Live While The Whole World Dies

Oct 27, 2009 23:14

Who: Alexander Wolfgang, and some cameo appearances.
What: Where he’s going, there is only room for one. Alexander takes a little journey to Sleep.
When: Some time after the little guy was taken to Repo Hospital by Starscream.
Warnings: Gore, drug and alcohol use, and massive tl;dr.
Notes: NARRATIVE.


I need... to see my brother.

I don’t think he’s here, Alex.

No. He’s not there. Not where they would expect him to be.

He’s here.

It begins with two brothers, faraway and nowhere inside of a man’s unconscious mind. He goes to sleep so that he can be here. And in here, he sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, where there is almost no end to such a blank and vacant and cold space. Midst the space, however, there is the sound of two boys’ laughter.

When the darkness materializes, there is a driveway. The dirt and aged cobblestone line a pathway leading to a manor that is established on a grand estate. The land itself is dying. The sky itself is blood red. The air is hot and difficult to breathe in. The boys do not notice. They laugh and play and run, and push each other around as young brothers at play would.

One brother is older than the other by three years. The younger one, a scrawny, reddish-blond boy with green eyes who is no older than six follows him. This tale of two brothers led them across the estate. Their mother is calling, but neither of them can hear her. They joke and play. The sound becomes mute. There is nothing, save for the dull ringing that carries throughout the air, drowning out the laughter.

The two boys are talking now, as one dares the other at the entrance of a lush, green labyrinthine prison. Neither of them knows why it’s there. Mother tells them not to go inside. She never explains to them that this is because people get easily lost in there; some never even come out. It’s merely a game to them when the younger brother dares his elder to defy their mother’s concern. After a new game of bickering, the older finally enters the labyrinth in a huff.

The younger brother waits by the entry. And he waits. It was morning when the elder went inside. It is nightfall by the time their mother comes along and briskly demands what is going on and where they have both been; she has been searching for them all day. Her sons were only playing a game, but quickly she realizes what it is they have done. She yells and shakes the younger son... There is this look of terror in her face that the boy has never ever seen before.

When they hear a cry, it is nearby. He starts to get up and go after his brother, but the shaking and his mother push him back and he hits the ground hard. Mother runs inside the labyrinth, and doesn’t return until a half hour later, cradling her son in her arms. He’s lost his glasses and he’s rubbing his face that is red with scratches, as if he’d been trying to claw at his skin with his own fingernails. Neither of them look at the youngest boy when they march back home, where no one speaks of the incident ever again.

***
Two years have past. Mother has been missing ever since she had a fight with Father. No one has seen nor heard from her in two weeks. Missing reports start to return with notions that she is likely dead, as hope of finding her dwindles. The younger brothers do not believe in it. Marcus, the eldest son, is more than willing to accept the inevitable; he is too busy with his college internship to give a shit. Yet the two brothers have been walking together to and from school every day since her disappearance. He’s been keeping an eye on his younger brother, protecting him in times where their mother no longer can. The young boy has not spoken in some time.

One day, the two boys return home to find their mother’s car parked in the driveway. At first, it feels as though there’s no one inside. Not even when there is a body slumped against the glass of the driver’s window, a hand barely touching the wheel. There is something very empty about this scene, about this feeling. The older brother feels it, numbed by the moment so much that he forgets to hold his younger sibling back when the boy runs for the thing that is not their mother.

The thing wearing their mother’s face is drugged and red-eyed with bloodshot and fever. Gashes cover her half-naked body as she snaps her head to the boy beyond the glass. She starts clawing at the window, leaving behind streaks of red. Her fingernails have been ripped off, allowing a blood-red trail to seep down the breaking surface. When she finds that does not work, she starts beating her fists.

Soon she is an animal. She is a rabid beast; a demon that begins pounding and pummeling the glass while screaming so loud that her lungs should burst right about now. The screams turn to static; you cannot hear it but the boy is sobbing now while watching his mother’s face tear itself apart against bloody fingernails and shattering glass as she starts slamming her skull against the window. The elder now wrenches from his daze and catches his brother before the younger boy tries to release the thing that is not their mother from the confinements of the car.

