Perfection

He was perfect. He was just like I'd remembered him, down to the very touch.

Of course, his eyes had grown sunken – he was very tired; it was only natural. Those eyes used to burn green like the sun scorching a tall plain. It was natural and vivid and bright. The color was still there, but just a little diminished. Only a little, though. He was still wonderful.

His hair, once golden blonde, had taken a paler, thinner shade. I remember the scent of that hair, the feeling of my fingers running through it when he kissed me. Soft hair and soft lifts made me float while the hardness of his form, of his strength brought me down to earth again again. When he held my hips, I held his hair, and we were balanced. Paired. We were two men and one energy. We were whole. I could almost feel it again with just a look.

Those lips were a little dry, cracked in a place or two, but the injections were holding nicely and his teeth were still so perfect white. He'd seen a dentist, David. David was always smiling, too, but not the way my lover smiled. David smiled like a liar, like a thief. Like a monster in his closet. David stole from me, from us...but he did such lovely work, we'd both have to admit.

His shoulders, his arms, his chest were almost flawless. The little punctures had been carefully, so carefully sewn, with such loving attention to dismiss the carelessness of a moment's passion. David couldn't have done that – David wasn't a doctor, he was a fucking dentist. He didn't have hands like mine, or a heart like mine. He didn't love him or trust himself like we had. So why- ...it didn't matter. David wasn't holding him tonight. I was. We were together again. Perfect. Flawless.

Just like I'd remembered him...only this time, he promised to be better than he'd ever been.

A slight flutter in his heart resounded in mine. Or was it just my heart beating twice as fast?

Does it matter?

Cracked-Up Reflection

(More song lyrics. Imagine a fast 1-and-2 pace, sort of piano mad, banging on the keys with breathless pauses. Might sing it sometime if bribed well enough.)

Don't look at me with your problems,

Don't look at me when it all comes due, now

Don't come to me with your sad eyes.

Don't come to me with the tantrum's through, I've

Seen you without all your makeup.

I've seen you outside of lace and leather, and

Frankly, I liked you more bound up.

Liked you more with a social gag, I've

Found my-self

Lose-ing pat-ience

With..your...shit.

Found my-self

Deaf to...your...cries.

And I've

Found my-self

Los-ing air

In my lungs when

You o...pen your mouth.

All my joy falls out. Why?

There's this new pain inside my ear,

And I think it might be your tongue,

Are those barbs new or have you hidden

Them behind that lovely stud?

That I admit blew my mind right...I

Thought that silver burned the devil.

Lesson learned, and I learned right.

You learned me wrong, but now I'm teaching.

Found my-self

Los-ing pat-ience

With...your...lies

Found my-self

Bleed-ing...right

Through my ears, and...

Found my-self

Cry-ing one too...

Man-y times.

You open your mouth

All the truth falls out. Why?

I said...why?

I guess I knew better.

Guess I signed up for

Every-thing that you lied to me, but...

I guess that I could do much better

Could get all this sweat

Off of my brow...

Get...you...off...my...brow....

Found my-self

Los-ing time...with

Your bull-shit.

Found my-self

Hap-pil-y

...Walk-ing a-way

Found my-self

Breath-ing air

For the first time...

For the first time since you...

Opened...your mouth...(Since you)

Opened...your mouth...(I said, since you)

Opened...your mouth...(Oh, God...)

Just shut...your fucking...mouth.

The Escape

It was over.

The running, the terror. He'd never run so fast than when those memories were at his heels. His father's eyes. His father's hands. His father's reach. He'd been held so fast and so safe for so long that he'd wondered if his legs would fly if he were given the chance.

The third row of fresh scars upon his back taught him the truth, and gave him all the speed he needed.

He'd walked streets and slept in gutters. He'd found the life in parks to be different from the life on roadsides. He found the deeper forests and the silent songs of deep ravines. He walked with his back laid bare among the muck, the trash, the rain, and the burning sun. He walked until he hungered, till he starved, till he thirsted. His only direction – away. Away from the cultured wilderness of home, from the pavement that chased him with police cars and posters.

Away.

When he collapsed, he collapsed into a running creek. The smooth rocks cut his belly, his chest, his face. The water flowed around and through him, licking at his wounds, stealing away his breath. In his mind, he was rushing down that river.

He followed its course through old, rusty pipes, held in place by cement, a testament against the endless floodwaters that would rise again like the sun, long past when men could hold them. He flowed on past the barriers, down a rushing dam like a diver. He crashed into a thousand pieces and his shards joined the great Mississippi, slow and wild and thick. He was drunk on the history of it, man and path, and the path grew older still than man's touch. He did a little dance as he waved by New Orleans. (The floodwaters howled and sang, for they were ready for another drink.) He fell into the ocean.

