Song Of The Heir Of Destiny Part Sixth: Vacant Possession
I should be doing my homework, really really should.
This is not even the Nightcrawler story I planned (and have been planning for quite some time) to write. I was hoping on more vampire!kurt, instead you get the next ickle part of the AU I thought had stalled forever.
It's The Song Of The Heir Of Destiny time again!
omg! savemenow!
If you thought the narrative technique in the previous instalments was odd... if youwere one of the select few to read the previous instalments)... it's got majorly odder. I think we can establish that the narrative is an omnipotent schizo who isn't telling you what is going on. If god played dice, you're just rolled a seven...
So, yeah, summary: freaked out AU Priest Nightcrawler, having been dragged off to Limbo by the Amanda version of Magik, has just tranced out and his hands just keep on putting down those damned infernal tarrot cards.
And yes, I got the tarrot motif before Aguire-Sasca (no I can't spell him) did, which might show how long it's been a WIP.
PART THE SIXTH: Vacant Possession
Kurt Wagner is placing the cards down on the floor. The floor is made of flagstones, they’re rough and the cards just don’t balance quite right, they tilt this way and that. It could harm the pattern, but the floor is only flagstones at this second, at this very moment in time, with your next breath it could be glass, or pulsating human flesh. Limbo, as you see it, through imperfect human eyes, is an extension of the mind of its ruler. Amanda Sefton is dreaming an unconscious, unfinished dream of a great citadel set in the chaos that is now her home, a sanctuary, a safe house, for the moment at least. Breathe in. Is the room still the same? How would you know? Limbo is outside time and outside space, there is no time, only duration, a function of perception, just like the room you see/not see around you. And everything changes when its mistress wills it. And everywhen.
Pray to whatever gods you have that you never see what lays beneath the illusion.
There is one man who did, and he screams incessantly into the night, trapped in Bethlehem Hospital, corrupted by the rust of the common tongue to Bedlam, trapped timelessly. He has no past, no future, just an eternity of screaming. One moment looped, as his eyes look upon the world with horror. The doctors don’t know what to do with him. He does not eat, or sleep, or drink, or piss; and yet he does not die. They’ve tried bleeding him, leaches, strange powers of distilled sleep from the orient, an exorcism or five, surrounded him with candles to keep away the dark. They would have given up by now, there’s nothing in Galen, nothing in Hippocrates, nothing in the more esoteric texts they do not confess to owning, to explain this. They’d have put him in the great hall below, to amuse the visitors, where it not that their unseeing unhearing ever-screaming patient was a rich man, and despite indulging their every, assuredly medicinal, vice, he still is. They want to look at the books that he was found with, when the screaming started, but his wife, a widow in all but death, had them burned. And at the playhouse, the new German play warns them to be very careful of what they ask of demons.
And still, watch his hands as they lay down the cards, the pack seems inexhaustible. Hone in, ignore the floor that is not a floor, and ignore its outraged and terrified mistress, ignore her screams as she desperately tries to get her not quite brother not quite lover to awake, screaming, shouting, anything but touching him. Ignore all that, look at the hands laying down the cards, filter out the cards, watch only the rhythm of his hands. Watch the hands, watch the hands, can you see the rhythm yet? Can you see the invisible beat in his head?
Now look into his eyes. It’s easy, they’re not closed. Not closed at all. Look into those wide almond yellow eyes, and what do you see? You see nothing, because there’s nothing there, no light, no beat, no Kurt.
He’s somewhere else entirely and you’re left here, watching those hands, watching those hands with nothing left to guide them.
Are you scared yet? The good lady is, and she’s faced down demon hordes that make your high school reunion look like a Salvation Army temperance party, and she knows things you don’t, so many beautiful terrible things, say what you like about her mother, she was an excellent teacher. Of course, you were not her pupil, so we forgive your tardiness.
Are you afraid now? Can you feel it building in you, the blood stopping in your veins, the air faltering in your lungs, your mind slowly grinding to a halt, as the dark water of fear seeps through you?
