one day, you will understand. but that day is not today.

[thepull_mods]

Who: Siren's Port
When: The night of Thursday, October 20th into the morning of Friday, October 21st.
Where: In the mind, in the dreams, in the unconscious of the sleepers.
Summary: The final night.
Warnings: These dreams may be considered not safe for work, with violence, gore, death, underlying sexual themes and other mentions of graphic nature. Having them is completely voluntary. They will strike your character when they are asleep (and if they do not sleep, your character may be pulled into a trance-like state for an undetermined amount of time, at the mun's discretion).

Reactionary logging is encouraged, and feel free to use this post to do just that. Anyone hoping to do dream-walking and other psychic-related shenanigans should ask for permission first, though. And, of course, there will be one log per day of the dreams that happen at night for the entire event.

There is a gore and disturbing images warning tonight. Please be aware that there may be triggering themes.



No more pain. No more suffering. Freedom is yours at last. There is rain and dew and brightness wonderful finally free at last no more darkness

All of it is yours. And you walk under the beacon of street lamps, smiling, laughing, twisting, turning.

You can't be late, now. Mother is calling for you

You run, like a small child hurrying home.

Darkness. Complete darkness. You jerk your head around, hoping for one small ray of light, but it doesn't come.

Then there's a growl, like a low roar echoing through the dark. Small tremors quake through your body as you turn your head slowly, staring behind you. That small ray of light you hoped for his here, but it's not alone. Dim, gray shadows linger there as a pair of red eyes peers through. White teeth with just a touch of slobber glisten against it. A large paw advances towards you.

You're running now, too afraid to look back. You can still hear that low growl behind you, inching closer and closer each second. Your legs aren't moving fast enough. Mind racing, heart pounding, breath rigid, you beg to escape. Your mind goes through those important faces of your life just before a sharp pain tears through your back. You fall. The sound of glasses skittering across the ground echo above the growls, but only for a moment.

Then there's a pair of feet. Small, delicate. The face doesn't match. A darkened expression with tears misting the blue eyes. Blood is dripping down her face, mixing with the few tears that she lets escape.

"We were going to be... good friends."

CRUNCH.

The bag you have, the packet of notes and belongings you took with you from that lonely, dark (corrupted) place is heavy. Too heavy for where you're going.

"Nothing needed, nothing gained," you whisper with a smile. You start to drop things along your path, breadcrumbs in case you need to find your way back.

(you won't go back never go back never)

never

The sound comes first: small, constant, high-pitched and animal. It is everywhere, a single note piercing the dark in every direction. You put your hands over your ears, recite an old rhyme and an older prayer. Nothing blocks it out. You give up, and keep walking.

The damp comes second: there is mud under your bare feet. Smudges and smears of it cling to your skin, feet sinking ankle-deep into the uneven ground. It is cold, and the cold unnerves you more than the mud. You are sure in your dream that you are never cold anymore. But you are now, and the sensation bites like a sickness through your skin.

The smell comes third: the rolling reek of death, recent and still-red and ancient lingering decay all at once. It is the smell of spoiling flesh. Rot, burrowing into your nose and your throat, smearing itself across the hidden walls of your lungs. It is a wet smell, and you know that it will never leave you.

You keep walking, one hand pressed to the rock-and-earth next to you because you still cannot see. The air is stagnant in the tunnels. If you cannot find fresh air soon, you are sure that the wet smell flowing into your lungs will drown you soon.

The lights come last: small pale flickers creeping up from the muddy earth, and slowly, finally, you realize you can see. The muddy earth under your feet is a black, bloody red, and your hand has left a long gory streak of it on the wall of the mines to mark your passing.

There are three small teeth near your foot.

The small, constant, animal sound suddenly stops, and your stomach lurches so violently that you wake at once.

One page. Two page. Pen. Picture. Book.

Breadcrumbs. That's all they are. They're useless to you now. Where you're going, there will always be food. There will always be love. You're going home.

Come. Come away.

Soon, Mother. Soon.

You are very much awake.

You cannot speak. You cannot move. You cannot blink your eyes, move your limbs or head, or give any kind of indication that you are still conscious. Even wiggling your fingers is impossible. The steady rise and fall of your chest and the beeping of a heart monitor are the only signs that you are anything more than a corpse.