He found a merlin there, wild and strong. It tore a fisher from his boat, tore the hook from its bloody lip, and his own bloody kiss found a comfortable brother. They swam hard and deep, hunting and eating and living and fighting. He was alive, with a fire in his spine and a weapon down the line of his eyes. He was whole.

He woke up in that empty little creek and his blood tasted strong with mercury. He stood up, unhungry. Unstarving. Unthirsting.

He starting walking. South.

Blood From the Heart

The shot rang true. She died like all the rest, a sudden slump and a pool of blood.

There was no romantic meeting of the eyes, no slowing of time. People described time slowing down all the time in the stories, but it never slowed for me, never stopped either. It just marched on at its usual pace. Every hour felt like an hour, every eternity like an eternity. Watching her die felt like four painful seconds, and the pain wasn't even mine.

Her hair had changed – she'd had it shaved, scarred her face. No one knows when the raping and the murder started, or who started it, but the very worst of either side had turned to it like sport, roving packs of animals with guns and machetes and rocks, torturing and using 'the enemy'. The enemy...we'd all drank wine together a few short months ago. Then the talk of gods came about, or was it wealth? Tribes? It hurt me to remember, to even think of it. Time went on for me, and it left the reasons behind.

Her eyes were still that burning brown I remembered – I didn't have the time to close them, and every moment I looked into them was a moment I wasn't looking for life. The image stuck with me, though. I saw her eyes in everyone. Brown over blue. Brown over green. Brown over black. I killed her three more times before I hit cover to reload, and the pain I felt was just the same – a recoil shudder and a locked door. I wouldn't feel this now, couldn't feel this now.

I remembered the hell I went through to even learn her name. She'd been kept under lock and key by that father of hers, a lion of a man with old attitudes and older prejudices. I'd yelled at him every day, worked at his shop, did everything I could to earn his trust. He denied me every time, until I stood beside him when my cousins set that shop aflame. I thought I'd gone through hell to see her.

I thought I'd gone to war.

She was dead now, and I didn't miss her. I missed myself far, far more.

Time never stops, nor waits, nor slows. It simply flows, like blood from the heart.

Unprompted: Retreat

It started out simply enough – a sensation of pressure within the ears. I thought nothing of it. I'd been swimming, living, singing, and far, far worse at the spa retreat. It was only natural that God would throw an ear infection my way as a sort of biological penance. I felt like I deserved it, that I'd earned it. It was a minor discomfort to balance out the best of bliss in the best of places.

At the time, I thought it only fair.

The sensation was a minor annoyance for several days. A slight pain here and there, a sensation like flowing water at times...it wasn't anything I hadn't felt before. At the worst, it sometimes felt like a fly were wiggling about inside my head – disturbing to say the least, but no sort of agony. I ignored it with drink and painkillers, and set about my daily fun. A mistake, perhaps, but how could I have known?

The first headache struck me on the fourth day, a sudden jackhammer strike into my temple that left me gasping on the ballroom floor. I laughed it off, once I could breathe again, but the damage was done. They'd left me room for air – no one came closer. They could smell the illness in the air now, and they were all afraid.

The headaches spiked and worsened, slowly at first, but growing closer and sooner with each passing hour. The sensation is liked to the contractions of a pregnancy, or a slowly awakening heartbeat. I am not so poetic; to me, it felt like a methodical villain were piercing my ears with an ice pick according to some devious calendar of his own design. It was just off enough from clockwork to leave me constantly wondering, constantly worrying. The pain only worsened with the surprise.

By the seventh day, I could no longer speak. I was mad with pain, drowning in it, gasping it in with every breath. I had to be restrained, and I was not alone. Complaints of ear infections were on the rise, and the part of me that couldn't scream was made to laugh for hours on into the night. They attempted to sedate me – it failed utterly. How can you offer chemical peace to a body so wrapped in the heartbeat horror of this agony? It only made me laugh harder, of my own free will.

That was the next to go. By the ninth day, my teeth had distended and then fell out completely, replaced with blackened, hungry needles. They moved and writhed and cut my gums apart like they were paper. The blood in my mouth was more satisfying than a drug, laced with the dulling poison coursing through my sweating skull. It was my first taste of relief...and a promise besides.

By the tenth day, the needles had progressed down my throat, thick enough to tear my neck restraint apart. It cost my the flesh on my wrists, but I was free. I was so hungry I hardly heard the scream of the nurse, or of the orderly. The sounds soon turned to pleasant moans in any case, murmured complaints of angels crawling into their ears, cracking their skulls. I hear the whispers of the others now, vibrations in my now-invaded skull.

I felt so much better now. When I'd signed up for this retreat, I'd felt alone.

No longer.

Unprompted: Skids

The first thing I remember is the smell. This vivid, acrid smell rising through the burning air. It had weight - substance. The smoke was part of it, burning my eyes and filling my lungs and nose with this roasted sensation. After that came the rubber...the heat of the metal.

