TM Prompt: Talk about something you did that made you feel ashamed of afterwards.
[Delirium of the Endless, Sandman, Vertigo Comics, 625 words]
Delirium knows things, mostly the sort that people would rather she not know about, the sort that they would not speak out loud, secrets they keep even from themselves… It isn’t that she goes looking for the knowledge, it just seems to find her. An innocent walk down the street and suddenly someone else’s thoughts are filling up your head, how can you be blamed for that?
She feels bad about it, though… knowing these things, its an invasion of someone else’s heart and mind, knowing the stuff they kept to themselves…
Deli feels it most keenly because even she has a secret or two that she doesn’t want anyone to know about. Thoughts that, although maybe she can’t keep her sibling Desire from glimpsing them, she keeps hidden as close to herself as she can manage.
It isn’t something she does on purpose, something she wants to do. Not want in a sense of willingly or knowingly pursuing… more in the same way that a body needs sustenance, it wants air, it demands sensation.
So, too, her heart and mind hunger for a thing, a dark forbidden thing. Something that, if most more than suspected it within her, might cause them to turn away from her.
These thoughts are on her mind as she slips out of the mansion and out into the space in her realm that is kept sealed so that no one, not even Patch, can find a way inside. There is a sense of guilt in her even as she moves through the field of flowers toward the red door, a pall that darkens the sky above her… yet there is that rapid beating pulse in her throat and in her breast that urges her forward.
A year ago she would never have thought to do this, she would never have considered it in this way… A year ago she was still a millennia old virgin with no concept of what it truly meant to lust… A year ago it seemed an innocent enough, if somewhat obsessive, filial attachment.
Today, however, it is something completely different. It is something she has put weeks of effort into arranging, into finding the individual. It may not be quite as it might have been, had the proxy not been necessary, but perhaps it will be enough.
Her hand rests on the knob and for several long moments Delirium hesitates. If she never opens the door, ventures within, she can pretend it was never more than a passing thought, a moment of her own madness…
The knob turns beneath her hand and the door is opened from within. A man looks down at her, his broad shoulders filling the frame. The smile he turns down at her is indulgent, yet there is something hidden within it. The hand he holds out to her is enormous, and as she takes the invitation her own hand is engulfed within it.
The lumberjack of a redheaded man draws her through the doorway, and as it closes there is a moment’s glimpse of the space beyond. For a moment it is a campsite, with a flickering fire where a small and terrified madling might huddle as her most Beloved Brother wraps an innocently comforting arm around her shoulders. For a moment the space is dominated by an enormous bed where a girl kneels, so overcome by nervousness and excitement that her hands cannot manage the buckle of her Beloved’s belt. For a moment it is an Endless plain where, should they choose, two individuals might explore limitless possibilities.
As the door closes, a sigh escapes as the two figures, now enshrouded in darkness, merge into one. The sigh waits, an amorphous cloud of tangible shame awaits its mistress.
Delirium knows things, mostly the sort that people would rather she not know about, the sort that they would not speak out loud, secrets they keep even from themselves… It isn’t that she goes looking for the knowledge, it just seems to find her. An innocent walk down the street and suddenly someone else’s thoughts are filling up your head, how can you be blamed for that?
She feels bad about it, though… knowing these things, its an invasion of someone else’s heart and mind, knowing the stuff they kept to themselves…
Deli feels it most keenly because even she has a secret or two that she doesn’t want anyone to know about. Thoughts that, although maybe she can’t keep her sibling Desire from glimpsing them, she keeps hidden as close to herself as she can manage.
It isn’t something she does on purpose, something she wants to do. Not want in a sense of willingly or knowingly pursuing… more in the same way that a body needs sustenance, it wants air, it demands sensation.
So, too, her heart and mind hunger for a thing, a dark forbidden thing. Something that, if most more than suspected it within her, might cause them to turn away from her.
These thoughts are on her mind as she slips out of the mansion and out into the space in her realm that is kept sealed so that no one, not even Patch, can find a way inside. There is a sense of guilt in her even as she moves through the field of flowers toward the red door, a pall that darkens the sky above her… yet there is that rapid beating pulse in her throat and in her breast that urges her forward.
A year ago she would never have thought to do this, she would never have considered it in this way… A year ago she was still a millennia old virgin with no concept of what it truly meant to lust… A year ago it seemed an innocent enough, if somewhat obsessive, filial attachment.
Today, however, it is something completely different. It is something she has put weeks of effort into arranging, into finding the individual. It may not be quite as it might have been, had the proxy not been necessary, but perhaps it will be enough.
Her hand rests on the knob and for several long moments Delirium hesitates. If she never opens the door, ventures within, she can pretend it was never more than a passing thought, a moment of her own madness…
The knob turns beneath her hand and the door is opened from within. A man looks down at her, his broad shoulders filling the frame. The smile he turns down at her is indulgent, yet there is something hidden within it. The hand he holds out to her is enormous, and as she takes the invitation her own hand is engulfed within it.
The lumberjack of a redheaded man draws her through the doorway, and as it closes there is a moment’s glimpse of the space beyond. For a moment it is a campsite, with a flickering fire where a small and terrified madling might huddle as her most Beloved Brother wraps an innocently comforting arm around her shoulders. For a moment the space is dominated by an enormous bed where a girl kneels, so overcome by nervousness and excitement that her hands cannot manage the buckle of her Beloved’s belt. For a moment it is an Endless plain where, should they choose, two individuals might explore limitless possibilities.
As the door closes, a sigh escapes as the two figures, now enshrouded in darkness, merge into one. The sigh waits, an amorphous cloud of tangible shame awaits its mistress.