Chocolate # 26 - Nostalgia
Flavor: Chocolate [#26 nostalgia]
Rating: PG13 [for a child’s recollection of mature experiences]
Title: Bitter Medicine for a Nonexistent Sickness
Author: Queen451
Summary: The memories are bleak and vivid, surround-sound and fantastic. They are not merely memories for the Sparrow King, they are life times. They are moments. They are feelings and sensations and words and actions. They are real, and at the same time nothing could be as fake.
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|| ???: He wants to scream: “Love me!” but he doesn’t know what he means. ||
“I remember. Many things. So many things.”
Ivory eyes stare off into the distance, at people and places that aren’t really there. That have never been there. That exist only in his mind. Or theirs. The distinction is flimsy and unnecessary in present company, but sometimes pretending to be normal helps him ascertain that he’s not.
“Like Judas the Lord, Judas of Pin-pricks. And what his name meant. One of the twelve apostles of Christ, the one who sold him for a few pieces of silver and a hang-man’s way out. But this Judas was never like that-he was all choices and certainty and clarity in a world that was designed for none of that.”
| Judas: “If you can’t pick one, why not have both? What’s the chance that you’ll die and take me with you, if you betray your leader and still tell them where we are? I know that look on your face-no, it wouldn’t have been any easier if you’d wanted me for my body alone. Besides, I think I’ve told you, someone already owns me. All of me. And guess what? He knows what you’ll do.” |
He sighs, and takes a sip of his tea. He laughs, his teeth chattering against the fine china.
“Yellow, Yellow of Sa-raya, he liked seven cubes of sugar in his tea. Always, seven cubes. If he could have diabetes, he’d have died of it. Like Merfolk -god, he was worse- and that ‘Shuffler who was obsessed with the decaying land mass that is the United States of Drug-Drunk America, Neil. Of Route-66. And Merfolk, which was Idazel.”
| Yellow’s Right Hand: “Master, you’ll rot your teeth out if you keep drinking your tea like this.”
Yellow: “Bullshit, Sousy, I’m already rotten to the core.”
Idazel: “This tea is too bland. Give me a cup’s worth of sweetness.”
Idazel’s First Elite: “Thank Solomon we’re immune to diabetes, else you’ll be giving me a head ache by now. Wait, you usually do, so that is beside the point.”
Idazel: “Hahaha!”
Neil: “What the heck is this? I asked for Sugar Tea, not diluted fairy dust!” |
“I dreamt last night.” He spoke the words slowly, as if the act is sacrilege. Or as if it wasn’t a dream at all. The man sitting across him is silent, has been silent ever since he started speaking. He is here to listen, to know, not to comfort-vehemently, he reminds himself, he will not comfort you.
|| He wonders, when he dies, will someone recall his memories with pain, or will they be completely erased? ||
“Six times. Six times, last night, six times in memory, and multiples more in each. Insatiable, lust-driven, passionate, needy, rough, masochistic…” he pauses, his blank gaze wavering as he contemplated the copper liquid that filled his cup half-way.
“I know sometimes they say you can experience your ‘First Time’ twice, but doing so thirty-five times is just ridiculous.”
| The memories are bleak and vivid, surround-sound and fantastic. They are not merely memories for the Sparrow King, they are life times. They are moments. They are feelings and sensations and words and actions. They are real, and at the same time nothing could be as fake.
Insatiable. Esfield. A bacchius festival of wine and flesh. In the 2nd Master Shuffler’s Private Domain, there is a writhing, moaning, gasping crowd. Women and men, some children here and there for those who would fancy them. And he, the Master Shuffler, at the heart of it all, taking a woman with bottle blonde hair and sky blue eyes whilst a tanned brunette pounds into him from behind. At every thrust, the pendant of topaz that hung around his chest swung like a pendulum. It didn’t tell time, but that wasn’t what it was for, anyway. Waves upon waves of orgasms hit them, continuously but curiously, it seems that they will not stop. Was it the wine? Or was it the night? No one knew. No one cared. Only for the blinding pleasure that crested beyond their reach.
Lust-driven. Octavia. In broad daylight, in the palace of the last czar. Nikkol was pleading, begging, His sister, ‘Tavia, this was his sister. She, for in this life time he is a woman, does not listen to his groveling, instead recites the ancient law. And then, “Convince me. Show me that you are a man who can keep her safe, who can give her what she needs. Take me.” She was in love with his body, his physique, his rippling muscles and the pleasure between his legs. How long had it been? She was still a virgin, by this man’s standards. Her maidenhead was taken on the steps of Czar Ivan XX’s forsaken palace, by a man she would kill five minutes after their last kiss.
Passionate. Solomon. This memory is special, it comes from his first. And incidentally, it is a first. For Solomon’s lover, that is. The girl has just turned eighteen, and by her self-imposed rule, she was not to be touched until said age. Tonight was the night the rule would be broken. She’s a young thing, pretty and with skin loved by the sun. Her eyes are almond shaped, and they are the color of the endless night. Her hair is ink, and silk, and his favorite flower. Lilies. Her breasts are bare, full and hot to the touch. She moans, arches her back, tempts him to go insane. But he won’t. Tonight is special, tonight he will take it slow. They kiss, and it warms his soul’s depths. He thrusts into her, to the hilt, both of them groaning at the alternating pain and pleasure. It is beautiful, but this is not what drew his tears.
