[ Week 25 | Day 2 ] There’s nothing you can say; nothing you can do
In a city there is a town, and in the town there is a village; so what is in the village?
A pitiful question.
You ponder.
A hand extends, fingers reaching.
The sun cannot search for the moon, it merely follows.
This, you know.
And so the new teeth slide over the old.
There is a city. A city mixed with all sorts of cultures, but you are pretty much certain it is mostly Japanese. Or Chinese. You never know the difference. (The languages are like excited chatter.) You see a rare blond with leather, or a black-haired man with one red eye - none of them are like the others. (Do not avoid them.)
A heavy weight is encasing your hand, and lo, as you look down, it is a severed arm. You bash it in, and it crumbles like dust. Blood falls through your fingertips like mud. “Bone-ash,” they say as they involve themselves in a stupid business of dead blood.
Walking through the woods toward the village of stone, you encounter a couple: old, shuffling, and beautiful. A hello, a brief smile in the dark, and a wave you give. Murderously, they feign blindness and deafness and move away. Disgusting. Blood-hair shimmers in the moonlight and you can smell their fear. Independent muscle slide over exposed bone, and you continue on. It’s a wasted event of horridness, gone forever.
The man in the suit will be sad. But he won’t be - he doesn’t know you, but he knows a small bird. It sings nicely in Spanish or Italian. You don’t know the difference between the two. The moon is a guide and protector, silver in color. (Silver brings the fire to the skin, scorching. Skin repairs, so there are no tattoos made by the burns. A small kiss to the metal and everything is suddenly encased in faint smoke and hissing flesh.)
Curling your lips back and bare your fangs to the stars, hushed whispers haunting, proclaiming “This violence is not legitimate!” But this is a lie; you know this. Sobbing in the strength more powerful than love, more disastrous than fear, you tear a man’s throat out and break his back from a hug.
Once more, you come to this soggy city, made out of stone and sand and the flesh of a woman’s thighs. No one knows who you are, but they know what you are - alien, monster, newcomer, other, dangerous, red-haired girl. The men behind the stalls stare at you with slanted, rodent eyes, glinting in a way only a true animal can. A boisterous man offers fish; a scrawny one offers a pretty necklace. None of which you want; but you do detect the faint beat of their necks and smell the blood rushing underneath their skin. “Would a pretty woman like you wear this?” The same man offers necklaces reveal a chain of delicate silver. His voice is deceptively hopeful, as though trying to guilt you into buying it. His eyes are wary, looking at your hair to your eyes and back to your hair again. He has never seen such color.
You say no.
Later on that night, the man wears a necklace of red.
A blind dog walks daintily near the grave, ribs sticking out. You feel for the dog and offer for it scraps. The next night you see it, the dog is dead near a grave of a young boy.
You see some poetry in it, but in the end you’ll just dismiss it: you don’t know the dog, after all.
There is no history in this world. The days are longer than days, weeks becoming months; months counting into half-years. The empty night offers no varying opinion from any sides. The moon is empty, but it’s no friend of yours; a god in symbol only. So everything goes - because there is nothing overhead to watch over and nothing down on the ground that can be recorded. A pass of time - a time when everything means nothing to a beast like you - and there is more to come.
One day, a love will die.
You know this.
Woven fingers grip each other tightly as darkness (your shadow) descend.
Clinging to the warmth of a frail body, you hear muffled steps of hooves overhead.
“Help me. I’m hurt.”
Morning is coming. You must flee. Hide, until night returns.
A hand grasps your ankle. You looked down and you see a boy who looks familiar but you don’t know him. Who is he? Where does he come from? He smiles, and his teeth are red-stained. “Help me.” His chest is pocketed with bloody, messy holes, his brown hair a tangled mess. Feverish eyes shine, the liveliest eyes you have ever seen in a person.
“Will you help me?” He asks, smoke coming out of his lips. You lower yourself to your knees, almost in prayer. Dead hands cup his cheeks.
“No,” you say. “I will love you.”
You hear the prayers of the faithful. They do nothing to you. Pure showmanship, you think. Sometimes, you think the smart ones in the temples know it. An offering, a clap of hands, washing of hands and mouth - a boy offers his pet rat - and finally, a prayer.
There are carvings of the gods, of dragons, of snakes and dogs and rabbits and roosters - but no help for everyone come from these carvings. Some people demand sacrifices to get what they want. You find this to be a lazy form of obtaining. Why don’t people just take it, like you have done? Take the drug lord’s reliable methods of drugs, use your own drug, and just take over. Of course, people are crafty like yourself and decide to take you and call out to silver coins and necklaces and chains, and tear you apart. Amidst of the carvings comes a tiger, and it bounds out, roaring, bloodthirsty as you are.
A woman with a godly name tsks and insults everyone who dares to defy her verbally.
