|P u r g a t o r y| [Aramir]
Sept 19, 2012 23:31:00 GMT -5
Post by cyrus on Sept 19, 2012 23:31:00 GMT -5
Naif Malloc
Narration
Thoughts
Other’s speech
What I Say
Exclamations
I’ve never liked the darkness between waking and sleeping. I’ve called it the in-between because of the drift: it’s that moment when my eyes are hazy and all starts to blend into one. I hadn’t wanted to forget the feeling of Gage against my own body. When his arms snaked around my chest and pulled me in—chaining us together as it were—I didn’t resist. The safety of him against me brought out a sigh, and all the room began to fade. Just for a little while, could it have stayed this way?
Nightmares were better than this. When my father crept through the darkness and wrapped his hand around my neck that was a physical, real thing. I could be nine again, and I could cry out to the walls—those that would hear nothing, but keep my secrets trapped forever—and our shadows would dance as our bodies writhed together. This vivid, twisting thing could wrench me awake, it could leave me covered in sweat. I’d go from one world to the next, and I would be alive. I could know that even after my toes curling, even after his face morphed from his own to Elias to all the other men that I’d bedded, there was an end. Because even my dreams had their limits, they lifted me up or they dragged me down underneath to the very bowels of the underworld.
And there could be moments of memory, too, that would make me smile. I could imagine the autumn where we’d be on Sandra’s porch, and Cyrus and I would be dressed in jeans and sweaters—gifts she had given us, no doubt, our father never sparing a dime on either of us. And we’d sip on a treat of hot apple cider, staring out at the big old houses on the block, still grey like our own, but soaring out toward the sky with spires and domes, their families more ambitious than our own. Better, in their riches, in their ability, in everything.[/color] My mother and father never held a candle to my Aunt and Uncle, their only victory over them had been having children, I suppose. Cyrus would spend hours laid out on the porch, his goofy little smile on his face as he stared up at the sky.
I didn’t see you now, though. I didn’t see anything at all.
You wanted the truth from me, I suppose. A confession of what I’ve done or a plea for absolution. I’ve never been good at asking for such things.[/color] Would you have come back to me, then? If I forced the black tar back into my veins, if I chased the dragon and pressed to see you again, would you forgive me? Or was it too much for all that I’d done? The year had come and gone—had it been nearly twelve months since your passing? I had yet to see your grave, too[/color]. It struck me then by fuzzying into this gray that time had slipped by so quickly. Not that it mattered, marking the day that you had died. I could celebrate you when I wished, I didn’t need to mark your death with a stupid date, not with nonsense of old stories and pomp and everything that wasn’t true.
The in-between was endless. It swallows you up and reminds you that this is forever, like the shores of the ocean in this district, it stretches out further and further until there is nothing. And the most obvious fear, the one that no one ever admits but is quite apparent: this is as close to death as anyone can get. This is what one sees at the end of life, when the breath has been stripped out of your lungs. This is what happens when too much blood is lost. When one slips under the waves for a final time, and all that can be done is to accept what is to come. And so the gray swallows you, this sea of nothing that appears around and encapsulates. Death. Nothing. They’re the same, then.[/color]
It’s why I fear death. It’s why I think of how close that I’ve come, and how lucky I am for someone like Gage to have swept me up. But even now I can’t tell if the wounds that he’s mended and the food that he’s given me have done anything at all. I’ve disappeared to the nothing, this gray that neither leads me to believe that I exist, nor tells me that I have passed on from this world. Because in the end, we will have no answer.[/color] We will simply vanish, a white blank page at the end of it all. And you don’t ever know until the moment of waking, until your eyes fly open and your body sweats, that you’ve made it through another day. But one day, you won’t open your eyes. One day, you’ll slip and you won’t dream—you won’t nightmare—you’ll just slide away and never even know that you were at all.[/color]
The sun breaks through the shades of the room and strikes my eyes. I can see red then, and let out a murmur. Another day.[/color] If I can still see and feel, if I can still touch and smell, if I can do anything at all—life has purpose.[/color] Even as heavy and battered as I am now, I have promised to hold on. Something burn inside of me—not the pain in my stomach or the gashes on my back—but a hunger, one that forces me to let out another gasp as I shift in my bandages in bed. I don’t feel Gage next to me and for a moment I panic, thrashing my arms about the sheets as I look around. Am I still here, in his room, safe? Have I been taken somewhere else? Why does everything hurt? But I’m still too tired to fight much, and I shift again underneath the covers. The room comes into focus and I try to remember last night.
“Gage…” I whisper out as I turn my head, and once again I see stars. “Gage… someone? Is someone there?” I shake again and start to breathe faster. The covers are heavy on top of my body and find it hard to move on my own. “Help me… please… someone please…” I don’t want to cry out but I’m frantic. Why did he leave me alone?[/color] “Mmmph. Arrrgh…” I let out a yell as I twist and shake under the covers. Why did he f—king leave me alone?
[/color] [/justify][/blockquote][/blockquote][/size]