But you are very much awake. You can feel the worn-down mattress of the hospital bed beneath you, the old cotton gown on your body, the tubes and IVs lashing you to the bed, penetrating your arms with the slow drip of cold fluid that hurts as it flows into you. You see and hear everything in the blank white room around you.

People walk by the doorway in front of your bed, some you know and some total strangers, some doctors and some people who have no business being in a hospital-but none of them bother to notice you. No one looks closely enough to see your eyes frantically moving back and forth and the pain on your face as you struggle to move, to blink, to tilt your head, anything to tell them you’re still alive.

Only one person notices you. There’s someone sitting at the foot of your bed. Sometimes she is a beautiful woman with long brown hair, and sometimes she is someone else, perhaps not even a woman-but she is absolutely someone very familiar and cherished to you. She sings to you, talks to you, sometimes holds your hand and strokes your hair. Her voice and her touch are the only comfort you have, the only trace of emotion in this cold medical hell.

“Wake up. Please, wake up,” she says. Even she doesn’t notice that your eyes are open, that you’re trying to get her attention. You try to squeeze her hand, make a noise, give her any indication at all that you hear her, but you are completely helpless. A near-lifeless corpse, just a sack of organs and meat living as long as that machine stays plugged in.

She pays no attention to the room around her. You are the only thing she cares about. She does not hear the heavy footsteps nor see the silhouette filling the doorway behind her. It’s the dark shadow of an unknown man. Something glistens in his hand. He approaches slowly and methodically, one step at a time.

You have to warn her. You must protect her. You are the only one who can see him. You try to move, but pain and agony are robbing your strength. Your heart monitor begins to steadily speed up, beeping faster and faster along with your pulse.

“Wake up,” she whispers. “Please, wake up.” Her eyes fill with tears. The man stands behind her now, and you can see the malice in his eyes.

You open your mouth to yell, scream, do anything to alert her to the approaching shadow, but your voice doesn’t work. You are helpless but to watch as the man raises something over his head. He slams it down, bashing her in the temple, his silhouette vanishing as the strike connects.

She never saw him coming. Her body jerks downward with the blow, collapsing, dead against the foot of your bed where she lies like a broken doll.

You want to scream. You want to scream or cry or do absolutely anything, but you are helpless. Worthless. You sat here and watched her die and did nothing.

“Why didn’t you wake up?”

Her hands tighten around the sheets. She slowly lifts herself up again. Her skull is caved in on one side, matted with hair and blood starting to drip down the side of her face. Her eyes lock with yours, and she begins to crawl towards you with jerky, inhuman motions.

“I was waiting for you. Why didn’t you wake up?” Her skin face is turning pale, gaunt, decaying before your eyes. The blood pours from her wound, dripping down onto the bed and staining the white sheets as she draws closer and closer. Her weight presses you down into the bed as she crawls over you. Her warm hands have turned cold, the clammy and lifeless touch of a corpse.

She leans over you, staring into your eyes and smoothing her palm over your cheek. Now she can tell that you are there. She knows you were too weak to save her, too weak to do something so simple as make a sound. Her blood is pouring now, dripping on your face, hot enough to burn your skin. Her beautiful face is starting to rot. Your stomach churns nauseously as she leans closer, so close you could hear her breathing, if she had any breath left in her body.

“You’re still sleeping,” she whispers coldly. “At least give me a kiss goodnight.”

She presses her lips to yours, and the stinging taste of chemicals fills your mouth, burning like acid all the way down your throat. The fire spreads through you, searing every nerve with hellish pain, eating your body away from the inside out. You can feel every second of it as one by one, your organs start to fail and your muscles begin to waste away.

The last thing you see before your vision fades is red. Red blood on white skin and sheets.

The lamplights all wink out, one by one, as you pass them, down the long and empty streets and to a grove of trees and various plants. They sprout in front of you like wildfire, beckoning with colors, sweetness, and desire. You haven't eaten in days. You're starving.

You walk into the grove of apple trees, unfettered by any obstacles.

You pluck one of the fruits down for yourself and devour it slowly, chewing on the skin and then the meat of the apple itself.