You’re not feeling even a fraction as afraid as he is. But, then, how would you know, he’s not here to tell you…
This is not even the Nightcrawler story I planned (and have been planning for quite some time) to write. I was hoping on more vampire!kurt, instead you get the next ickle part of the AU I thought had stalled forever.
It's The Song Of The Heir Of Destiny time again!
omg! savemenow!
If you thought the narrative technique in the previous instalments was odd... if youwere one of the select few to read the previous instalments)... it's got majorly odder. I think we can establish that the narrative is an omnipotent schizo who isn't telling you what is going on. If god played dice, you're just rolled a seven...
So, yeah, summary: freaked out AU Priest Nightcrawler, having been dragged off to Limbo by the Amanda version of Magik, has just tranced out and his hands just keep on putting down those damned infernal tarrot cards.
And yes, I got the tarrot motif before Aguire-Sasca (no I can't spell him) did, which might show how long it's been a WIP.
PART THE SIXTH: Vacant Possession
Kurt Wagner is placing the cards down on the floor. The floor is made of flagstones, they’re rough and the cards just don’t balance quite right, they tilt this way and that. It could harm the pattern, but the floor is only flagstones at this second, at this very moment in time, with your next breath it could be glass, or pulsating human flesh. Limbo, as you see it, through imperfect human eyes, is an extension of the mind of its ruler. Amanda Sefton is dreaming an unconscious, unfinished dream of a great citadel set in the chaos that is now her home, a sanctuary, a safe house, for the moment at least. Breathe in. Is the room still the same? How would you know? Limbo is outside time and outside space, there is no time, only duration, a function of perception, just like the room you see/not see around you. And everything changes when its mistress wills it. And everywhen.
Pray to whatever gods you have that you never see what lays beneath the illusion.
There is one man who did, and he screams incessantly into the night, trapped in Bethlehem Hospital, corrupted by the rust of the common tongue to Bedlam, trapped timelessly. He has no past, no future, just an eternity of screaming. One moment looped, as his eyes look upon the world with horror. The doctors don’t know what to do with him. He does not eat, or sleep, or drink, or piss; and yet he does not die. They’ve tried bleeding him, leaches, strange powers of distilled sleep from the orient, an exorcism or five, surrounded him with candles to keep away the dark. They would have given up by now, there’s nothing in Galen, nothing in Hippocrates, nothing in the more esoteric texts they do not confess to owning, to explain this. They’d have put him in the great hall below, to amuse the visitors, where it not that their unseeing unhearing ever-screaming patient was a rich man, and despite indulging their every, assuredly medicinal, vice, he still is. They want to look at the books that he was found with, when the screaming started, but his wife, a widow in all but death, had them burned. And at the playhouse, the new German play warns them to be very careful of what they ask of demons.
And still, watch his hands as they lay down the cards, the pack seems inexhaustible. Hone in, ignore the floor that is not a floor, and ignore its outraged and terrified mistress, ignore her screams as she desperately tries to get her not quite brother not quite lover to awake, screaming, shouting, anything but touching him. Ignore all that, look at the hands laying down the cards, filter out the cards, watch only the rhythm of his hands. Watch the hands, watch the hands, can you see the rhythm yet? Can you see the invisible beat in his head?
Now look into his eyes. It’s easy, they’re not closed. Not closed at all. Look into those wide almond yellow eyes, and what do you see? You see nothing, because there’s nothing there, no light, no beat, no Kurt.
He’s somewhere else entirely and you’re left here, watching those hands, watching those hands with nothing left to guide them.
Are you scared yet? The good lady is, and she’s faced down demon hordes that make your high school reunion look like a Salvation Army temperance party, and she knows things you don’t, so many beautiful terrible things, say what you like about her mother, she was an excellent teacher. Of course, you were not her pupil, so we forgive your tardiness.
Are you afraid now? Can you feel it building in you, the blood stopping in your veins, the air faltering in your lungs, your mind slowly grinding to a halt, as the dark water of fear seeps through you?
You’re not feeling even a fraction as afraid as he is. But, then, how would you know, he’s not here to tell you…