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Stanzas
Topic Started: Jun 8 2009, 08:02 AM (230 Views)
Ares-Senpai
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Absit Revarentia Vero
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So... some of you have already seen this, for the rest of you, enjoy my stortelling. If it gets positive feedback here, I'll post more of it, but I'm writing it no matter what. This is something I hope to turn into a novel. Possibly 4 or 5 of them, if I can tell it correctly.

Intro
Ending

The sound was eerily amplified, the drip of the liquid into a dark puddle on the floor. That was the last of it. He could feel the tears welling behind his eyelids, but couldn’t bring himself to open them. The world would never be the same.

The child, no older than fifteen, but obviously no younger than thirteen, sat with his back to the wall, head buried in his pale arms. His knees dug into his chest, making the position somewhat uncomfortable, but he was still unwilling to move. Dark brown hair hung down, obscuring a pale face, one that had never before seen the light of the sun. Try as he might to stop them, the tears behind his eyes had their own course to follow, their own destiny. The streams trickled down from below his eyelids, pressure overcoming the force keeping them down, nearly invisible in the dim light. The streams of tears were unmoving as silent sobs shook his body. Anyone watching would have wondered what could happen to sink the child so deep into despair.

But there was no one, not anymore. No more pain and no more happiness. The world had gone grey, and cold. A dark space inside threatened to swallow him whole.

It had been like this for three days now; the boy didn’t question the knowledge, though he had no way of knowing if it was true. There was no way of telling how much time passed in the grey world. Three days since the dark had swallowed his home. Seventy-two hours, alone. It was the longest he’d ever been alone, except for maybe that hazy time before true memory had begun.

The once white medical-looking uniform worn by the child had been stained crimson, as were his hands, clasped tight to his head. The dripping sound had invaded his consciousness over the past few days, even more than it had before. He saw it in his mind’s eye, a solitary drop of that crimson liquid he was now covered with spilling out of her chest. And another drop, and another after that, staining the white tiles of the floor. It kept coming after that too, becoming a waterfall, a river, an endless tirade of that could never be stemmed, flowing without pause.

The memory was too much to bear, and the child was sent spiraling into the deep recesses of his mind.

There was fire there, fire and darkness. Hatred lurked there, where the conscious mind feared to go, waiting for its chance to strike. This was not what he’d known before, but it was still a part of him.

Not savior, but Destroyer.

Angelous-DeltaGen, Group99, tag008.

First Stanza: Life

Chapter One: A Bloody Love Story



The lights overhead flickered, mixing dark and light, casting strange shadows on the wall one moment, and banishing them the next. The dripping sound had stopped, or if it hadn’t, he was too far away to hear it any longer.

It was no better here though, the fluorescent bulbs buzzed, and one of the white wall panels had fallen, or been broken off. On the other side was even stone of an unfamiliar color: grey. The corridor wasn’t fully blocked off by the panel though. An adult couldn’t have fit through the gap, but he was still small enough to.

As he crouched down to look at the space between floor and fallen wall, a memory rose in his mind. He saw his own hands, stained red, crimson liquid spilling out of something in a tide. His hands weren’t enough to stem the flow, but something inside him had taken over, something dark, powerful. It was probably still there too, in the lower reaches of his mind.

“Laura.” He spoke the word slowly, and his voice came out at more of a whisper than anything else, having remained silent for three days. Hot tears stung his eyes again, and his ID tag slid down to his elbow as he wiped the liquid away. His fingers brushed against something dry, something that crumbled as he touched it. Faded maroon flakes of, of something, fell to the floor. Whatever it was, it had dried in his hair.

His stomach growled at him, but the child chose not to listen. It didn’t seem right that he could continue eating, breathing, living even. Not when they were all gone. But the beast wouldn’t be denied. It growled at him, having been made weak without nourishment in the most recent days.

He stood up slowly, the world almost seeming to spin before his eyes; it had definitely blurred. Even the miniscule effort required for walking was almost beyond him in his current state. It wasn’t, at least not yet. Down one corridor, across a catwalk through a large empty cylinder of a room, down a flight of stairs, and through a set of double-doors he walked, ignoring the – it didn’t seem right to call them bodies – people, even lifeless, they were people, strewn against the walls so haphazardly. Ignoring the crimson splotches that stained the white surfaces, ignoring the places where there were tiny perfectly circular holes in the wall, the child continued onward.

He entered a room, not large, but not small either. There was even a window, though the curtains were always drawn. Nobody had liked looking out on that dismal space at the Arc Station’s center; the extremely tall room called ‘the Shaft.’ It was the communal living space shared between him and the seven others that had encompassed his group. Over in one corner was the only thing he was interested in; the kitchen area. Eight white plastic chairs were seated against a table just as blindingly colorless as the rest of their world. There were mechanical devices there as well; a microwave and refrigerator, both recessed into the straight walls. Cabinets were lined up, one almost hiding he microwave from sight, containing the substance the child so desperately needed. On the whole, if it was a word the child had known, he would have thought of the room as sterile.

