Prompt Post - Part Five [CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS]
THIS PART IS NOW CLOSED. YOU CAN CONTINUE POSTING FILLS, BUT PLEASE PROMPT ALL NEW THINGS HERE.
Part one here!
Part two here!
Part three here!
Part four here!
Feel free to reprompt posts from parts one, two, three or four in part five once. If you do so, I'd recommend leaving a link to your fill on the original prompt, in case somebody is tracking ( Read more... )
they say he lives among the dead
they say he sees you in your bed
and eats you while you're sleeping
hello, breathes his nightmare, and he greets it like the old friend it is. It crawls in through his eyes, and roots around in his head, scratching and kneading and digging until it has a nice little bloody nest, and it settles down and stays. Sometimes it leaves in the morning. Sometimes he can make it go away, though it laughs at him and promises see you soon i'll be waiting.
But in the end, it doesn't really matter, because the furrows of it's claws scab over and get infected and ooze more fears and worries, and he'll never heal, not with the bells rolling-tolling and moaning-groaning in his head. Not while the raven calls and the shadows answer in a rhythmic give-and-take from his eyes to his ears, and round and back again.
He's not broken, he promises himself. He may be held together with expectations and hopes and dreams, but they're fading fast, and, to be honest, they weren't really that strong to begin with. But he's not broken.
Not yet.
humpty dumpty sat on a wall
humpty dumpty had a great fall
and all the king's horses and all the king's men
couldn't put humpty together again
He clings to his friends, almost too hard. And he knows this, and so he pulls away, only it doesn't help, because when he reaches back out, they say he's being moody and they slap his hand away. He watches the poison spread from their contact, dark and creeping, betrayal crawling up his arm. The shimmering protection that was trust shattered a long time ago, but it's oh so pretty in pieces on the floor. And then the expectations fall, and break among the dreams, and he takes the time to admire the contrasting patterns before hope can drop and break him for good.
i don't understand, he tells his nightmares, and they bare their fangs and smile. we know they say, and come with us and we'll never leave you and we'll be in your head ever and ever until the world dies.
It's comforting, actually.
But Superman smiled at him the other day. It was an accident, Superman thinking he was someone else approaching from the periphery, but it was a smile, and it was happy.
Hope is ever so small, but very hard to kill. Like a cockroach.
So he sits in his darkness, and tries to reassemble his broken puzzle pieces, gluing his friends back together with lies and smiles, and welding his dreams into new shapes.
And he clings to the rhythm pounding along inside his head, because he can use it as a crutch, a wall to pull himself up. He clings to the one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, and holds it tight, close and tight, for now.
Because this one piece hasn't broken yet. And maybe that piece is him. So if he holds it gentle and cups it and feeds it and covers it and lets it grow, to release it into the sky like a firefly in autumn, then maybe he'll be okay.
Because he hasn't broken yet.
And because maybe someday
ring around the rosie
pocket full of posies
ashes, ashes
we all fall down
if he can just
ring around the rosie
what do you suppose we
can do to fight the darkness
in which we drown?
then maybe
ring around the rosie
this evil thing, it knows me
so many ghosts surround me
i can't fall down...
he won't.
Reply
Reply
O_O
Reply
The fact that I read this at midnight, the house is silent, the lights are off and I'm all alone in my room made this fill so much more frightening.
Then, my ten-year-old cousin started to scream and cry in the room next to mine (I assume she woke up from a nightmare) and scared the fudge out of me.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment