siriverse100-blog

[siriverse100-blog]

65.

“She's changed hasn't she?"

Nayan stared back, mere feet away, where there had been nothing but noise before. She was thin as ever- wore the same clothing that found tears and tatters, and held the same little half-smile of confusion. The smile untrained by mirrors nor company. She was conspicuously alone.

"Where are the other two? Shouldn't you be running along with Harley or whatever?" Atony asked with some disdain.

"No, not anymore. I'm fine on my own now, so Harley's sent me out here. It's just a tiny one. Figured I'd take a detour to check in on how you were doing- if you were still alive. Seems like you are, huh."

"Sure."

Nayan kicked her feet out into open air. They sat upon a branch, but it did not dip under their weight. Atony held no mass, and Nayan may as well have been a leaf. "So. Mackenzie Glantz. She's changed, right? That's why you're watching her, isn't it?"

Mackenzie Glantz stood below them. Her hair as cropped short, but this was not the most conspicuous difference. Her chin pointed up, her hand was planted upon a cocked hip, and her shoulders were pushed back with reclaimed pride. A man stood across from her and he scowled at her posture.

Atony shrugged. "Guess so."

"You guess?" Nayan inquired, then brushed the rhetorical question away. "Who's the guy who's with her? You've been watching her, right? Never seen him before."

"Some doctor." Atony tracked her hand with wary eyes. "I dunno, she's been talking to him a lot lately. Seems like they have something in common.”

"You haven't done any digging?"

A thousand ways of phrasing hissed between Atony's teeth before one made audibility. "Sure. He's killed a guy. His brother."

Nayan did not seem surprised. Rather, she watched with vague curiosity. "So they figured each other out? Neither of them seem to have gotten any jail time though. So how'd they catch on?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Atony was standing now, with no transition between the two postures. There was little more than smoke about the movement- a little swap between two states in a whips of existence, and Nayan wondered if Atony may have grown a little fainter despite an aggressive presence. "Didn't see it- must've been before she got interesting again. I dunno, but they've been talking a lot even though they kinda seem to hate each other. And y'know..." The sentence stalled.

Nayan glanced over at Atony, and wondered if that thought would be finished. They had no reason to trust each other now, despite the way they had corrected each other's mistakes in the past. While they had cooperated in a brief and deadly effort, there was nothing binding them here and now. They had been in opposition for much longer a stretch than they had ever sought a common goal. Atony was a stubborn sort. She knew this because she was cut from the same cloth for much the same reasons. When you worked on your own for long enough, you learned that getting your way was only natural, and failed to recognize that missing your desires was an acceptable alternative. If their goals differed, they would not get along, and neither knew the other’s current aim. "What I'm working on is just kinda a disease on the other side of the planet. Nothing around here. Thought I'd drop by to see how you were doing. It’s not work."

Atony seemed to gauge the sincerity of her tone, and found it satisfactory. "Y'know... Sometimes they disappear. Dunno where they go, and it only happens every few months or so, but they'll just walk behind a tree and not come out the other end. They'll pop back out another minute or two later like nothin' happened, except they'll be all battered and bruised and something's off- she looks pretty tired sometimes, and the doctor guy looks really grumpy for no reason. Sometimes their clothes'll be torn, and once I thought I saw blood. Think the doctor came out wearing different clothes once, except he wasn't carrying any when he disappeared. It's like,"

"Like they're disappearing, and they've been gone for hours or days, and you don't know where?" Nayan inquired, because there were some details that she would like to clear up.

"Yeah- something like that. There's others too- Others around but I dunno where they go or why or if it's even connection. And these guys... There's another thing. These guys don't dream."

[siriverse100-blog]

Hitaus

NaNoWriMo is upon us, and all of my writing time will be directed at that. This little drabble blog is on pause in the mean time.

[siriverse100-blog]

64.

The suits and skirts still roamed the streets as they did every day. Their faces were obscured by scarves and hoods, but they had been gradually transitioning to this state for some time now. That in itself was no shock. It was the result of an ongoing metamorphosis that had taken hold of the city. The transition from summer to winter.

Marie took nothing from the city, and it gave nothing to her. The little that she had, she’d stolen. She was not a part of the crowds that wandered the streets, but she felt some kinship with them all the same. In the life that had led her here, they were the only constant. But tonight little monsters walked among them.

