Untitled RP Blog

How come I end up where I started How come I end up where I belong Won't take my eyes off the ball again You reel me out then you cut the string

How come I end up where I started How come I end up where I belong Won't take my eyes off the ball again You reel me out then you cut the string

You used to be alright What happened? Did the cat get your tongue Did your string come undone One by one One by one It comes to us all It's as soft as your pillow

You used to be alright What happened? Etcetera etcetera Facts for whatever Fifteen steps Then a shear drop

A foreword: the personal context of this research project.

Allow me to address the gaja in the room: a completely healthy, sane individual would not be performing this particular experiment on themself. If you have suspicions about the rightness of my mind, you are not alone. I share them too.

I’ve chosen to do this after a year of great suffering.

There was a point, only a few months ago, where everything went completely wrong. I lost a old friend, a cherished daughter, and estranged myself from the most precious woman I’ve ever known. It took a year of mistakes, but the climax ended with me putting a bullet in the back of the head of a woman whom I felt an undeniable attraction towards--it was shit all around.

I blame myself mostly, but I know I’m not alone in carrying the blame. So many of the people that I looked to for help made things worse by bringing their biases and frailties into the fray. I got to watch them mope afterwards and wallow in their pain. They seemed to take pleasure in their sadness, and in openly displaying just how much their hearts were aching. It was then I began to resent them and that feeling won’t go away.

“For fuck’s sake, Sephora!”

The deck below is breached and water has begun to flood into the hold. Above them the sound of guards spilling out onto deck begs for attention. And yet she’s laying in the ilm of water, sprawled out on her back, dazed and confused.

“You gotta get up. Get moving. C’mon. Chop chop.”

He leans over and pulls her to her feet, but she’s shell-shocked. Like a deer in the headlights, all she can really do is teeter back and forth despite the dire situation. He takes one look at her face and snaps.

“...have you been fucking crying? What were you doing down here? Did you even try to look for my shit?”

The waist-high door swung forward and back, but didn’t completely shut. It remained ajar troublingly. He stopped in his tracks and turned around slowly to inspect the mechanism even as the building behind him burnt, sending out a pillar of black smoke into the air that had been visible for malms around.

The smoke demanded he return. He’d hurried back from the first cross at the sight of it, only to find their bodies mounted at the edge of the property on two fresh constructions, each similar to the first. They were much smaller than the Xaelan body he’d found before, but the crucifixes were not. They could’ve tied both of the twins to one easily with space to spare, Altan had thought; what strange care they’d put into the display. Maybe even something like pride. Now he couldn’t think of anything other than the fencepost.

A loose bolt; that seemed to be the culprit. Altan knelt in the dust to fasten it with his fingers. It would have to do. If there were any tools nearby, they were likely in the conflagration behind him. His fingers hurt from turning the metal when he stood again, but the door fit into its recess in the fence shut this time. It even latched.

“Aetheryte’s shattered too,” he says to no one in particular while frowning intently. “Oh well.”

Altan felt blank. The loss was probably his, but its significance was not a puzzle he could make out. And though the danger was real, he could not feel that either.

“What could have all of this been about...?” He asks as his voice betrays a flair of annoyance. Before Altan stands a cottage in the middle of nowhere. He places his hand on a the top of the small well on the property that the twins have sustaining themselves on then leans over to look down inside the simple stone construction. His eyes can’t make out the bottom. “What the fuck was I doing?”

Altan bends upward again and notices them watching him out of the corner of his eye. It’s the Twins--a pair of Lalafell that are in his employ. Beyond that all he can remember is two names: Nald and Thal. Theirs? Maybe, but probably not. No--that’s definitely not right. Nald’thal is something else. Right? No. Yes.

“Hey boss, whatcha doing out here today? We’ve got nothing to report,” their socialable half asks. The other doesn’t talk. Never has, Altan thinks. At least he thinks so.

“I’m just...” A pause and a quiet scramble; what’s a good lie? What’s a bad lie? “Surveying.”

The talker shrugs, they seem to have bought it. “Well, we’re gonna need more supplies soon. I’ll get you a list.” And with that they totter back into the cottage.

