It's flashback time! Enjoy!

Chapter III

When the lights of the fire disappeared they did not return, darkness and cold enveloped every aspect of Microux's existence, and he was unable to move. At first light, Microux made out the faint silhouettes of ashes, scraps of clothing, and bone on the stone floor before him. It horrified him, he knew what they once had been. He slowly drew himself up from his crumpled position on the floor and hoisted himself up to the tiny barred window. In the early morning light, all he could see was the slowly falling snow.

As they hours passed, alone in the wine cellar, and the light grew brighter in the day, the snow stopped and the winter sun came out. Ironically warm, it kissed all surfaces so they glistened and tried to melt slightly. However, the fresh snow did not melt, it darkened the old snow, and remained powdery in the light. Microux reached out through the window as far as he could to touch the snow, crushing the fluffy snowflakes in his hand. It left a light gray residue upon his palm and indeed was not cold at all.

Microux tensed as he realized silently, it was ash. It was the ashes of his home, and he was trapped underneath them. No one knew where he was. everyone believed he was dead. As the night came and the next morning, Microux curled up again on the cold stone and began to believe, maybe he was dead. Maybe death wouldn't take him and this was some form of purgatory, only accepting of monsters who can never be saved. Reality broke around him, voices became spirits, unusual noises where the ghosts of his parents come to haunt him, and his mind created his first unreality that he could live with.

The key he held, his silent, dormant, however loving handmaiden. She slept in his hand peacefully never to awaken unless he wanted her to. He pressed himself to the cold stone wall and held his arms tightly to his chest for warmth. In his hands he clutched that key but he did not move, and hours passed visited by only his shivering and his growing hunger. He had not eaten in two days now and he resisted every urge to move from where he was.

The hours grew long on the evening and the sky lit up again like fire until it too darkened, scaring the child so that he held his head and didn't dare look up to the light even when morning came again. The hours prolonged to days and the first movement Microux made was sudden, at long last he bolted up right after writhing on his side silently for hours but now he couldn't contain himself.

Near the ashes of his handmaiden he clenched his fists, on his knees, reeling over and vomiting. His stomach was empty, it had been for days, and more gravely than the fact he had not eaten neither had he drunk. He grew pale, his skin became moist and sticky like that of a frog and he collapsed on the floor near his sick. The pain throughout his body paralyzed him but he simply didn't know how to help himself or what was wrong. He struggled on his hands and knees vomiting every few minutes to the point where his empty stomach only produced blood.

He was too delirious to know how much longer he stayed down in that cellar, too young to fully remember this pain, and too scarred to say he maintained any innocence. Blood, pain, cold, blood, pain, and cold. The onset of tremulous chills rendered his weakened, bony body to a convulsing mass on the floor near a pool of blood he added to whenever the pain became too much to bear.

Not a sound but his coughing and the trickling of his blood from his lips came to his ear for what he thought was days. His skin burned he could see the fog rising from his hand in the cold as the fever consumed him. Finally he gave in, unsure that waiting would ever fulfill the goal he did not know. Why was he waiting in here? He was not trapped!

His friend, the little key, whispered to him, and he heard more voices, they grew around him assuring kind things. The house was not too damaged, with a little work it could be repaired, he heard them say. When the snow melts they could get to work on mending the burned manor, they continued. "You can free yourself…" the key whispered to him, "go into the house, help them repair the house…"

Microux coughed, breathing blood as he very weakly drew himself up out of the pool of blood. It covered his face as if he had ripped open an animal with his teeth, but even that seemed for favorable, a little food and sustenance, rather than being sick every hour. He could not even sleep to heal such a pain. With unsteady footing, he sluggishly stumbled against iron bars of the cell. His head knocked against the bars striking his pate with an unbearable ache. His hand shook as he inserted the key into the lock, licking his lips of the blood and shuddering before he turned it.

The door opened outward and he fell, landing again on the cold stone of the wine cellar and crawling, feebly towards the stairs out to the surface. The journey was a battle, he had no strength in his limbs, and the pain would have been too overwhelming to move had his determination… his obsession not been so strong.

