4. Living in the fog (part 1)
In the same way the fever created the illusion of peace, the fog emphasized the reality of his isolation.
Peter Lake realized in due time that he wasn't really confined to a static limbo, where no new graves were dug, no new death arriving.
He wasn't stranded in an ocean of white velvet and delicate snowflakes, as he'd perceived in the beginning. He was on the other side of a great white curtain.
Peter Lake lived behind it for a very long time, and his slow familiarity to the space he'd been confined to gave way to a terrifying awareness.
This fog was as alive as he still was, impossibly, miraculously so. It breathed. It laughed.
The parallelism he'd drawn to a tide skimming past the rock he represented weren't lost to this new realization. Water had merely transformed to mist, turned rigid and stagnant by the ever-present winter. And it caved around him stoically.
Time hadn't stopped. It was his space, his eyes that were corrupted.
And the fog had given him his madness, his oblivion. His cold, which he took forever to surpass but proved to be as fatal to him as the river had once been.
Somehow, someway… Peter Lake just couldn't die.
O Come, O Come…
At night, the shadows morphed and reshaped in the starlight.
He thought he remembered theater curtains, or at least dreams of them, borrowed from the man he once was.
Ballet dancers tiptoeing behind a great red veil. Light shining from the other side…
Lips trailing across his closed eyes, bringing forth this thought…
A spotlight breaking through a curtain.
A promise of spectacle.
I fear…
When had he known such delight?
I fear opening my eyes and discovering…
What? What else had he said?
Peter Lake fed into his obsession during these instances. The hunger for memory returning and thickening into starvation.
Lack of food and water wouldn't kill him, but this surely would. It had to. It hurt too much.
Who are you? Who am I?
Who was the spotlight breaking through the curtain?
Open your eyes.
Someone had answered him this while he was in the dark, lost to a peaceful trance, trails of warmth slithering across his naked skin…
A woman… From the brief, fading memory of it, it'd been a woman speaking…
Who had told him to open his eyes?
I fear opening my eyes… And discovering… you were never here at all…
That's what he'd said. A piece of it, anyway…
Who had he spoken to so softly, in this voice so ripe with longing and tenderness?
Who was this warmth he'd known?
All memories of it had to have come from one person. It all made sense.
It was probably part of the reason why he'd found painful peace within his fever. It was an unconscious echo of someone he'd known.
Someone he'd loved.
I fear… you were never here at all…
He had ceased speaking altogether, at this point. The gravedigger was gone, the fog unresponsive, winter too loud in its wispy, careless whispers. The coughing had exhausted his desire to hear his own voice, anyways.
In due time, it would become another forgotten memory.
Then again, the man he'd been before he crawled out of the East River wasn't this. This, the shell he'd been reduced to, who spoke only in coughs and sighs of exhaustion. He didn't even know what he looked like.
And he never would know or be. Not unless this fog cleared entirely, this curtain open to the city he'd lived and died in, the names whisper memories to him from the cemetery, his life narrated to him by some generous and all-powerful being…
I fear…
So Peter Lake did the only thing he could do. He kept waiting.
Waiting for a play to begin. For the whiteness to dim to black, and the story of his life to commence onstage.
Waiting for the same little hand with the same orange hair and the same moon to echo in his dreams.
O Come, O Come…
When the smattering flashes of sound and touch had amounted to new theories, Peter Lake realized something:
The girl he dreamed about, with her hand to the moon, wasn't 'the warmth.'
She wasn't in any way linked to the woman he'd longed for, the one he'd seen as color and light.
This dream was like the fog. A curtain, hiding warmth away. Because it didn't spark any tangible memories from his lost life, only a bitter mix of indifference and frustration.
And so, in his loneliness, Peter Lake waited, dreaming worthless dreams, turning slippery whispers between his fingers.
Who had been his warmth? Who had been his light?
Who had he been?
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.
I don't have a lot to say for this one, but then again I already elaborated plenty on my last Note, and I have a 3d animation final I need to finish for tomorrow :3 I just couldn't let today pass without giving you a new chapter. I missed being so fast writing my fanfictions, I feel so at home...
I also need to keep working on my dissertation, so I'll put my new revitalized writing skills at work on that as well, cause that should really be my priority right now XD
To my FF readers, by the way: The fanfiction-dot-net app and website are being very buggy lately, and I've heard that it's probably got to do with the California wildfires going on right now. So if the site is being weird recently, it's probably because of that.
If any of you are currently being affected by these fires, by the way, I hope you're doing okay, and that your situation dissolves soon.
Take care, you guys, I'll see you next time! Now I have some uni stuff to finish :3 *hug*