His skin is made of old and tattered newsprint, and his lips move as he leans forward to light your cigarette for you. But you don’t hear anything, as if he’s at the bottom of a deep pool and you’re looking down on him, laying far below on the sand. And you keep looking at him, it’s like touching the tender gap where a tooth used to be: you shouldn’t, but you keep at it, as if the feeling is going to change, as if it’s going to bring anything but a sharp pain and a sudden well of blood.

But there is no blood. He’s bloodless, and you are too. Your arms are lank, like birchwood branches, pale in this graying version of your clothes - and the blood is crawling out from underneath your fingernails, fat grubs of the stuff, crawling down your arms, under your shirtsleeves, working down, down - No, it isn’t blood, it’s colorless, bloodless, fat but fat with you, with something pulled from deep inside your chest - your soul, you don’t know where that connection came from, but it’s true, as soon as you’ve thought it, you know that it’s true. Your soul, and it’s crawling out of you, eking its way onto the floor and out under the door, the heavy door, the heavy stone door, and it’s then you hear someone start to laugh, but it sounds more like a cough, except it goes on and on and on.

Your chest hurts. You press one hand against your hurting chest and stare down at someone you don’t recognise - you, but pressed flat, pressed thin, and for a moment, you really do hear the whisper of his voice, you haven’t heard it in nearly three years. When you look up, his smile is wrenched on his face, wrong, but it should be wrong, he’s dead here, and dead men don’t know how to smile.

I’m sorry, you want to say, but sorry for what, you don’t kill him, not really, could never, everyone should know, everyone will know. I’ll change it, you want to say, and even that sticks somewhere inside of you.

You look away when you hear the scream, a high, thin sound, like a frightened baby, and something of it tears at your nerves - and when you look back, he’s gone, and your father’s chair is standing in the corner with its high back turned toward you. Smoke rises gently, wreathing in the space just above it like a ghost, but there is no smell, you’d recognise that smell and it isn’t there, and whatever is in that chair is not something that you want to see, whatever is in that chair is watching you, and the path of your soul has changed now, crawling toward the chair, it is not your father, you never want to see your father again, you hate your father -

Your chest hurts. You press one hand against your hurting chest, but it isn’t your hand - it’s his hand, James’ hand, and the fingernails are hard and black and cracked and filled with gravedirt, and he’s standing next to you, smiling at you, his teeth are rotted pegs in his mouth, and there is nothing of his face that you know.

“You’ll do it,” he says. His voice creaks like old leather. His tongue is purple. “You always betray your friends.”

“Good for nothing,” murmurs the thing in the chair. The smoke spirals tighter. It isn’t rising from the chair, but drifting into it, sucked inexorably down.

I’m sorry, you want to say, but you can’t, and you realise that you’re the one laughing, a dry, cracked sound, one that you can’t stop. You swallow; you swallow again - the front of your shirt is sticky with blood -

In James’ house - a house that you do not know - you kneel in the front hall with your hand pressed against James’ sunken chest, your fingernails dark with dirt. His eyes are open and empty and in the corner of the room, the chair’s back is turned toward you, and it’s the thing in it that laughs, and on the floor, James turns into Jack, pale and wan, his shirtfront stiff with old blood, and he’s trying to smile but dead men don’t smile, he’s died time and time and time and time again, always your fault -

“You’ll do it,” he says, and blood bubbles from between his lips, dripping down his chin, and when you go to wipe it away, you fingers are shaking and already stained with the stuff. “You’ll do it. You always hurt your friends, good for nothing, you’ll do it - ”

Your cell is like a child’s drawing of a cell, gray and cold, and the bars are high up on the wall. Outside, the endless crash of waves break and ebb and break and ebb, and your hands are still red, bright red, and the thing in your father’s chair stands, its fingers long and gray and rotten, and it turns on you, gliding across the floor, silent, it’s the silence that is the worst, and when it puts its hood down, its mouth is a hole of teeth but it has James’ eyes, silent and cold and staring, you’ll do it, the world will go the way it’s meant to go, and nothing stops those rotted
hands from touching your face, a caress that feels like raw meat, and its thin and rank lips lower toward yours -

It tastes far too sweet.

