ooc // dream #1
Strains of hooting, whistling, discordant circus music belching forth from an ancient and rusty calliope he couldn't see accompanied the swirls of blinding lights; he could hear laughter beneath the smothering sound, and felt himself try to smile. His face was frozen, he realized, touching trembling fingers to his cheeks--expressionless, blank, cold.
His eyes flicked helplessly back and forth, watching as the lights dimmed and then striped into red and white, thick and flowing, like fabric, or water (or blood, he heard himself think) unrolling and draping down over empty space. At the door of the great tent, men and women and children of all ages crowded, pushing to get in, waving tickets and chanting. A man with brown hair and refined features stood dressed in a blue military uniform at the barker's booth just to their left, crying out to the press of humanity before him.
"See the wonders of the modern world, ladies and gentlemen, step right up. Witness the two-headed girl, get a peek at the dog-faced boy, fifty cents, only fifty cents, military discount, military discount..."
As if to compliment the words of the barker, posters exploded over the walls of the tent; he found himself at once fascinated and frightened of the girl in question--on the painted picture of one head, she were portrayed in angelic style, the sweet face pleading kindness and friendship, but the other was cruel and hideous, warped, split almost in half with wild laughter, a strange pendant hanging from her neck on a thick gold chain twisted into a noose.
A great wind blew, and the tent rolled from its base, twirling in the wind like feathers, revealing a carousel of dead men--they stood posed in horrible, contorted ways, all of them screaming, some of them cowering, others arched back, the rest melted down around their poles like candle wax. The music grew louder, and a curtain drew up, revealing a brightly-colored man/machine standing at a crank that came out of the bottom of the grisly merry-go-round, slowly turning it.
He could see himself in the center of the machine, unblinking.
The noble look of the barker faded in his vision as he broke away from the scene, the wheeps and phwoots of the circus music following mockingly after, the man's fine jaw and elegant nose melting away, snakeskin scales in brilliant white peering out at Trowa in their place. He couldn't scream; it was impossible to breathe, he was surrounded, his fingers scrabbling uselessly for purchase at his false porcelain skin--
Put your hands down, a voice called. Beasts only bare their fangs at their enemies.
A thin, featureless boy, more ghost than flesh, stretched for him through the starry expanse within the tent, and he remembered a desert; sand, as far as the eye could see, but there was an oasis in the middle, wasn't there? He was there, beneath the concrete tree overhead, and there was warm sun beating down on him.
I was the first one to come out and surrender. Put your hands down.
He tried, straining to comply, but his hands were so heavy, like iron weights had been tied to his wrists; it was impossible to do anything but keep them up in the air.
"I can't," he mumbled through the not-face, tired from the effort. "I need them."
A deeper voice sounded from behind his back.
It hurts like hell. What's your name?
His mind burned as he searched it, but he couldn't seem to recall. The question was repeated, twice more, before he turned to see who was asking it of him.
"I have no name," he responded, his shoulders sinking with the weight of the admission. "But if you must call me something, it's--"
"I have no name," he responded, his painted smile turning up to the sky. "But if you must call me something, it's--"
The last thing he saw before his thrashing burst the cocoon was the fine white china of his mask as it spread over his head, suffocating and crushing him.