Do I wake or sleep?

The question arose anew once they stepped outside and the sky above them was free of concrete and stone, splaying itself wide and vast in its nakedness which was the only one that did not disgust him. Looking up at the moon who was looking down, he felt a stranger to her gaze. Forcefully taken from it and locked behind bars only to be nearly forgotten by the world outside and the life within the fortification of the enemy. What worse fate could have hit a man? To disappear from every eye and be dealt the cards of someone that no longer induced fear? That birthed fright? To no longer be seen with eyes that were full of the doom that they were facing. To be with them as they knew their last seconds were running out because he was there to cut the string and extinguish their flame between his fingers.

How many nights had he spent behind bars? In a coffin made of concrete. How many weeks? How many months, with his senses dulled and him locked within his own mind, which was not a healthy place to be locked up in? What does a dog eat when there is nothing left to eat but himself? Adal does not remember. He is ashamed to admit that he stopped counting. That he had reached a point where he had stopped to care.

He followed Felix in silence, caught in the spell of the glowing sphere who shone with cold stolen light, pulled along by instinct without looking down. Following the sound of his heels meeting the tiled courtyard floor, perhaps, that low and soothing clicking of boots and a lively stride so eager, that it nudged something inside of him to surface. Weak, like a newborn. A sense of calm. Even though sneaking out and feeding the doll wine was one of the few taboos even he was warned of.

The view of the moon was cut off by a man-made structure again and when he looked down darkness encompassed them. Shadow and shade, of which one would think the gomorrah was full of but only just so. Barely, with how dim the light was, it was still cast enough. Draping itself over everything and all in obscene red, with the shadows of all and everything worn as lingery. This dark out here was different. Like a wall he had walked through without realizing. It felt heavy on the limbs and tried to drag him down. Not knowing any better he followed the soothing whisper and sat down beside Felix.

Who was almost too eager to fill his cup and the brute did let him without thinking twice about it. Invitation or subconscious need to serve, still, even though they were not too far apart on the pyramid of hierarchies. Adal did not question it.

“Music’s the temporal ordering of sounds and silences that establish rhythms and harmonies.”

Cold, unfeeling, words wholly unbecoming of an artist. Yet there was an unmistakable sense of clarity to them, like the ticking of a metronome timing his breaths. In reality, Felix believed the stolid and technical minutiae of the arts to be as warm as flesh. There was no less feeling in the counting of beats-per-minute than in the thudding of one's heart. Life started in that same fashion, after all, in the thoughtless drumming up of blood and in the clanging of primitive synapses. “It’s in the birds trilling before the sunrise. In the wind and trees. In the breath and voice of every person you’ve met. The pattern of all living things. Whether by design or by happenstance, music is everywhere and in everything.”

His hands toyed with the bottle between his thighs, tearing at the label with red colored nails. “That being said, while I appreciate all kinds of music and musical experiences–” He frowned, strengthening the pout that was ever on his face. “The radio here’s starting to wear me out.”

It had all but driven him mad. He’d never so disliked a station and its host before. Pompous and false in every sense of the word. A wretch sat high upon his tower, observing the going ons of his domain and its people like specimens he’s kept in a glass case. An insufferable man, and with such little respect for music that he lazily puts the same couple of tapes in rotation. Why use the station at all then? Why have the families play it through their speakers? Was this a new form of torture?

“That's what I wanted to get at, actually.” A shy admission, accentuated by the subtle reddening of his cheeks. Felix tried never to complain about the conditions of his stay. A bed at Gomorrah was better than lying on the cold, hard ground anywhere else. But especially out in the Mojave. The people were desperate in the desert, splitting at the seams for an escape, no matter how brief or how grave the consequences. For them or himself. A dangerous game to play with an eager thing like Mischief around, always scheming for its next bit of fun…Though Felix paid for his current shelter on hard terms, it was better than suffering the revelries of his god each and every night.

Every few nights would do.

             „You mean, down here or up there?“ His head briefly tilted to the notion, looking at the windless sky and the shape of clouds that looked twisted and contorted. They still held their initial shape from when the wind still had been and looked frozen ever since. Mid-touched, half fleeing. Turn in two by things that had parted them and left like that. The sky itself, bare of anybody. A weeping mother to a codependency torn asunder by a jealous lover.

             „As with every calamity. People died quickly. Those who didn't were quick to be at each other's throat.“ The gaze of the witch focused on the road again,soon scanning the approaching of mostly-intact stone walls surrounding a once lively city. No one left to take up post. They would have to somehow get by the lowered iron gate.

