I so want to get this bit right...
Apr. 20th, 2003 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessBut I can't get the image in my head down right.... maybe it's a bad time to try considering Laurell K Hamilton has distracted me again...
I will put down Cerulean Sins long enough to post. I will.
I can do this, I am not a complete junky.
Rick: Crisis Darren! We're having to compete with Nathaniel and Jean-Claude for his attention... Drastic action needed; You'll have to wear more revealing clothes! Or less clothes, we have no choice!!!
Darren: Nice try, but no.
Rick: Damn.
Darren: Besides, I've got to hunt down Richard... here puppy, puppy, puppy...
Rick: Um... I thought you weren't gonna use the black magic stuff?
Darren: For him, I'll make an exception.
The moment of waking, sometimes I value it so much - that moment of time of pure blissful confusion. The one time when I don't know who I am, where I am. What I am. The one time when I can forget the pain.
The moment of waking, sometimes I hate it so much. As memories return with vengeful teeth. Where peace flees to those more deserving of her tender mercies. As the knowledge that, again, there is another day, another day where my cowardice threatens the world.
The pain hasn't returned... my body does not burn. I am lost, the agony has been my anchor for so long, constant, unbearable torture is my only companion. My life and existance has been based on this edifices of torment. They're gone. My head can't stop swimming, without a haze of pain to force themselves through my thoughts cannot form.
This is beyond confusing, have I managed it? Did I finally end it? I dredge my memory, digging desperately through the maze of peace; something rises to the surface. A pair of beautiful brown eyes, soft and comforting, sparkling with a smile always half formed. Eyes wide open with pain, filmed with death. Eyes filled with silent accusation and terrible loss.
The pain rises, guilt, and grief beyond measure; the cold certain knowledge that I am a monster, a daemon, a creature who deserves far worse than death. I want to scream at the returning anguish. Part of me smiles, welcomes home the only friend I have. The only surety I know.
Bolstered by the mental torment, I finally open eyes filmed with familiar tears. A new puzzle, where am I? This isn't my flat, that place is bare, empty, a reflection of me in many ways. This place is expensive, and crammed. I drag myself to an awkward sitting position, I'm not used to beds. This one's huge, with about 20 white sheets too many. Seems to be a theme of the room: white ceiling, white floor boards, white walls, white shelves, lots of incredibly useless and expensive white electrical equipment, even white light shades and rugs. Some designer would probably use words like magnolia and off-white, or the other couple of dozen words they use to try and excuse a pathetic fear of doing anything interesting with their homes.
Which brings me to the person sat on a chair (chrome) by the bed leaning forwards and drooling into his coffee. Is it him that's freed me from my pain? My body still feels so clean and fresh, the dull ache echoing at neck, wrists and ankles is but a shadow of the burning agony that normally wracks me... I try to shake these thoughts loose - don't question good fortune, especially when I have so many other questions - like where the hell I am, and how I got here. One way to find out, I glare at the idiot and start grilling him.
"Ok, if you're going to kidnap me, you could at least put me somewhere more tasteful."
He looks shocked, even a little hurt. 1-0 I think. Doesn't stop him grinning though. I hate people who grin all the time, is life really that wonderful for them?
"Hey, you're awake! And don't knock the decor, this stuff is expensive!"
Expensive. Typical, how come people with lots of money rarely have the wit to use it?
"It's a shame that some things, like style, you cannot buy." Maybe if I insult him enough he'll leave me alone. I doubt it though considering I nearly threw him through a wall and it hardly dissuaded him.
"Meee-ow, Darren! I take it from your bitching, you're not a morning person? Did the liddle sorcerer wake up on the wrong side of de bed den?" That sacchirine sweet simpering is too cruel to use on the newly awakened... wait a minute!
"Darren? How do you know my name?!" Surely this shaman isn't good enough to scry my name? I didn't think any shaman was that good... maybe he's more dangerous than he looks... Well so I thought before he holds up my IDs. Typical, my uncle always did say that magic wasn't the only answer. Of course, in his case it was mainly an attempt to make sure I didn't use any of my tainted power.
