1st Leaf // Text
I never should have decided to clean up.
The book was published, it was out; it was over; I had escaped the labyrinth of my own self, I knew, now, that I was free, free to go, free to walk out of my door without fear and to live my own life, free to, I don't know. Free to something, even if I could never go back to the way I was I knew I was unbound from the threat of black hallways, from the glare of shadowed eyes from black corners. Lude was dead and with him my old life was dead but it didn't matter, I knew the house could no longer find me.
And I was also completely, utterly wrong.
I was taking off the last of the duct tape from my windows, peeling it back, feeling the sticky gum on my fingers when I smelled it - again, that familiar acrid scent, the knowledge that something ancient and terrible was behind me, fangs bared, teeth extended, ready to pounce, ready to rip my throat out and drink deeply of my blood, devour my flesh and undo me; only no, it wasn't a monster this time, it was the wall, and that was perhaps worse, the knowledge that this gaping void, this mouth of madness had opened up behind me, an endless black abyss of nothing into which I might fall forever, head over heels (that never made sense to me - isn't your head usually over your heels? When you stand, that's where your head is, so why should "head over heels" mean being disoriented, being lost, why should it be so commonly a metaphor for love when logically it should mean standing up straight and tall, knowing where you are, facing ahead, but I guess maybe the implication is that we're all mad, that it doesn't matter if we're standing up straight because we're all falling anyway, regardless of if our heals are over our heads) into nothingness, over and over again, never reaching the bottom, never feeling that blessed smack followed by an even deeper darkness, that undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns or some other Shakespearean bullshit, I don't know, but what I do know is that the fourth wall was gone and I was lost.
Darkness.
And then.
Light.
Blinding, searingly bright, like operating table lights, and I thought to myself, "This is it, Johnny, you're finally done, cut off; at last it's over and you're standing at, I don't know, somewhere, elsewhere, you've been through the darkness and then-"
And then some average joe, or maybe it was a girl, I can't remember, regardless some pretty ordinary guy hands me a pair of tags and says "Welcome to the City, hero."
Hero? I have to laugh, because if there's anything I'm not, it's a hero. Villain, maybe; monster, definitely; freak, absolutely; hero? Please. Tights just don't show off my ass like they do for some people.
All I know is this - that somehow the house finally caught up with me. The last wall is gone.
[[ooc: I am a bit tired. replies will be. very slow.]]
The book was published, it was out; it was over; I had escaped the labyrinth of my own self, I knew, now, that I was free, free to go, free to walk out of my door without fear and to live my own life, free to, I don't know. Free to something, even if I could never go back to the way I was I knew I was unbound from the threat of black hallways, from the glare of shadowed eyes from black corners. Lude was dead and with him my old life was dead but it didn't matter, I knew the house could no longer find me.
And I was also completely, utterly wrong.
I was taking off the last of the duct tape from my windows, peeling it back, feeling the sticky gum on my fingers when I smelled it - again, that familiar acrid scent, the knowledge that something ancient and terrible was behind me, fangs bared, teeth extended, ready to pounce, ready to rip my throat out and drink deeply of my blood, devour my flesh and undo me; only no, it wasn't a monster this time, it was the wall, and that was perhaps worse, the knowledge that this gaping void, this mouth of madness had opened up behind me, an endless black abyss of nothing into which I might fall forever, head over heels (that never made sense to me - isn't your head usually over your heels? When you stand, that's where your head is, so why should "head over heels" mean being disoriented, being lost, why should it be so commonly a metaphor for love when logically it should mean standing up straight and tall, knowing where you are, facing ahead, but I guess maybe the implication is that we're all mad, that it doesn't matter if we're standing up straight because we're all falling anyway, regardless of if our heals are over our heads) into nothingness, over and over again, never reaching the bottom, never feeling that blessed smack followed by an even deeper darkness, that undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns or some other Shakespearean bullshit, I don't know, but what I do know is that the fourth wall was gone and I was lost.
Darkness.
And then.
Light.
Blinding, searingly bright, like operating table lights, and I thought to myself, "This is it, Johnny, you're finally done, cut off; at last it's over and you're standing at, I don't know, somewhere, elsewhere, you've been through the darkness and then-"
And then some average joe, or maybe it was a girl, I can't remember, regardless some pretty ordinary guy hands me a pair of tags and says "Welcome to the City, hero."
Hero? I have to laugh, because if there's anything I'm not, it's a hero. Villain, maybe; monster, definitely; freak, absolutely; hero? Please. Tights just don't show off my ass like they do for some people.
All I know is this - that somehow the house finally caught up with me. The last wall is gone.
[[ooc: I am a bit tired. replies will be. very slow.]]