They were a disease- something hat infected the streets and crept onto them. They sported fangs and pointed hats, and blood caked upon their faces. The suits did not seem to care. It was not that they did not notice the monsters in their midst; they nodded and smiled. Occasionally conversations were exchanged for candy. It was as if the composition of the entire world had changed overnight.

She retreated back between the buildings and tucked herself away under a haze of uneasy sleep with the hope that all would return to the world she’d known in the morning.

[siriverse100-blog]

63.

Millon’s words echo in his mind. He had called him incomplete, but this does not terribly surprise him or offend him because it is a matter of fact. As a guard at the palace, he had been nothing with his queen. In his life outside of that he was little more than a Rosencrantz without a Guildenstern. And now, here serving under the thumb of a new name and mistress, he was incomplete in another sense entirely. To say that he was human would be incorrect; the oozing wounds upon his neck and ageless, mutilated face screamed the truth though he did his best to hide them. But he wasn’t but Harley was. He knew full-well that she was capable of ripping him completely apart and making him into the same sort of existence that she led- but she had not. He was stuck halfway in between mundane and monster with nothing to tip the scales to one side or the other.

Somewhere off in the darkness his mistress roamed, wandering the streets at an aimless, mindless, pace. Unable to sleep, unable to dream,

(a monster)

and Spade could not help but wonder why he’d been left behind.

[siriverse100-blog]

62.

Word had it that there were plots afoot. Each night Tinnitus’s spear was stored a little closer to hand, and footsteps echoed under the door at odd hours of the night. Sleep became increasingly elusive. The sharp attention that he’d dedicated to observing Harley since her arrival was no longer quite enough to split between two threats. During those times that he could not sleep, he found himself drawn to the wing of the castle that the duke had claimed under the guise of visitation. Every morning he found his station with ragged eyes, and the duke smiled with a little less simper.

One month after it occured to Tinnitus to question the length of their guest’s visit, Harley met him in the courtyard well past two in the morning. She did not wear the cloak of colors that he’d seen upon her arrival, but her eyes were open, and he could see through to the back of her skull. She had hardly spared him two words in the years since her initial arrival, but she does so now. “You need to stop this.” Her mouth was just as hollow as her eyes. Tinnitus found his gaze fixed as her lips opened and closed before a finite slice of the void.

[siriverse100-blog]

61.

Jordan wakes in the hallway with ever-increasing frequency. He finds himself propped against the wall, or with his arm tucked under his chest at increasingly unpleasant angles. In all of his years he has never been a victim of somnambulism, and he’s past the age it frequents.

As each night fades to morning his mother watches with vague dismay as he wakes increasing inches from his bed.

“Can’t you just stay there? I nearly tripped over you this morning! Is there something wrong with your bed? Your sheets? Is that why you don’t stay in place?” Her voice is ragged around the edges- she sounds as if she has not slept in weeks, and there’s a hint of something broken. Jordan ignores it as always.

There is no point in defending himself against her. He does not care for what she thinks of him, nor for her orders. Trying to convince her of the truth will only be harder. Even he is hard-pressed to believe that it is mere sleep-walking when he wakes up each morning with a pillow tucked under his head.

[siriverse100-blog]

60.

Jordan sees no merit in forgiving the messenger.

His mother only makes her position worse day by day, bringing him back to what is little more than a rock to stare in silence for what seems like hours. The rock is not his father. Mark Galantz is gone. She has told him that much, but she still commits these frequent pilgrimages. Jordan sees little value in these trips, but has no choice but to come along. His mother has isolated herself from her past and has nowhere to turn, and no one to entrust him to. There is an outcrop of stones some ways from his father’s grave that he deems amusing enough. They frequently proclaim that the people that they represent have died too young, and he finds a mild amount of pleasure in subtracting death dates from births.

 From under the sound of his mother’s silent sobs, a voice reaches out. “Rye?”

Jordan turns, but there is nothing there- only a passing breeze and the smell of empty promises.  

[siriverse100-blog]

59.

Here in this house of familiar strangers, he was vulnerable.

Even the safety that he found in the familiarity of the lower levels that he called home was often interrupted. Bare moments passed in blessed security before there was a knock at the door. Tiernan opened it, ever obliging. Cael could not find the energy to protest.

Another stranger, though this one more distant than most, stood silhouetted in the doorway. Light breaks in around his edges, and Psi retreats to the shadows. Of the few visitors that they had in the time since they had been transplanted into this new prison, there were two types: the first barged in as if they had something to prove. The other kept their hand anchored to the door, and their feet in the hall.

