A Madhouse

Sincerely, Adham ap None

"And she said that the woman over there was being a downright bitch to her! I think we should do something," a wife says to her husband, while their daughter looks with tearful eyes to them both. Over in the corner the subject of their conversation, the bitch, stands. A girl, a little younger than myself it looks like. Piercing stare; filled with judgment.

I hear the rain outside, close my eyes, and fall in to my thoughts. I've been doing it a lot lately, and it's made me realize, I cannot stand myself. I see all the things I should have done, all the things I could have done. I see all the insults to mother that I should have reacted to. My sins, and I'm my own judge, and my own jury. I'm my own God. If I had lightning, I think I'd shoot it at myself.

I'm lazy. So lazy. I know what I want, but I haven't the mental determination to attack it. All I want to do is sit here thinking; thinking about the plays, the poems - thinking about mother. Despising father. Thinking about sister, and the thoughts before. I thought about killing her. I even threatened it. Would I really? I don't know. The way I lounge about, I'm not inclined to do anything. Picking up a sword is beyond me. Training myself so I don't get tired toting that blade about is beyond me. The rain is so soothing...

And the people are not. I'm stuck inside listening to each false syllable. Listening to them go through the routines of life, routines that they know. If somebody laughs, they laugh. If somebody dies, they cry. If somebody lies, they don't ask why - they just lie too.

I hate it, but what am I to do?

The Slings and Arrows Pt. 2

Adham ap Otis

Dear Mother,
It has been a month since I saw you last
(Your face shallow'd, like a grave)
I've been my own, as you asked
(In a voice that was not far from a rave)
Wish I could join you, for I say
There's no joy without you
Not one, single, day

I'm crying. Madness, to joy, to crying, within the day. I really must be going crazy. I'm sobbing like a child. Crying, from a single thought. I miss her.

If sister could see me now. This is real emotion. The gods above couldn't receive better.

26th, End of Spring, 1087

Troubled

Adham ap Otis

Why not a stranger? Why not there? Why not now? I needed to channel my anger some way.

Puppets! Masked puppets dancing in the most common of ways. Oh compassion, boo-hoo, oh - joy! Oh, poetry, LOVE! It makes me sick, physically ill almost. An odd sensation fills the pit of my stomach when I go through it in my mind. It was fun, really, making them dance, pulling their strings. If I had spouted just a few stanzas, she would have gotten in bed with me, she would've been at my beck and call.

Fun and sickening at the same time.

Is this life? The pointless dances, the conforming movements? Father would have me believe so. Sister makes it seem so - and is everyone the same, or are all the interesting people just hiding underground so that they aren't killed by the ignorant masses? Better they hide underground. There are demons and Vek all around up here, or so everyone says. It makes me wonder why father would forbid me from the forests and the road. He's so fearful, yet he has complete faith in society and the guard. Just another fool, another puppet.

That man, that man at the end ruined it. Ruined it completely. I was out of words to shoot at him - he was simply that overbearingly stupid in the way he approached. Arrogant, high and mighty. Maybe next time, maybe next time.

I'm shaking with the joy, or is this anger? Adrenaline?

Am I going crazy?

26th, End of Spring, 1087

A scrap of paper, written front and back

Untitled, by Adham ap Otis

Anne: The words were bold on your tongue,
Now dried and o'er used, too much in the sun,
Passionate light has dried them good.
Might you speak those words again?
Could you,
Would you,
Just once more?

Wessire: With the dawn, each day seems wronged,
Light jigs and dances 'round,
But I've no heart to be found.
The oncoming of night steals over, cold and right.
I may have loved, and held you tight,
But no more - not again - there is no 'might'.

The oncoming of night... horrible, horrible line. I might as well talk about asphyxiation on black shades and wights. Wights... that's good. Wights.

(Written to the side) In the shade which serves me right, I'll make love with a blackened wight, for I may have loved, and held you tight, but no more, never again, there is no 'might'.

Better. Wessire - where did I come up with the name? Maybe I'll change it.

I don't usually spend my time frequenting taverns, I leave it to the drunks and whores (sister sister, oh sister mine), but it's been a great supply of scraps. Little pieces that I can continue to write on, and also a great supply of great annoyance. Do -all- women act like that? Masks of makeups, armor over a conscience. Does it even feel anymore, or like a smith's stone in wartime; overused? Mother would never act like that. She was as pure as Cymur's flame in matters of the heart. Oh, mother...