Altan turns and starts to walk down the trail away from the small dwelling. The dusty path is lined by scorched golden plants that look to be on the verge of death thanks to the heat of the summer. They’re the only signs of life this far out in Paglth’an.

The path is terribly boring.

The walk doesn’t help him recall what any of this is about, but something on the horizon catches his eye and so he puts one foot in front of the other quicker, and quicker until he can make out the shape: it’s a body, hanging from a simple, crude wooden cross. Altan breaks into a sprint, but he arrives in time to see that the Xaelan body fastened to by thick lashes of rope is lifeless and still.

The vultures have picked at the crucified remains, taking the eyes clean out while every ilm of skin has shrunken tight. The sun has baked away all of the water that once filled out the man’s form, preserving him--in a sense--like jerky.  It’s a grotesque vision, but the symbolism stirs something in Altan’s head. A deep sense of deja vu grips him. For a moment it’s almost as if he’s back on the Steppe once more.

He’d seen this once before years back, his cousin’s handiwork: A Kharlu bonepriest mounted high as a message to others. They’d watched together as flesh turned to ash and bone ripped itself from the cross, roused by a vivacious beat only the dead can hear.

I lay on my back by the cage with my revolver resting on my stomach. I pick it up by the handle and feel the balance of its weight. One eye closes and I raise it to aim at the cigarette-burn on the wallpaper. My wrist pulls back, imitating the kick of a shot, then my other eye opens.

I tilt my head to the left to look at what's left of her. Sullen sockets, vacant stare--she's gone hollow for now. She was up all night howling and testing the locks. Scraping her teeth against the metal and trying to work her hand between the door and its frame.

I kept going in and out, scared that she'd broken free. No more than a bell of uninterrupted sleep at any point. At least it's not ambiguous, I tell myself, she's not getting any better. Then I remember that Claire died for nothing--I shot her for nothing.

I keep thinking about that night out in Thanalan. Theft and a harmonica--her self-reflexive smile. Her life had just begun, but now it's already over. At least she went out on a high note--Izumi should too.

I jump to my feet and grab the key from my pocket. The key slips into the lock and then dangles there with it as I return to the bed in the corner. I wonder if she heard me collapse onto the mattress as I close my eyes. Ring the dinner bell.

Concentrate, concentrate People dying, children crying Concentrate, concentrate Knife in your back Blood is running down Spiders crawling up Spiders crawling down Knife in your back Blood is running down Spiders crawling up Spiders crawling down Concentrate, concentrate

I try to give myself the shivers; it never works. It feels like there's a very thin layer of paper over my eyes. Sleep sounds so nice. I was an insomniac for awhile, and now I keep busy. That's the trick; keeping busy. Can you imagine a caterpillar without segments? Life's not so different. Structure. Everyone needs structure.

"Doctor Charcot?”

The damned nurse breaks my reverie with an announcement of bullshit. I can’t be mad, because sadly that’s what I pay her to do. “What is it Beverly?” I ask. She’ll never know but I hired her for her name. It just sounds like a nurse’s name. It’s not a good reason, but I did it, so that’s on me now.

“A patient just came in. He’s bleeding all over the waiting room... Should I tell him to go? I don’t much like the look of him.”

She doesn’t like the look of anything. Beverly’s a malcontent. I’ve never known a more hateful woman. That’s the second reason I hired, but I don’t mind owning that one so much. “Let me take a gander.”

===

"Thal's balls Altan, what did you do?"

"I played Manawall,” he replies, but there’s got to be more to the story than just that. I won’t ask. I don’t really want to know.

Blood is coming out of his arm in gobs now. And I just know it’s all over my godsdamned waiting room and I’m the one who’s going to have to clean it up. You think Beverly would go out there with a mop and broom? Heavens no. “The bullet seems to have knicked a few major... euhh...” I motion about with my hands as if this will give me the words. It doesn’t of course. “Blood passageways.”

“Could you mean arteries and veins?”

“No one likes a know-it-all, Altan.” I pinch his arm. He doesn’t seem to feel it. In fact, he doesn’t seem to feel anything. That isn’t good. “Can you feel this...?” I ask, then inadvisably poke at a tender piece of exposed, pink, skinless flesh. Probably shouldn’t have done that.