Deon stood just under the doorframe, thumbs tucked into his pockets. There was an idle sense of invulnerability to him- not the atmosphere of a predator, but certainly not prey. Cael bristled. “The fuck do you want?”

“You’re Cael Bathory.” Deon replied. His expression was obscured by shadows, and Cael found his back hunched and fists clenched.

“Yeah. What about it?”

“You’re the reason that all of this happened.”

Cael’s knees buckled into a crouch, and he shrunk down and away. His eyes squinted against the light. “Did you want something?”

Deon’s hands fell from his pockets- one dangled by his side, and the other found the door.  “No.” He stepped back and shut the door, leaving them in darkness.

Long after Tiernan had coaxed Psi out of hiding, and had gone to bed, Cael found that he could not fight the tension from his shoulders.

[siriverse100-blog]

58.

“Tinnitus?” Her voice is impossibly small and hesitant. It occurs to Atony that she has never uttered a word until this point. The syllables come clumsy, tripping over one another in their desperate rush to be heard. ”Tinnitus, answer me.”

He looks as if he wants to but cannot find the air. The remains of his mask powder the breast of his coat, and his jaw strains for speech.

In a sick sense of triumph, Atony slaps him upon the back. It makes shameful contact and the noise echoes. “That takes care of her. It wouldn’t have been possible without your help.” The Night-Mare fades into the background with a wicked Cheshire smile, leaving Tinnitus to watch his former master grope aimlessly at the air, seeking him out with two new eyes that see less than the sockets they block.

[siriverse100-blog]

57.

A drift of white has settled upon Tinnitus’s hair, while Atony’s remains blissfully bare of interference. Tinnitus has once again removed his mask. It rests upon the night stand. His fingers intertwine with his prosthetic in an anxious knot. “I had thought this impossible. No one… It was never our intention to kill.”

“Then why are you here?” Atony asks with a pound of bite.  

Tinnitus hesitates as if grasping for an answer- trying to find something in his memories that fits. “To set things right.”

“By killing him. By killing us.”

“Had you not attempted to resist, then…”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Tinnitus falls to silence just long enough to tell Atony everything.  “What did she take from you?”

Long moments are wasted and Tinnitus scrambles to don his mask again, and Atony is momentarily convinced that he will leave without providing and answer. But once the straps are secured around his head and that thespian smile is fixed over his own, he begins to speak. “…My queen. My home.”

“Your life.”

“My life.”

“Why do you even bother following her around then? After all the stuff she’s done to you, you keep helping her do the same thing everywhere! And now Millon is dead!”  

The face behind the mask curls downwards, creating the counterpart to the manic grin that hides it. “It is a tragic sacrifice, but one that is deeply important. Had Millon continued upon that path, it would have only led to something even more horrible.”

“Something like what?” Atony demands through a vice of teeth.

“I…” Tinnitus sinks further into the mattress as the weight upon his shoulders grows and grows. “I do not know.”

Atony’s howls. It brings another deluge of dust down upon them, and the foundations of Millon’s legacy creak under its force.

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56.

Tinnitus placed his mask upon the table, struggling with his prosthetic hand for a moment. While he’d had no trouble catching it in his grasp, he had some difficulty letting it go. It had been years since he’d last removed it, and the fresh air felt uncomfortable upon static skin. The way that Millon’s eyes traveled over the fissure that peeked out from under his collar and ran up his cheek was all the more unsettling.

“She saved me!” he replied with a grin that pulled the tear in his face a little wider. “Were it not for her noble actions, I would have been long dead.” The grip of his hand caught upon his collar and he pulled it down to reveal the increasing length of separation. It met with a series of almost indistinguishable frozen wounds that encircled his neck- a ring with all the hallmarks of thorns. “A vicious fiend saw fit to murder me for his own vile ends, and my lady gave me life anew. She is nothing less than an angel!”

A wildly gesticulating arm sliced the air near Millon’s head, and he hardly found the will to duck. “Can you really call that being saved?”

Tinnitus paused, and ran his ‘hand’ down the crack in his features. His eyeballs, wildly off-center and half-hidden by skin, rattled in a futile attempt to right themselves.  His skull peeked through the gaps. He retrieved his mask, and covered the remains of his face, and lowered his voice. “Can you call what I was doing before this living?”

“I don’t know where you were, or what you did before this, but you used to be human, didn’t you?”

Whatever burst of flame that had been fueling Tinnitus’s wild movements and proclamations had waned. His limbs hung limp beside him. “Perhaps.”