The blood.

A long streak drug from my feet, all the way down the block to the end of the line. Police raced and dashed across it. A fire truck was parked alongside it, flashing lights and gleaming in the street lamps. It seemed too clean for the street. Untested. Unready. Paramedics were milling about. Milling - not hurrying.

It was then that the scent of meat caught my nose. I vomited.

I opened my eyes...followed the trail.

I vomited again.

Part of me wishes I knew the poor woman.

Part of me is glad I never will.

Unprompted: Quiz Night

(This one goes out to my favorite minion. If you don't hear from me in a week...take my stuff.)

“Look, I KNEW, all right. I fuckin' knew! Lay off!” Two shadows worked in the night, where other shadows eithe ignored them or gave them a wide berth. Shadow time was supposed to be quiet. Then again, these two were not known for their subtlety at the best of times.

“I'm sure you did. You simply didn't offer that answer for a deeper, spiritual reason that I'm certain reveals the depth and glory of your character.” The calmer of the two actually worked the least, idly twirling a knife around two fingers. An occasional slice here and there would part the air, but never with much fanfare, and never without a certain lazy precision.

The other was more brutal. Rather than a blade, she used her bare hands, cracking and tearing open the poor bastard's rib cage with her fingers, before digging about inside the inner workings. “I was going to pick it. Fuck you! Shut up! I was GOING to pick it!”

“I'm agreeing with you, if you hadn't noticed.” The long, thin blade slit through layers of flesh...dermal armor...bone...dust...this one was rotting quickly. The ruin did such havoc on their goal; the reason for that was as mysterious as the self-cleaning aspect of their prey in the first place. The calm one found it perplexing. “Perhaps you were under some duress, or by a sense of fair play, decided to belay your genius?”

“FUCK my genius, I HAD it, okay?! The answer, the points, the whole fuckin' SHEBANG! I just...y'know what, how about you just get the fuckin' heart and let's get the fuck out of here. I wanna get back to the quiz!” Lungs were thrown over her shoulder, squishing into a meaty, stinking sulfur on the hood of some poor bastard's car. She backed away. “You're so damn smart, YOU do the fuckin' retrieval.”

“Your anger is irrational, I would just like to say. I support and stand by you, one hundred per cent.” The way he spoke, you could catch the clip of every syllable on his tongue. He licked his lips, then crouched over the dead...let's call her a woman. The maw of fangs and look of growing distress made the distinction difficult to truly claim. The knife flashed once, twice, thrice, and then in a great moldy cloud, it was done. The calm one held up the heart like a gem, grown over with fungus and wires like a sick joke unto nature. Indeed it was. “With that, we can move on?”

The woman lunged onto him, ignoring the blood and the muck and the grime, and she kissed him with all of the vulgar passion in her tiny, powerful frame. “You know I fuckin' knew the answer, right? I fuckin' knew?” She purred up at him.

“Of course, my dear. How could you not? When a vampire question comes up at the bar quiz, you're fated to win. It's as simple as that.” He kissed her back, but then grimaced as she punched his chest. He felt something crack, but simply smiled – it wasn't the first or the last time, after all.

“I fuckin' KNEW!”

“Of course, of course.”

“...You buyin' the next round of wings?” She smiled.

“The heavens could not stop me.” He smiled as well.

Seal Upon Despair

The pale blue along his arms filled the alley with soft light, pure and gentle as they started to scream.

His strength was unbelievable, his speed beyond perception. Three men drew guns the moment he stepped into their path, and one of them was already crying out into the stars before the first trigger was pulled. That blue light pulsed slow and rhythmic, filling the air and the shadows and the coats, catching the snow in sparkles. That first hand twisted and snapped like broken ice, the body tossed behind like a heavy drift.

He kept walking.

The second of the trio fired franctically, striking brick and dumpster steel, but finding nothing but the echoes of that blue light, growing stronger and deeper all the while. He felt a sudden cold behind them and then a deep pressure at his back. Then he felt nothing, stumbling forward with an odd, disjointed gait. His legs were numb and unresponsive, his chest thrust an inch ahead of itself. He fell, never to stand again.

He kept walking.

The last of them backed away, firing shot after shot. The man in the blue lights never once stopped. The shots strayed, fear giving the killer armor. The man in the blue caught the gun, crushed it. He reared back a fist.

“Please! Stop! Don't kill me! I don't want to die!!!” The target, a petty murderer and thug, was as afraid as any other human being that night. He reeked of sweat and piss and fear, and he was weak before this thing, this force of nature. It paused, considering him.

“Why are you crying? You've killed many. Tears did not stop their deaths. It is an inefficient tactic.” The voice was neutral...cold. New snow fell amid the deep blue light, sticking the target's clothes, his hair, his face.

“I-I don't want to die...I'm a bastard, but I don't wanna die! Look! You're crying, too...you don't want to do this!”