BAM! BAM! BAM! It relents; it does not stop. Slamming and crackling until eventually the glass shatters and breaks and even then she does not stop-she keeps going. The jagged edges of the broken glass invite the creature into An Ending as it raises its head. Its neck cranes. The boys cry out. In a split second, the woman-thing that looks like their mother impales her throat against the edge of glass, allowing the blood to seep from the glistening edges and down the side door of the car. And the boys, her sons... they stand there in dumbfounded silence before the young brother screams and screams and screams while tearing strands of his own hair out.

It was a Thursday.

***
He forgets what started it. They are fighting. The boy falls down a flight of stairs.

A rumbling surrounds the house. A tragedy that nearly forces it into a tremble as a child rolls and tumbles down the spiral flight of stairs. Down, down, down he went until he crashes head-first into the ground.

When they take him to the hospital, he suffers trauma, in addition to broken limbs and fractured ribs. He will need a replacement for the piece of skull he is now missing.

He’s lucky he’s not dead, they say.

***
A middle-aged man with the tattooed face and the bloodied coat grins between the bars dividing the estate and the outside world. The boy will follow him not long afterwards. History repeats with Jerusalem Kavar.

“‘Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o’re-fraught heart, and bids it break.’”

***
“Dad’s dead.”

Hearing such news over the telephone leaves a disconnection that Alexander can’t quite relate to anymore. He is numb and cold inside when he hears Dominick’s voice breaking the news to him. Suppose he should be feeling bad about it. Their father is dead. Deep-throated a shotgun. But Alexander can’t think of guilt or sadness of grief. The only thought that comes to mind is what dumbass would kill themselves in such a pathetic method. And then he could only imagine the fucker with his brains splattered up against the wall, and what kind of formation they must have illustrated and the look on his face when Dominick found him that way. And then there was anger, because what kind of asshole would off themselves in a way that they would leave their son to find them like that?

So no, he did not feel any sympathy for their old man. No grief or remorse. All that he could bring to mind was the harsh cruelty in his voice when he speaks into the phone: “‘Bout damn time.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s had it comin’ for some time. You know that.”

“He was our dad.”

“And nothin’ of value was lost.”

“Look, his funeral is this Saturday. I know you don’t want anything to do with us anymore, but it’d only be right if you could-”

“You stecks have fun, then. I’m gonna be busy. Bye.”

Alexander has a meeting with the mayor of Ophelia City that Saturday. Jerusalem has the plan all set out. It would be a waste to not be there when they hand that bitch’s ass on a platter. There will be riots. There will be gun smoke. There will be mortar and chaos and he will enjoy every minute of it. He has no time to dwell on the dead like his older brothers do. Not when there were so much more important things at hand. Like tearing down the Ophelian government, making a place in human history.

Without giving Dominick a chance to retort, he hangs up the phone. He ruffles his own hair, darker now-more reddish brown than light blond, and the color changes from the artificial strands that cover the side of his bangs. It will be almost eleven years before the two brothers ever talk or see each other again. But to Alexander, nothing of value was lost.

***
Smoke, smoke, smoke. Flames and destruction. It dances around like a wonderful little melody as he dance-dance-dances over a street of blood and corpses. He is knee-deep in the cadavers of young men, women, and children and it’s all pretty fucking glorious to him, to all of them. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO THE GREAT MOTHERFUCKING CIRCLE OF LIFE. Enjoy your stay.

Let the Ophelian Riots commence. The city government is doomed to fall. And it’s all thanks to Jerusalem and his little army. And as Alexander stalks the streets of blood and death, as the Ophelians shoot and divide and conquer the wretches of the city, he is young and proud to be a part of it; the rush of making history, the smell of blood.

The blood-soaked teenager laughs as he kicks aside a corpse and shoots it several times with a 9mm in the face, blowing apart its teeth until the face becomes recognizable no more. Because it’s funny. Killing is fun. Everyone is all just born to die anyway. All insignificant in their own little ways. Jerusalem told him, so that means it must be true!

***
Clubs are great.

When people dance, it’s like watchin’ a thousand little aphids gather ‘round a light. They go and go and they don’t ever stop. The lights here have that effect as well, drawin’ people to their flashes in a daze. A foot pounds the floor. Beat-beat. Fist raises; like a punch in the air but with more grace. The redhead I am with but never asked for her name takes my other hand and pulls me out onto the floor. We dance.