“But now you’re not human. You aren’t whatever that thing is either. You’re stuck somewhere in between. I’ve sure you’ve seen what it’s capable of. It could have turned you into something like itself- it was going to. You have the same scars. Aren’t you scared?”

Tinnitus hesitated. Millon thought that he had heard the tell-tale sound of breath echoing behind his mask. And then his guest leaped to his feet and forced a frantic salute.  “I’m afraid that my lady is calling me. While it was pleasant speaking to you, I must be going. Perhaps we shall meet again sometime!” His mask was smiling, but Millon suspected that it did not reflect the face behind it.

Tinnitus left through the door.

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55.

The beginning of a summer sunbeam advances down the street towards them with patient regularity, and Atony shies away a few steps. Light glances off the blood on the ground, and it ripples as Teagan pushes herself up to her elbows. “I’m not sure.”

“You’ve never seen it before?”

“I have. Several times.”

Atony retreats another few steps from dawn’s relentless march. “When?”

“Thousands of years ago.” Teagan’s tone indicates a relative lack of concern for the wound ripped through her side, but her face is twisted into something that no longer appears human. While she may be acclimated to the pain, her host is not. It is likely this advantage that is allowing her enough control to speak. “Then another million before that. She always looks the same.”

“Why did it do that to her?” Atony inquires, and ducks into the shadow of a nearby building. “Why’d it kill her? Do you think it wanted to talk to you?”  

“I don’t know,” Teagan breathes, and the body falls. It can no longer support itself. They are both running out of time. In mere moments they will disappear to the next death- the next dream. “She never speaks. She never tells me. No one ever tells me.”

Atony is all but silent in response because Teagan is the closest thing that they have to omnipotence. She is supposed to have all of the answers, though she always claims that she has none. For her to have no explanation, no information, no hints about the thing that is stalking their world, is terrifying.

“Atony, I’m dying.” Teagan mutters with vague resignation.

Atony does not wait watch. Teagan does not need the company.

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54.

The news had never been terribly interesting to her, except when it pertained to how she lived her life. Six years before, when the first taste of Tones had slipped into the grasp of the media, she had made a point of tuning in nightly. But as the interest faded, so did the stories, and she had stopped. She had observed the news in bursts and fits ever since- The founding of AIPO. The incident involving Tiernan Finch. The growing public animosity. Tonight she was not expecting anything in particular. The litany of recitations regarding how much the public doubted her boss and her position were getting tiring at best. She pulled a bag of chips onto her chest, and settled back.

“-has been charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit murder, with more charges expected. The story is still developing at this time, and we are not positive about what will happen to AIPO or the Tones in its employ, however-“

Crumbs fell from Taylors fingers, and she swiped her fingers across the edge of the couch in an absent-minded attempt to get them clean. Sebastian Hazelwood recited the lines that his teleprompter provided. Taylor thought she saw the beginnings of a smirk upon his lips. A chill ran down her spine.

“-two bodies at the scene, but Roald Gacy is nowhere to be found. Nicole West and Kade Heirens have been taken in for questioning-“

Across the room her phone began to ring. She grabbed the remote, and fumbled until the television went dark. The chips fell from her chest, joining the shards of the world as she knew it upon the floor.  

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53.

            As Millon stands on the lonely street and waits for something more terrifying than any Night-Mare to greet him, he feels a little presence to his side. It is not an unexpected one. He’d been warned, or rather reassured, that it would find him.

            A little voice on the edge of human hearing speaks up. “Yes. Though right now my name is ‘Millon.’” It sounds like static. A little high-pitched, and a little distorted, and not unlike the voice of his own thoughts. Millon had asked Teagan to explain how they worked on more than one occasion, and had rarely had much success. At this, Teagan sighed and assured him that he would understand some day. It seemed that someday is today. “…You’re scared. You should have told them ‘no.’”

            “Could I have?” Millon inquires. “Was that ever an option?”

            “I’m not sure, but I think that you have more choice in the matter than I do.”

            “So you’ve always known. That it would end here. On this street.”

            The little voice pauses with something that could be mistaken as guilt. “…Yes.”

            “You couldn’t have warned me?” Millon asks, with more weary resignation than curiosity.

            “Whenever I tried, it would have been too late or too early. And if I had tried to warn you, she would have found you anyway.”

