@just-horrible-things / just-horrible-things.tumblr.com
[Follow-on from here]
The same dream as always.
Hands push at her face and tangle in her clothes. Shoulders slam into her body, jostling her back and forth with such force that her boots skid on the street. She clutches at sleeves and lapels, but they slip through her fingers. Someone has hold of her wrists, fingernails digging into the skin, pulling her backwards. No! she snarls. She needs to get to Cae - he's dying and she can't reach him!
[Prequel here]
She’s painfully glad of the quiet hours. She’s too exhausted to think straight, but she hurts too much to sleep. A few more days will fix that. But for now she just lies still where she’s pinned face-down to the floor, drifting in a haze of misery. It’s dark, and the concrete is cool against the heat of her wounds but not cold enough to make her shiver. It could be worse.
The entity that Tacitus calls Spiral is framed in terms that the human mind is not meant to handle. He perceives it mainly with his other sense, the one that he calls Sight but is nothing like sight. The sense that takes in infinitely complex vistas of horror, depths that should never be comprehensible, and renders them somehow into understanding. The daemon is of that nightmare other realm, and he Sees it in its true form.
As such, much of what he recalls is vast reams of gibberish noise to anyone with the normal complement of senses. But flashes are comprehensible.
There is a percept that is a little like a bond of blood, but only insofar as the clear sound of a bell is a little like a bright sky blue. There are peripheral echoes in the other senses. The smell of thick smoke and burning skin. Terrible heat. Pain. The sound of scales moving across scales. Laughter, mocking and inhuman. All these are but pale echoes of the truth.
It is a little like what might exist if the concept of jealousy grew fangs of guilt and stalked the night as a predatory beast. It is a little like a spider plucking on the strands of a web that spans worlds, trapped flies dancing as they struggle against their bonds. It is a little like intimacy with a furnace-flame.
It is not much like any of these.
It exists in more dimensions than three, brushing up against the thin, thin skin of the world and reaching through with claws-that-are-not-claws to play with the living. It is in all places and in none. It treats time as a maze to wander at will. It cares as little for the laws of physics or causality or common sense as it does for the constraints of morality or decency or fair play.
And Tacitus was in love with it.
And in the memory it is alive. It sees the intruder in Tacitus’ mind with a gaze that is like yellow-hot skewers and like the highest, purest note of an agonised scream and like liquid hypnosis. Its attention is weighty with malevolent, inhuman intellect. It sees the intruder and without a mouth it smiles.
Tacitus is fighting back now, trying to wrench his memories and his mind out of the intruder’s grip. In the real world he is screaming, high and wild and terrified. He is more afraid of the daemon than he is of the hands holding his frail body. And he’s almost more afraid for the mind rifling through his thoughts than he is for himself.
When the bond breaks, he falls silent, shuddering, back arched, gasping for air. His eyes are wide and unseeing with terror. There’s nothing alien lurking behind that blank stare. There’s nothing reaching out from Beyond with claws of malice. The air is still and cool.
But on the very edge of perception there lingers, so faint that it might be imagined, the barest hint of the smell of smoke.
Pain eclipses thought.
It’s the only good thing about it. When the pain dulls enough for thought to creep back in, he fights it. The agony is bad, but the litany of hurt hate hurt fear despair hurt hate hurt is worse.
When it hurts too much to think, it’s almost like time doesn’t pass.
It does, of course. The seconds crawl excruciatingly by. But the mindless animal that inhabits each eternity doesn’t reflect on the past or the future. Doesn’t communicate with the self of the next second, or the second gone by. So there may as well only be one moment.
It’s a little like not existing.
He never thought he would want to not exist. He always thought he would prefer to live for the smallest of mercies, the least of blessings, those rare moments of bliss or at least relief. He thought it was better to have that than nothing at all. Worth the suffering, if only barely.
Now he chases the closest thing he has to oblivion. Because even the blessings of cool water or fresh air or a reduction in the constant pain, even these things are tainted by hate hate hate.
He barely remembers who or what he hates. But he loathes them more than he loves life. Hate fury pain despair hate hate hurt hate.
No mercy is worth the curse of thought.
And it’s easy, so easy, to slip back into that near-oblivion. Just force his torn muscles to tug on the shattered bones. Just drag seared skin over seared skin, or over whatever surface comes to hand. Just shift, and the flash of agony wipes away all else.
Sometimes chemical relief is forced into his veins. Sometimes that agony is out of reach and he hates he hates whoever did this to him he hates whoever took it away. Fury despair loathing rage misery hate.
He only wants one thing, besides escape from himself.
It’s not mercy or relief or love or approval. What would the point even be? Life is suffering, in the end, and death is worse. There will only ever be hate fear despair fury PAIN. Anything else is a lie, a brief distraction from the truth.
All he wants, besides oblivion, is to tear it down.
Tear it all down, especially the ones who hurt him especially the monsters that feed on his hurt hate misery fear despair. Tear them down to his level. Make them suffer as he suffers. Rip them apart as he has been ripped apart.
There is only fury loathing pain. And he wants to share.