She’s laughin’ and I don’t know why, but she looks pretty fuckin’ high, if you ask me. Her drunken little woman’s laugh makes me laugh, too. What the hell, right? I step forward, she steps back with me; we are in sync with those ‘round us who take part in the Ophelian routine. Simple pleasures of sex and drugs and booze. God don’t play dice; he plays with cards. And we’re all His deck of jokers. I do what everyone else does; and what I do she does with me. We were all the synchronic machines of metal and horror, out havin’ our own little brand of fun.

Laugh monkeys, laugh!

Believe it or not, this is relevant: Jerusalem is a man who is rarely ever surprised. And it’s even rarer to see him impressed. He had to have seen it long before I ever did, that much I do know, ‘cause when I glanced his way at the bar, he’s no longer there holdin’ his shotglass. He is walkin’ toward the entrance of the bar.

The intuition I’ve always had since my childhood hits me again, and I feel the need to pull away from the woman. But I can’t. She won’t let me. The redhead in front of me has her arms draped over my shoulders, and she pulls me forcefully into a kiss. She kisses me hard, nearly fallin’ against me. Her lips taste like drugs and... gunpowder, strangely. The lights around me blink quicker. The high starts to get to me, too, and I’m dizzy. So dizzy. I can’t keep track of who I am or where I am from. Not even Jerusalem who should be nearby.

Brain pulses and hammers in my skull. That same intuition tells me that somethin’ bad is gonna happen now. It’s all wrong and it’s all bad. The blood in my head, the lights, the poundin’ of the band, and now the rush of feelin’ passed from the woman’s lips when she touches mine. I can’t tell now if I am dreamin’ or awake. Sure feels like I’m slippin’ away, though. But I can’t escape. I’m dreamin’ and I know I must be. Has there ever been a point in my life where I was ever awake?

I’m alarmed by the sounds of gunfire. That blindin’ light from above us all shatter. A thousand mirrors fall down; particles of glass cuttin’ into my scalp and skin. The redhead’s mouth weakens against mine, parting her lips. She does not stumble back, turn around like everyone else. Instead, she slips. At first I’m not so sure if she has fainted or not. As I take her shoulder with one hand and the back of her head with the other, I could feel that her hair is more than just red now. There’s an unpleasant reek of blood drippin’ onto the dancefloor below us both. Her once amazingly dark eyes are now starin’ blankly at me. Her choked out, gargled noises leads me to believe that yeah, she is in a lot of pain as her hand touches my face.

Huh. That’s... odd. There’s a strange taste in my mouth now, asides from the drugs and booze. Must have been the blood. Sure, it’s funny at the time, simply because the woman means nothin’ to me. She’s just another nameless face, a concave gist amid my own excuse to give my life meaning. I had wanted nothin’ else from her. Come to think of it, I was, and probably will be, no different than what she represented to me.

There’re people shootin’ all ‘round us now. I can’t make out which way is where. So I do the only thing my monkey instincts beggin’ for survival allow me to.

She was gonna die anyway, so why does it matter? She chokes out more gargled sounds of terror as I force her body in front of me, inviting the incoming bullets to hit her instead of me. She’s my shield until I’ve no longer any use for her.

Whoever is firin’ at us must’ve taken time to reload. So I take that chance to drop her.

I run a hand across my face while the crowd around me goes wild in chaos and mayhem, wild gazelles stampedin’ for the nearest exit. Wild, high, fuckin’ drunk gazelles and I am in a bedlam of noise and death, and in due time they will be using me as a rug to trample upon because I am too stupid to get out of the way. I draw down my fingers, looked at my hand that held the woman by her head, and saw her blood smeared across my face.

If the more selfish people want to make their way out the door where the danger really was, then they can be my guests. If they want to climb their way over me, let them. Like it would have made any difference if I had allowed it to happen now or any other time. Maybe I stopped carin’ what would become of me, and carin’ all ‘bout the things I have done the day I watched my mother smash her fuckin’ brains out and impale her throat against the broken glass of that goddamned car.

When I had thought that, the “present” returns to me and there is the redhead. The way she sprawls across the dancefloor, crushed with broken bones of people runnin’ over her and laid out the way she is; her empty eyes on me as life faded from them. And it occurs to me now: She was watchin’ me when she left this life. Her lips just barely moved, and then they stopped. She mutters quietly, so quietly. Alexander... Alexander. Why do you do this? The blood drips from my hands and onto the hardwood floor. I am afraid, but I have been more afraid.