Safe; surrounded by other of your kin, that is how you feel you ought to feel. Although you do not look anywhere other than directly before you to the deep blue expanse of sky, unable to spare much effort to do so without compromising the speed of your wings, you know that there are others scattered far below and around you.

A small dove like you should be faster than them. Their wings are large- they glide while you flap endlessly, just to stay up, in the hopes of finding the slightest current of air to carry you as the wind seems to be carrying them. Perhaps it's their size-- a raven to a dove has an advantage, there.

Flapping of wings, louder and closer now; you hadn't noticed it before above the sound of the beating of your own, your vision hemmed in by flutters of black, the occasional shadow streaking down before you. Reflexively, you glance down to the earth as though their patterns are meant to warn you of something.

Not a single raven flies below you now.

It's not adrenalin from soaring so high that tells you to dive down and away towards the ground; it's from your fear. You think of their size, their beaks, their love of prey that yet hasn't been turned towards you. Flying amongst them is only endangering you. How could you think you would be protected within such a barrier?

As though to prove that, a claw (or perhaps the edge of a wing, too fast, too panicked to even tell) buffets your flattened wings, and another, and while your eyes sting from the gust that only tunnels you down further to flat, cruel earth, you don't need to blink or look to see that sea of feathery black surrounding you-

And you plummet-

If it were a falling dream, you would have broken your neck. But a bird knows how to catch a gust before treading on the floor.

Ravens, on the other hand, know how to break your neck for you. You're allowed a brief, hopeful second to jump into the air once more (your last freedom) before suddenly you are battered down, horizontal, the sky spinning above you and blackened- Try as you might, you can't stop looking, those sharp beaks jabbing at your wings repeatedly rising back into your vision more painted with blood every time the birds raise their heads. Of course your distinction between colours can't pick up the red on their black, but the sensation of stabbing and heat leaking out in those spots and that glimmer of liquid slicked over the bone there is too coincidential to be anything less than the truth.

When more of them gather around you to pick at your body as yet untouched you shriek, a truly frightened scream for your life. But it sounds so pretty a call- who would suspect such fear behind it and come to your aid? It only seems to spur on the jabbing now tearing, rending, your breaths expanding through your abdomen and not your throat, the heat mixed with the coldness of beak and roughened, dragging wings-

They're not kind enough to pluck at your neck after they break it. Your final plea screeches out with your blood through the gap of your throat- and a snap.

You almost choke on the sweetness, on the desire of the apple, whose core is like a star.

There is no sound save the whisper of breath - yours and the one beside you. No sight save that of the Elder Emperor, with his long beard and cruel choice, his eyes colder than anything you've ever felt as he stares at you with ice-blue eyes dispassionately, waiting.

You look to the side and see yourself, yet it is not you. His eyes are calm, so calm.

Your hands, tiny little chubby hands, reach out as one and clasp each other tight before you both look back towards your Emperor, your uncle.

He has his answer: neither of you can forfeit the other’s life.

Neither of you can chose any other way, save each other. After all, you’re a child and so is he and in your limited understanding of the world you know only one truth - he is your other half, your twin.

You will always choose him, just as he will always choose you.

A sudden gust, harsh, frigid, unrelenting chills you to the bone and you look up...and up...and up before a sudden, insistent tugging at your hand snaps your gaze back down. There is desperation mirrored in your eyes as those little fingers clamp around each other, twisting and clawing to hold on that moment longer, so focused on each other as they sunder the last physical connection between you, and you don’t know whose voice is the louder, but the uncomprehending anguish is clear in the shrill screams that rip out of childish throats.

~*~

There is nothing, nothing at all, save an oppressive darkness - the kind that seeps into the marrow, steals your breath and leaves you gaping, scrambling for air, panic-filled eyes wide as you stand in a frozen stasis.

And then the sound of feet, the echoing resonance of water splashed with each step as you run and run and run, never looking back, not daring even a peek for fear of what you’ll find, the only sound that of your breath, each shallow, labored, as if you’ve been sprinting this marathon for a small eternity, with no sign of stopping-

- until you slam full tilt into a wall.

Gone are the impersonal halls -all that’s left is a field of pristine white and unforgiving stone and a tower that’s impossibly high.