Needy. Ulheilee. Not a woman, but a girl. It’s from her memories before the Circle, before her reign. Before salvation. The man who calls himself her father is drunk and she is eager to please. She is sixteen. He is thirty-three. They do it on her bed, with a broken bottle of beer on the floor and the wailing of orphans in the background. It’s quick, and fast, and repetitive. It hurts, it’s her first time. Blood is spilled. She tries to ride him, it becomes more painful. When she wakes up the next day, they do it again. The farce is shattered. They do it every night. His body is aching. But still he does not cry.
Rough. Dawn Earl. On a visit to his first kill’s grave, he meets the man’s wife and his brother. He has always been cruel to those who were not from the Circle. He calls his Right Hand and the brother is restrained as he fucks the woman -Lucy- on top of her husband’s dead body. She cries, and tries to claw his eyes out. He laughs. “No use honey. They’re dead and gone.” She’s no virgin, but by the time he’s through with her, she bleeds like one. Cries like one, too. He goes for the brother next. A twenty-two year old whose name is Al, and who has never known a man’s touch. He comes more than half a dozen times, but the Earl doesn’t care. He bleeds, too, much worse than she. His Right Hand reminds him of his appointments, and they leave. Here is where he cries, because the problem with having a one syllable name is that it’s common, and it sounds the same coming from anyone’s mouth.
Masochistic. Erscheuwe. By his Kirin, Cedric Roy, in his second reincarnation. It’s on the eve of the Polish Independence Day, something that Erscheuwe knows because he reads too much. He’s starting to doubt the Circle, himself, and the world they live in, and he doesn’t want that. He calls Cedric, asking him to make him forget. And both of them know only one thing that can make a man forget. He’s whipped and marked like a bordello girl, and the insults pouring from the strapping black man’s lips are welcome barbs. On his knees, begging for release, being denied and fucked like a bitch. Its sanity, glorious sanity, the truth that he can’t escape anymore, and that he shouldn’t even consider. He had a Circle to lead.
He’s a virgin, all of thirty-five times. And he knows, one night, he’ll see how he lost them all. |
It’s waking up that’s the worst. He feels all six times taking a toll on his child’s body. He feels the white hot shots of pain from his lower back and, for some ludicrous reason, his groin. His back is raw with pain, but there are no markings. His tongue is like rubber in his mouth, and his lips feel swollen even if they’re not. There are tears leaking from his eyes, and these, he is somewhat happy to note, are reconcilable with his existence. They’re his tears.
Shaking his head, he attempts to make sense of what he has been shown.
“Esfield’s pendant, the Raven’s Guilt, it has an ability that was over looked, the last time it was used. That Ganymede died of nervous system shock, didn’t he? It was because the pendant is a life-leech, it drags your mental limits higher, at the same time it cuts off any sensation of release.”
The man nods, taking note. This was what he came here for.
“Nikkol’s sister. She was Octavia’s Sixth Elite. Nina. She was the one who instigated the battle for the czar’s throne, years before. She was in love with Octavia’s throne, the Master Shuffler’s throne, and she was killed because of it. Nina gave birth to a boy before she died. His lineage might still live.”
The memories are being made sense of. Being dissected and inspected. They bring answers to unasked questions. Truths, when the lies are believed. Power, to the wicked, and the wickedly wise.
“The girl Solomon was with, she wasn’t the First Elite’s murderer. They gave her a sentence she didn’t deserve. Ulheilee was pregnant, but the Healers aborted her child. Her rape, years later, by a man who looked the same as her father, and her subsequent pregnancy gives ample reasons for her lack of sanity in her final months on the throne. An Li was right in killing her the way he did.”
His body is humming with remembered pain, and he vows to slip into the Lake of Picasso after this interview. If he remembers anything more, he’ll throw a fit.
“Erscheuwe doubted for one night, and he was cured by the next day. That is all.”
|| ???: Why won’t you love me, why won’t you love me? You loved them, all of them, in many different ways, and don’t you know I can take any one of those ways? Just as long as you love me. Love me. Why won’t you love me? ||
Cohen the Fourth Kirin looks up, his mismatched eyes cold and like mirrors, and he asks, “Is there anything else?”
For the Circle, no. The Sparrow King blinks back tears of remembered pain and agony, and shakes his head. The memories are golden, like sand falling in an hourglass. They come and they go, and if they touch me, they won’t mean anything if they don’t touch you as well.
“No.”
Cohen nods, gets up and brushes his lips against his forehead.
“I’ll see you again, Al.”
He does not reply, it is not expected of him. Dolores and Edna lead him out, and Leila hangs back to ask him if he needed anything.
“Have Emery bring me to Picasso’s Lake.”
The guard comes and takes him to the secluded wing of his mock palace, and he waves a hand to dismiss him.
He slips off his robes, leaves his crown on the cushion. And collapses into the water, made beautiful and colorful by the paintings that lay at the floor, beneath the glass. They shimmer and glitter and they are not memories, for which he is thankful.
The Sparrow King sighs, and swallows stale water. His lungs hitch, and the men and women in his mind who are afraid of water scream in fear and send him memories of death by drowning and torture by water. He ignores them, and tries to remember his memories of water.
There are none.
|| My first memory consists of white walls and ivory eyes just like mine. And a man with amber and gold eyes. ||
When he opens his eyes again, he sees Emery and Lira, and the water on his face hides the tears he sheds for the memories that were not his, for the lives that he never led but is forced to experience.
|| Birds with tiny wings cannot fly. ||
.