Jerusalem yells at me. He says he’s cleared a path. The pushers that have come to turn this place into a massacre are makin’ their exit, and we’re supposed to go after them for some reason. I don’t question why. I don’t even look at the woman who’s dead now because of me. I leave her corpse to bleed out and I run away. And you know what? I have no regrets.

***
So it’s all fun and games until you’re ripped out of a slow-moving vehicle by an angry mob. They then proceed to beat you repeatedly for a good solid fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like a long time. But when it consists of non-stop pummeling, kicking, thrashing, screaming, tearing into asphalt and blood and guts and gore and shameless sobbing it feels like it drags on an eternity for the teenage Alexander. Because of the wires in his brains, help arrives. But he is not conscious long enough to stop it and everything just... fades to black once more. The rest is history.

***
You wake up in a hospital. You receive months of treatment, physical therapy. This persists for some time until you lose all concept of time entirely. You forget things. You remember things. Time comes and goes as it always does. Drugs and treatment passes it by in a dull sense of bliss until you are released from the hospital. But they say that you will never be the same man you once were. They say that everything changes now, including your lifestyle. They also tell you that you’re supposed to be dead, without a shadow of doubt. And yet you are still alive.

At first, you’re not sure how to take the news. People treat you like a living corpse. You wonder now if this is this how your mother felt before she died; before her blood and spattered guts stained the once-nicely polished leather seats and interior of her precious Pontiac. You begin to wonder also if you’re even alive at all, because you can’t feel anything anymore. You feel even less than you did when you pushed aside the fact that your brother calls you up and tells you that your father committed suicide. This must be what the dead feel like when they’re stuck inside the corpses but their mind still goes.

Do corpses really think?

You wonder this as you recall those months spent in the hospital bed, watching the life flee from the eyes of those you so ruthlessly murdered. And you loved it, and that’s the kicker of all of this realization. You did all those things and you fucking loved it.

In the end, you’re well enough to go back to college. Funny how you’ve been able to balance education with terrorism, but by God somehow Jerusalem manages to pull it off for you, and you’re grateful for it. He tells you to take some time off. Learn how to build a house or something with all the smart folks. There’s nothing else you can do in your condition; you’re in no shape to fight anymore.

Then one day, you go to your philosophy class, and decide to fall in love with a girl.

You are an Ophelian. You are born to die. You only fall in love with those you are born to die with.

But now you are alive again. That’s how she makes you feel. She is the first person who has ever made you feel anything in your entire life, and you begin to realize that this is the one. Except, you do not realize that this decision is not your own. You don’t care anymore. Because you’re young and foolish.

***
what are you doing alex reene asks me

and so i tell her the truth i’m praying

for what she wonders

i’m praying for you i say scared and trembling oh god please let her be safe if i were to lose her i don’t know what i’d do

you will do what you have to she says and grabs my folded hands and places them over her throat and they tighten because my body is an expendable vessel so it is okay don’t be sad i’ll be here always for you
always always always
you will do what you have to
KILL ME ALEXANDER

like a command that flips an on switch in my brain no no no each time she says it my fingers get tighter and tighter around her throat her pretty thin neck and i realize just how easy it would be for it to SNAP

kill me alexander

oh my god this isn’t happening

kill me alexander

she is dying she is in pain so

kill me alexander

so if i kill her now

kill me alexander

she won’t feel pain anymore

kill me alexander

right-

STOP STOP STOP IT THAT IS ENOUGH

PLEASE JUST STOP WHY ARE YOU SHOWING ME THIS AGAIN
give sorrow words the grief that does not speak whispers the orefraughtheart and bids it break

He feels as though he is about to collapse, but he is dreaming and there is nothing for him to collapse on. Except he imagines himself doing so because he is weak of mind. Falling to his knees, shaking, trembling, barely able to hold his head up when he finds that he’s lying on soft dirt that isn’t there. Only, it’s there because his mind wants it to be there.