“If you’re going to dissect me, can I have some formaldehyde first?”

“Ha. Ha.” The least he could do is suffer a little. I cannot stand his cheery disposition. This is a clinic after all. Only pregnant women are allowed to be happy here. “I’m going to have to dig out the bullet.”

Existence precedes essence.

I fucking wish that was true.

I used to think that I was special case, “My father made me for a reason, unlike the rest of you.” I know better now. Any responsible parent has hopes for their child, but they’re not usually as lofty as the goals mine set for me.

I’m supposed to rise up and fix the imperfections of our people! A martyr-messiah destined to be in a rocking chair half-rotted to dust by the time he’s just barely finished graying unless I perform the ultra-specific task I was made to complete--an act scarcely possible now that they went and fucked everything up.

They tell me she died during Operation Archon, that whatever happened in the Praetorium that killed the Black Wolf took her life as well. Her motors stopped churning and the ploughs and drills they governed fell into a slumber once thought to be unending.

I’ve been down there. Time eroded the metal; once-sharp edges have been sanded smooth or broken off entirely. They promise the replacements will be hand forged, and it worries me. The people of this land know nothing of fastidiousness. They were born into abundance and have since done nothing but gorge themselves on the surfeit of aether since.

We earned our industrialization through suffering in the bitter cold without the gift of the natural world’s compliance. Our productivity was born through labor and generations of hard life without meaning. We never scoffed at the machine’s demands.

A Garlean is happy to play whatever role is required of them, but an Eorzean? They need creative fulfillment; it is the only way that they can be fulfilled. They don’t understand interchangeability.

A machine abhors deviation because it is the same thing as malfunction. Despite the end of our grand experiment, ours was a spirit of order and obedience. We understood that all things decay and that when the time comes for replacement it is vital that the next generation pick up exactly where the last left off.

Garlemald is dead and the Towers are its dying gasp. There’s nothing there for the living anymore. We were made to face our civilization’s end. The calamity was not of our making, and still it has left our once proud people little more than orphans.

All of the plans I laid out for my life are no longer possible, but I cannot give into despair and die purposelessly like so many others. I have a family to protect. I would choose death for myself, but not for them. I’d sooner dirty my hands with Eorzean soil.

A denizen of the Ul’dah has offered us safe passage. We have been promised a home in the desert in exchange for my expertise. I will share with them the secrets of Magitek, but nothing more. In return they will give us shelter.

My dearest Aloysha; I know you will not understand the decision I am about to make. You see me as feeble and desperate, but you misunderstand my intentions. I am driven not by cowardice, but love. Someday you will have children of your own and you will be forced to compromise your principles for their well being.

This is the burden of any father. A man who has sons and daughters cannot prize his ideals above their well being.

Lilith hadn’t taught him that, so who did?

Not his unnamed mother whose corpse has long been chewed up by her own livestock; they saw no one out there in the intervening space between the tall, cold mountains and I doubt she taught her own son to bow, but with her? Who knows. Nothing’s really off the table when you’re dealing with someone that damaged. This isn’t a thought I want to entertain, so I dismiss it despite the possibility.

A courier? Perhaps it was someone in the markets showing the expected courtesy after a purchase.

Is this is how he sees our relationship? He’s warmed up to Lilith already but the boy has never known a father before. It’s not so different from how I felt about mine. Fathers loom; we’re larger and stiffer. Size is a threat.

The comparisons come naturally, one thought cascading off the surface of my mind like a pebble skipping along a pond.

Do I want him to see me as I saw my father? Did he know how I felt about him? Did he care? And who was he really, past the misconceptions I had? I was wrong about so much, and at this point there’s only so much I will ever know of the truth. Like so many other things it’s lost to the past. All I have left of him is what he made of me.

It starts as a nagging thought in the back of your head. Something is amiss and you just can’t help but reach out and trace the anatomy of your dissatisfaction all the way to its rotten core. What you find there you can’t unthink no matter how hard you try. It’s a debilitating experience, at least for awhile, until you pick yourself up and trace your way out, then start over.