The cold stone was rough and scraped his knees as they dragged lackadaisically across the floor. He focused his eyes only on the bricks below him, measuring their creases and fissures but not noticing how pale his thin hands were. He found the stairs after his eyes discovers a small hole in the wall which a mouse scurried into and he lost himself staring at that black abyss longingly for a few moments.

The wine collection was undamaged, it was not pilfered on the night of the fire, he heard the voices say softly. Microux laid his hand upon the first step, shakily as he drew himself upon the stone ascending at a snail's pace. He dragged himself up the jagged staircase of stone towards the light, growing weaker by the second.

He buckled over himself coming to a halt and coughing before the sick welled in his stomach, pouring out onto the stone and he gripped the stairs determining not lose in this fight. He would reach the surface, he had to!

"Merciful God!" a voice shrieked from very near to him, "Henrie!" it was a woman's voice. She seemed like a kind spirit, maybe some singing banshee who desired for her voice to be heard in this purgatory.

Microux raised his eyes to the light weakly but it was blocked out by two silhouettes, the second arriving later than the first which never moved. They stared down upon him, surprised he was alive. They had not expected anyone to have survive the massacre, much less this child. Microux's mind spiraled in confusion, too weak, too cold, too hungry, to dehydrated to even function a moment longer. He lost sight of the light and wearily, he laid his head down on the stone and sunk away into his true death. Finally, he thought, he could leave this purgatory, and enter the afterlife he was meant to live in, Heaven or Hell.

Microux scratched at his left wrist, glancing nervously to Béatrice every other moment. He paced nervously before the door, rocking and bobbing in his walk, muttering incoherently to himself about the voices and the spirits. His distress emanated from him like an aura and Béatrice stared at him unblinking, unmoving, it was deathly, terrifying to Microux. Finally, Microux stopped pacing and rushed at the bars, grabbing them and shaking them with a loud noise, "You can't move!" he screamed at her with all his voice.

Her spine stiffened, "I didn't move!" she insisted with him, indignantly.

Microux's knuckles turned white upon the bars and he reeled to and from them to steady his wavering thoughts in his ocean of uncertainty, "you can't move from there, not for days!" he explained in a nervous voice. He reached up and pulled at his hair, "after the fire falls the ashes…" he whispered, "fire falls to ash…" he repeated.

Slowly, Béatrice reached out at the bars, "Microux—"

"—Don't move!" he shouted in a voice so terrifyingly loud it seemed to be a roar, "the spirits will come for you, they'll show you the way to the light!" he said in an almost assuring voice. He was positive in himself though he appeared to be trying to replicate his dire predicament from fifteen years ago.

He took the bars again with fire in his eyes, "You'll stay there until you starve! You'll stay there until you bleed! You'll stay there until you go mad, thrashing about because you can't escape this purgatory, not even in death!"

He stared at her, making out the wrinkles in her dress and memorizing them, he spied the lace appearing at the hem of her skirt and her sleeves, a warm dress, warmer clothes than he had. She was not cold enough. It would take much longer for her to die in this cell than it did for him, and his frustration grew form fervent boiling his blood.

The crumbled down on the floor, he didn't have enough time, needed to quickly get this out, show her, make her understand, but how!? He didn't have enough time. He gripped his hair and cried, tugging on his auburn locks. Microux wept uncontrollably, sinking to the floor and rocking slowly as it even that would steady his thoughts. The movement was good, it was stimulating in the only way he wanted, long and rhythmic. Suddenly he felt Béatrice's spider like fingers reaching through the bars and touching his shoulder, he tensed and whirled about to face her.

The girl knelt at the edge of the cell, gripping the bars. Her dress trying to escape the bars like her fingers but failing to and she pressed her shoulders between the bars. "Please…" she whispered, "tell me," her voice urged.