             „A shame human instinct is such an ineffective reaction to dangerous situations. Prey will run fast. Predators may go on offensive. Some will fly, run up a tree, or dive into water. A young man may escalate the situation when he feels his ego is threatened. Others freeze up or make irrational decisions.“

For a moment Alexander turned to look at Dilnis.

             „You'd think fear is a dangerous thing.“

He looked away again.

Instead, he opted to hum in acknowledgement, and encouraged the witch to speak their mind. No doubt, Alexander had witnessed his people devolve in the midst of such a disaster. An animal might only bear so much, let alone the total destruction of their ecosystem- Forced to outpace an inevitable and fast approaching death.

He wondered, briefly, what it would feel like to outlive the viability of his own survival.

“Do you know another way inside?”

The city walls stood tall before the sorcerer, and in better condition than he’d first anticipated. He stared up at the battlements, whose dark and barren appearance further intensified the air.

         “ Billie,” he repeated, the single name strange in the mouth of one used to titles and status.

         “ I am familiar with our needs and deadlines,” he answered. “And not at all adverse to innovation when it comes to achieving our goals. Most importantly: I am faithful and loyal to our Queen’s righteous cause. ‘Tis in our best interest this work remains secret, of course. It must be carefully guarded from this point onward... You must be carefully guarded from this point onward.” He eyed the page before her, so unthinkably treated better than the Queen’s own missive. 

The sudden quirk of her brow, however, betrayed a kind of dull and tacit understanding.

“Ah, yes…”

The corners of her mouth twitched at the mention of her other projects, vastly overshadowed by the prospects of their new course. “It's just as well. I was going to begin my day with a different sketch, but our first draft comes to mind now…”

Out of the mists and bared before the sun’s brilliance. A fledgeling thought that should someday take flight. If only she nurtured it well enough, and imbued it with dreams of great devastation. She thought then of a fire that could never be quenched. A weapon that would scorch the earth for days. For longer, perhaps.

Forever…

Placing a of the cigarettes between his lips, Paukka caught only from the corners of his eyes, the movement of a shadow slipping away through the gate of a building. Not thinking much of it at first, buzzed as he was, he guided the lighter to the end of the cigarette and tried it a few times. The flame would not properly spring and he groaned curses under his breath at the lighter being in need of refilling.

From behind him, a second silhouette then emerged and he watched it pause right at the edge of the cracked sidewalk the first shadow had turned a corner at, before it too went down that path. Usually not that paranoid, something penetrated the air and unsettled him. A smell that wasd familiar but he could not quite place...

Felix had stumbled upon the wrong man that night, right where the light of the streetlamps could no longer reach. Empty streets, the first sign of an opportunity and heavy warehouse doors, warped open from neglect, had led him and his killer to the scene of his murder. Back then, the clambering of his screams had rattled off the foundation’s walls, shaking metal beams as he thrashed and savagely struggled against his attacker’s blade. Only for him to succumb in the end(, as he always did), choking on his own wineblood.

Once dead, he knew only what Mischief deigned to tell him. The way his body had been carried out to a second location, posed as part of the arrangement of an ambitious gallery installation. Every bit of his flesh (, save for his head,) was twisted into layered spirals, infinitely coiled as if in mimicry, or in mockery, of the very cycles of life and death. Seemingly endless. A beautiful display of artistic mastery. In turn, a grotesque vision of humanity. No doubt, a feast for the god who’d moaned at the sight and later in its retelling…

Here he was again, tonight, away from moon and star, and struggling to catch his breath.

The revenant shot a glance over his shoulder, already knowing what he’d see, but cursing all the same. Some other man had come to play, and had nearly matched his stride at that point. Damn. He didn’t want to wake up inside the city’s morgue a second time. Cramped into a metal drawer and panicked among the stillness of other bodies, the stench of formaldehyde wafting from every surface.

He began to run through the maze of narrow passageways cut in between the houses, wondering if anyone would notice the hunt from their windows and intervene. They never did, but against all reason, against all knowledge, he still prayed they would. (And that they wouldn't ignore him if they did.)

the crack of the drywall echoed loudly through the unfinished structure, but with construction having been abandoned once funding for the urban project had run out, Celia did not care to stifle the noise. even her footsteps, combat boots offering more grip on the loose, half-dried mud, were nigh careless in their placement.

the hole in the man's head is gruesome but familiar and she merely grimaces slightly when hauling the body off of the broken boards and scaffolding, slinging the dead weight over her shoulder with a quiet grunt, then stepping forward and up onto the foundation of what might once have become a home.