She was nobility. The silk and finery gives them the right to do whatever they want, with enough gold leftover to bribe the God's forgiveness. It was that, the simple fact that kept my tongue held back. Cowardly as always Adham, coward for not speaking, not snapping them out of their charade, not breaking their masks over a bent knee.

23rd, End of Spring, 1087

The Slings and Arrows

Sincerity, courtesy of Adham ap Ass

I found out the best phrase, as a summation of all the ruined thoughts that form her (thoughts that I picture to be spiked and jagged, like a chaotic line of machines coming up on the horizon to lay siege on my tolerance).

She bears depression like a ring of jewels, like a circlet wrought of gold on her head. Funny that I should describe it as a circle. That's what it is after all - subconsciously I know it runs in cycles. But it should be a complete cycle, whereas she breaks it. So what's wrong with the imagery of a circle? Right, the crown should be broken in a place, not to far from where it starts, and just past the finery of all the jewels which show like the eyes of Cymur, depicted in the painting.

Astounding that two of the same blood can boldly claim so different heads. She can take her crown and join the street for his bread, and may she harbor the plague between her legs. I should've punched him! I should have, should have struck him, tackled him, and took her back into the home. All those words he said to me.

'And when she rocks against me... it's all the harder...'

I'm a seething, Vek-gutted, coward. Next time, next time I'll have a knife.

No, what am I writing - I can't write that.

And all the while he just lets it happen, lets it pass him, while he dried the plaster of a dull-witted look and a smile across his face. How I want to burn their conception down! Though; what can I expect from a man half-dumb? Thank Elbahn I got her blessings rather than his. And now she's...

No. Don't write on that. I need to sleep, and if I get thinking on that... I'm already thinking on it. And the night echoes outside my window, saying come, come. I have things I could be doing, don't I? He'll kick me out if I venture out of the city, cut me off from his funds. If he's to make this my prison, I'll at least have eccentric freedom within it, and with all those masked-smiling-bastards.

Besides, I can never go to sleep when I start thinking of her.

Signed - 19th, E. Spring, 1087

(Gabriel)

It was a pale luminescence that came through the cracks of the door, diminished by distance and obstacles. Still, it caught and illuminated the walls of the small cell.

Walls, which were covered with writing. Here and there, but mostly everywhere, writings of runes and symbols and vague pictures which were not even close to a complete scene, and always were drawn in the most crude manner. The words and images were flaking, but only because the blood was drying.

Scrawled in painstaking, block-like letters on one section were the words;
'The shade has torn his heart
Everything and nothing is the part
Will the Father return to my halls?
Where is the passion?
It's on these prison walls.'

A little apart from that were the words...
'Catfish
or was it mutton? Fie
Why can't I remember?
Lenore, or Emilia or or'

The symbols drawn were convoluted. Something vaguely similar to a snake, or perhaps an eight on its side. A triangle, a circle. Then, numbers. Eight, nine, ten, eleven.

'Spirits, spirits, in my head
When will I be free and dead?'

The light shimmered in the room as outside a man passes by the torch. A chuckle touches the walls, echoes, and disperses into silence, but this chuckle has initiated a response, a response from something laying on the floor. A pile of ragged clothes, dirty, knotted hair, and pale skin.

'What do I love?
Love? Love? I love blood.'

A groan, and the head raises, while eyes look to the door - though it's a wonder just how much they actually are seeing. So glazed over are those eyes, as if all the cerebral thought of Melchior Himself were encased in such a mortal, youthful form. The head falls to the ground, and the body twitches.

'From the east when the light is past the west
What was, I forgot all the rest
Emilia
Sarahmil
What was it'

'They give me just enough of it to write
But not enough to live, love, or fight.'

A dissonant melody bounces on the walls of the cell. Cracked. There is no beat to it, no tempo, no rhythm. It is not a song, but the lament to the death of one's mind.

'Where it is
It's blood's job to find'

Once upon a time... there was a shade.

(Gabriel/Aldren)

A shade of himself was all he had to hold on to. The rest had been killed and drowned. He was locked behind bars, and inside he wept. There was a Father who didn't speak to him, there was a Mother who was dead - whose body he would not see. There was a love he couldn't love. There was a city where he would never be.

"Just give me the blood..." the words echoed throughout the cell. They crawled and slithered.

"That's one... two... four names... be back..."

He hadn't returned, and now the shade was frantic. There was a woman he tried to think about, but he couldn't remember her name, or if she had ever given it. There was something he kept trying to hum, a tune lost in the back of his mind... but his lips would not form it. Always and constantly there was a pulsing in his head and a pulling in his stomach. His skin crawled, his eyes burned, and his throat cried. For the first time in over sixty years the shade was actually breathing out of necessity, for if he didn't he felt he might implode.

