Dream § 007
He's small, a sliver of black and silver sliced against the earth.
it happens so fast, a two second flicker of time between the blink of one eye and a gurgle of laced breath, fingers clutch, unclutch, hard, harder, jagged, then not at all. fifteen, maybe sixteen at most, and you might think he's too young to be plunging a blade into a throat, watching life bleed its way into earth, but he killed his first man when he was only six. the man was so large, like a mountain, and he was so small, he thought if he wasn't careful the mountain would step on him and crush him to pieces.
The earth tastes like blood when it fills his mouth, and he's not sure if it's his or someone else's, and then he's not sure where his mask went. But somehow it's okay because he's got dirt and grass and blood for a mask, covering up half his face.
His voice is choked, and then he sputters when he inhales copper-flavored mud through his nose. A hot hand comes down on the back of his neck and presses him down into earth to make him understand the magnitude of its silence, the vibration of life and decay all rolled up in the muck underneath him. He doesn't understand the living part so much as he does the decay. That part's the easier half of a formula that never made sense, but he only ever was just a statistic, a number in a sea of numbers with no name, because he's not supposed to exist.
and sometimes he just falls so hard and doesn't remember how hard feels, when he hits the ground with shattered knees and hands that don't remember what it was like when he didn't have to fight. he's lost count of how many hearts he's broken in the grip of a hand that was too small to be plunged into chests that large, and it's for everything, but means nothing because he doesn't know why he's doing any of it. he doesn't ask questions because it's not his place to. he's only numbers with no name or face attached to them.
There's a meaning to this, the ebb and the flow between the hot pulse of life and its erosion, and he thinks he can feel the earth breathe under him when he slams his hands down on grass and rears back up, fast and quick and hot like fire. There's a method to this, and it's all silent and harsh and maybe he might just die this time around, but that searing thread of sensation that stabs and drives and rocks through him in waves is almost as good as the pain, and the pain is what reminds him that he's not just a collection of zeros with a nine-seven-two thrown in the middle; that he's still got some kind of human something left in him.
It's easy to lose yourself in it, with how much of you has to be cut out and silenced. And it finally came down to this, a mouthful of blood-flavored dirt and grass rubbing against his face, split in half by heat so violent, he thinks it might just drive right through him.
The earth opens its mouth and swallows up the single hoarse sound he makes, gone unheard by anyone else but him.
*He stares up at the sky above him. Rain smells like it's on the way, but it might just be a trick of nature. He'd slept out here, in the grass, in the dirt, thinking he'd feel comfortable closer to the earth than further away from it. Memories had a funny way of catching up with him when he least expected it. He briefly wonders how old he must've been in this one. Sixteen, seventeen maybe. Far too young.
A sigh. His hand closes around the screen of the Dreamberry.
Everything goes black.*