[Dream | Week 21, Day 6] Divide
WARNING: Gore, NC-17, possibly trigger-worthy imagery.
The feeling of displacement is fierce once more, like wind swept dunes in a desert, ever changing within the hours of daylight and nightfall. Nothing is ever static, nothing is ever the same, except for the consistency of barren lands and the granular sea that resembles disease, an ever flowing lump of infection, abscess in solidified and drying clumps; heap of dead bodies of the fallen gone unburied because they cannot be buried and can only rot away with time and under the scorching sun.
Like the house that stands amidst the desert planes of the untamed garden, the slightly murky koi pond and the dusty steps of a darkened home. So dark except for the lantern that burns on the step. It is red, like the yukata that rests on your shoulder, slightly dusty around the hems and the sleeves from where it had been resting on the floor forgotten for a while, tied loosely by an obi that has seen better days, has witnessed time pass by.
Yet time is of no consequence because time is viscous, an evolving phenomena and never static, not like the dunes of desert that surrounds you where at one point you stand in the middle of it and you will think it s beautiful, these golden planes. Gold, like the value of the memories that exists within these dunes. Gold because it does not rust, does not easily break, gold which is valuable, timeless, one that lifts the poor from the pits of poverty.
But it’s funny how gold and ageless dunes of beauty ceases to have any value simply because there is no one there to appreciate it, or no one there to care for it. After all, something can only be deemed valuable if an individual declares it valuable. So you’re standing there, with the cold earth digging in to your bare feet, the dusty hems of your yukata billowing in the hot breeze and you look around you and all you see is the dusty patio and the dusty living rooms and hallway beyond it, the unkept garden and the weeds that had replaced what should have been herbs and blossoms, the unclear surface of the koi pond -- are the kois even alive still?
It angers you, makes you feel that heat spread in your chest, like shrapnels of glass rubbing from the inside out, like the voice in the back of your mind that tells you repeatedly, I will not stand for this. I will not tolerate this. This is wrong. This is mine and yet it isn’t. I refuse to stand for this and you’re a goddamn coward for not wanting to do anything about it -- always, always content with watching, always listening, always obeying like the spineless thing you are, what are you? Where is your pride?
This voice which is strong, getting stronger than your own, that you forget sometimes where your own starts and where that one ends. Because you feel the tightness in your jaw from how the gritty words sound like to your ears, feel the lash of your tongue against your teeth and roof of your mouth when you find that strange because you haven’t been talking. You have been busy looking at the garden and its pitiful state.
(So why does your mouth feel like you have been talking?)
And turning to blink at the sudden presence that had replaced the lantern on the footsteps of the patio, a bright golden glow that reminds you of a god that you had once seen -- this one is small, barely reaches your collar bone in height, long golden hair and eyes as dark as the night sky, a smile on rosy lips that extends all the way up towards his rosy cheeks, decked in perennial gold. What a sight this god makes, this young face that brims with innocence and yet so malicious like the gyre of that arcane gaze.
“You should be patient.”
This boy speaks to you and you think he is a god but know that he isn’t. You’ve only seen one god and you’re pretty sure you don’t have the imagination of what any of the other gods in heaven would look like. So this is your god, this is your enemy, this is the thing that dares tell you to be patient - and a part of you agrees, somehow - dares come to your house that is in ruins and dares to stand on your patio steps. This hideous, destructive thing that is smiling and beautiful and reminds you of the children you teach back home in all its innocent glory. And how dare you, how dare you, how fucking dare you show up before me and speak to me of patience. How dare you come to my house, how dare you take what’s mine and how dare you take it, when it isn’t yours, give me back what’s mine --!
“You need to open yourself up before you can heal.”
It’s strange, the feeling of displacement yet again, when rage consumes and fuels the body like an overdose of soldier pills. You blink once and you’re crossing the distance between yourself and this deity. You blink again and you’ve got the thing in your hands, fingers wrapping around a pale neck and you’re under the shade and shadow of the sycamore tree in your garden, the squelching sound of blade against flesh echoing in your ears as you watch your hands plunge the blade repeatedly in to the corpse that you straddle. You watch your hands stick the blade in between the eyes that reminds you of those expensive cultured black pearls at home. And you yank downwards, hack in to brain and eyeballs, crack open bone and spill clumps of glutinous flesh, stick your fingers in between the pink cracks of marrow and body matter and pull. Pull, pull, pull, rip, rip rip, all the way down to the sternum, where your nails dig in to lungs and heart, circles around the esophagus and yank that out too right over your shoulder, like threads and cotton stuffing of a child’s toy.