Even so, even now, that distance doesn’t matter to you.

Neither does the frigid wind and constant snow, nor they way the cold seeps in through your skin and chills the bones, freezing tiny feet or numbing little fingers. All that matters to you is getting to him, so you take that first step, scramble for purchase with soft little fingertips and toes in the cracks and crevices in rough-hewn stone - after all, you can’t feel the sharp edges anyways. Not even a little. Instead you just climb and climb and get up each time you fall to try again.

And all the while you watch as the bodies of the other sinners tumble over the edge of the cliff, to join you in this valley.

Your fingertips bleed, toes split open on the sharp rock, little spider-webs of scars opening across your skin like gossamer threads, staining everything you touch with crimson blooms as you drag and climb and drag and climb on endless repeat until the bodies stop falling down like heavy rain.

They just stop but you don't. You mark your progress with stone stained red, win inch upon impossible inch closer to your goal, closer to him until that last body falls.

Your Emperor, your uncle, barely recognizable as the regal figure he once was as he lurches to his feet and puts the point of his sword to his own throat.

Your birth was the beginning of misfortune...

And when he looks at you with the mad eyes of someone long since dead, grimaces in the horrifying parody of a smile as he slits his own throat with his final command.

Live...pay for that sin.

You're screaming, screaming and screaming, the faint echo of his own despair drifting down to reach and torment you as you beg for help you know won't arrive, beg for answers that will never come.

Is it a sin just to be born? All we ever did was be born together...just to be born...

You don't know anymore - your broken mind can't hold onto the concept as hope dies with your Uncle and you stay where you'd fallen.

Like the mountain of corpses that surround you.

And as the snow falls with a gentle caress, burying you gently, and your soft, cherubic face thins, become gaunt to match the constant ache in your belly, your chapped lips, cracked and bleeding move to give the only evidence that you still live, whisper a single name like a wordless prayer on your tongue.

(And still, you can hear it, those steps. Still running, splashing across the surface, faster now.)

Then silence all around, a deceptively serene quiet that pervades the senses, until they're screaming to hear sound - any sound.

Any sound, except the snap of cloth as it’s buffeted mercilessly in the wind, the sudden whistle of something falling too hard and too fast. You raise your eyes, wide cerulean blue sunken in a gaunt face revealed from behind the curtain of muted gold, to stare with the sudden shock and joy of seeing him again.

But no.

There’s a screaming denial in your mind, the desperate shrieking of a broken soul because that flash of joy is gone before it’s even fully realized, replaced with a horrid twisted, wrenching within your very being. For a moment, you can only sit in stare with an abject horror, your already broken mind shattered beyond repair because your other half, the one being that gives the beat of your heart any meaning at all…the twist of magic so deeply entwined within you…

Gone.

Every last trace and dram of magic, of presence. Gone.

Empty. That single breath of a moment that leaves you sitting there, an empty husk of a disappearing shell as you stare in horror at the unmoving form.

You crawl on hands and knees across your frozen prison and feel your soul recoil further at the slide of warm slick blood that burns your skin, until you have his broken, shattered form clutched tight against you in one last mockery of an embrace.

Silence all around, a deceptively serene quiet that pervades the senses, until they're screaming to hear sound - any sound.

Any sound, when you hear the gentle crunch of snow under light steps.

A hand.

Long and slender, powerful.

It lifts you up, and with it, your eyes raise to see a man. Regal and resplendent, tawny eyes filled with something you don’t recognize. Something that strikes a muted fear in your heart.

Kindness.

(But you can hear it again, louder now. Those steps, running, running, running, splashing across the surface...)



You're standing in the dark.

No, it's not entirely dark; there's a glass case in front of you, and it's the one point of light in the room, an illuminated oblong of light with a large, sweeping black...cape inside. It's Batman's cape, if the scalloped edges mean anything, seen from behind.

Approaching the cape, you begin to circle, stepping around to the other side. It's unsurprising, somehow, what you see; instead of the bat sigil there is a large S; the same as Superman wears on his chest, but it's burned into it, seared deep into the fabric, black on black.