            “So that’s the sort of thing that she is.” Speaking to Teagan in terms of time is meaningless, but Millon finds himself compelled all the same. The way that they talk betrays a hook of familiarity. While Teagan does become familiar with everyone eventually, there is something more to how they speak. “How long have you known her?” He does not expect an answer.

            “Longer than I’ve known you.”

            “How long have you understood her?”

            “Longer than I’ve understood myself.”

            “I see.”

            “She’s coming.” And the voice falls silent.

[siriverse100-blog]

52.

            After Atony was long gone, and words long left unsaid fell from suspension, Millon turned to the night stand.

            Millon extracted the note by inches. Despite the lack of care he’d put into its keeping, it had held up relatively well. The envelope had yellowed, and it crackled under his hands. The paper was in pieces. That should have been no surprise- though he was all but immune to the passage of time, his possessions were not. It was legible all the same, though the ink had faded, and the writing was shaky at best.

            Dear Millon,

            I hope that you’ve been well. While I have talked to you very recently, it’s been nearly thirty years since you have last spoken to me. I know that you’re busy waiting, so please don’t worry. Atony has told me everything about what is happening.

            I’ve been told that you did not open this letter for a long time after you received it. I hope that you can still read it- Atony never said.

            I’m afraid that Rye is dead. I’m sure that if you’re opening this letter, you already know that by now. He had been dead for nearly a month when you asked Atony to find me. I can’t pass on any messages for you, but there is something that I can do. I’m going to try to send another letter along with Atony. I hope that it reaches you at the right time.

            -(Presently) Teagan

              The remains of the note crumbled under Millon’s fingers, and there was a tell-tale thud in the hallway. Feeling numb, he dragged a fresh towel from the upper cabinet, and got to his feet. Shattered pieces of the letter floated like ash to the floor. Atony only visited when it rained, and today it was positively pouring.

[siriverse100-blog]

            She signs her name ‘Mackenzie Harris,’ and it feels like perjury because he knows now that she is no member of that family- has not been since the sonogram. Mark Galantz is seventeen when he adds his signature next to hers, holds his son for the first time, and asks if she might like a ring.

            She smiles when she tells him that her name is ‘Mackenzie Galantz,’ and finally he believes her. It sounds perfectly right, and he pulls her into an embrace that is only severed by the howl of a baby from across the apartment. She pulls away and hurries to the corner with a frown on her face, and he does not bother to think of the future. (A future in which Mrs. Galantz will become Ms. Galantz, and Jordan Galantz’s name will be prefaced with words like ‘the late.’)  For now he only asks if she might like some sleep and she agrees as always.

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50.

It was not inconceivable that Rye had gotten busy, or was somehow otherwise occupied. But he would be back. He always came back, and though he’d never been gone for more than a week, precedence meant little. Life, as Rye had always used to say, was unpredictable. All the same, Millon worried. Humans were fragile creatures, and he’d watched generations of Rye’s family come and go through life and death for the most arbitrary of reasons, at the most unexpected of times. So Millon wrote a letter.

The next time that Atony visited, Millon traded a cup of hot chocolate for a favor- a delivery. It wasn’t the sort of letter that he could put out for delivery in the mailbox above. It had no address; only a name. An uncharacteristic silence settled upon the Night-Mare’s tiny shoulders. “Why are you writing to them?”

“I have a question to ask.”

“Is it about Rye?”

The ever-present lamp flickered, as did Millon’s composure. Atony seemed unperturbed. His silence seemed answer enough.

“It might be a while before I can get it to them. Even longer before they can read it.”

“I know.”

For the first time in Millon’s memory, Atony left through the door.

--

Six months. It was six long months before the telltale thump of feet fell into the hallway outside the door. Six months before a red umbrella leaned in the entranceway, and Atony sat in his room, nearly drowning in a towel. Millon held an envelope upon which his name was scrawled in a stuttering script.

“It was hard to find them.” Atony said, chest puffed up in pride. “I missed them three or four times- Gunshots and drowning and stuff. Then I caught them with enough time and both arms. Car crash.”

There was silence in place of congratulations. Atony’s face curled into childish disappointment.

Within moments Millon was alone again. Alone in an empty room with only a letter to keep him company. He stared down at the name Rye had given him, scrawled with some poor sap’s dying breath upon the paper, and felt the gravestone crawl of Death up his spine. Without breaking the seal, he crumpled the letter and tossed it into the back of the empty drawer of his nightstand. He had waited seven months for news of Rye. He was willing to wait a little longer if maybe, just maybe it meant hearing it from his own lips.