The killer looked down at his target, glancing at the blue glow. Snowflakes covered the ground in his wake. Drops of sleet spilled down his face, onto this last victim. “I feel nothing...tears are an unregulated response. My emotions, however, are regulated.”

He lifted his victim, who started to thrash and to choke. In the blue light, growing deeper with each passing gasp, he was turning blue as well. “Unregulated, I could not restrain myself. Everything would die.” He clenched his fist – his fingertips met his palm and the man grew still.

“The blood of a god must be regulated. Such technologies are not inexpensive,” said the killer, as he walked out of the frozen alley. Tears froze to his face and to the place of death behind him.

He kept walking.

Lust

(I took a prompt from life lately. Not just from the scenes in a game, but from how ugly some of my feelings felt. Enjoy. On to the older prompts tomorrow.)

It's the heat that makes me kill.

Not the sun. No, the sun stands long forgotten. Not for the obvious, romantic reasons, but because it simply doesn't heat my skin the same way anymore. Tanning seems like a waste...bathing in the glow just doesn't mean the same thing anymore. I've found another source of inspiration.

It isn't the weather, either. It's been overcast lately, a dull and sullen gray that bathes everything in muted tones...almost everything. The real colors stand alive, like Darwin's favorite photo album. The red of the brick, the green of the grass, the red...it strikes you visually, digging into your eyes with little hooks, keeping you in place. In gray days like these, it hurts to see the colors too long.

I think it hurts more to look away.

But that's not the same as the heat. The heat I feel is different.

It isn't the heat of a body, not exactly. The heat inside of a body can be so tantalizing...could be. The press of skin on skin, the taste of a breath, sweet with wine or water or want. The scent of hair brushing against my shoulders, electrifying, leaving sparks that burn and score my back into constant, hungry action. Oh, what a heat that can be, the heat of sweat and salt. The heat of life. Body...burning body heat.

My heat is something else...the heat inside revealed.

Your blood arouses me, excites me. I thirst to taste it, to feel it on my fingertips, my collarbone, my thighs. It rushes into me, onto me, through me...that heat extinguishes the cold ice of my logic, of all the plans and lies and the 'process'. The game turns into the hunt, the hunt into the kill. Your heat into mine.

I eat you. I eat you dead, and I love it. I feel warm inside. I feel love, or something better. My heat makes all the world turn cold. It's the heat that makes me kill. It's the kill that leaves me hot...and cold, a moment after.

I can never stop.

Dusk

She descended from the west, a nasty flurry tearing in her wake as if to flee the coming darkness. She stepped down the slope of the rising road like a furious angel, a presence that crunched and cracked the snow beneath her feet like she were cracking silence. Her hues were sunset, dark and deep and full of shadow. I felt helpless before the coming wave of shades.

The pale golden white of her hair was thoroughly empty of color of its own, the same way that mane's lion had no passion in roar. It was beautiful, sure, but the feelings evoked from that hair was merely a reflection: a desire, a dream, a season refracted and distorted and never truly hers. She wore it well, with all the rest of her lies.

Her face of porcelain was chipped and cracked from the dry air, thick marring pocks of red and purple rising up like the welts and bruises those eyes had made me bring. The hate in those eyes and the petty bitterness made less of a man of me, and twice the beast. Her face was framed by nature to make animals of men, and had all the beauty of a bloody, snapping feast.

Her lips were painted thickly like the evening air, a bruise purple, sharp like a plum that had never ripened. I felt sick in those lips, numb from the taste of the poison – the kisses, the lies, a year of abuse and pain and hurt. Those lips parted and I felt myself breath out, trying to spit away the burning heat that had infected me.

“What the fuck do you still want?” she asked me. She snarled.

The sun fell.

Dawn

She rose from the east, the sun blowing in the flakes of snow behind her. She stepped out from the hill's horizon like the coming dawn, and the colors of her took my eyes and kept them.

The pale golden white of her hair shone like the snow itself, almost painfully pure. Those loose strands reflected everything – the sun, the moon, the whiteness of the sky – right into me. She wore the world as her platinum crown, and beneath it, she ruled me.

A face of ivory burned with pale blue eyes, aggressive and eagerly alive. They were cold, but a cold that burned and made my body shake and shiver. She made me want to be hot, made me want to move with those eyes. Yet I was floored. Sealed. Silenced. The weight of her presence was too heavy for me to pierce.

Her lips, chilled by the morning air, had purpled to a royal shade, full like a plum with just the hint of frost. I felt drawn in to those lips, to the promise of sweetness and the coming Christmas. Those lips parted and I felt myself breath in, trying to catch what left her. Those lips spoke.

“Waiting for someone, or just staring, stranger?” she asked me. She smiled.

The sun rose.

Horizon Watcher

The evening deepens, and the gray folds closer earth and sky,

Distant stars occluded whispers to the seeing eye.