A voice behind you says 'What do you think you're doing?' Thick words, heavy and dark and angry. 'That doesn't belong there.' But whether the voice means the S or the costume in the case you never find out. When you turn toward the sound of the voice, the world spins out from underneath you. You fall. Green stars are falling--green...

You're lying on your back, looking up, suddenly aware of a feeling of weakness gripping you. Your body is fragile and powerless, and the world is so distant, so big, and white.

Two people are leaning over you. A beautiful woman with a warm smile is holding you out, looking down into your eyes. You feel warmth and longing, and you reach out with one tiny hand--an infant hand. Why are you so small? Too small to speak. Too small to tell her not to make you go.

"Goodbye, my sweet Kal-El."

No. Please. Don't leave me.

Down, down. The soft embrace of a cold cradle, not the warmth of your mother. She buries her face in your father's neck as darkness swallows you up, and then there's warmth, yellow light soaking into you. It feels like the sun, but it also feels wrong. It's not the sun you knew. You feel strong, warm, safe. You feel sleepy.

The cot begins to shake, and then there's bright light--so bright you close your eyes and your parents vanish. So bright that you begin to cry.

Lara!

The shaking gets harder and harder, it's hot, and hard to cry and all you want is your mother to hold you again and tell you that everything's alright. You're crying. Why won't she come?

And then the light is gone. Through the window you see a huge, red giant. It fills the whole window, then vanishes as you rotate, revealing instead the blue, white and green planet far beneath you. Just for a few seconds you see Krypton and one of her moons, and then you rotate again. The sun. Rotate. Krypton.

And then you hear them--you hear them scream. The dying scream of billions of voices on the planet below.

Rotate. The sun. Rotate. A planet chasmed with bright light, the core visible. Rotate. The sun. Rotate.

And that's when it hits you--a wave of energy like a supernova strikes the tiny ship, and you scream into light-drive. The planet remains visible for several seconds after you're already gone, paralysed, frozen in pieces, burned into your mind's eye. And then there is black. You sleep.

When you open your eyes, you're on your knees in a flattened corn field, looking up at a bald man in a long black coat. The scene flickers, not in perspective but in scenery, from the cornfield to a dark city skyline, back to the cornfield, back again, and as it does so the man changes, even if the black coat stays the same. The scene focuses on the night, and as it does the richness of the memory - for this is certainly a memory - flickers in. It's visceral, crisp and perfect, as though the owner of the mind it's from has perfect photographic memory.

The rain that pours down is thick and heavy all of a sudden. It beats at your face and stings your eyes, but you force them open. Your shirt clings to your chest, and every breath is agony; every breath is forced, dragging in after the next one, fighting. You're human, your heart thumping in your throat, and you know that you may very well die.

Opposite you the dark haired man is holding a dagger. It shines, ethereal, an electric blue like a beacon that cuts through the rain and the night. It looks like rock, not metal; kryptonite. Your brain provides the rock's name just as it gave you the name of your mother, of the dying planet, of the red sun Rao before you were stolen away from it.

And Rao is here too. The book of Rao. It's not actually a book--not really. It's a device, and it's going to take you to a new world - a New Kandor. If you don't get that dagger away from Zod, then he will stay here, and he will become a tyrant, ruling over the Earth with his powers. You've seen that future and you don't like it--you can still taste the dirt in your mouth, still feel the claustrophobia of the red sun in the sky above you.

So you come to blows, and you take the knife through your stomach willingly, because sacrifice is the only way to win, and as you fall off the edge of the building, Zod vanishes, transported away to his punishment at the hands of his Kandorian army, for betraying them, and for killing the woman who carried his child.

At least you will die on Earth, you think, surrounded by the people you love, with the people you belong to. You'll die human.

And you're falling--falling. When you hit the floor you will wake with a start, jolting out of bed, adrenaline pulsing through you. It's how the dream always ends.

But then the fruit yields to your lips, to your taste, and to your stomach. You eat ravenously, joyfully, as though this small fruit is a feast only for you.

There is darkness. Black. You're blind. Silence. There is nothing here. For a moment, you hope that this is a respite. A restful sleep. But you can feel. You feel yourself turning your head. Metal. There is metal in the air, thick and cloying and hovering near your nose.