Tears rolled down Microux's face, his green eyes sparkling like a dozen stars were trapped inside him, burning brightly. His tousled hair fell about his face in two strands which he brushed away tepidly. His lips trembled and his gaze fell away from her. Béatrice sighed, there was no way he was going to let her out of here, not in the state he was in. She frowned, "you were trapped in here once, weren't you?" she whispered and reached through the bars to touch his cheek, "for a week," she pulled his chin to look directly into her eyes, "alone, with no one but those voices in your head to talk to you. Is that what you're trying to show me?"

Microux forced his gaze down once more, he leaned forward, pressing his head between the cold bars, and he nodded ever so slightly, his hand drifting to his heart which beat faster than any drum. His other hand, his left, he favored, letting it drift into his pocket to stroke the key gingerly, his first friend of the spirits. She followed his movement with her eyes, "you show me," she urged, trying to take his gaze again but he refused, "what happened next?"

Microux accepted her touch on his cheek, caressing it and closing his eyes. Her hand was warm, smooth, and her slender fingers fondled his rough face unlike any creature he had ever made contact with. How wonderful was the feeling he couldn't liken to any he had experiences, that drew the key out of his pocket. As soon as she saw it, she tried to take it, but when he withdrew it from her, she kept his gaze.

Béatrice got him to open his eyes and stare into her own deep brown eyes, and with her gaze she reassured him, tenderly gracing her fingers on his skin while with her other hand, she forced him gently to relinquish his grip on the key. Their physical contact vanished as she stepped away from the bars and he fell into tears again, crying on the floor like the child he was, even though he no longer possessed the body of that child. The latch turning and freeing the girl was the most painful sound his ears took in all day and he continued to weep until she ran around the door.

The woman threw her arms around him with no hesitation to speak of holding on to him tightly to calm him but hastily he pushed her away. He stood up in a flash, refusing to meet eyes with her as he looked to the cellar door. "Candlestick!" he shouted hastily.

Henrie Choixton needed no further beckoning as he feared for the boy he had adopted and he rushed into the cellar to see Béatrice standing between him and Microux. Henrie shook his head slowly, "oh dear God…" he grieved, "Microux, what are you planning now!?"

Microux, of course, did not answer, but turned spitefully away for a silent moment and disappeared behind one of the wine shelves. Béatrice turned back to see he had vanished and took a few steps between the shelves. "Monsieur…" she beckoned in what she attempted to be her calmest voice.

Henrie came around the other way, just in time to see Microux select a bottle of wine from the shelf, raise it up to his eyes, which was peculiar because he could not read, and then raise it higher above Béatrice, "Microux!" Henrie shrieked, rushing at him just as he tried to bring the glass bottle down on Béatrice's head.

Microux screamed as a wild animal just as Béatrice cried out for fear and ran. Henrie grabbed Microux under his arms and restrained the boy as tightly as he could, "Calm down, Microux!" he demanded as he lowered the young man's flailing body to the floor, holding him there.

Microux kicked, writhed and screeched as if he were a dejected ghost, damned from his heavenly state to prey upon and haunt Henrie, "I lost everything, my blood, my consciousness, and my life on that day, she wanted to know what happened next! She will know what it was!" he insisted wildly, flailing in Henrie's arms.

Henrie's eyes widened in shock, "Were you going to knock her out?" he whispered in horror. No way! No way would Microux ever be that violent! Would he? Henrie had to scream Microux's name as he thrashed about in his arms but the boy only fought harder until the Old Clock rushed down into the cellar fighting with not Microux but his son.

The Old Clock pried Henrie's arms from around Microux's chest, "Let him go, Henrie! He's not a boy anymore! You cannot just restrain him!"

Microux broke free and scrambled away, running with all his might and blowing past Béatrice and Monsieur Dentelle. With blinding speed, he dashed all the way back into the house, tracking snow across the carpet, stumbling up the stairs, and slamming the door to his room once he reached it. He paced about the room furiously, pulling on his hair, letting out brief cries in anger and frustration.

