Post by Eternity on Nov 17, 2024 20:03:59 GMT
2024-11-11
06:43 CST (12:43 UTC)
Somewhere Deep Down in the Heart of South Texas
A new dawn. A new day. The first clear morning in a long, long while. An unparalleled moment of true peace and absolute serenity washed over me as I stood at one of the bedroom windows of my precious Archangel’s family home. Many, many years ago, this had been Abby's little bedroom. The smallest and once pinkest room in the house. Her little feminine safe haven for when she needed an escape or a place to refocus herself.
Abby’s parents had insisted on keeping everything about their only daughter’s room exactly as it was any time she left it for too long, which happened more and more these days now she was back on the road with me. She was the most successful member of her family of course, but that’s not why I loved her. Just as Daddy had not loved Mommy for all her remarkable life’s work either.
I am their only daughter too, after all.
Naked as the day I was born, but with my modesty carefully preserved behind a set of drawn scarlet curtains, I peered through the thin split between them at the sunrise. The guns of war have fallen silent. No hint of the thousands of bloody and discordant voices all yelling, screaming, shouting, yowling and howling in pain, as there had been in years past.
My head turned away from the light easier, less burdened, not as heavy and most blessedly of all, nowhere near as painful. I set my loving gaze firmly upon my Angel and not for the first or the last time, I marvelled at her peace. A peace she has so graciously imbued upon me, without rhyme, reason or even intent.
Still I am grateful to God for sending her to me.
I suppose it should come as no surprise that it took a courageous woman to finally bring light and hope to the dark, desolate battlefield of my scarred and wounded psyche. Truly, No Man’s Land indeed. Not since Jack, anyway.
Light on my feet, I glided back over to the bed, and gently brushed some of my beloved Abby’s hair out of her face, whilst she slept soundly. She flipped from her side onto her back and I leant down and kissed her gently on the forehead. She smiled as her eyes slowly fluttered open. My kiss had broken the spell of my dearest’s slumber and awoken my Sleeping Beauty.
“Mornin’ gorgeous,” her smile widened. “You’re up early, or haven’t ya slept yet?”
“Life’s too short and precious,” I said. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Nothing else to do then.”
Abby’s response was snatched away by the easily identifiable ‘Fairy Fountain’ from A Link To The Past. The pleasantly ethereal tone alerted us both to Ricky Spencer’s call. I unplugged her phone from its bedside charger cable, noted the battery was full, and handed it to Abby.
“Must be important. Family matters.”
Abby smiled and nodded at me as she accepted the call and pressed the phone to her ear. “Yeah? No, no. I’m awake. What’s up?” Abby rubbed some crust from her eyes with her palm as she sat up and listened to her baby brother intently. The duvet slipped down from her bare chest to her lap but she didn’t bother to hide anything from me, she never did. We felt safe, home with each other. “Want me to talk to her? Where is she? Okay, okay. I’ll ask Shea, she should know. They’re friends, right? Okay, okay, bye. Love you too.”
Abby sighed deeply as she set the phone down in her lap for a moment. “Ya gonna be okay without me for a bit?” Her eyes briefly flicked up at me, registered my nod and then flicked back down as she thumbed out a message, presumably to Shea. “Good. Birdie’s having a bit of a crisis, and Ricky’s never been good with those,” Abby explained as she waited for Shea to respond, hopefully soon. “They’ve been tryin’ for a baby since the weddin’ an’ cause it ain’t happenin’ right now, Birdie’s thinkin’ God is punishin’ them for how her mother abandoned Mai. It’s a whole fire I have ta try an’ put out before it gets any worse.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. By tryna talk ta Mai I guess. We haven’t ever really been on the best of terms I know.” Abby said. “But if I don’t take care of this now, it’ll just hang over Thanksgivin’ an’ Christmas an’ ruin shit for everybody, y’know?”
“No, I mean how can I help? I can come with you.”