The torch light flickered through from outside. Shadows danced on the walls, and where usually their edges would be followed by the shade, he was naught but unmoving. Unfeeling. Silent, and uncaring. Yet, his thoughts were a sea. A crimson sea.

'He knows... he knows... he knows the names were false.'
'How could he? How?'
'He's a Dryth! Could you not feel it? And you stupid, stupid - oh He would be disappointed.'
'I can't keep anything straight! I can't resist... I can't stop... my thoughts are like a mortals. They race, and, oh Lord help me! Lord help me!'
'What will--'
'No, no...'
'Tell him! Take revenge! The ones who put you in here, the ones who will take this city in their hands and crush it, waste it.'
'No! I must get out. I can use them, use them all! If I can get out, they'll find the ones who can be converted, and I'll teach them...'
'You won't get out - just tell him. Take your revenge on those souls who would kill with only the purpose to kill.'

'I remember something... a vision long ago... there was a sad man, and I felt him through every bone of my body. He echoed inside of me, and me inside of Him. To me He showed a vision of a garden in night, with beauty on the air, upon my nose, and in my eyes. Speckled in starlight every flower opened and closed, with each softly taken breath of the night...'

Now the flowers bleed red, and the shade might reach for them... but they crumble.

'Here am I sitting in a tin can...'

(Gabriel)

The blood isn't everything.
The blood isn't everything.
There's more to it, there has to be. More to Him... more to Us...
Just a curse. Something we need, something to be dealt with like a fly.
It isn't everything.

I have never lied to myself about this. I've always known I've been trying to convince myself. It's always been a battle against myself, to tell myself that there is more. There is love, there are shadows, there is freedom, and truth. Yet never before have I been losing the battle so badly.

Who am I kidding? I've lost the war.

I've never wanted it more. I used to prolong it, prolong it so that when I took it it would be all the more sweet. Now it has been prolonged too long. On the edge of my vision I can see it, a crimson veil, and the tightening in my chest returns to me like lightning. Every vein which is on the man, shackled across from me, is apparent. Every pulsing -glorious- vein.

Stark beauty, and beauty it is, if I could but slice it open. I want it. I need it, so badly. It calls to me and calls, and there's no echo anymore to stop it. I am forsaken, forsaken and at the mercy of the curse.

I'm afraid I won't be able to stop anymore... I was a fool to forsake it so. I was thirsty when they put me in here, and now, now my very essence is slipping away behind it. Blood runs down my wrists from where the shackles cut into me. If I could break loose... I must break loose. I can't handle this. It's not the pain, no it isn't. It's knowing that the blood is all I want. It's never far from my thoughts. I don't want to find Lilian, I don't want to stay with her, I don't want revenge, I don't want to have the mortal love come with me into the night...

I don't want to play a fucking lute.
I don't want my violin...
Oh Father...

I just want the blood.

(Samir)

A constant crying from the right, and a low laughter to the left.
Blood spurts once more over my face, and onto the grass beneath me.
I lay prostrate upon the fields. So many leagues away from me lays the few lights of the village.
Right beside me lays the hand of my brother.
Just a hand. A very bloody hand, without an arm.

"Samir..." the voice is softly whispered, and with such softness I awaken to the sound of a stirring household. Steps shuffle in the next room. The low voice of my father, speaking with a Melchorite priest, sound in the hall outside my room.

"Samir, Samir... here, lemme help you sweety," that same soft voice again, a voice so stretched and sad compared to the happy tone which used to be carried by my mother. I wonder, how has my own voice changed? I cannot tell. She helps me put my boots on, gathers my cloak about me, and kisses the cloth wrapping my head.

"It's time. They're gunna... burn..." she doesn't finish, and I can hear her move away to the far wall before she comes back and helps me up. I remain silent, and we move out the hall. Speech from my father, questions asked about my health. I shrug them off. The priest speaks out, telling me about my part in the ceremony, and how that if at any time I should feel uneasy that I have but just to speak out and people will help me. He tells me how brave I am for coming to the burning so soon after the trauma.

My mother leads me outside. I feel the chilly breeze on my face, and rain begins to fall on my face. It is Darkfall, and darkness has truly fallen for I can see nothing. I reach up a hand habitually and toy with the headwrap which conceals my face, the bandages which are caked with blood. The soft hiccuping of my mother at my side stirs my arm. She is crying.