The dirt has been freshly dug as he stands at a gravestone with the words ALEXANDER WOLFGANG etched so nicely into the surface. On the surface, it says that he died at age twenty-four. Ten years have gone by and he’s still alive and still paying for his past mistakes. Not that he complains, of course. There are some things you just can’t complain about. Living the life he had once reveled in being one of them. He was proud to be a destroyer, an enabler, a killer, a terrorist and a pusher. He was happy with this life and, if it was one thing he learned just now, it was that part of him still beckoned to have that life back. Before he knew a difference between right and wrong... or gave a shit, for that matter.

Alexander Wolfgang had only wanted to see his brother. Instead, he has dirt and blood and dreams.

...and this disease that has been eating away inside of him for eight long years.

The dizzying feeling makes him cough. He’s sure that his body is coughing, but he does not wake yet. Something is keeping him here in this comatose state. Keeping him asleep. The tombstone with his name on it spatters with blood as he hacks and chokes on the decay that is eating him away alive on the inside.

“Don’t worry. You’ll wake after this.” A voice calms from behind him. Different from the one he talked to during his last visit to this place with Cyrus. It has a slight, unknown accent; pronouncing her Ds with a slight sharpness to them, for instance. This woman he turns to, and finds that it is a face that he knows well.

For now, she is a shadow.

“You.” He spits out blood. He wonders how much of it he might be coughing now.

“Dead and gone. No more than you are.”

“Why-”

“Wanted to have a word with you.” She doesn’t always speak in complete sentences. Just like how he remembers.

Whether he’s actually dreaming this or not, or if he’s just having this conversation with her that happened to make an imprint in his brain... it doesn’t matter. She kneels before him with a cold, gloved hand grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the tombstone. He hears something cracking vaguely but the pain doesn’t register. He never feels pain.

“Alexander Wolfgang.” She’s close enough; he sees her face. Her eyes are strangely brown... not the way he remembered them. She raises a thick eyebrow as she peers so closely at him their noses are touching. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks a lot, Star-Shine.”

If she were capable of looking amused, she would. “From Crazy Dream Lady to Crazy Lady. Now Star-Shine? Not sure how I feel about this promotion.”

“Don’t get used to it. You’re still Crazy Lady to me.” He shouldn’t be choking if none of this was real. He shouldn’t be coughing up blood if none of this was real. How much of this was he making real, then?

Before he had a chance to contemplate that much, she lets go of him. And he feels a strange, overwhelming sense of relief as he’s able to breathe again; like taking his first breath of fresh air after being drowned for so long. He touches his own throat, and wonders what it is that she’s done to him. She looks at him, already expecting him to ask-

“I’m sick ‘cause of you, aren’t I?” He waits, and... she nods. Slowly. Slightly. But she nods. He feels his throat tighten again. “Back then, when you... Eight years ago. What did you do to me?”

Moving away, she stood back up and tilted her head, looking down on him as if seriously contemplating such a question. What did she do to him, he asked? “Alexander Wolfgang. I did nothing to you. You did it to yourself.”

He remembers. He remembers killing her. He hadn’t meant to. He remembers screaming and yelling and crying as he drove a knife into her chest. She returned plenty of times before. She couldn’t die, after all-she was DEATH for Christ’s sake! So why would that time have been any different...? Except he did not know that she was dying at the time. That her body was wasting away, that she was deteriorating. And in short time, she would become nothing. She did not tell him this. And she let him kill her.

A piece of her remained after that day. Something that stayed with him, and has never left no matter how hard he tries to put it behind him. And she looks down with him with almost the faintest hint of genuine sympathy. It almost seems, well... human of her.

“Try as you might, Alexander Wolfgang. The past always has a way of catching up with you. That is why it won’t heal. Why you can’t get rid of it. Deep down, you know why.” She leans over him again. “Left a piece of me inside you. Won’t die until I say you can. Won’t be free until you let me. And...”

He’s about to wake up now. He can feel it. He doesn’t anticipate the blurred movement as she’s now facing him, her face so close to his own again and her words shudder in his mind even though her mouth does not move. Not once.

“YOU’RE KEEPING SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO ME, ALEXANDER WOLFGANG. TAKE CARE OF IT, PLEASE.”

***
And then-as that cliché in most stories go-he woke up. In a hospital bed, no less, feeling no pain whatsoever.

Just another yarn to weave into this blood-spattered story.

† alexander wolfgang

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