“You’re a peach for offerin’, but no thanks. I got this, darlin’” Abby smiled. “If Mai won’t talk to me, I don’t want her takin’ it out on you. Folks give ya enough crap ya don’t deserve already.” Abby reached out and cupped my cheek gently, prompting me to lean forward until our lips met in the sweetest kiss I’d ever tasted.
This is it. A sign from God, I thought. It’s now or never. I need to do this before we leave home again for who knows how long this time. This is my best shot at a life after death.
By the time Abby’s phone finally notified her of Shea’s response, my Archangel and I were already lost together in our kiss. I resisted the temptation to press any further, just barely. Abby’s phone pinged again, the message demanded to be read, but for me the message was already clear:
Abby’s the last great love of my life. One day, I must marry her.
2024-11-11
11:11 CST (17:11 UTC)
It really was an odd time for the rest of Abby’s immediate family to be gathered here in their quaint little lakeside hut, especially by me and most especially without her. I insisted they line up from left to right, oldest to youngest as I prepared to ask them something that would change all our lives forever. I was certain that had it not been for our shared love of Abigail Francine Spencer, nobody here would have indulged any of my quirks or do anything I said, here and now.
There’s no time. Like the present, I thought. Now. Or never.
My heart pulsed in my ears and the awkward lump of anxiety in my throat grew harder to swallow with each passing second. I scanned her father’s eyes first. Then her mother’s. What were they thinking? Would they truly accept me? Did they? I didn’t know for sure, but I hoped to God they did. For close to a year now, The Spencers had been my family. I couldn’t afford to lose them all too.
Not again. Never again.
“Okay, what’s goin’ on?” Buck said finally. He was always most impatient. “Did somebody die?”
“Why? Ya got a date?” Jebediah said.
“Always,” Buck smirked, needling his younger brother, the only one still single. “Jealous?”
“Nah,” Jeb insisted. “Nothin’ wrong with waitin’ on the right one.”
“That’s what every ugly loser with no game says.”
“Buck, Jeb, please,” Jeremiah Senior patiently interjected.
“Sorry, Pops,” the brothers said as one.
“Take your time, Sweetheart,” Evelyn insisted as I felt her eyes upon me. “There’s no rush.”
“Thanks, Mrs Spencer,” I said to my entwined fingers. The deepest breath I’d ever taken followed. Everything felt stiff, heavy. My ribcage was now a steel trap for my rapidly beating heart.“Sorry.” I brute forced myself to make eye contact with at least Evelyn. It hurt like hell how much I suddenly missed Mommy. I wished she was here for this. “I have gathered you all here today to ask you one of life’s biggest questions. I have to know whilst I have this chance, here and now. I don’t know when we’ll all be here like this again, and to wait any longer would kill me. I cannot go to my grave, not knowing.”
“Sounds pretty serious,” Jeremiah Junior said.
“Like a coronary,” I promised. “Like y’all, I love Abby. I can’t imagine my life or my death without her anymore. I know we’ve only been dating for less than a year, but I’ve been in love with her for what feels like forever. But I also know, I can’t just keep taking her away from her family, so I’ve made the only decision that makes sense. I want to spend the rest of my life on Earth and in Heaven with her. I want to marry her, but it wouldn’t feel right without asking for your blessing. So, Mr and Mrs Spencer, may I please ask for your only daughter’s hand? She’s the only one I want to live, love and die in the arms of when the time comes.”
The elderly couple whose enduring love I envied and sought to one day emulate with my own dearly beloved Archangel held hands for a moment. They smiled at each other as if they were so in tune with one another that they shared the same thought. Jeremiah Senior nodded at the love of his life before they turned to me as one.
“There is nobody who makes our daughter happier,” Evelyn said. “For years now, we’ve watched the two of ya grow ever closer. Her whole face lights up like a Christmas tree whenever she talks about you.” Evelyn squeezed her husband’s hand as she turned to him briefly. “Doesn't it?”
“I never thought I’d see the kind of light you’ve brought into her life in her eyes again, especially after…” Jeremiah Senior shook his head softly and cut off his own tongue before it bled with deep regret, for his daughter’s sake. “Doesn’t matter, it’s in the past. We’re talking about the future, and with you I believe my little chicken has a bright one. Whenever ya want her hand, ya have our blessin’.”