Breathe in. Metal and water. Is that aftershave? You can't tell. There is no one here, just metal. Is this blood? You look around, trying to find your way out of the darkness. You reach out a hand- and something falls. A pearl- no, a small bead of light, pure light, falls into your hand. You turns it around and finds it stained, red and dripping with blood. The smell of metal was even stronger, so much stronger. It is blood. You know that now.

It doesn't surprise you.

You can hear water dripping. Sounds, breaking the silence. Water hitting metal, hitting something solid. You turn around and start moving towards it. There must be a way out. This is a cave, and a cave has a mouth. You don't know how you know it is a cave, but somehow you just do. A cave. You walk, and walk, and walk. The water doesn't seem to get any nearer, or farther away. There is nothing in your path. Is there even air? You don't know. Do you breathe? Your heart is beating; you turn a corner.

Light.

It is so bright that it blinds you, scars your eyelids. You swallow a scream, throw yourself back, and there is a sudden rush of sounds. So loud, crowding into your head. Screams and shouts and thuds- like falling bodies. Tiny wriggling sounds. You open your eyes slowly and it's dark again. There's only one light, and it's in your hand. It is now a maggot, trying to crawl under your skin. You stare at it for a moment before you scream, stepping back, back. You step on something soft. You don't want to look, but you already know. It's a corpse.

Corpses, all around you. The one maggot drops from your hand and burrows itself into the corpses, and there are maggots everywhere, crawling, wiggling, eating. You can hear the tiny wiggling sounds they make. There are maggots in the blind eyes that stare at you accusingly before they are eaten. Blue eyes all stained with blood, with holes in their pupils.

You recognise them. You don't know their names, but you know them. You know who they are. You know that their deaths are your fault. All of them. The maggots eating and eating and eating and they are suddenly green. Green-white-green-white and streaked with red. You tried to move but you were stuck, the sole of your shoe stuck to the ground. Here, here was the water you have been hearing. It's blood. Congealed blood.

You turn and run but laughter follows you. Mad laughter. A muzzle gun flash right in front of you. A gun shot. Light is falling from the ceiling to your head your face your hands and blood is everywhere. The metal is choking you. You can't breathe anything else but blood. It's sinking inside you. There is something symbolic here but you can't think, you can't think.

Bells.

Heavy tolling bells. The light stops. The blood is gone. You stand still, and listen. Heavy church bells. Perhaps this is peace. Perhaps the nightmare is over. Perhaps the bells cleanses you of your sins. You can feel carpet beneath your feet. You reach out, and there is warmth, suddenly. Warmth and wetness, against your hand. A person's face, streaked with tears. You know who she is. You know why she's crying.

Lightning splits the darkness. You see it coming. Red light. In a sudden rush, you push the face away, then-

There's nothing left. Not even a smell of charred, burnt flesh.

The juices from the apple flow down your lips and over your chin, gushing with every new bite. It's heaven. It's perfect. You lick your lips greedily even when you hear them, even when you hear the group begin to cluster around you. They want some too. They want a piece.

You smile and keep eating. "There's plenty for all of you!"

They lick their lips, their teeth.

They begin to descend on you.

"You didn't know shadows could smell. But there it is, thick in your nose. It's like smoke, only it's colder, crisper and almost sweet. It pulses, heaves and moves over you like like something alive. It chokes out everything: sight and sound and thought.

But it's all right. Because you're still you, even if everything about you permeates, bleeds darkness. You can still think. And the shadows will help you do what's important. It'll help you do what's right.

Like erasing the monsters that surge up from the ground at your feet: The Heartless. They sway, stagger and lunge like fiends. No time to think, only time to act. The dark will help just for a little bit- will help you rake your claw across enemies, bring down heaving shadows ten times your size. -- Rip. Tear. Rend. Because you need to keep everyone safe.

But you're careful. Don't get swept up in the frenzy. Don't get caught up in the feeling, and the power. You've seen what it does to people, to your friends. You're too smart for that.

It’s easy to get lost in it, to let instinct take over. To let the dark sweep over you like a current, to pull you beneath its waves like an undertow. There’s so much power here. You’re in the air, and then scrambling across the ground so fast that claws scrape deep gashes into the pavement. It’s irresistible, excitement escalating with each new conquest. You topple one after another, moving on even before the last dissipates into nothing.