"Well I got your first name, but the jury's still out on your second name. So, we got about half a dozen choices, which one is it?"
"Let me just compile a summary. You harass me in a club, refusing to take no for an answer. You follow me outside. Later you track me to my flat, break in and trespass. Then you kidnap me to wherever I am now and go through my wallet. Now you're asking for my second name. Wonderful, it appears I have been abducted by a madman." My finest and most withering sarcasm; it seems to have had an effect, he's not grinning any more and those pale, bright blue eyes are a lot darker, anger I take it.
"How about I do my own fucking summary," yes, definitely angry I think. "Let's see. There's a well of darkness in the club. I got check it out, and it's this really hot guy. I start a conversation, he totally blows me off and runs from the club. I run to help him, he freaks and practically paints the street with my fucking brains. Worried about him, since he's in real bad pain, I go out of my way to find him. I track him down and find he's an utter mess. I try to help him and find out he's murdered the poor woman who lives downstairs. He completely freaks and collapses messily all over the place. I, like a freaking idiot, try to comfort him and take the fucking psychopath home, though I've probably just given him another load of poor bastards to torture and slaughter for fun." He's glaring back at me, trying to match mine.
That's one contest he can't win. My face feels stiff, I know it's gone smooth and emotionless, my mask to hide behind. Trying to hide the huge guilt that has risen in me - that poor woman. The pain she suffered! Gods I loathe what I am. Gods I despise myself, a monster, a daemon, a psychopath. My eyes are burning, unshed tears and pure rage. I do not need this would be Samaritan to tell me what I am! He thinks he knows?! He thinks he could possibly understand?!
My magic rises, the darkness that permeates my soul fills me. I grin, perhaps for the first time in a year, and I know it isn't pretty. A mirthless, cruel smile that widens as my eyes darken - black from edge to edge, no iris, no pupil, just a pure dark light shining through from impossible depths. A halo surrounds me, my whole aura thickening to pure wonderful darkness - so much power that anyone could see my magick, no matter how talentless. A corona surrounds my left hand, dancing wildly on my skin. THe room grows dim as my darkness eats the light. There is a creaking, groaning sound. The wooden floor boards are warping, twisting and rotting. The bed creaks and crumbles. The chrome chair corrodes and shatters. Sparks fill the air as his expensive electronics corrupt and die. The silent screams of awakened spirits echoes through the room. Anguished cries of fear and pain. I listen to the sound and love it.
I laugh.
Rick screams, falling to his knees, rivers of blood streaming from his ears, eyes and nose. Cut by the dark bladed edge of my laugh. The windows, large beautiful windows that take up one wall, shatter as if hit by sledgehammers. Sunlight pours through the gap and is consumed by glorious darkness. The plastic shells of dead machines shatter into lethal shrapnel that peppers the room in razor slivers, molten along their edges.
The echoes reverberate around the room, causing the building to shake. Voices just beyond hearing mimic my cruel mirth, a thousand forms just beyond vision crowd around with savage glee.
Rick is on the floor, splattered with blood, he shivers. Shaking uncontrollably cowering in a twisted ball around the pain he cannot bear, the darkness his mind cannot encompass.
I stand.
I hover an inch or two above the ground. My hair flies around my head, tossed by storm winds that touch only me. The floor boards beneath me char and smoke, their white paint peeling back leaving black stains. I stalk towards the fallen Rick. My passage leaves black foot prints - marks of taint in a see of broken purity. It pleases me.
I lean over the prostrate, cowering mortal. Truly this is how such pathetic creatures should greet the darkness that shines. I dip one glowing pale hand enshrouded in darkness into the thick, flowing blood. It coats my hand in beautiful scarlet runnels.
I lick the blood.
It tastes so sweet, so rich. I like it. I love it. I look at the cowering mortal and want to feed. Flesh and blood are mine for the taking. His soul is mine by right of my power. He is weak, he exists only for my pleasure. He lives or dies at my whim. And he tastes so sweet. It is so easy.