Mr and Mrs Spencer threw their arms open to me and I fell into their loving embrace without even a second thought. Abby’s home was my home. The four brothers also enveloped me in a group hug. Abby’s family was my family. For the first time in forever, I felt as close to whole as I was ever going to get in this life. Tears were second nature to me, the joy behind them wasn’t.
“You’re not takin’ our daughter away,” Evelyn whispered. “You’re bringing another home to us. Call me Mom.”
I bawled. The endearment stuck in my throat before it finally left me as a soft stammer. “M-M-Mom.” That word would take some getting used to. It had been thirty years since I’d last used it to describe another person who truly mattered to me.
💀🦋💀🦋
“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”- Galatians V: 13.
💀🦋💀🦋
Surrounded by four twenty foot high walls of steel mesh, Bella Morte laboured together under Heaven’s brilliant white light once more.
Abby wore a short long black dress and black boots. She sat on the ground with her legs only half-crossed. Eternity’s half of their titles lay spread flat before Abby. Eternity knelt behind her, arms draped around Abby’s neck. Eternity’s attire was also perfectly coordinated with her partner. Safely concealed, wrapped around her waist, Eternity wore Abby’s half of their titles. She also had a pink heart with a black arrow through it as part of her facepaint, under her right eye. Abby had her customary red spider lily nestled in her hair, on the left side.
Friends and family of the dearly departed, we are gathered here today to pay our final respects to the old Extinction Event. In life, we knew it to be the grandest tag team match of them all, but nothing lasts forever. And so we have erected this cage in its memory and we’re going to celebrate like it is 2016 all over again. It’s what the old event would have wanted.
We stand united against the returning criminal who first assaulted our beloved and twisted and transformed her until she was a barely recognisable shell of herself. That is your specialty, mate. That is what you do, Cyrus, you change things until nobody even cares anymore. You took the most beautiful flower, shackled and chained her to your anger and misery and twisted her until she liked it. A knife to her heart and mine.
But now Vivienne is beyond saving, so we’ll just stop trying. Life is too short to waste trying to unmaking the flower bed. She can rot in it, she can turn away from the light, commit herself to your hate and your bile. She will not escape. She will never escape.
Not the cage. Not her rage. Nor my Archangel’s blinding fury.
Absolutely, beloved. For reasons beyond our control, Cyrus has evaded divine justice for many moons now. He has taken so much from my family and has yet ta truly answer for all his hate crimes. Anybody can call him out, and many have, but few truly seek to teach him as I will. Through the only language he understands, violence. More blood has been spilled in pursuit of proving one’s faith than anythin’ else in our history - and this Sunday, I will do unto him and his loved ones as he did upon my brothers.
Cyrus, ya said the kindest thing I could do is let my long suffering love slip away. Well, let’s see if ya still feel that way when it is your long suffering love dyin’ by my hands. Maybe I’ll make ya watch as helplessly as I was when ya ran through my brothers without a second thought. Your Kitten is not only sick, she is terminal and beyond even my most charitable life saving efforts now. As I choke what little light remains in her eyes these days, I hope ya choke on the realisation that all this is your fuckin’ fault ya big bald bastard.
The Daniels Family owe mine more than a pound of flesh, and at Survival of the Fittest I’m comin’ ta collect. And the real kicker is now I really don’t care from whom. The long overdue debt will be settled before the Steel Cage Match is.
Bet ya big ol’ bigoted ass on that, mate.
Whilst my Angel works through her past personal pain, I will anaesthetise our present professional one by addressing what remains of Savage Kingdom. Poor Edith Finch. Poorer Black Widow. A forgotten Queen and her most faithful jester, both will learn the most painful lesson of all. You can never go back to happier times, you can never go back to the way you wish things still were and still could be - no matter how much you want to.
Trust me, I tried.
For years, I tried.