The night occulted falls and wraps upon the endless view,

With writhing wisps of cirrus casting every range askew.

Above, the endless ranging vines of current breaths divine,

What cannot be revealed by hill and growth and home defined.

My canvas lies before me, filled but ever adding textured layers,

That I might spy the vision's whisper and from here compare.

I witness life.

I witness air.

I realize truth.

You are my scrying place, my crystal ball, my opened eye.

I am your witness. I hear your truth. I feel your lie.

Gold To Rule, Silver To Serve

Her maid dressed her slowly, set before a mirror vast and tall. Stockings of pale silver. A chemise of pearly silk. Over that, a gown of deep burgundy, almost black in the faint candlelight. Along the right hand, she set a long glove. The left was laid bare. It was the night – this dress had been chosen by her father for its beauty, by her mother for its sensual sweep.

Tonight, the girl would be claimed. And yet, though the mirror revealed such splendorous velvet and a dozen necklaces of fine golden chain, she could not see herself. The veil was first, woven into her scarlet tresses and as black as the night. She could see perfectly.

Everything except for the pain and indecision her face. Her body had long since learned to hide such things.

The mirror shone in two panels. The panel to her left showed her eager, impatient – her stance was tense, her legs tight enough to leap at a thought. The panel to her right revealed the weakness in her arms – she hugged her waist, uneasy and ill of heart.

Before her on a nightstand was a ring box. The gift she had been given shone there. It was a perfect golden band, shaped to her hand like a second skin. Chains hung from it, meant to weave about her hand and arm in adornment. Possession, she thought bitterly. She would look so delicate in chains.

“Is something wrong, milady?” Her maid watched her, head bowed. Her own ankle was chained, had been chained for years. Its pale silver path extended to the western wall, where her own chambers lay, small and cold.

“...Tell me. What is it like, to be owned by someone you're expected to obey? Someone you're supposed to honor and live for? I make you pretty so that you might please my eye. I make you sleep beside me, so that I am not cold...is it difficult? If you lie, I'll know.” The threat needn't be said.

Her maid, for all her grace, merely took to her knees. “I was never beautiful to anyone until you bought me. I am yours eternally.”

The girl smiled. She may be a lady tonight...but not yet. She knelt before her maid, unlocking her manacle with a whispered word. Then, without a thought, she cast it over her bare arm. “Then show me how to survive it.”

Her maid smiled, wide and soft. “As you wish, my servant.”

The Crucible

They say that weakness is pain leaving the body.

Or was it the the other way around? For me, it works. I feel so strong in that cramped little gym in my apartment. Nothing else can fit in there but me and the sweat. Me and the steel. Me and the stink.

He isn't there. She isn't, either. None of them are. Just me and the pain.

Some people drink. Others cheat and steal and lie. A few cut themselves, and others still find the solutions no one can solve. Me, I hurt. I burn. I grow.

I can run a 9-minute mile on a treadmill. I can bench press half again my body weight, squat closer to double. I have excellent flexibility and a mean right hook.

I have scars on my feet from the blisters I refused to let heal. Some nights I've cried from the tears deep in my body – they were more honest ears, cried as I kept pushing.

I have the willpower of a god, or of a mother giving birth. Pain doesn't have no meaning – it is meaning to me.

If it doesn't hurt, then I'm not getting strong. Not getting better.

If I doesn't hurt, it's just numb.

They say that pain is weakness leaving the body.

They're so very wrong. Can't they see how perfect my body has become?

How perfect I've become. Some days I sleep in that little gym. No one else ever comes by anymore.

No one else can compare.

Enough (A Jazz Waltz)

You said yourself...that this wasn't easy.

You told yourself...that you had finally found a friend.

You tricked yourself...blinded your eye to the world that's surrounding you now...

So I bow...

In humble submission,

To your superstitions,

About words like friend and tomorrow.

In burning attrition,

I speak contradictions

That burden my soul... (No, No)

Enough is not...enough.

A kiss....is not...a game.

Enough will never be...

Enough....for...me.

I told myself...that perspective was in the eye.

I begged myself...to keep a simple heart.

I fooled myself...the day I lied and said that we could play this game wild...

So I cry...

In scarred supplication

To your distant nation,

About words like sometimes and compromise.

In aborted redemption,

For this damn temptation

To catch you in my lie...(No, no, no...)

Enough...is not...enough.

A kiss...is not...a game.

Enough...will never be.

Enough for you and me.

A friend...is not a friend.

When the heart is an enemy...

Enough is not a friend...

When I'm lacking every better part of me.

So I tried...and I lied....and I made of a liar out of me.

So I stay...and I bleed...because saying goodbye is too much for me...

Enough...is not...enough...

A kiss...is never a game...

Enough...will never be, never be...

Enough for...enough for...

