Post by Eternity on Dec 17, 2016 22:43:40 GMT
In my darkest hour, I heard their voices.
They began as whispers, carried upon the chilling wisps of winter. The words escaped from the lips of her four children, speaking to me as they often did, in one voice. Their mouths cracked and their cold, lifeless eyes watched me, as they spoke with all the morbid curiosity and fascination their mother was known for.
They giggled, as giddy as schoolgirls, as they relayed to me once more the news of my Uncle Brad's passing. We weren't particularly close, but I was not yet so cold or distant as to ignore the pangs of loss as they reverberated within the walls of my heart. He had been, by all accounts, a troubled man. Plagued by his own demons, as seemingly was the family tradition.
The Children of Eternity: The mention of Kane's funeral brings us back to the point where we started from. There is no doubt that Kane was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story we are going to relate...
Now they laughed, before standing up as one. The first and last sister in the line rang a bell in each hand, as they all began to sing to me.
The Children of Eternity: Hark how the bells
Sweet silver bells
All seem to say
Throw cares away
Christmas is here
Bringing good cheer
To young and old
Meek and the bold
Ding, dong, ding, dong
That is their song
With joyful ring
All carolling
One seems to hear
Words of good cheer
From everywhere
Filling the air
O, how they pound!
Raising the sound
O'er hill and dale
Telling their tale
Gaily they ring
While people sing
Songs of good cheer
Christmas is here!
A burst of light and sound than floods the room as Eternity arrives, playing a violin in perfect harmony with her children, all of them now sing, following her lead.
MERRY, MERRY, MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
MERRY, MERRY, MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Her children separate quickly into two pairs, parting to let her through to me. Now only her voice and her violin remain as she stares at me, her emerald eyes sparkling as I take her presence in. Dressed in a black satin and velvet Victorian ballgown and with a crown fashioned of holly nesting in her pink hair, she presents herself as she always has - a Queen so wonderfully out of history.
So wonderfully out of time.
On, on they sendOn, without end
Their joyful tone
To every home
The children now sing once more, accompanying their mother's violin.
The Children of Eternity: Hark how the bells
Sweet silver bells
All seem to say
Throw life away
The end is here
Start a new year
As you did the last
Held by the past
Ding, dong, ding, dong
That is their song
Let sorrow ring
All not a thing
One seems to speak
Words of the meek
From everywhere
Killing the air
O, how they pound!
Raising the sound
O'er hill and dale
Telling their tale
Gaily they ring
While people sing
Same every year
Christmas is here!
MERRY, MERRY, MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
MERRY, MERRY, MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
On, on they send
On, without end
Their joyful tone
To every home
On, on they send
On, without end
Their joyful tone
To every home
Her smile punctuates the end of the performance, as now everything falls once more into a deafening and uncomfortable silence. One of her children approaches her and collects the violin, whilst the little one I had come to know as Charity, approaches me and offers me a half eaten chocolate chip cookie.
The smell alone caused me to start salivating, but there was still the matter of protesting my imprisonment to consider. For months now, I had survived mostly on rationed pieces of fruit and occasional bottles of water - determined not to eat any more than was absolutely necessary to stay alive.
So I used what little energy I had to turn my head away and close my eyes.
Oh come now, Kidd. Look at that face. The face of a child, an angel. How can you say no to such a sweet little thing? What has she ever done to you? Nothing. It's not her fault you are here, it's not her fault your Daddy left you here with us...
Charity: I don't know where my Daddy went either, but he left me too. Eternity says Mommies and Daddies just have to go sometimes, but it doesn't matter because she's not going anywhere. Eternity will look after us all and together we will be a family. A real family...just like we've always wanted...
Those words struck me, even when they had no right too. I knew they were most likely coming from a place of careful manipulation, still I'd be a fool to deny the sliver of truth within them that now resonated with me. All in all I really hadn't known my father that long, just long enough to know that we'd never be a real family.
In hushed whispers, I prayed for guidance once more from my Lord.
Warren: And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One. For if you forgive men their tresspasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you...
You see me wildly clap my hands together now. As Charity finishes her cookie.
Oh! How utterly delightful!
Prayer - the last refuge of a scoundrel. Good old Saint Matthew, about as helpful as Saint Michael's was in the end, I'll wager, but still that's a story for another day. Another time, another place. Somewhere far away from here, where the bound unbound and the unbound rebound.
Again and again and again.
Life after life after life. Afterlife. Another life. A life beyond the ropes, the leather, the gold, the silver...
You see me now reach up and caress one of the steel chains that shackled Warren to the cold hard steel of his makeshift crucifix.