I’m sorry for not believing you sooner, Pan.
You were right.
You were always right. Right there, like the weakest link in the chain. Hidden until fully exposed. Like RAM. The wannabe try try-hard drive who is actually the floppiest of all the damned disks Nick Knight could have possibly inserted the wrong way around into a USB port.
Like a standard lightning cable, it will not take much at all to break the man’s will entirely. A sacrificial lamb or just an overpriced spare component, the blue screen of death is never very far away for you my friend. You may be tripping on bad pills and seeing demonic uncles but I promise you, no trip you take on Sunday will end with you seeing the outside of our cage.
No well connected Hollywood Butcher will save you from the chop. No saving grace will deliver you from the slaughterhouse Nick so carelessly signed you up for. And he’s supposed to be your friend?
With friends like that, you really don’t need enemies, do you RAM? And still you make them so damned easily don’t you, dear? Dear, dear me. Your outlook is almost as bleak as it is for the itsy bitsy spider who scrambles up the cage wall just to throw herself off because she doesn’t care about the win or the titles, only hurting.
Well, Brandy if ya really wanna hurt that fuckin’ much, allow me ta grant your fondest wish. Chances are good that after I’m done grindin’ Vivienne’s pretty little mug inta bloody burger meat on every last one of the four cage walls ta prove a point, I’m gonna have enough residual rage left in me ta throw hands with ya too.
Your pain threshold is supposed to be legendary, isn’t it, Brandy?
I look forward to testing it myself. I always enjoy seeing the outermost limits. Of pushing myself just beyond. Just far enough to see over the damned and bloody horizon.
What’s on the other side?
I always wonder.
Well, at Survival of the Fittest, we will find out together. My great love and I. My beloved Archangel has already set me free in ways I never thought possible, and on Sunday I have every faith that she will do it all over again.
I turned to face my Archangel once more.
Give me liberty, love, or give me Death.
I don’t want to live any other way.
I can’t, not anymore.
Not now that I’ve seen the rest of our lives together. Not now that I know there’s another way to live. A better way to live. It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to before, and with you, I know it never will.
You are worth your weight in gold and more to me, Angel.
Please, won’t you set me free one more time, one last time?
Abby turned to face me once more.
Always, my love.
Here’s ta a beautiful life.
And an even more beautiful death.
Faces forward once more, always forward. Together, forever.
We are Bella Morte and there’s no escape for the rest of y’all.
Not like there ever was.
“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”- Galatians V: 13.
💀🦋💀🦋
Surrounded by four twenty foot high walls of steel mesh, Bella Morte laboured together under Heaven’s brilliant white light once more.
Abby wore a short long black dress and black boots. She sat on the ground with her legs only half-crossed. Eternity’s half of their titles lay spread flat before Abby. Eternity knelt behind her, arms draped around Abby’s neck. Eternity’s attire was also perfectly coordinated with her partner. Safely concealed, wrapped around her waist, Eternity wore Abby’s half of their titles. She also had a pink heart with a black arrow through it as part of her facepaint, under her right eye. Abby had her customary red spider lily nestled in her hair, on the left side.
Friends and family of the dearly departed, we are gathered here today to pay our final respects to the old Extinction Event. In life, we knew it to be the grandest tag team match of them all, but nothing lasts forever. And so we have erected this cage in its memory and we’re going to celebrate like it is 2016 all over again. It’s what the old event would have wanted.
We stand united against the returning criminal who first assaulted our beloved and twisted and transformed her until she was a barely recognisable shell of herself. That is your specialty, mate. That is what you do, Cyrus, you change things until nobody even cares anymore. You took the most beautiful flower, shackled and chained her to your anger and misery and twisted her until she liked it. A knife to her heart and mine.
But now Vivienne is beyond saving, so we’ll just stop trying. Life is too short to waste trying to unmaking the flower bed. She can rot in it, she can turn away from the light, commit herself to your hate and your bile. She will not escape. She will never escape.
Not the cage. Not her rage. Nor my Archangel’s blinding fury.
