FIC: KHR, Bel drabble
Belphegor dreams, lashes quivering like a thousand pale spider legs against his cheeks. In his dreams, he is in his castle, the ancestral home of his royal blood, and the wind whistles through the cracks in the walls.
It’s winter, perhaps, because it’s snowing. It isn’t cold, but dreams are like that. He raises a hand- thin, just a little blue- and taps on an icy windowpane. It cracks, pieces fall and shatter, or tumble across the floor like jagged diamonds. It makes such a lovely noise and breaks so magnificently that Belphegor does it again and again, entranced, until his hands come away ragged-edged and shining. Light reflects off his glass-embedded palms, skin torn away, blood sliding down his wrists and elbows and shoulders when he raises his hands high, laughs. So, so beautiful. Now he’s a diamond too, sharp and sparkling and cut so finely.
He twirls; blood splashes the walls and ceiling, an ugly impressionist design seeping into the foundations, rotting in the secret palace caverns. Bel clutches at his head, drags dirty fingernails down his face and cries out.
“Can you hear me, brother? Your pretty, stinking corpse is in the ground here, isn’t it? Aren’t you glad now, you shit brother of mine? You’ll always be here. Shishi, just like a tacky little lawn ornament.” He giggles again, licking the blood from his fingers. It’s cold, now.
“Watch, brother. From your sad excuse for a kingdom, in the dirt where you belong, and I’ll show you what a true prince can do.”
Another shard of glass falls to the floor, and deep underground, the castle walls groan.
“Goodnight, brother.”
There, in the palace, there’s a boy on the throne, laughing, and the wind whistles through the cracks in the walls.