Death wasn't the worst part. But the stretching of his soul through the pinhole of eternity. Worn thin like a string tugged at both ends. Surrounded by other bodies, other voices, all of them clamoring in terror and ecstasy.

What horror, what bliss!

Felix held his breath and steadied himself, waving away the memories lest he succumb to his own fears. Carefully, he inched backwards on the floor, hoping to remain out of the killer's line of sight, lumbering so close to discovery.

Words. Paukka was no good with them and he had trouble with everyone that thought too much into speaking them out. He had met the kind that thought too much yet understood so little or the type that thought using high and fancy words made them into something better. He thought of all the priests he had met and how they so meticulously dressed in their drab black garbs and followed the word of some long dead saint and that of his father, as if the man was capable of wonders and could help them from beyond his grave. Anyone crazed by their belief, to the point they did not speak, in fear of someone sitting high above the clouds could hear them, like it was an easy distance to breach like that if their main street, from the saloon carrying the voices of many drunk and stupid either out of the front door or the voice and noise of working women through the windows, to be picked up by the wind and carried all the way over or down the street for anyone walking it to hear.

No. Paukka did not like words. They held power in the wrong places and meant absolutely nothing when they should. They were bound to cause harm more often than did any gun. Which was why he looked at the stranger the way he did. As if he could see what wound was caused him, or by who, or if any of it was fright, come through guilt over his own bad actions. Was that why people had strung him up all the way out where they had? A wrong chord hit that they thought it not necessary to follow the law set for every one of them?

Whatever the reason behind it, Paukka could not help feel for the guy. Standing there like a wet cat, with an arched back and hissing at him for making a noise that has startled him. When all that Paukka saw was a sad mess of a man whose nerves had been strung so tight it was no wonder they were so thin. Even with this feverish response and the whirlwind of questions it brought floating about, the winds just as quickly calmed again.

The state the stranger was in, he simply did not look like a threat. He looked miserable, with his thin shoulders and overall willowy looks. Pittyable, almost, with those sad eyes and that somber expression. Paukka almost wished him back to singing again.

He would not argue with the other over matters that did not matter in the end. They did not need to get along and certainly did not need to become friends. He only needed to do the job that came with bearing that worn tin star on his chest and see that folk would give him less reason to follow through with it. For a fleeting moment his eyes sank to the tub and the Sheriff too wished he could sit down in it and clean himself from all the dust and sweat, or rest his body after the long ride. His muscles ached, his throat was dry, his eyes were burning and the longer he stood the more he wanted to lie down and sleep.

An old and heady grief stole its way through Felix, and pressed over his heart like a waterlogged corpse. Good samaritans, like the sheriff, were bad for his health. They burdened him with kindness and their shows of good will, until he could half believe them to be true. But he knew, all too well, the kinds of things men actually wrought with their hands. Had felt them for himself as they dug through the lining of his skin and filled him with unimaginable pain. Well intentioned or not, every person had their weakness. A point of entry through which his Shadow crept in and left its traces. Like wine smeared over a perfectly clean mantle. Rinse, and it would spread. He turned away from them and buttoned up the trousers around his waist, ignoring the toll of his stomach as best he could. Not that any mortal food could satisfy him then.

But, what if he agreed to sup? What’d be the harm in breaking his fast with the man who rescued him? The soft, animal parts of his body ached with the still-beating recollection of their wants, urging him to accept. Survival was a hard thing to unlearn and strip from his nerves. It didn’t matter just how long he’d been deceased, only that his organs functioned under the false assumption that he was alive, and that he needed sustenance to keep from keeling over. He didn’t, however, and the reality of that alone was enough to wreak further havoc inside his mind. How did one argue with something as thoughtless and as base as a hunger pang?

“I'm tired.” He whispered with bleak despair. How long would a single meal last him? How long until he was attacked and slung right back to his feet, his stomach emptied of everything he´d ever brought to his mouth?

The revenant steadied himself with a hand, stiffly gripping the back of the chair before taking a seat. He stooped slightly, with his hands placed over his lap, and his legs posed listlessly before him. If not for the subtle heaving of his chest, he could have passed for a puppet let loose from its strings.

“You’re…you’re taking me to a cell, yes? I won’t resist. I won't fight. Just take me there.”

^This is the kind of singing your muse hears that veers them off the path and straight to Felix like a person possessed.