It is the morning of my brother's funeral. As is custom, he is to be set on a funeral pyre... except the only part of his body that could be found were his severed hands.

The Faithful

Blood.

Ever since, I've needed something to lean on. A lover, a violin, a vain mortal, an understanding immortal, and now a captive convert, who I can watch and grow to love... but even that's gone now. I've nothing to support me. All the bridges have been burnt. I was a sheltered fool, and still am, but perhaps I can set one thing right. Without the shadows, without whispered words and great slights of hand, I will do this - extremely bluntly - to prove what I've been preaching, and hang the consequences.

After all, what's the worst that can happen?

Oh right... I'll be put in a lovely, nice vase of skystone.

To prove what I've been preaching. A more valiant pursuit, I've never had. They are so stupid, but I have to believe. I have to have faith in them, faith that one day they might see the truth as I see it. Not with my sanity in tact can I throw myself at them and kill them for their stupidity, and so I will try to get the message across to them. I will be the abomination who might be nearly (or completely) martyred, for them, and Us.

But for the Father's sake... I think I pity them more then the Dryth.

Hearts in Shadow

"Gabriel... will you not play the lute? It's sitting there, waiting for your touch."

Her raven black hair gently fell around her shoulders, and I reached out to grab it. As my fingers went through it, it was like there was a stuttering in the world. A rip. And my fingers went straight through her as if she was immaterial. A ghost.

"No," I moaned. The slow pulse in my throat was becoming too much, but I didn't want to move. There's something soft beneath me, and yet I can't see it. All I can see is darkness, and her. "I'll play the lute later."

The image shifts.
I'm still floating on softness.

"I want you to live, Gabriel."

Is that a bed I lay on? Yes, and there are the curtains of the house we had in Seahaven, so long ago. When I was still breathing. Yet, I'm not breathing now. I feel no heart in my chest, and again I try to reach for her, only to have that soft hair shimmer from me.

"Lilian... do you really want me to live? Is that what you would call this? I know the Truth, and the Truth torments me. What use is it to know the Truth if they won't have any of it?"

"My love... my love..." Echoes of the past. Echoes of passion, and it hurts. "Play the lute."

"You play the fucking thing, Lilian." The words were like venom dripping from my tongue, and she faded into the darkness only to reappear yet again to say; "Gabriel, I want you to Live."

"WE CAN'T LIVE!!"

"We live forever."

"No, we're dead!"

"Dead until the day we are blessed to life. Dead, and manipulating, and conning. Liars in shadows, monsters in darkness, until that day when we may assume the place once more. Go to your Twisted One. She'll know. Tell her that you don't want to be mortal anymore."

"But I'm not mortal."

"You are young... so young, and so wise yet. You've seen so much, and learned things beyond others of your age, yet your passion is your mortality. Save your passion for when we are truly free, Gabriel. For when there are no enemies left around you. Save your passion for hugs with your Twisted one. Save it for embraces with the Insane Child. Your mortality drives you further and further from the shadows...

In Shadows we are One
In Shadows we are All
Until the fall of the sun
Until we no longer have to run
Until we can live in peace.

Ask your Twisted one, she will know."

And then I realized that the soft thing I lay upon was a cushion, and it was extremely wet.
I also realized... the voice had been my own.

(( I'd like to announce to those of you that do check here (bless your little hearts) that this will probably be the last blog post I will be making for a while. A while, when considering I usually do a few a week. Thank you - Leech ))

Power

Passion and death, wrapped up in one. Love, and then the hatred. The blade into the skin, the blood, and the passion. Without the death.

And is it really an anchor for me, a shelter against insanity, or a sail so that I might drift out amongst the sea of madness?

Is this passion real, are these emotions real, or an echo of mortality. Is it all a manipulation of the world around me?

I might never know.
I don't think I want to know.

The Truth

It was all around me in the beginning, the truth of the world, the answers to everything. In those books, copies of words from Elders before, and before, that were in Lilian's library. Copies that I devoured in night, and then took their meaning to be some metaphoric process of living.

And yet, there's no metaphor.

It didn't take the opening of the Doorway to impart the truth to me. As is perhaps always the way it should be, it took blood, and the words of an Elder, words which spring my mind back to those days in the library with all those books. And in a way, I already knew the truth, I was simply blind to it. Now, it shocks me into sanity. Musical notes reach deep into my mind and tear me away from that which would take me down into nihilism.