Absolutely, beloved. For reasons beyond our control, Cyrus has evaded divine justice for many moons now. He has taken so much from my family and has yet ta truly answer for all his hate crimes. Anybody can call him out, and many have, but few truly seek to teach him as I will. Through the only language he understands, violence. More blood has been spilled in pursuit of proving one’s faith than anythin’ else in our history - and this Sunday, I will do unto him and his loved ones as he did upon my brothers.
Cyrus, ya said the kindest thing I could do is let my long suffering love slip away. Well, let’s see if ya still feel that way when it is your long suffering love dyin’ by my hands. Maybe I’ll make ya watch as helplessly as I was when ya ran through my brothers without a second thought. Your Kitten is not only sick, she is terminal and beyond even my most charitable life saving efforts now. As I choke what little light remains in her eyes these days, I hope ya choke on the realisation that all this is your fuckin’ fault ya big bald bastard.
The Daniels Family owe mine more than a pound of flesh, and at Survival of the Fittest I’m comin’ ta collect. And the real kicker is now I really don’t care from whom. The long overdue debt will be settled before the Steel Cage Match is.
Bet ya big ol’ bigoted ass on that, mate.
Whilst my Angel works through her past personal pain, I will anaesthetise our present professional one by addressing what remains of Savage Kingdom. Poor Edith Finch. Poorer Black Widow. A forgotten Queen and her most faithful jester, both will learn the most painful lesson of all. You can never go back to happier times, you can never go back to the way you wish things still were and still could be - no matter how much you want to.
Trust me, I tried.
For years, I tried.
I’m sorry for not believing you sooner, Pan.
You were right.
You were always right. Right there, like the weakest link in the chain. Hidden until fully exposed. Like RAM. The wannabe try try-hard drive who is actually the floppiest of all the damned disks Nick Knight could have possibly inserted the wrong way around into a USB port.
Like a standard lightning cable, it will not take much at all to break the man’s will entirely. A sacrificial lamb or just an overpriced spare component, the blue screen of death is never very far away for you my friend. You may be tripping on bad pills and seeing demonic uncles but I promise you, no trip you take on Sunday will end with you seeing the outside of our cage.
No well connected Hollywood Butcher will save you from the chop. No saving grace will deliver you from the slaughterhouse Nick so carelessly signed you up for. And he’s supposed to be your friend?
With friends like that, you really don’t need enemies, do you RAM? And still you make them so damned easily don’t you, dear? Dear, dear me. Your outlook is almost as bleak as it is for the itsy bitsy spider who scrambles up the cage wall just to throw herself off because she doesn’t care about the win or the titles, only hurting.
Well, Brandy if ya really wanna hurt that fuckin’ much, allow me ta grant your fondest wish. Chances are good that after I’m done grindin’ Vivienne’s pretty little mug inta bloody burger meat on every last one of the four cage walls ta prove a point, I’m gonna have enough residual rage left in me ta throw hands with ya too.
Your pain threshold is supposed to be legendary, isn’t it, Brandy?
I look forward to testing it myself. I always enjoy seeing the outermost limits. Of pushing myself just beyond. Just far enough to see over the damned and bloody horizon.
What’s on the other side?
I always wonder.
Well, at Survival of the Fittest, we will find out together. My great love and I. My beloved Archangel has already set me free in ways I never thought possible, and on Sunday I have every faith that she will do it all over again.
I turned to face my Archangel once more.
Give me liberty, love, or give me Death.
I don’t want to live any other way.
I can’t, not anymore.
Not now that I’ve seen the rest of our lives together. Not now that I know there’s another way to live. A better way to live. It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to before, and with you, I know it never will.
You are worth your weight in gold and more to me, Angel.
Please, won’t you set me free one more time, one last time?
Abby turned to face me once more.
Always, my love.
Here’s ta a beautiful life.
And an even more beautiful death.
Faces forward once more, always forward. Together, forever.
We are Bella Morte and there’s no escape for the rest of y’all.
Not like there ever was.
Well howdy there pardner.