The rush of cold air embraced him as he opened the refrigerator door, taking out a cylinder of opaque blue liquid. As he screwed off the cap, the single overhead light in the room flickered. Once, twice it happened before the room was normal again, though to the child, the light seemed harsher, less familiar. A deep drought from the bottle both reassured and refreshed him, though it had other effects.

As he finished the bottle, he looked around at the room that was so familiar, and so unforgiving. This place was no longer home. In a way, it never really had been home. Sanctuary, maybe. Safety, yes. Home, definitely not. Every part of his body screamed to leave, though his conscious mind couldn’t supply a legitimate reason to. It was an instinct, some primal directive left over from the time when humans were no better than the rest of the myriad animals that strove to exist upon the Earth.

He took a bar from the cabinet above the microwave, tearing into it with a ravenous ferocity usually reserved for wild animals. Another followed its brother down the child’s throat, and a sister, and another faceless sibling, until none remained. Sated, he realized that what he’d done was probably not the wisest course of action, but also realized that he couldn’t change what he’d already done. His eyes found the wrappers that the food had been in, covered in pictures of round objects, for the most part. Some of them were red; others orange, there was even a funny crescent-shaped yellow one. They meant nothing to him; merely a way of discerning flavors, and something like that wasn’t high on his list of priorities. Escape was.

Thoughts wouldn’t come, not the thoughts he waned. Memories invaded the flow of his consciousness, wiping aside half-remembered floor plans and barely planned escape routes. Memories swelled until they were dominating each of his senses. He was seeing one thing, hearing another, even smelling something in the stream of disjointed memories, all jumbled up and squashed together in his mind. His eyes, open, but unseeing, screwed tightly shut, floodgates drawn against tears.

The screams he heard were horrible. He brought his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sound, but it only got louder. The screams were his own, inside his head, trying to escape any way possible. As his eyes shut ever more tightly, a second pair opened; the pair within his memory.

Fire

He could see fire. Other than that it was dark. Sharp sounds assaulted his eardrums, like nothing the child had heard before. It would have been comparable to thunder, if he knew anything about it. It eclipsed all other sounds, even the hated screaming. How much easier it would be if it all just went away. The crimson liquid passed in front of his eyes for the first time, and continued to come into existence with each of the powerful sounds. With each drop of crimson and scarlet, the screaming got quieter, less intense. Every tap, another scream died.

Dark

It was too dark, though lights flashed with each recurrence of the harsh sound that eclipsed the screams. It was a harsher light than any he’d ever seen before, but somehow more powerful, more in focus. Purpose lurked behind this type of light, when all others would only show fuzzy edges. He turned around, or had turned, whichever was the right expression, in his memory. Someone was standing beside him, wearing a black suit nearly identical to his own in all but color and size. Even the stranger’s face as covered by a black mask. Only the irregular bursts of harsh white light told the child that it was a mask, not some faceless creature.

The eyes were visible though, vibrant green eyes. Eyes filled with fear, even though the owner of those eyes was the one in control. The machine was cold against his skin, pressed into his neck. A voice was heard, shouting above the clamor.

“We’re done here.” The voice sounded harsh, as harsh as the light and sound from the machines, all of which stopped as soon as this person spoke. The strangers –invaders– made no noise as they left, filing outward silently. His own assailant was the last in the room.

If I could– he thought, and was immediately interrupted by another voice. “Stay here for a while. They might circle back.” The voice had an edge of steel to it, but there was also kindness in it, hissed into his ear. A sharp pain in his arm made its way to his mind, but it wasn’t until he was on the ground that he realized he’d been pushed. He laid still, just another corpse on the floor, another statistic, never to be recorded.

His eyes had been open. It would have been better if he’d shut them. He wouldn’t have had to see—NO! He wouldn’t remember that. It just couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen, no matter what his senses told him, it was impossible. It couldn’t happen. It didn’t happen.

But it did.

Laura. His Laura. She had walked in after the invaders walked out, obviously coming from a test, as so many others would be. Her eyes were blind to the bodies, save for one. His.

And she screamed.

The knife she always carried with her, a trophy of some contest in which she’d beaten one of the aides, was drawn, for the first time she ever really wanted to use it. Laura ran towards the girl who was… what? Was she his savior, or his destruction? Perhaps both. Her scream echoed, fluctuating between one pitch and another. He understood perfectly, looking back. She had screamed bloody murder. That was what the people had done. Murdered.

Laura’s knife found a mark in her target’s shoulder, the shoulder of the arm that held the death-machine. A muscle spasm ripped through the arm, contracting the muscles in her fingers. It was an involuntary action, a reaction that would echo through the child’s thoughts for years to come, if he made it there.