With one quick swipe he tossed a chair across the room so that a few of its legs broke off. He sank low, under the table it belonged to and he rocked irately, his right hand ripping off the cravat on his left wrist and scratching at the wound violently. He had tried to make her understand. He had tried! But it wasn't worth it. He was still going to fade out and it was going to be beautiful. The color he would impart to the gray world, the lush, living red would do so much to make it better once he was gone. He no longer needed anything.

Blood caked under his fingernails and the pain the wound caused numbed his senses to other pains. Happiness consumed him as the red covered both of his hands and he closed his eyes from where he sat under the table. Every day he got closer, and soon it would all be over.

Warmth was a thing totally foreign to him, he forsook it, never wanting to touch the blessed warmth of the covers or the flames ever again in his life. But he was met by warmth when some form of consciousness returned to him. The air itself was warm, the temperature hotter to his left where a fire burned steadily. His eyes opened, fluttering quickly and looking towards that fire for fear but to his surprise the first thing which came into his vision was a candlestick.

His brows knitted together and with all his might he tried to sit up and blow out the flame but he dizzied and collapsed in bed just as a voice urged him softly, "Don't move, it's okay, Microux!"

He pinned his eyes shut upon hearing the voice and tried to raise his hands to his ears. His throat felt sore and all his limbs felt as if they were being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles. He swallowed hard but it only caused him more pain. He heard the voices all around him, whispering things as they declared to all the other spirits that he was awake, demanding with each other to bring him water, and food. One urged him, a female voice, whispering as she raised his head, "Can you try to drink something?"

Microux opened his eyes slowly to see a teacup, practically floating in front of his face and he sat up a little utterly startled. It was moving on its own! "It's okay, Microux, you need to drink something," the teacup urged in a soft sweet voice. Hesitantly, he took the teacup in his hands, it was warm and wriggled in his grip threatening to fall away. The teacup pushed itself closer to his lips and guided his hands. He sipped the tea, a grey tea, it was bitter to him, and he didn't like the taste or the warmth.

The boy laid his head back against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling absently, watching the ghostly figures hover over him, keeping him warm and trying to force him to eat. He was deathly pale from the fever, too weak to raise his arms, and he closed his eyes to rest only to feel them forcing his mouth open and trying to coax him into eating a light soup. The salt burned his sore throat and gravely he realized the spirits had been forcing him to eat this way over the course of his unconsciousness however long that might have been. His stomach ached to be filled after bleeding and he coughed.

The sputter, spitting out the soup onto the pillow beside him, caused him to curl up on his side, choking and coughing for several minutes until again he was spitting blood. He moaned softly for the pain in his stomach, crying words incomparably to any cry in French. The voices continued talking in his mind and he struggled to cover his ears. "Stop…" he wailed desperately, crying, and overwhelmed with pain, confusion and sorrow, it was the only word he could muster.

"Microux…" a sweet voice sang to him softly, soothing and gentle, the voice of a mother, "Tu vas bien, Microux…" she whispered to him. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked up to the blurry wavering creature looming over him, he made out her shape. Her cheeks were rosy and full, she had smooth dark brown hair, and she was much, much bigger than he.

Microux fell into violent tears again, and she shushed him kindly, taking a warm, moist cloth and stroking it across his forehead. As soon as he was conscious of the contact he suddenly reeled away from her in one quick motion, pressing himself against the headboard and letting out a scream. Yelling at her without any words to just leave but she didn't understand. All she saw was his fear. He was terrified of her.

He screamed and cried in shock for hours, never drawing the covers around himself for warmth until he heard the voices whispering. He calmed when they said they thought it best to leave him alone to rest for a while. He curled his legs up to his chest as tightly as he could, pressed into one small corner of the long bed, crying until he fell asleep. Never had such a lonesomeness seemed so wonderful to him, the cold so promising, the pain so endearing as if soon everything would come to an end.

But the end never came and for days Microux suffered while his body healed steadily.

Tu Vas Bien - You're alright