I spent so long in pursuit of a singular goal only to find out it didn’t bring me the satisfaction I imagined once I accomplished it. And isn’t that how it always is with dreams other people taught you to pursue? True satisfaction comes from within.

And so you dig again. Deeper and deeper into the core of who you are. Past the constructions of others, deeper than the noble lies you tell yourself, there’s something there. Your truth; a statement that lacks refinement. Something that you have to bring out through hard labor and refine into an identity of your own.

I’d meant to die that day, crashing into the front of the theatre with the throttle pushed all the way down. They told me the core would rupture and the explosion would be magnificent. Imagine my disappointment when I woke up sprawled out on the red carpet. Somehow the crash only threw me through the glass and left my ride twisted around a cermet pillar. What a disappointment. There would be no blaze of glory, just a welcoming party of dazed onlookers coming to gawk at the survivor.

Crane. It’s the kind of name you give a kid who is born into this world already thirty-two. I remember reading it, pinned on that little tag stuck to the breast of his usher’s uniform. My eyes rested there when I put the barrel of my already blood-stained handgun under his chin. He didn’t have time to flinch before I pulled I pulled the trigger. I don’t play with my food.

Here’s a tip: when you blow someone’s face off up close it’s a good idea to fixate on something else long enough for the remains to drop to the ground and out of your field of vision. We aren’t meant to comprehend some things, and mortality’s chief among them. I live by a simple rule: spend as little time thinking about the things that might paralyze me as possible. I always wanna be moving.

The Golden Rule? Fuck that. I am not other people. Do onto me as I deserve, I say. And I’ll give you the same treatment in return. Which, if you’re an Optimates bootlicker means 37.45 grains of shaped steel giving you the facelift you always wanted but were too afraid to ask your pureblooded master for.

She told me I had the dressed-down look of a Magictek Millionaire but all I could think about was the automated carriage waiting outside. Pretty? Sure, but I’m Cinderella late for the ball and she’s the only glass slipper for malms around. I don’t have a fairy godmother so I’ve gotta make do.

The clock’s ticking; I push. One hand on her ass, the other on her wrist. I’m hoping for a squeal and bracing for a yell. Instead she gives me a look and I know I’m in.

We bound to the nearest exit and out the door. She wants to find a dark corner and I am disappointed. I ask myself why I’m never this lucky on a normal Darksday while dragging her along to my ride, much to her dismay.

It’s programmed to take me home the second I turn it on, she explains.

So don’t turn it on, I counter.

It takes a moment but the light bulb comes on. She gets the jist while my stomach flutters. I’m almost there. Her hand moves to her purse and with the speed of a G-DOT Bureaucrat with arthritis that refuses to retire well past his prime she searches inside for the key.

She smiles, embarrassed, and mistakes my impatience for larceny to one born of horniness. This is her at her most relatable; it’s the kind of honest mistake that her friends and family are gonna be wondering about tomorrow when they hear the news.

Breath mints, a handkerchief, her compact, a tube of lip gloss, three wrapped tampons, a condom she flicks my way, seventeen coins, and finally--the key. I snatch it from her slender fingers and now I’m feeling bad; it’s always the small reminders of femininity that get me.

I unlock the door, pull the gun from my waistband and turn around to lower it downward. I don’t even process the sound the firearm makes when I unload a tight three round burst right into her chest.

She falls back and I plunge the key into the ignition. The door shuts of its own accord and the machine grinds itself alive with a horrible, cacophonous sound not unlike a cough. Someone really oughta look into that, but tonight that’s not my problem. I take a knee and rewire the control module. A crowd’s assembled outside.

“What’s in the pipe, boss?” He asks--I hate his blocky face so much I cannot reply at first. I can only stare. Gannis looks like he was carved from marble. Literally. This is not a good thing. “Somnus.” It’s a beautiful word; perhaps even the most beautiful way of saying sleep in all of spoken language. Of course, I only speak common and therefore my opinion is not particularly well-informed but that isn’t about to stop me from having it. “A particularly delightful variation of the compound at that. It’s almost sweet on the tongue.”