Wait. Something's wrong. Why is it easy? What is happening? Shouldn't it be harder? No... everything is as it should be, how could I be wrong? Me, a master of the darkness?
A face shimmers before my eyes, a pair of beautiful brown eyes on a kind woman's face. Asking me why. I shake the image away.
Another image forms. David. He looks at me with those honey brown eyes that are seared into my memory. Tears flow down his rich tanned face. He cries for me.
I blink. What am I..? I see them. On a shelf by the bed, glowing like captured stars, power growing until they scream like tortured banshees. My wards. In panic I look down my body. The tattoos at ankle, wrist and neck glow and writhe. They fight and burn, the pain unnoticed in the huge waves of dark power that ride me. They are not enough. He took my wards!
Sheer horror fills me... my wards are gone! I run for the bed, for my life line, my last hope in a sea of darkness. I hungrily pull the pentacle over my neck. Press the amulets into my hands, huddle around the ward stones.
I scream. I howl and yell, long and loud. It lasts but seconds, it lasts for untold centuries. I'm burning, freezing, I'm being crushed under an immense mountain, being drowned in a vast ocean. I loose all thought, all senses. I fall to the floor and scream and scream and scream. I clutch the wards to me and scream in torment.
After an eternity of infinite agony, Darkness closes in. It no longer holds power, only the sweet gently touch of longed for oblivion. Through clouded vision something moves...
"David..." I cough and feel hot liquid leave my mouth, "Rick... I'm sorry. Not strong enough." I cough again, my voice is a rasp, a death rattle. "Never strong enough... There is no light so strong to shine in true darkness."
My head hits the ground, it feels like a hammer on an anvil. From a vast distance I hear the near silent whisper of a voice.
"You're wrong. There is no darkness so deep that the light cannot illumine. You hold no darkness that the light in my heart cannot shine through."
Oblivion claims me, but I carry a spark into the darkness. And it shines.
I will put down Cerulean Sins long enough to post. I will.
I can do this, I am not a complete junky.
Rick: Crisis Darren! We're having to compete with Nathaniel and Jean-Claude for his attention... Drastic action needed; You'll have to wear more revealing clothes! Or less clothes, we have no choice!!!
Darren: Nice try, but no.
Rick: Damn.
Darren: Besides, I've got to hunt down Richard... here puppy, puppy, puppy...
Rick: Um... I thought you weren't gonna use the black magic stuff?
Darren: For him, I'll make an exception.
The moment of waking, sometimes I value it so much - that moment of time of pure blissful confusion. The one time when I don't know who I am, where I am. What I am. The one time when I can forget the pain.
The moment of waking, sometimes I hate it so much. As memories return with vengeful teeth. Where peace flees to those more deserving of her tender mercies. As the knowledge that, again, there is another day, another day where my cowardice threatens the world.
The pain hasn't returned... my body does not burn. I am lost, the agony has been my anchor for so long, constant, unbearable torture is my only companion. My life and existance has been based on this edifices of torment. They're gone. My head can't stop swimming, without a haze of pain to force themselves through my thoughts cannot form.
This is beyond confusing, have I managed it? Did I finally end it? I dredge my memory, digging desperately through the maze of peace; something rises to the surface. A pair of beautiful brown eyes, soft and comforting, sparkling with a smile always half formed. Eyes wide open with pain, filmed with death. Eyes filled with silent accusation and terrible loss.
The pain rises, guilt, and grief beyond measure; the cold certain knowledge that I am a monster, a daemon, a creature who deserves far worse than death. I want to scream at the returning anguish. Part of me smiles, welcomes home the only friend I have. The only surety I know.
Bolstered by the mental torment, I finally open eyes filmed with familiar tears. A new puzzle, where am I? This isn't my flat, that place is bare, empty, a reflection of me in many ways. This place is expensive, and crammed. I drag myself to an awkward sitting position, I'm not used to beds. This one's huge, with about 20 white sheets too many. Seems to be a theme of the room: white ceiling, white floor boards, white walls, white shelves, lots of incredibly useless and expensive white electrical equipment, even white light shades and rugs. Some designer would probably use words like magnolia and off-white, or the other couple of dozen words they use to try and excuse a pathetic fear of doing anything interesting with their homes.