A dirty homeless man chants out on his shabby podium, deluding he has an audience: no one is here. Beak-like nose, rodent eyes, spider fingers, he stretches out to the sky with a tone that there’s laughter underneath:
“So much for faith!
So much for prayers!
So much for all those gods who brought you here.”
Counting to the drip drip drip of the blood that has poured out, black and unloved, you rock back and forth to the ground, sobbing in the relief. (The tears you pour are not lovely.) There’s a black religion inside of you, solid and cold and sharp. It’ll come out, everyone will see.
Driven by vengeance, you seek relief; though you are told will be none. So you snatch someone’s ox and rip it apart, bleating cries echoing to the valley until there are no echoes at all. The moon above your slaughter offers no opinion, like a god would’ve. You have never done this before. Jessica, don’t you know you can’t drink animal?
This is the tenth month you have stayed. Time passes on, merely illusions. And you know a thing or two about illusions, yes?
Exhibit A:
He weaves words around as though they are made of thread, his smile (or, indeed, a lack of one) is his needle. Fingers linger and caress a trident that appears and disappears on his lackadaisal need. The trident is not important however - one must beware his red eye that sees through time and into the many hells that drag people down after death. (Which rim you belong to, you wonder.) Murderous but caring, the red eye casts around and sees nothing but the operations and mechanics of desire’s desire. Murder or sex or money or even companionship - it is what the need of desire and the wants of the needs becomes intermixed, acknowledged, so illusions became real. However, the man does not care so much of reality as much as tearing down the expectations of it. Why else would he enjoy the presence of murderous, hateful coworkers and vampires such as you? You have no love for him. He knows this; takes in amusement of it, which you lack the care to be even bothered by it.
“You lack patience.” Mukuro says once to you. You ignore him, and puts on a pearl necklace you stole from a merchant’s stall.
He laughs as men shamble outside the house he stole. Dool dool! they moan. Dool dool!
Hands caked in blood and dirt reach out, their gaping mouths drooling with blood and fluids and slaver. Bullets - anachronistic things in this past - rang out and places messy holes straight through them. One bullet got lucky and a man’s head is gone. Another is impaled by the trident. It reaches out to you. Any violence on your part is pointless, so you ignore it. The flesh on it reeks of roadkill.
There’s a woman inside a closet. Her face is as vacant as the men themselves, picking at her lip.
None of these are examples of illusions, but they are certainly the effect of them.
Incapable of casting illusions except in the person’s own memories, you make your mind blank and slide away to the dark.
Exhibit B:
Wings folded, snouts lifted high, and fire ruptured forth, wild and angry and uncaring. You see familiar tusks of monstrous species, but then you might see the tiny wings of a bumbling dragon. Or the brilliant blue sheen of another, the blue flame of one that creates out of darkness. All in one, this creature, this thing with the one red eye.
“Jessica! Here to make a deal?” The wings expand, shining light to red rubies around it, as though proud.
“No,” you say. “No deal.”
The dragon is impasse, still, coiled and poised. Then, a sharp crack of noise, and it laughs. “Look at you!” The tusked thing heaves, laughs crackling like dried leaves, as it points a clawed paw at you. “All work and no play, vampire? What happened to your initial joy at the hunt, ripping out throats and drinking blood from a champagne glass?”
At the corner of your eye, you see flames inching toward gold.
There is a pause.
“Would you like me to drink your blood?” You finally asked dryly.
Hot air blows around your hair as the dragon lets out an amused huff.
“Sodding waste in my opinion,” the dragon continues, eluding your question while a bright blue eye casts a casual aim toward the ceiling in thought. “You have something that you got was right for you, and you throw it away. You got clean murder your eyes, and then what?”
You ponder about that. Taking lives, giving lives, being an unlived person: what next? Is there a difference, truly?
“No difference,” the dragon says, coldly and slyly as it can be. “None at all. I’ve seen your next life, vampire, and there will be hunger and darkness and suffering and passion. Means nothing to me, of course, I’m just a tourist. What would I care about you? What would I care about little birds and dragons and Andalites? What would I care about your lover’s indecision, should he pick you or him?”
You raise your eyes to the heterochromatic eyes of the dragon; knows that despite his folly, he has seen everything. The lips on his jowls curl up in a smile - not quite a sneer, not quite a smirk.
“You already know. And you have seen the businessman before.” You challenge.
The dragon howls. “I died earlier when he came along. But he and I are alike, this I acknowledge. Create trust funds, skin out deals and make treaties out of hallowed-out trees. I count all the monies I made and throw them away, tearing down the very establishment I hate. He’s more personal, more one-on-one, than I am. He shoves people into puddles of blood while I intend to create the damn bloody ocean myself.”
“And skinny dip in it,” you putter in.
“That as well,” he admits, lowering his mighty head to his paws, like a dog. “But you are the only one who can drink from both the puddle and the ocean. And you will.”
Both exhibitions are illusions.
Which one is inherently true?
Answer: you don’t care.
In the moonless night, you fade away.