I find...myself...ashamed.

That I put my wax heart before the sun.

Yet it won't run away....

But it burns...

But it burns....me.

But it burns through me...

Burns through me...it's not enough...

It's not enough...it burns me.

Real World Perspective

Dear Journal:

Today was the best day ever.

The bus ride was the most amazing bus ride I've ever taken. The rush of the wind. The constant vibration on the floors where me and my misfits like to sit in the back. The dull roar of voices laughing and singing. Thirteen different sets of headphones blaring – the Metallica was especially nice. Mark Sheridan was glowing with heat from his morning run, and I had to bite my lip not to reach out and touch him.

I doubt he would have appreciated it. We used to be so close...but then something rather pointed got in the way. But I'm not talking about the worst day ever, I'm talking about the best.

My class assignments were choice: chemistry and English, with some mandatory phys-ed and a lazy hour of history at the end. I walked down the halls like a rock star. I danced with my books in dance, ducking and weaving through the crowds like clockwork. The Anti-Queer Cheer Squad tried to prod and dig at me, my clothes, my lack of money. At least, I assume. I turned off their voices until I was gone – it was fucking stellar, and besides, those skank bitches wouldn't know class if bothered to pay attention in one. Mark's girlfriend tried to grab me.

I don't even know why, but I slapped her. It felt so very good to throw my hand righ into her bony, hollow cheek and make it rattle like a goddamn rattlesnake. It felt RIGHT. Of course, it didn't save me from a long lecture in the principal's office and a call to my foster folks, but someone on the other side of the school was playing a violin solo and it brought tears to my eyes that got me out of detention. I don't even remember what he said.

Chemistry blew my mind. Everyone else performed their little icebreaker experiments with flame and copper flakes – I saw it happening. The fire was dancing for me, burning hotter and brighter, showing every color in the world. That fire was free, burning away the stifling air in that room. It was hot. Alive. Perfect. No one really noticed that I didn't pick up my copper flakes. No one noticed that the gas was off. It was my flame to dance with, and we flirted and whispered to each other until the bell called me away. I kept the spark in my water bottle – it's on my desk now, a beautiful vermilion.

Mark Sheridan tried to beat me up during PE. I knew it was coming, but for the life of me, I couldn't care. I ignored the crowd, tuned out their voices and hateful fucking jeers – especially his bitch girlfriend. He ducked in at me and it was like he was pushing against air. I wasn't going to let anyone hurt me anymore.

I ducked him three times, three punches that would have cracked my head open, and it was like they were nothing. I just watched his eyes – his heart wasn't in it. His hits were weak, restrained. The force was hesitating. That made me so happy I wanted to hug him. Mark was still in there. He still cared.

So I said, “Screw this.” I managed to catch his hand. I hugged him anyway. He thrashed at first, but then he hugged me back. I said I was sorry.

He said he wasn't scared of me anymore. I almost started to cry, but I caught the sight of the brick. That bitch was yelling hurtful words I hadn't even registered, but now she'd crossed the line. Where the fuck did she even get a brick? I wasn't even thinking when I just sort of...PULLED at the edge of it, flipped it around. Wings of light that only I could see enfolded Mark and I, facets like crystal shards showing every different face and color of us both. The brick hooked around us and caught the bitch in the nose.

She looks like Owen Wilson now. I'm being expelled.

But it's all right. I met some people – there's a school they want me to go to downtown. And the best part?

Mark promised to call me. Best friends reunited. Just friends, but...

Anything can happen. I signed my name on the burning flames of my empty, hollow past.

If I can make a fire dance, why couldn't I make him love me one day?

Signed,

----

(Name ripped from the page. Following pages blank.)

Voyeur's Confession

I remember the first time I watched you change.

It was the first truly hot day of the year; I remember because it was so uncomfortably warm on my balcony. My clothes were sweating. My brow was sweating. My drink was sweating. Everything in my world was perspiring, and I couldn't hope to escape it. My air conditioner was busted, and as I watched the birds fly, I wished with all my heart to be one of them, riding the breezes.

My wandering eye caught a stirring by your window. I used to avert my eyes from your building – you never kept the drapes closed and I didn't want to be a spy. Peeping seemed like such a violation, I had to look away. It was an intense sensation, and I realize why now that I've seen you. The desire was intense, so the denial had to match it. Otherwise, I might never stop.

On that hot, steaming day, you stood before your window, your back to me. Long, dark hair fell down your shoulders, barely wrapped in a black sports bra. It sloped and dipped and glistened in the heat down to wide hips and gray shorts, long legs that had every contour I could dream of. I was entranced. It wasn't fair.

I couldn't stop.

The bra was peeled away and my breath caught. The heat turned from stifling to scalding, running over my arms and through my eyes like sparks. A single tattoo like a black seam was revealed and held me. I couldn't blink. You stretched your arms and the seam widened...darkened, cracked and split open like the skin of a fruit. Unfurling like the petals of a flower, lengths of white silken light rolled out of that crack, painted with a little blood.