But it’s not enough. When all the monsters are gone, something still draws you, tugs at your heart. Something you have to have.

What you’re really looking for is not a something, but a someone.

You can’t stand the maddening itch the incessant need to be with them, to be close enough to hear their heartbeat. To feel it. They're so very important and so very close.

-- looked everywhere for you --

You have to find their light. You have to seek them out and be near, and so does the dark. And you’ll tear through anything to find it. You’ve been looking so long, you need. them. You need their heart.

-- come back to you--

Find them, tear, find them, rip, find them, rend them-

There you are."

Flesh tears. Blood is drawn. The world becomes an amalgamation of black and red and white, the sky dotting in and out of existence. And all you do is chew, chew, just like what they're doing. Their claws rake up and down your legs and arms, and still you keep eating your apple until it's almost gone--

And then they stop. They back away.

A fleshy chair begins to come into view and you drop the fruit in surprise.

You smile.

"Mother."







The horde of monstrosities part to make room for the queen, for the Mother, who says nothing. Her long talons and her disfigured head are hideous in the darkness, but the sight is welcome to you. This...this is what you've been waiting for. She's been calling to you.

You walk to her, up to her throne, with the others snapping and nipping at your heels and hands.

You come before her, smiling, arms outstretched.

"I came home, Mother. I'm here."

Her jaws open and close upon your face.

There is pain.

This world has moved on.

Corruption. Despair. Darkness. This world rests on the brink of ruin, just waiting to teeter over the edge and crumble into the (A)byss. Slavery, experimentation, murder... This is just the beginning.

The cruelties of this world are rooted in the very essence of the people, in their souls and in their hearts. (And non-hearts.) They have a source, one tied to the true darkness of this miserable excuse for an island. You know this. You know what it will be like. You've seen the truth for yourself. Nothingness, Light, Dark, Order, Chaos... All of these words are meaningless. They have no context in the world that is gone away. A world beneath the ashes of the Darkness still exists. This is the world that we live in.

This world is no more.

Open the door. Open your eyes. See the truth for yourself.

Listen.

The world will be lit in fire as the corruption will finally open up and split the earth in two. The people will be divided by blood, grouped together, brother fighting brother. There will be swords and guns, Keyblades and Chains, magic and the mind. No one will be safe. (The time of despair is here.)

Watch.

Look upon the world and what you have wrought.

There is Jack Vessalius, who walks into the fire with his sword and a smile. Sirius, who casts a dark charm into the sky to tear his enemies apart. LivioRazlo, who breaks into the dark with a raucous laugh and a smile. They are only a few of the people who will begin the change, who will open the hearts of their brethren and cast the darkness back into the world.

Batman will finally fall to his urges and kill for the first time. Then, he will not stop. The police will fall to the masses of "Heroes", now changed and warped with bitterness and strife. Blood will flow from their victims, from Origami and Tiger who tried to stop the madness. They will be joined by other bodies, by the broken forms of Franz, Shiroe, and Peter, as Tifa, Red Hood, and Ventus succumb to the madness and destruction.

None shall be spared.

Yazoo will rip the hearts of out of his brothers and feed them to the monsters that will run rampant during the day and night, the sun forever gone from this tiny shred of island. Demios and Vincent, with Alice Liddel at his side, will pave the way for a grand kingdom for the destruction of humankind (and for their own destruction). The angels will take to the sky with fire and brimstone, dark words and magic raining down upon the masses. The city itself will be a snarl of mayhem and catastrophe, all because of the corruption that has seeped out from the hearts of others.

And in the center there will be nothing but lines of the dead, people who have been cut down. They are too many to name, from Ritsuka and Spike (killed by Helen Magnus), to Lois and Kurt (killed by Superman). Memories shall be destroyed (by that hideous witch) and will bring unknowns together (the likes of Ciel Phantomhive, Joker, and Madara Uchiha). Fire and ash will blot out the sky while Re-l, Caster, Lucifer, and Elaine look on in horror and delight.

All of this is because of you.

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

You say goodnight to the world and it all e n d s.