Challenge 297
Challenge: 297 - the masks we wear.
Title: the sword of damocles.
Wordcount: 582.
Notes: Wordcount what wordcount. (Oh boy, what a literal take on the prompt.)
Once, he was the boy from the city of masks, and he’s long since lost his own face.
Shift.
He is seven and he loves the feel of wood or porcelain beneath his fingertips, tracing fine curlicues and rows of sequins studding the curve of a jaw and sweep of a cheekbone. Annisele laughs at him, at the silly animals and jesters whose likenesses he dons, but she always stops when he slides on ogre-faces bristling with teeth and lesions; her mouth always narrows to a thin, strained line when he turns to her with plague doctor masks and their dead-eyed stares.
“Lauriam,” his mother says, always a warning, and he reluctantly pulls them off.
Shift.
He is thirteen when he gazes into the abyss for too long and it draws him in like an old friend.
He is thirteen when he shucks the skin of Lauriam and emerges from his chrysalis of shadows and lost hearts. He is thirteen when he becomes Nameless and puts on a new face, hollow-eyed and terrible and desperate for survival; dreaming for too long of a world beyond his soap-bubble universe, he paid the dragon-hearted witch-queen his entry fee without a second thought.
It’s a pity he doesn’t know it at the time, but he will, eventually.
The price of the world was himself.
Shift.
He is eighteen and he’s evaded them for long enough; after five years and four score days, the lancer and the diviner come for him. He's grown bitter and strong and ripe for the picking, an untamed vine to their deadly nightshade. Five years is not enough to overpower them; five years is not enough to force his magic into cruel thorns that rip and tear and choke and crush.
In the shelter of their stronghold he grows and changes again and becomes Marluxia; in time, he bursts into bloom, into something new, something vicious and poisonous veiled by shallow prettiness.
“Such a pretense of civility they try to maintain,” he sneers to the boy with fire in his eyes, “when inside they are all the same, so full of the same disgusting thoughts and desires.”
“Look who’s talking,” the wildfire boy says, and laughs and laughs and laughs.
Shift.
“What of an alliance, dearest?” he purrs, honey-sweet, to the angry girl with the wildcat’s snarl. When she looks at him her eyes are dark with desire and loathing and she smiles, sharp as glass shards.
Shift.
“Don’t think for a second I don’t know what you’re planning,” the academic says coldly at the end of a meeting. “Your simpering subservience fools no one.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marluxia says blithely, as though there aren’t spires of ice crackling and freezing around his head.
Shift.
“Look at me when you say it, princess. Do you think I’ll hurt you?”
The lily-of-the-valley girl stares at him. Her fingers curl and knot around the pencils in her hands as she says, “I think you're a liar,” so softly he almost misses it.
Shift.
Only away from the others, does he allow the façade to fall.
In worlds marked for destruction, he tears them apart from the inside out with festering thorns. “So this is what you really are - rot and choking weeds,” the sniper says when he finds him, and twists space as Marluxia sends thrashing vines sweeping his way. Suspended upside-town, he laughs, a jackal’s harsh bark. “Don’t you worry, pretty boy. I won’t tell a soul.”
Shift.
Title: the sword of damocles.
Wordcount: 582.
Notes: Wordcount what wordcount. (Oh boy, what a literal take on the prompt.)
Once, he was the boy from the city of masks, and he’s long since lost his own face.
Shift.
He is seven and he loves the feel of wood or porcelain beneath his fingertips, tracing fine curlicues and rows of sequins studding the curve of a jaw and sweep of a cheekbone. Annisele laughs at him, at the silly animals and jesters whose likenesses he dons, but she always stops when he slides on ogre-faces bristling with teeth and lesions; her mouth always narrows to a thin, strained line when he turns to her with plague doctor masks and their dead-eyed stares.
“Lauriam,” his mother says, always a warning, and he reluctantly pulls them off.
Shift.
He is thirteen when he gazes into the abyss for too long and it draws him in like an old friend.
He is thirteen when he shucks the skin of Lauriam and emerges from his chrysalis of shadows and lost hearts. He is thirteen when he becomes Nameless and puts on a new face, hollow-eyed and terrible and desperate for survival; dreaming for too long of a world beyond his soap-bubble universe, he paid the dragon-hearted witch-queen his entry fee without a second thought.
It’s a pity he doesn’t know it at the time, but he will, eventually.
The price of the world was himself.
Shift.
He is eighteen and he’s evaded them for long enough; after five years and four score days, the lancer and the diviner come for him. He's grown bitter and strong and ripe for the picking, an untamed vine to their deadly nightshade. Five years is not enough to overpower them; five years is not enough to force his magic into cruel thorns that rip and tear and choke and crush.
In the shelter of their stronghold he grows and changes again and becomes Marluxia; in time, he bursts into bloom, into something new, something vicious and poisonous veiled by shallow prettiness.
“Such a pretense of civility they try to maintain,” he sneers to the boy with fire in his eyes, “when inside they are all the same, so full of the same disgusting thoughts and desires.”
“Look who’s talking,” the wildfire boy says, and laughs and laughs and laughs.
Shift.
“What of an alliance, dearest?” he purrs, honey-sweet, to the angry girl with the wildcat’s snarl. When she looks at him her eyes are dark with desire and loathing and she smiles, sharp as glass shards.
Shift.
“Don’t think for a second I don’t know what you’re planning,” the academic says coldly at the end of a meeting. “Your simpering subservience fools no one.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marluxia says blithely, as though there aren’t spires of ice crackling and freezing around his head.
Shift.
“Look at me when you say it, princess. Do you think I’ll hurt you?”
The lily-of-the-valley girl stares at him. Her fingers curl and knot around the pencils in her hands as she says, “I think you're a liar,” so softly he almost misses it.
Shift.
Only away from the others, does he allow the façade to fall.
In worlds marked for destruction, he tears them apart from the inside out with festering thorns. “So this is what you really are - rot and choking weeds,” the sniper says when he finds him, and twists space as Marluxia sends thrashing vines sweeping his way. Suspended upside-town, he laughs, a jackal’s harsh bark. “Don’t you worry, pretty boy. I won’t tell a soul.”
Shift.