Part of me wanted to taste it; part of me felt sick. All of me felt alive.

The soft bone spilled out into the wide span of wings and snapped wide. They shone like crystal, bathing the window in a momentary light that hid you from me. I fell to a knee – my eyes were weeping red. I wiped the blood with my shirt and hoped no one noticed. I was hard and gasping and so very eager for more. When the light faded, you were looking at me, bare-breasted and smirking.

You blew me a kiss and drew the blinds.

I thought I was going to die from the heat.

I saw more of you the next day. The last sight my eyes will remember.

A Bardess' Journal

To My Dearest Candle (In Reverse...You're Getting So Big),

There's so many wonders in this world. It breaks my heart to wake up every morning, and for you not to be bathed in them. I was just like you when I was small – bright, inquisitive, always singing little songs. I cried just as much as you, too. Yes, I cried...I still do. One day, you'll read this and I hope it'll bring you a tear. There's one or two already on the page. Maybe we can cry together this once.

This story's one for happy tears, though. I know it's an old one, but I never get tired telling you. It was the full moon of the first harvest. I was in Valibard – by Eranthis, you'd love it. The streets are bigger than our little field and the buildings and plazas rise higher than all our trees put roots to branches. Mystical lights flicker and dance with your steps. The city light dances with you, little candle. And it had danced for me...it was my turn.

The stage was set, and it was my stage...my first real stage. Valibard was my city that night. You should have seen the crowds...elves and dwarves and gnomes and every vast and little thing your eye can dream of. Look in my books, and you'll find the pages clapping and waiting for me, candle. It was the largest crowd I'd seen. The finest night of my life, the stars promised.

And boy, but did they ever deliver...

I was adorned in moonlight, in every sense. My gown of silver caught the light by the gifts of magic and little stars kissed my skin – all along my arms and brow and belly. I felt bathed in that light, nude in it. I felt so beautiful...and with all of those eyes on me, I felt like the moon herself. My song came unbidden, and the poor band had to recover and catch me. I was calling out, a lover's song, one of the gifts of my lonely nights just like yours, crying out from the soil of a village too small for my voice.

And he heard. There he was – the second box on the right. Alone...shining. His eyes burned like the sun as he watched me, his chest shook like it could not contain his heart, and with a flicker of his hand, I could hear him sing along. His voice was low and full of meaning, full of sorrow like a sunset....a sunset voice just for me. My tone turned to a duet for just the two of us, while the rest of them listened in oblivious awe.

I sang my heart that night. There is a magic there beyond the arcane, beyond tone and breath. I revealed my first and only love song to a breathless crowd, and they gave me their love in return. The moonlight comes from the sun, dear, and I shone like a silver flame. I dazzled and I burned. The night was as bright as the noon for me and my sunset serenadist. I was his.

I hope you see the dancing lights of Valibard one day, little candle. Those lights will never forget me.

I'll never forget your father.

With All Of My Love,

The Bardess Elaine

The Trap of an Embrace

“It's...beyond imagining. I was so small...so afraid.” He held me in his arms, so strong and firm. His eyes were dark like the ocean is dark, the crystal green of a sunset I hadn't seen in so very long. The memories rose up from depths into my lips. I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop. “I was...thirteen. God, it's been three years. How long have I...?” Fingers brushed my lips; I was getting distracted. I had to keep telling the story. I had never felt so warm.

“It was a little village, near Vienna. Just the village boys, the village girls, the parents, and the elderly. There was a lake, so green instead of blue. People always told us lakes were blue, like oceans...we knew better. The beds of stones were slick and smooth all the way down. It was our little taste of Eden, overgrown with flowers, far away from chores and troubles.” He slid in closer. “No, no...this is...this is vital. You have to imagine that little lake...more of a pond, but so massive to little bodies like our own.” He subsided, but his hold was comforting, yet so powerful. I couldn't dream to leave it.

“I was alone that day. The little boys and little girls knew somehow. The parents had forgotten, but even they could see the signs. I had my little clothes, my little shoes. I remember the greenness of that lake...and I remember walking. I gathered stones, five in each hand, then five in each pocket. I needed them; I just knew. I stepped forward, off of the bank. I slipped and slid and dove and the stones were so heavy. Below and below and below...my heart was racing, screaming. I couldn't breathe. My eyes flew open from the shock, as if I'd awoken from a trance.