You hear the words, patience? You ask me to be patient? You ask me to open up when you’ve robbed me of my choices! Stop telling me things like I have a say in the matter when I don’t so --
“ -- how does it feel? To be ripped open and exposed like this?”
You ask the mess lying before you. A body torn in half, from the top of the head to the groin, spilling white and green and yellow and so much red. You look at the mess and you blink once, blink twice and you stare at your hands. They’re as red as your sleeves and if you hold them away far enough you’d think from how red they are that they are a part of the yukata you wear.
Watch those fingers shake, watch the horror descend upon you like a ton of bricks because you’ve just ripped a god in half. But gods aren’t supposed to bleed because gods aren’t human so you turn to look at the body before you and who is it except you can’t really tell who the person is anymore because you’ve ripped their face out, tossed brain and hair and pieces of skull and squashed eyeballs --
(What is this? When did I -- how did I -- what is this!)
Your throat hurts -- were you yelling? -- and you use those shaky hands to push yourself off the mess, take a few steps backwards away from the trunk of the tree until you feel you heel slip and your balance tremble before you catch it. You’re scared, so scared and you feel it in your chest with how fast your heart is drumming, feel the strain around your lips and eyes and cheeks, feel your hands shake because what did you just do? What have you done? You’ve killed a boy, someone you don’t know -- what have you done?!
Except when you correct your balance again before you tip over completely in to the koi pond, you catch sight of your reflection on the murky water.
And you freeze.
Because why the hell are you smiling? Why the hell do you look so happy? So triumphant? You just killed an innocent child - you didn’t win anything! Look a little mortified for fuck’s sake! Stop laughing! Stop fucking laughing! What is wrong with you?!
“Iruka?”
A blink and you’re watching yourself sink to your knees, rinse the blood off your hands. You watch your reflection get disturbed by the floating corpse of a long deceased koi fish and you watch yourself tilt your head to the side as you catch sight of the eyeball at the bottom of the pond. Ah, must have landed in there earlier. Fish are dead anyway. Oh well.
“Iruka!”
You stand, and when you turn you do not walk in a desert but amongst the grounds of an oasis. An oasis that is temporary and probably will drown in the drought and dryness of the desert one day when but it is an oasis now because you think of it is as an oasis, your oasis and it is not a desert. Because I say so!
Your dirty feet leave imprints on the still dusty footsteps of the patio, all the way in to the living room. Your bloodied and dusty yukata join the whitened and unclean floor as you strip it off your shoulders, let the fabric rustle and kiss the ground and make clouds of gray rise as you step in to the hallway, and in to the next room where there, next to a lantern is the person who had been calling you.
(Who is this man? What is he doing here? What does he want?)
“Something wrong?” The man asks, tilting light colored hair to the side, which reveals a brown scarred left eye and bright green right eye.
Everything is wrong! I just killed a boy outside, how can you not hear it! What the hell is wrong with you! Are you deaf? Can’t you smell the blood? Can’t you?!
But you smile instead, and move to straddle his lap with your bare thighs, let you bare hips meet his, wrap your arms around broader shoulders, arms that are still pink in color form the blood earlier because you need soap to wash that off -- water is not enough. You smile even when you feel terrified and ready to fall apart at what you’ve just done, smile, smile, smile and hide what really matters behind all the smile, smile, smile.
“Hmmm. No. Just a pest outside...”
You silence whatever question the man might have by pressing your mouth against his, carding a hand through his hair, your other hand reaching between your bodies, reaches for his cock and strokes the length that starts to harden in your palm, coaxing it and feeling the weight of growing arousal against still blood sticky fingers, dirtied nails -- that nail that you use to trace the slit of the that slowly thickening cock. And you're smiling against the kiss that feels hesitant against your lips, but ah, he opens his mouth for you and you feel your teeth pull to a grin just as you feel your lungs asphyxiate from fear because --
Everything is just fine...
Everything is wrong...
(Because you shouldn’t bring your personal fears in to other people’s business. Well done.)
--
[Iruka wakes up with a slight sharp intake of breath, lifting his chin from where it had been resting against his chest. The sky is painted in sunset colors and a hand reaches to block that sky from the Hitomi screen before the transmission cuts off.]