A hailstorm of metal came, flying out of the machine, ripping into Laura’s chest, red on white. Laura’s screams fell on deaf ears as the death-dealing machine turned on it’s dominant. Held in only one hand, forces of recoil spun the machine around her fingers, the metal hailstones ripping into her head as they had into Laura’s limp form, seconds before.

The scene played itself in his mind more times than he could count. He was forced to suffer as he watched metal tear into the heart of the girl he could have loved, had he known what love was. He saw drops of crimson and scarlet arc into the air, coming down like some perversion of rainfall. He saw what happened to the other girl too, the black-clothed one. He saw her eyes… what was left of one of her eyes, glaze over and stop seeing.

He heard a distant door hiss shut behind the invaders, and hoping they were gone, ran to where Laura had fallen. Twice, he nearly tripped over the carnage upon the bloodwashed floor. He could hear her heartbeat, faint, but unmistakable. Crimson liquid poured from the hole in her chest, into her clothes, and eventually to the floor. He held her close, tears in the ice-blue eyes. This wasn’t meant to happen. It couldn’t be.

But it was. Her chest was still rising and falling, but it was slowing down. She was struggling to speak; he could hear her strained breath.

“A-Ares.” So much pain in a single word, not even said properly. His hand slipped from her shoulder, crashing into the crimson on the floor. He felt something within it; not a physical object, but a force. The liquid was life, in its purest form.

“Don’t talk,” the child reassured the dying girl, desperation evident in everything from his voice to his breathing. “I’ll find help. I’ll find somebody.” Panic had crept into his voice, and his being.

“Too late.” Laura had said so, her face bearing a sad smile. This was too much to bear. Laura. His Laura. She was almost gone, had lost too much of the crimson liquid to live longer. She’d lost her life-force.

The child named for a war god could see only a single option, in his frantic delusion. He bit down on his lower lip, breaking the skin, pain flowing through his frame. But that was nothing compared to the pain that Laura must have experienced. Even the trials all the children had been forced to endure were nothing compared to this sort of pain. Some sense told him of the life-force contained within the liquid, as his mouth filled with it.

He leaned his head over hers, hair obscuring their faces. The view only became fainter as hot tears stung his eyes. In his arms, she shivered, and her heartbeat grew fainter at once. This would work. It just had to, he was out of options.

His lips pressed into hers, feeling the quickly fading warmth of her body. Carefully, he pushed open her lips with his own, for reasons he didn’t understand. Again, instinct dominated his mind. The liquid slid between his mouth and hers, for a moment creating a link that he felt could never be broken. A beautiful connection existed between them at this point, only to break a moment later as her body relaxed.

All the tension left her body, and her pulse slowed, until there was no pressure in the veins and arteries of her body. Her heartbeat had stopped. Nothing was left in her kind eyes; they’d glazed over, just as her killer’s had, and they’d lost that intangible spark that defined her. He clutched the body closer to his chest, the read soaking into his own tunic, as if sheer force of will could bypass the barrier between worlds. His head rested against her chest, where the projectiles pierced her body, eyes shut against the terrible reality.

The tears began to flow.

Unstoppable.

Uncontrollable.

That had been three days ago. Three days since Laura had…

Died.

He had to get out of this place.

Had to.

But how could he get out? The entire facility had been sealed at its creation, according to all the aides. None of the workers had anywhere to go, all of them had lived here, just as the children.

They got in though. Didn’t they? F there was a way for them to get in, they must have had an escape route. Anything else would just be suicide.

No, not sui-cide. That hadn’t been the stranger’s intent. It was close though, close to what the horrible reality was. Genocide; the elimination of everyone like him. Like Laura, and every other child he’d ever met. Everyone he’d ever come to think of as a friend was gone.

They couldn’t have gotten –killed!– everyone. That was what part of his mind said. The other part, the realist perhaps, knew that they had. Everyone that he’d ever known, ever cared for, was dead.

In a way, maybe he was too, he thought. It was true to one of the less literal definitions of the word. As if, emotionally, he’d become less receptive.

Not that any of this mattered now. There would be a time for mourning later, if a later ever came. Escape was the next step.

Escape from this place?
Or the memories?
Edited by Ares-Senpai, Jun 8 2009, 04:47 PM.
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Gwen
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I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed.
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Sounds like you could make something good out of it. So, from what i gathered, he's a test subject, he killed the woman taking care of him, and now the entire facility is somehow empty, devoid of life and all light; leaving his mind to break alone in the dark? Or was the absence of light symbolic only?
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Takkun
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That was really good, Ares. You should continue. Maybe majoring in English would be a good idea for you.
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Ares-Senpai
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Absit Revarentia Vero
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I already have more. I know Pus has seen the first chapter. Which I'll add now. Just gonna edit the first post tho.
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