And the steel. It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men. Travel far and wide, if not in life, then after death. And so here we are, Warren, you after me, as it should be. Shadows within shadows, lives upon lives, bodies touched, four fold. A wonderful amalgamation of thoughts, ideas, dreams and nightmares. A beautiful ugliness to the whole squalid affair.
That is what we are, Kidd, you and me.
Fettered to this life, this land, this Earth, by a most ponderous chain, forged link by link by link by link and worn for quite some time. How long a time? How short a spell? Well, that my friend is anybody's guess. To some a word, to others a sentence, in any form, life seldom makes sense.
Chained to this one existence, both finite and infinite, we raise our heads and see tiny lights in the night sky. They seem to go on and on and on. Forever and ever and ever. Diamonds masquerading as stars, littering the Heavens - burning, burning, just beyond our reach. Almost there, almost...there. Almost.
The chain pulls us back - not yet, not yet.
It is not your time yet, Angel.
And so we wait, and we watch the circles as they spin, ever onward, ever inward. Neither advancing nor retreating. Just there, put on the spot, under the light of a sun she can never reach. Pandora. Her life neither a comedy nor a tragedy, her entire existence, limited. Confined to a box by brutal irony and the harsh truth. Her dance, an ever spinning circle, looping, endlessly looping - the same old sad tune. The song of marionettes, twirling in their little music boxes. A novelty, rarely opened and seldom admired.
When the lid closes, and she is left alone in darkness, I know her dreams, for I am there at the end. Every end. Every time. Every wish, every desire, for her I am every beginning and every end. Wishes upon wishes, a life wasted chasing an Eternity she will never know.
Never understand.
I am not something you chase, I am something you run from.
Death is always the one in pursuit, my dear. I will come for you, I will come for all of you, and I will turn each of your sweetest melodies into the bitter maladies siphoned from each of your broken dreams. And then the chain will be broken, the armour penetrated and the attack repelled by the shield I have forged. Carried, without carrying. Marched, without marching.
Charging into battle once more, still without her sword, she fights.
Unshackled, she runs and she roars.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
You see me rattle Warren's chains again.
LEMME A' EM! LEMME A' EM! TADA-TADADA! PUPPY POWER!
CLANG! CLANG! Steel clashes against Steele. Her time runs short, do you even care, Kidd? LISTEN! You can still hear it in your mind, can't you? The sound of shattered dreams and broken bones, Shea shrieks, as it all pops and snaps out of place. Kate shrieks. Such a beautiful little song, perfect in pitch and pentameter, superimposed symmetry upon the fundamentally asymmetrical. A pair inspired, yet mismatched. Black and white and pink and blue and green, OH SO GREEN!
Jealousy, envy, sickness, she wears all these colours and finds purpose in somebody else's pain.
Oh how far we've come since the days of my little Lexi. The seed is planted, the roots go deep. If insanity truly is the act of repetition. an endless circle, unbroken and vicious, then look at every little flower I have already pollinated. See how it flourishes. Blossoming, blooming. Like a flower, pluck its pretty little petals off one by one by one.
Such delicacy, weathered by the cold touch of death's hand,
Diamonds, ice in the dead of winter.
She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me.
OH WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?
Watered daily. Watered down. Left to grow. Right to die. Pushing, pulling, pulling, pushing, still the door won't quite open. So she stands on the threshold once more. An act repeated. An insincere insanity. A discordant duet lost among the songs of sirens and the dances of disc jockeys. A cacophony of confusion, kissed away and sent swirling into the clouds of frozen smoke.
A kite dancing in a hurricane.
She bobs, caught and tethered. Torn, the stripper herself stripped. Laid bare. Exposed. Her flesh lashed by chain. She screams, pain or pleasure. Either way her faces are contorted, distorted. It's a long, hard road to enlightenment, Helena, but it will come. In time, it will come.
For all of you.
And then the acts will be dropped, the songs muted and the music stopped.
And you will know me, know what you have pretended to be.
A work of art, a painted portrait, a Shieldmaiden sketched.
Echoes of Eternity, the lingering voices of the long gone.
Broken chains, pushing daisies, pulling weeds, rattled by death. The bells will toll, and each of you will have your time upon my stage. The final stage. The final act. The swan song. The last dance. All saved for me. None saved by me. Diamonds are forever...
Condemned for an eternity.
Each life sentence curtailed only by death.
You see me then grab Warren by the face and lock eyes with him. He groans.
So what are you in for? It's been quite a stretch already, hasn't it?
I bet you can't wait to get out of there, can you, Kidd? So come on, come out of there already!
The world is waiting...and so am I...
Well howdy there pardner.