The feeling of displacement is fierce once more, like wind swept dunes in a desert, ever changing within the hours of daylight and nightfall. Nothing is ever static, nothing is ever the same, except for the consistency of barren lands and the granular sea that resembles disease, an ever flowing lump of infection, abscess in solidified and drying clumps; heap of dead bodies of the fallen gone unburied because they cannot be buried and can only rot away with time and under the scorching sun.
Like the house that stands amidst the desert planes of the untamed garden, the slightly murky koi pond and the dusty steps of a darkened home. So dark except for the lantern that burns on the step. It is red, like the yukata that rests on your shoulder, slightly dusty around the hems and the sleeves from where it had been resting on the floor forgotten for a while, tied loosely by an obi that has seen better days, has witnessed time pass by.
Yet time is of no consequence because time is viscous, an evolving phenomena and never static, not like the dunes of desert that surrounds you where at one point you stand in the middle of it and you will think it s beautiful, these golden planes. Gold, like the value of the memories that exists within these dunes. Gold because it does not rust, does not easily break, gold which is valuable, timeless, one that lifts the poor from the pits of poverty.
But it’s funny how gold and ageless dunes of beauty ceases to have any value simply because there is no one there to appreciate it, or no one there to care for it. After all, something can only be deemed valuable if an individual declares it valuable. So you’re standing there, with the cold earth digging in to your bare feet, the dusty hems of your yukata billowing in the hot breeze and you look around you and all you see is the dusty patio and the dusty living rooms and hallway beyond it, the unkept garden and the weeds that had replaced what should have been herbs and blossoms, the unclear surface of the koi pond -- are the kois even alive still?
It angers you, makes you feel that heat spread in your chest, like shrapnels of glass rubbing from the inside out, like the voice in the back of your mind that tells you repeatedly, I will not stand for this. I will not tolerate this. This is wrong. This is mine and yet it isn’t. I refuse to stand for this and you’re a goddamn coward for not wanting to do anything about it -- always, always content with watching, always listening, always obeying like the spineless thing you are, what are you? Where is your pride?
This voice which is strong, getting stronger than your own, that you forget sometimes where your own starts and where that one ends. Because you feel the tightness in your jaw from how the gritty words sound like to your ears, feel the lash of your tongue against your teeth and roof of your mouth when you find that strange because you haven’t been talking. You have been busy looking at the garden and its pitiful state.
(So why does your mouth feel like you have been talking?)
And turning to blink at the sudden presence that had replaced the lantern on the footsteps of the patio, a bright golden glow that reminds you of a god that you had once seen -- this one is small, barely reaches your collar bone in height, long golden hair and eyes as dark as the night sky, a smile on rosy lips that extends all the way up towards his rosy cheeks, decked in perennial gold. What a sight this god makes, this young face that brims with innocence and yet so malicious like the gyre of that arcane gaze.
“You should be patient.”
This boy speaks to you and you think he is a god but know that he isn’t. You’ve only seen one god and you’re pretty sure you don’t have the imagination of what any of the other gods in heaven would look like. So this is your god, this is your enemy, this is the thing that dares tell you to be patient - and a part of you agrees, somehow - dares come to your house that is in ruins and dares to stand on your patio steps. This hideous, destructive thing that is smiling and beautiful and reminds you of the children you teach back home in all its innocent glory. And how dare you, how dare you, how fucking dare you show up before me and speak to me of patience. How dare you come to my house, how dare you take what’s mine and how dare you take it, when it isn’t yours, give me back what’s mine --!
“You need to open yourself up before you can heal.”
It’s strange, the feeling of displacement yet again, when rage consumes and fuels the body like an overdose of soldier pills. You blink once and you’re crossing the distance between yourself and this deity. You blink again and you’ve got the thing in your hands, fingers wrapping around a pale neck and you’re under the shade and shadow of the sycamore tree in your garden, the squelching sound of blade against flesh echoing in your ears as you watch your hands plunge the blade repeatedly in to the corpse that you straddle. You watch your hands stick the blade in between the eyes that reminds you of those expensive cultured black pearls at home. And you yank downwards, hack in to brain and eyeballs, crack open bone and spill clumps of glutinous flesh, stick your fingers in between the pink cracks of marrow and body matter and pull. Pull, pull, pull, rip, rip rip, all the way down to the sternum, where your nails dig in to lungs and heart, circles around the esophagus and yank that out too right over your shoulder, like threads and cotton stuffing of a child’s toy.