Which brings me to the person sat on a chair (chrome) by the bed leaning forwards and drooling into his coffee. Is it him that's freed me from my pain? My body still feels so clean and fresh, the dull ache echoing at neck, wrists and ankles is but a shadow of the burning agony that normally wracks me... I try to shake these thoughts loose - don't question good fortune, especially when I have so many other questions - like where the hell I am, and how I got here. One way to find out, I glare at the idiot and start grilling him.
"Ok, if you're going to kidnap me, you could at least put me somewhere more tasteful."
He looks shocked, even a little hurt. 1-0 I think. Doesn't stop him grinning though. I hate people who grin all the time, is life really that wonderful for them?
"Hey, you're awake! And don't knock the decor, this stuff is expensive!"
Expensive. Typical, how come people with lots of money rarely have the wit to use it?
"It's a shame that some things, like style, you cannot buy." Maybe if I insult him enough he'll leave me alone. I doubt it though considering I nearly threw him through a wall and it hardly dissuaded him.
"Meee-ow, Darren! I take it from your bitching, you're not a morning person? Did the liddle sorcerer wake up on the wrong side of de bed den?" That sacchirine sweet simpering is too cruel to use on the newly awakened... wait a minute!
"Darren? How do you know my name?!" Surely this shaman isn't good enough to scry my name? I didn't think any shaman was that good... maybe he's more dangerous than he looks... Well so I thought before he holds up my IDs. Typical, my uncle always did say that magic wasn't the only answer. Of course, in his case it was mainly an attempt to make sure I didn't use any of my tainted power.
"Well I got your first name, but the jury's still out on your second name. So, we got about half a dozen choices, which one is it?"
"Let me just compile a summary. You harass me in a club, refusing to take no for an answer. You follow me outside. Later you track me to my flat, break in and trespass. Then you kidnap me to wherever I am now and go through my wallet. Now you're asking for my second name. Wonderful, it appears I have been abducted by a madman." My finest and most withering sarcasm; it seems to have had an effect, he's not grinning any more and those pale, bright blue eyes are a lot darker, anger I take it.
"How about I do my own fucking summary," yes, definitely angry I think. "Let's see. There's a well of darkness in the club. I got check it out, and it's this really hot guy. I start a conversation, he totally blows me off and runs from the club. I run to help him, he freaks and practically paints the street with my fucking brains. Worried about him, since he's in real bad pain, I go out of my way to find him. I track him down and find he's an utter mess. I try to help him and find out he's murdered the poor woman who lives downstairs. He completely freaks and collapses messily all over the place. I, like a freaking idiot, try to comfort him and take the fucking psychopath home, though I've probably just given him another load of poor bastards to torture and slaughter for fun." He's glaring back at me, trying to match mine.
That's one contest he can't win. My face feels stiff, I know it's gone smooth and emotionless, my mask to hide behind. Trying to hide the huge guilt that has risen in me - that poor woman. The pain she suffered! Gods I loathe what I am. Gods I despise myself, a monster, a daemon, a psychopath. My eyes are burning, unshed tears and pure rage. I do not need this would be Samaritan to tell me what I am! He thinks he knows?! He thinks he could possibly understand?!
My magic rises, the darkness that permeates my soul fills me. I grin, perhaps for the first time in a year, and I know it isn't pretty. A mirthless, cruel smile that widens as my eyes darken - black from edge to edge, no iris, no pupil, just a pure dark light shining through from impossible depths. A halo surrounds me, my whole aura thickening to pure wonderful darkness - so much power that anyone could see my magick, no matter how talentless. A corona surrounds my left hand, dancing wildly on my skin. THe room grows dim as my darkness eats the light. There is a creaking, groaning sound. The wooden floor boards are warping, twisting and rotting. The bed creaks and crumbles. The chrome chair corrodes and shatters. Sparks fill the air as his expensive electronics corrupt and die. The silent screams of awakened spirits echoes through the room. Anguished cries of fear and pain. I listen to the sound and love it.