Beneath the waves, my grandfather watched me...he was sitting on the stones like he used to sit on the old tree trunk, pipe raising bubbles. His wife was with him; I'd never seen her, but he'd told stories of the golden shine of her hair...she was so young, a few years my elder, arms around so old a man. What an odd thing to see below our little lake...the stones gave me no purchase and I slid lower and lower. Was it always so deep? I saw other old men and young women, other young men and old wives...and children, too, so many children. Things were so different then...the stones beneath by feet cut and scratched. They were so smooth, and they shone like little beacons. Diamonds. Rubies. Ingots of gold and silver and platinum. All the wealth we'd ever had, and it was in those depths, in my private bottom. The stones were growing heavier...” I nearly fainted in his arms. It was so fresh, like diving down again. I couldn't breathe. He trailed his fingers along my jaw and I returned. He kept me in our little world, even as his eyes drew me deeper like the lake of my memories.

“The bottom of the lake bore a great black hole, and sure enough, though I fought and swam and scraped, I fell down and down into the darkness, but after a breathless breath, it was no darkness at all. It shone like stars. Smooth water stones, all scratched and etched by little fingers. Words and names in my native tongue...and in older ones. Our little village was so old...that tunnel was so deep. I was losing clarity, losing my heart and soul to that endless gravity, and so I latched on. A smooth stone protruded; I caught it with my right, then with my left hand. No, this is important. I see that now.

“I began to scratch my name, frantic, eager. Gazing down into the murk, I remembered my most frantic thought. 'I must not be forgotten. I have a name. I have a name!' And so I wrote, scratching with the nails of my hand. Of my left hand....clever little lake, but it took on my name. And with it, the stones tore through my pockets and I was rising, shooting up like an arrow's shot. Or more like a bullet, I suppose. The rocks were tumbling, crashing, closing in at my feet like a snapping turtle, trying to catch me, but I rose and rose and all the underwater people cheered. I shot up like a rocket, through the lake and past the surface, bursting through to the taste of air...my first breath. My first...real...breath.” I kissed him softly, unbidden. His eyes widened in surprise. I emptied my lungs into his, watched him exhale.

“That...is what you're after. That is what you seek, you and your cousins.” He whispered something in English, but I laid a finger on his lips. His shock soon turned to fear; he was rigid, unmoving. His embrace had become a statue's grip. He could not let me go...and I would not let him free.

“All the little girls, and all the little boys, they're gone now. It took me many years to find you, meine schokolade.” I smiled. “You whispered to them, like you whispered to me. You chained them in their hearts with those deep lake eyes...you found the water.” I touched his cheek, watched it start to flake and crumble beneath my grasp. His eyes were terrified and animal, churning my little lake away, how tragic.

“But without the breath, it's meaningless. The lake was a terrible place, and I marked it with this same left hand.” His skull was bare and cracking before that caress like spiderwebs. “But my name will NEVER be forgotten. Thanks to you and yours, blutsaugur, I'll make sure of it. But do not tremble so...”

My lips curled into a smile as I kissed his rictus grin. It blew away like dust. “My name is one with yours now. We are both eternal Tremere.”

Roll Initiative (Borderline NSFW)

Her lips left me thirsty like a day's walk through a desert. It was my first taste. It was an awakening.

The heat was stifling. I could barely breathe, and I wanted to breathe her in so badly I was gasping. The only light came from my fat old monitor, as CATS gazed down upon us like a disapproving god, shining pale blue jealousy against her sweat-soaked skin, along the length of her golden cross chain. All your base belong to us? No, this base belong to me. Fuck you, CATS.

She hovered over me, burning like a sun against my skin. She made me feel fat. She made me feel like a sex god. She made me feel inadequate. She made my thinking stop with the salty taste of her lips, flavored with a hint of Mike's hardest. Her tongue ring rattled against her teeth, then against mine. The static sensation overrode me and I rolled her to her back.

I hovered over her like a shadow, like a status of doom, counting down until the inevitable descent. She was level 5 doomed, and pressing L and R were useless. Her green hair fell about her face and she smiled at me. The morale bonus emboldened me and I kissed her again. She moaned into my throat; it was super effective.

The tongue attack drew from my hit points as her black-painted nails drug across my back. I was in critical condition, and I needed her so badly, I might die. It was too late to take 10; luckily, her bra opened like a natural twenty, revealing the treasures in her chest. She opened her waist slot for me and...

My buffs dropped. My heat resistance dropped to zero;my life dropped like an elevator. Her DPS was massive. Too many DOTS, and not a priest in sight of what we were doing that night.

I tried to focus on the trench run, as she wrapped the shields around the fuselage of my X-Wing. Too much heat, I couldn't shake it! I fired.

Hit? Negative. It didn't go in. It just impacted on the surface...

She held me as I went up in a wave of sexual shrapnel. “I'm sorry...” I cleaned up, tossed the empty package away in shame as the negative levels washed through my tired frame.

She was smiling at me. I felt a new hope, felt the rising will to strike back...She kissed me again, and I felt the return coming on. “The Force is strong you, you Jedi...there is...” She pulled a condom from her discarded jean pocket. “...another.”