I have questions. I've many questions, and the answers will come. But now, I've the Truth, and I've Purpose again, and I am living.

All things are falling into place around me, and there is a veil of darkness going down upon the world. I pity those who don't know the Truth, those who haven't been exposed beyond those paltry lies and services of their Old Gods. They will be exposed to so much bloodshed... needless bloodshed. The demons will see to it. They will tear their skin from their flesh, and blood will pour from the very gutters of the streets. The slums will be painted, silk will be crimson, and Ylessa's fountain will bubble with the life of so many dead. Useless blood.

Here I am, writing this page, underneath the light of the Red Mother's moon, and I feel sorrow for them... and anger at those who would blare this 'enlightenment' this 'falseness' onto them, keep them shrouded in the dogma of the Failing Ones.

"If you have been saved, and seen the White Queen, the Father must have some plan for you," the words echo in my mind, words that my Twisted one said to me. Words which in some way... I resent. I've known him for sixty-two years, and it's only now do I understand all that I've heard, and my understanding is growing... and yet there are so many more who are more deserving. Many more who are so much more perfect, and refined.

I'm becoming rather embroiled in it all. I must not make the mistake of losing perspective. No, never that. Then I would have truly failed Lilian. And now, to bury this parchment into the earth, where it will forever lay. My mortal thoughts, buried deep.

A Stutter

I really fell apart at the seams, and rather quickly too. No matter that the Dryth still lives - the point was to make my escape and not have to worry about her calling Doraster, or the whole pack of Wolkin on me, and I believe I did that amiably.

But everything happened so quickly... even I, who is quickly losing his concept of time, felt it. I, who's mind is so sane, actions so rational, felt the insanity of the moment.

I couldn't even ask that woman for answers, the girl who looked like she had seen as many lifetimes as Lilian herself. She was so connected to the Father, I felt it, and yet I asked her nothing. Perhaps it was politeness, or that inane foolishness at the rate at which things were progressing. And then, it hit me. Promises of the truth.

The truth! Answers! All beyond a fifty ton metal doorway which I could hardly push open even if it was unlocked!

My mind is ravaged, my thoughts insane. I am not myself. Demons and blood, demons and blood... I have said I am different from them, Lilian raised me to be different. I don't enjoy it! The killing, the rape. Tits for ears - it isn't funny! Why did I laugh inside, why?

Why must this come when I've found her...? That lovely somebody who would fill the void inside of me?

Perhaps she can console me, and turn my mind back to what it was. Maybe I'm just pissed because in attacking the Mind Fuck, I lost my violin...

This will pass. It must. I will live.
For You, Father. Things will come into perspective once I see the Truth.

Falling Leaves

By far, autumn is my favorite season over any other, even the Darkfall. The air, laden with the smell of dry leaves, moist leaves, earth, and chill is invigorating. I can blow my breath in a tube and have it appear to me in the form of a white ghost. I can crumple a leaf between my fingertips, and feel the texture of the dead thing on my skin - excitingly itchy and brittle.

To be in such a state of mind, in such a golden time, is more than I could have prayed for. I truly am blessed by Him for this, to be able to experience this novelty, over and over again. Seeing the various preparations for the harvest festivals, to be so invigorated by the four senses is an experience I'm not wishing to pass. To think I would have dulled this out, that I would have stowed away myself underneath layers and layers of reservations, in turn with wide smiles of the toothy kind, is madness.

My only regret is that I am alone. As I look at the vague changes of color, as I sit and watch them even as they change, for hours on end, I feel it acutely. When I stare into the sky, my mind drifts back to years ago when I used to stare at the same sky with a kindred spirit. We would sit on a rock, and I would profess a young affectation for her, and she would sit next to me.

How many women did I do that with when I was young? How many of them did I confess love to, only to have love replaced with disenchanted glances and a canyon of ambiguous emotions as my manner dissuaded them from me? I recall a few, though perhaps it was a fair number more. I can hardly recall those individual situations, and even now I don't know why I recall those in particular. It's only somebody to talk to, somebody with whom I can look upon things, that I feel a longing for, not a lover. In my loneliness, why would I not wistfully ponder back to my mother, and to her image? After all, she knew me better than anyone aside from Lilian.

And now, as I write the words, it strikes me. It's because I can't remember her. That's alright with me, oddly enough... I've no feelings of corrupt morality on it. Maybe I've no morality to speak of, or it's been so starkly convoluted from what Lilian left it as.

The raindrops are starting to speckle through the climbing roses, now. Perhaps I should stop writing.