I laugh.
Rick screams, falling to his knees, rivers of blood streaming from his ears, eyes and nose. Cut by the dark bladed edge of my laugh. The windows, large beautiful windows that take up one wall, shatter as if hit by sledgehammers. Sunlight pours through the gap and is consumed by glorious darkness. The plastic shells of dead machines shatter into lethal shrapnel that peppers the room in razor slivers, molten along their edges.
The echoes reverberate around the room, causing the building to shake. Voices just beyond hearing mimic my cruel mirth, a thousand forms just beyond vision crowd around with savage glee.
Rick is on the floor, splattered with blood, he shivers. Shaking uncontrollably cowering in a twisted ball around the pain he cannot bear, the darkness his mind cannot encompass.
I stand.
I hover an inch or two above the ground. My hair flies around my head, tossed by storm winds that touch only me. The floor boards beneath me char and smoke, their white paint peeling back leaving black stains. I stalk towards the fallen Rick. My passage leaves black foot prints - marks of taint in a see of broken purity. It pleases me.
I lean over the prostrate, cowering mortal. Truly this is how such pathetic creatures should greet the darkness that shines. I dip one glowing pale hand enshrouded in darkness into the thick, flowing blood. It coats my hand in beautiful scarlet runnels.
I lick the blood.
It tastes so sweet, so rich. I like it. I love it. I look at the cowering mortal and want to feed. Flesh and blood are mine for the taking. His soul is mine by right of my power. He is weak, he exists only for my pleasure. He lives or dies at my whim. And he tastes so sweet. It is so easy.
Wait. Something's wrong. Why is it easy? What is happening? Shouldn't it be harder? No... everything is as it should be, how could I be wrong? Me, a master of the darkness?
A face shimmers before my eyes, a pair of beautiful brown eyes on a kind woman's face. Asking me why. I shake the image away.
Another image forms. David. He looks at me with those honey brown eyes that are seared into my memory. Tears flow down his rich tanned face. He cries for me.
I blink. What am I..? I see them. On a shelf by the bed, glowing like captured stars, power growing until they scream like tortured banshees. My wards. In panic I look down my body. The tattoos at ankle, wrist and neck glow and writhe. They fight and burn, the pain unnoticed in the huge waves of dark power that ride me. They are not enough. He took my wards!
Sheer horror fills me... my wards are gone! I run for the bed, for my life line, my last hope in a sea of darkness. I hungrily pull the pentacle over my neck. Press the amulets into my hands, huddle around the ward stones.
I scream. I howl and yell, long and loud. It lasts but seconds, it lasts for untold centuries. I'm burning, freezing, I'm being crushed under an immense mountain, being drowned in a vast ocean. I loose all thought, all senses. I fall to the floor and scream and scream and scream. I clutch the wards to me and scream in torment.
After an eternity of infinite agony, Darkness closes in. It no longer holds power, only the sweet gently touch of longed for oblivion. Through clouded vision something moves...
"David..." I cough and feel hot liquid leave my mouth, "Rick... I'm sorry. Not strong enough." I cough again, my voice is a rasp, a death rattle. "Never strong enough... There is no light so strong to shine in true darkness."
My head hits the ground, it feels like a hammer on an anvil. From a vast distance I hear the near silent whisper of a voice.
"You're wrong. There is no darkness so deep that the light cannot illumine. You hold no darkness that the light in my heart cannot shine through."
Oblivion claims me, but I carry a spark into the darkness. And it shines.
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Re:
Date: 2003-04-22 11:25 am (UTC)Darren tends to carry yikes and ow around with him... and I'm not sure if he will ever be OK, he has waaay too much baggage. And lots of power to throw it around. But my Rick's far to stubborn to admit defeat.