They look at me with barely contained disappointment, put off by my choice of intoxicants. It is, after all, associated with the lowest of the low. Addicts laying about in gutters, stinking of excretions brought on by the Ul’dahn heat. Their minds are simple; they cannot help but see the through line. It’s simple association and so I pity them, “Have you something to say...?”

No one says a thing, and so I float to my room, shut the door behind me, and pick up my pen. I love the sound of friction as harsh strokes dance over a page, plunging in opposite directions with every letter. My hand creates the most dramatic of curves, and soon that becomes the point. Meaning is lost to form as my ministrations become art for its own sake, a pure appreciation of aesthetic that embodies my rekindled spirit at its most basic form.

The smoke eases the pain of integration, the changes brought on by this strange device. What a thrill it is, living outside the safety of the ordinary confinement of consciousness.

“Some day you’ll see it with your own eyes, when you’re old enough to drink if we’re still profitable. Every surface is polished, there’s not a speck of dirt to spy from floor to ceiling. I’ve never owned such a clean space before. In the past, I would’ve taken great joy in leaving behind muddy footprints like a barbarian charging through a fragile palace on his way to kidnap the queen after breaking through her castle’s defenses.“

“When you live on the Steppe you get used to dirt. I barely saw it. Then I came to Eorzea... The change was gradual. People look at me and they see a degree of composition, but they don’t realize how paperthin that image once was. I was trash. I ruined everything I touched.”

“I moved three times in the past few years and never got the deposit back once. Cigarette burns on the wallpaper, stains on the carpet from spilled food, holes punched through wood; taking care of things wasn’t my style. Now I buff water rings out of a wooden countertop.”

“My clothing is no longer a lie. I’ve changed; gone a little softer maybe. If I went back to the Steppe I would complain about the heat and the bugs. Straw mats, simple food--no. Never again. I don’t spend my days dreaming of violence drunk off my ass with the stink of Kumis on my breath.”

Torgana speaks while washing dishes. Her voice drones on in a classic monotone that his own once resembled: “The boy does nothing but cry. He sits in his room and weeps, staring at the light peeking through the window. He does not eat; I must force him to drink. He grows more sickly every day.” “He’s adjusting,” Altan says with a flippant shrug of his shoulders, projecting disconcern at the situation and confidence in his own decisions. Past the façade he isn’t so sure. What he refuses to eat? What if he dies? He’d intended to kill the mother, not the son. “It’ll be fine. Give it time. Change requires adjustment.”

She doesn’t look at him as she vents; he knows why. The dishes are a good distraction--a distance they both value. “If he doesn’t eat soon, he will not grow. The boy will be a runt,” she says before confessing her true worry: “If he survives at all.”

Altan takes in a tense breath as his muscles refuse to relax. “I know what to do.”

“What?” She asks, then turns to look at him, breaking the illusion. Her face is wet with tears; she looks like him. He hates it.

“It’s you,” he confesses, the words lodging a dagger into his sister’s side. As much as it pains him to say it, he doesn’t let her know that. He keeps his own counsel; she will get none of it. “Us, I mean.” His eyes flit down to the scales on his forearm in wordless reference. Torgana nods. “We are not soft. Our scales cut; they dig into his skin--they remind him of our differences.”

“Yes,” she says simply, distressed.

He opens his mouth to say it, his tongue moves, but no sound is produced. Torgana turns back to the dishes. “Lilith.”

“I know,” she whispers sadly. “I actually thought this might work... When he first arri--”

The creak of his chair quiets her. Altan rises to his feet and makes his way to the child’s door and raps his knuckles softly against it before opening the portal slowly. “Come on boy,” he calls to the small Raen inside. “There’s someone who wants to meet you.”

The child does not listen. It’s unclear if he heard at all. Torgana sobs quietly in the next room. Impatience mounts and after a moment of failed restraint his temper flares. Altan draws his arm back and plunges his fist. The wood splinters and cracks as he puts his hand clean through the door with unintended force. He pulls his hand from the fresh hole in the door, wipes the blood away from his knuckles, then averts his gaze from the terrified boy.