled notes, of long and defining paragraphs, of detailed and picturesque accounts of Sin.
These yellowing and aged papers, written upon with the black ink of a merciless scribe, my aspiration.
My sad, pathetic aspiration.
To write and write and write, the more I write, the more I die.
At the cost of my heart, I would be able to achieve greatness.
I would be able to spend sleepless nights with a blacker than black ink bottle, filled with its even blacker poison, and a quill.
The feather stained and dirtied by Time and ink, held by hands even more marred by the smudges of ink-poison, crippled and frail, only capable of gripping pens.
The fingers withered and old and thin, pale, yet black.
Always black, always a hint of black.
My future.
I closed my eyes and sighed.
A deep, chest-heaving sigh.
A sigh so loud, but so quiet it was like the gentle, deafening yawn of a Giant, muted by the yell of a mouse.
I had taken in a deep breath and sighed again.
I had to prepare myself, I had to brace myself, I had to be ready for anything.
I had made my decision that morning, after the conversation I shared with The BookMan.
I was going to 'cut it out'.
It would be no more.
I might have dreamed about my utopia with Yuu, but it wasn't to be.
As much as I yearned, as much as I suffered, it couldn't happen.
It had been my perverted and twisted dream since I was younger, to get rid of my Heart, and for a short and blissful while I wanted it, but that phase didn't last.
Love didn't save me.
It only gave me more conviction to get rid of it.
I had never been a happy or loved boy, and the countless nights of lust from the older men I encountered in the streets didn't help, they only fueled the Empty inside of me, fueled it into one big, blustering ball of Emptiness.
A black hole.
In me.
Yes.
That Empty, it was like a parasite, it slowly ate away at me, until I couldn't bear it any longer.
It engulfed my heart a long time ago, it swallowed it whole the night when I was left all alone in the cold.
It choked out my young, passionate fire and ate any remaining embers.
Mr. Empty became my only friend, and my only enemy.
He loved me, and he would croon sweet melodies of the void that awaited me once he had finished feasting, and how we would be together forever, floating in the Abyss of Absence.
I was a shell, hollow, I was empty.
Until I came across Him.
He was left alone too, but somehow, the Empty didn't find him like it found me.
He might have been bloody and angry, and a murderer, but he wasn't Empty.
When I saw him, young and bruised, I saw passion.
I saw something.
I saw substance.
I saw the opposite of me.
In that moment, that singular moment, I felt a sluggish thump inside of me.
A tired and weary and weak and faint thump inside of me.
My Heart.
Despite the years of being in the Stomach of the Empty, it was still alive.
It had beaten.
Once.
Then twice.
Then it faded, to weak to go on.
In awe, I raised a helpless hand to my chest and held it over my heart.
My eyes, tired and a dusty emerald colour, widened and stared at the boy with the tattoo, at the young Angel, at the long black hair, at the blood, at the eyes, those navy-blue eyes, and I knew, he was going to fill me up.
Fill me up and never let me be empty ever again.
How wrong I was.
How horrible and very wrong.
The more I found myself secretly, and longingly staring after the brooding boy, the more I felt myself sinking into a muddy hole of Desire.
It stuck to my clothes and pulled me in deeper and deeper, it was a quicksand, and I, as a stupid moth, was left floundering in it, attracted so much to the Light, that I failed to realize the danger of my current situation.
I shook my head and tried to dispel the cloud of yearning for the past and the innocent wants of the Before Time.
This was now, this was the moment I would separate myself from the faceless crowd of the weak.
I was going to be Heartless.
My sleek, leather and ebony boots clacked against the nearly perfect white marble of the halls.
The white walls, high and blank, decorated sparsely with a few crosses, and the high white ceilings, with golden Chandelier-Spiders hanging from them, were the only things my world-weary and desperate eyes could gaze upon as I made my way down the familiar halls.
Left.
Right.
Left again.
Another left.
And then, a right.
Twenty paces down the hall was the room of my Heart.
Behind that tall and heavy door, was a certain pair of navy-blue eyes, flecks of grey and black swirling within them, beckoning, calling, whispering for my tortured and troubled emerald greens to join their dismal rainbow.
They were calling, and I was coming.