wade kaine [d10 - finished]
Jun 29, 2015 16:09:27 GMT -5
Post by rook on Jun 29, 2015 16:09:27 GMT -5
w a d e k a i n e
male, 42, district tencatching flies in his mouth
tasting freedom whilst he dares
then crawling back, back to the top, top of the stairs
he won't see the sun again for years
he's broken out in loveI have done a lot of horrible things to a lot of good people. Sometimes that's the way, you know? Feel it in my blood, clotting and blocking. Flush it out, man. When there's this much disease standing between you and the promised land, you have to do the things no one else speaks of. The kind of stuff that your mother and father shielded you from your entire life. It's a climb, but we're not meant to reach the top, friend. No. It's suffering, this whole twisted wormhole. Slowly we die, slowly of course. We are born into it, something so final and concrete that it cracks over your head. The blunt trauma from that reality drags everyone down, makes them slow and weak. Not me, man. I'm a hurricane, and this world is nothing but a kite to me. I will devour it.
You see, we all hold something dear to us. Family members, valued friends. Money. Even power and authority. Status in a static society. We cling to memories most of all. We thrive on nostalgia, feeding off it's sepia haze. I'll tell you why that is. Many will say it's because the world is such a dark place that we cling to those fireflies of light, hoping that flashbacks of happier days will see us through the dark ages. It's a lie, fed to you at a ripe and tender age. Memories are paper, you see. They're not even real. I suppose you don't even know that half the things you think happened didn't actually happen in the way you remember. Your mind only conjures up what it thinks will comfort itself. It's a selfish organ. I will burn your fake memories, and drag you back into the void. To the here, the now. The reality. Crippling and devastating.
What do I hold dear, you ask? Oh, well a great deal of things. You may think me a heartless man, but I can assure you that blood pumps through my veins. It is not pure blood. Tainted and cursed, black and putrid. Blood all the same. Would you like to see it? It's almost alive, the way it curls and forms into something solid. Like it's hit boiling point, and yet this room is as stone cold as a tombstone. My family are precious to me. They understand, you see. They are like me. Some of them, at least. Others are black sheep, straying from the herd. As their father, I must shephard them through these cursed days. Oh, and believe me, these are cursed days. We walk on hallowed ground, breathing in the same air that spirits like to linger in.
I remember the night that my life went sour. It wasn't the best of days beforehand. My wife, our relationship was strained, she would hit me, and I would hit her. We would scream at each other in front of our infant children. It's really no wonder that they turned out how they did. She was into her voodoo, and I thought perhaps it would be good to get some spiritual guidance, to flip the misfortune in our lives. I supported her in that. Maybe I should have, maybe I should have known better than to tamper with such dark magic.
My older brother, Billy. He had the mind of a child, but the body of a brute. His ginger beard stretched down to his waist, and he always had such curious, curious eyes. I named my son after him, because he had that same curiousity. Forces be good that my son didn't turn out to have that same insanity that my brother did, else I would have had to crack his infant's skull on a rock. It's a curse, you see. This family is cursed, even before the night my wife was taken from me. The same curse stretched to my younger brother, Dylan. He was an anarchist, an arsenist, a scarecrow scaremonger haunting the fields of Ten with his firebombs and petroleum trails. His eyes had a different curiousity to our older brother's, one with more hunger and initiative, and it landed him in the detention centre, where he still festers. I named no son after him, not least because he burned Brother Billy's leg. I always despised Dylan, from a ripe young age.
And now I'm the only brother left. Brother Billy died not long after Dylan was taken into captivity. Brain heamoridge, although I'm not naive enough to believe it wasn't the work of the devil. Billy's days were numbered, just as our father's was. Now I have to continue our legacy. I have to rid us from this invisible plague. I supported my wife, she was convinced she could work the ways of voodoo to fix us. So that little Billy would be healthy, and Otis clear of mind, and Abigail stayed innocent. Oh, but then came Amberley. Youngest of my four. The blackest of the sheep. I knew she was tainted from the day she came out of the womb, pale, silent, and unbreathing. The doctors declared stillbirth, but in that silence we heard it. She had a heartbeat. Life prevails, always, and Amberley grew stronger by the day. Perhaps it would have been better for her to have died in the womb, because she's sent us all to hell.
I remember the night, I see it in my mind's eye, bleeding fresh. The sky was a momument, cold like slate. The moon was a bloodstain, spread across what should be sacred, a warning sign that I missed, or perhaps disregarded. Amblerley found one of her mother's books, she had stolen it, and read its secrets. A girl, barely a teenager, practicing such dark arts. It's not right, man. The night went cold. I didn't know, you see. None of use knew she had the book, or what kind of black rituals she was performing in her room. She must have hexed her mother, because Mary was sat right next to me with an empty expression. I reached for her, but she fell, writhing on the floor, fingers twitching, limbs curling up like she was being cooked alive. She had epilepsy, that much the doctors had told us, but she had never had a fit like this. It was black magic, it wasn't human. There was nothing I could do.
My wife stopped moving, and so did the world. I was unmovable from that spot, not even a freight train could have unfixed me from the porch. I existed, and that was it. I was an entity, staring at the spot where my everything died. Cold winds did not ripple my skin, nor did the cries of my children tear me from my waking coma. She was dead. The spirits were angered. The curse was not gone, it was aplified, and things were going to get much, much worse for us.
The grief turned to rage, and I found Amberley in her room, trying her best to hide the bloodstains of her taboo ritual. I grabbed her skinny wrists with one hand, and beat her with the other. Billy tried to move me away, but Billy was a boy, and I was a man enraged. The girl had killed my wife, her mother. She had no place in this family.
But family is family.
We are all tainted. Like corpses we move around from room to room, zombified, hollow. Amberley tampered with something she knew she shouldn't have. She screams coincidence, talks science and fact, and disregards voodoo as something that is real, when it killed her mother. She is ignorant and blind. I try to make her see, but she's still just a child. Children don't appreciate sacrifice, and she sacrificed her own mother to purify herself. That was the ritual she followed. Death for life. Taboo.
For years now, I have been waiting in the dark, swinging on the rocking chair that pivots on our wooden porch. Waiting for an answer, for a spirit to speak. The silence deafens me, but my expression is unwavering. A dull expression, one that hangs in my beard like a swarm of flies, occasionally twitching, as if about to speak.
I sent my oldest son Billy to farm pigs. He is a man now, and he builds himself well. He is cursed with simplicity, and dullness. He will be nothing more than a pig farmer. He barely understands the rituals we must perform to keep the spirits at bay. My oldest daugter Abigail stays at home, reading up on her mother's texts. She is a bright girl, and she has a passion for aiding this family. She is cursed with her father's traits, anger and wrath. Her blood is bad. My youngest son Otis is cursed with insanity. He is, I think, very much like my brother Dylan. He searches for answers when he doesn't even know the questions. He has no purpose to his days, he simply wanders, screaming and confused. My youngest daughter Amberley, she is cursed with lonliness, separation, exile. She did this to us, she made this so much worse than it was, and I can never forgive her.
The daylight soaks us like bleach, and we wait patiently for the long night to fall. It shrowds us like a cloak, and we vanish all together. We linger, waiting for signs and spirits to guide us. And then, when the fireflies dance over the muddy fields, and we follow the sounds to sacred ground, the world will know.
We are here.like a cat without a care
roaming freely in the streets
you could find him amongst the pigeons in the square
he won't see the sun again for years to come
he's broken out in loveword count: 1585, graphics: rook
theme: "broken out in love" by mark crozer and the rels