You hear the words, patience? You ask me to be patient? You ask me to open up when you’ve robbed me of my choices! Stop telling me things like I have a say in the matter when I don’t so --
“ -- how does it feel? To be ripped open and exposed like this?”
You ask the mess lying before you. A body torn in half, from the top of the head to the groin, spilling white and green and yellow and so much red. You look at the mess and you blink once, blink twice and you stare at your hands. They’re as red as your sleeves and if you hold them away far enough you’d think from how red they are that they are a part of the yukata you wear.
Watch those fingers shake, watch the horror descend upon you like a ton of bricks because you’ve just ripped a god in half. But gods aren’t supposed to bleed because gods aren’t human so you turn to look at the body before you and who is it except you can’t really tell who the person is anymore because you’ve ripped their face out, tossed brain and hair and pieces of skull and squashed eyeballs --
(What is this? When did I -- how did I -- what is this!)
Your throat hurts -- were you yelling? -- and you use those shaky hands to push yourself off the mess, take a few steps backwards away from the trunk of the tree until you feel you heel slip and your balance tremble before you catch it. You’re scared, so scared and you feel it in your chest with how fast your heart is drumming, feel the strain around your lips and eyes and cheeks, feel your hands shake because what did you just do? What have you done? You’ve killed a boy, someone you don’t know -- what have you done?!
Except when you correct your balance again before you tip over completely in to the koi pond, you catch sight of your reflection on the murky water.
And you freeze.
Because why the hell are you smiling? Why the hell do you look so happy? So triumphant? You just killed an innocent child - you didn’t win anything! Look a little mortified for fuck’s sake! Stop laughing! Stop fucking laughing! What is wrong with you?!
“Iruka?”
A blink and you’re watching yourself sink to your knees, rinse the blood off your hands. You watch your reflection get disturbed by the floating corpse of a long deceased koi fish and you watch yourself tilt your head to the side as you catch sight of the eyeball at the bottom of the pond. Ah, must have landed in there earlier. Fish are dead anyway. Oh well.
“Iruka!”
You stand, and when you turn you do not walk in a desert but amongst the grounds of an oasis. An oasis that is temporary and probably will drown in the drought and dryness of the desert one day when but it is an oasis now because you think of it is as an oasis, your oasis and it is not a desert. Because I say so!
Your dirty feet leave imprints on the still dusty footsteps of the patio, all the way in to the living room. Your bloodied and dusty yukata join the whitened and unclean floor as you strip it off your shoulders, let the fabric rustle and kiss the ground and make clouds of gray rise as you step in to the hallway, and in to the next room where there, next to a lantern is the person who had been calling you.
(Who is this man? What is he doing here? What does he want?)
“Something wrong?” The man asks, tilting light colored hair to the side, which reveals a brown scarred left eye and bright green right eye.
Everything is wrong! I just killed a boy outside, how can you not hear it! What the hell is wrong with you! Are you deaf? Can’t you smell the blood? Can’t you?!
But you smile instead, and move to straddle his lap with your bare thighs, let you bare hips meet his, wrap your arms around broader shoulders, arms that are still pink in color form the blood earlier because you need soap to wash that off -- water is not enough. You smile even when you feel terrified and ready to fall apart at what you’ve just done, smile, smile, smile and hide what really matters behind all the smile, smile, smile.
“Hmmm. No. Just a pest outside...”
You silence whatever question the man might have by pressing your mouth against his, carding a hand through his hair, your other hand reaching between your bodies, reaches for his cock and strokes the length that starts to harden in your palm, coaxing it and feeling the weight of growing arousal against still blood sticky fingers, dirtied nails -- that nail that you use to trace the slit of the that slowly thickening cock. And you're smiling against the kiss that feels hesitant against your lips, but ah, he opens his mouth for you and you feel your teeth pull to a grin just as you feel your lungs asphyxiate from fear because --
Everything is just fine...
Everything is wrong...
(Because you shouldn’t bring your personal fears in to other people’s business. Well done.)
--
[Iruka wakes up with a slight sharp intake of breath, lifting his chin from where it had been resting against his chest. The sky is painted in sunset colors and a hand reaches to block that sky from the Hitomi screen before the transmission cuts off.]