#ic*

‘        OH DEPUTY    -    what about this strikes you as a game?        ’        teeth drag against his lower lip, something threatening underlying in his tone    -    irritation obvious as features twitch and contort before he follows up.        ‘        is it the part where i try to save your life? try to give you some redemption from all those horrible, SINFUL things you’ve done? UNGRATEFUL.        ’        there was that wrath he couldn’t quite shake        ‘        if i weren’t so invested in you, i’d surely call you a lost cause by now.        ’        fingertips drum restlessly at the hard surface of his makeshift workstation, an almost pained sigh passes the youngest brother’s lips.

        ‘        yet HERE I AM, invested    -    ready to welcome you into my open arms, all you have to do… is say YES.        ’        a step taken closes the small space that separated the opposites, john can’t help but let the corner of his lip twitch    -    though it isn’t amusement, it’s a feeling of certainty.

it is said that reality is liquid  &  through concentrated existence one can learn to swim.    so the legend goes   ...   yet,   if reality is a sea then its waves are vast  &  you are far better off trying to float than to swim :    where the water takes you is not up to you,   it is the will of the force. 

but after a lifetime of blind faith  &  complete devotion rewarded with only indifference,   the water grows muddy.    his faith wavers.     ❝  no.  ❞     then steadies.     ❝  religion closing your eyes and finding that you can still see.    the delusion is when you only see what is being recounted to you.  ❞    black eyelids shield away twin suns  &  for a moment the deep-dented tension around his eyes smooths away.    there is peace in floating ;    in knowing that you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

knife cuts through sister,   boy dies,   a shape is hatched in the residue.    anger is a memory,   sparse even there,   but here exists only calm  -  calm  &  the artful language of violence,   and he understands it well.    sensible violence is fear.    this exists not even in the boy’s memories,  &  thus the shape doesn’t partake,   but she does;   she,   the girl,   blonde and pale and wild.    there is something admirable about her,   he thinks.    something familiar.    deeper than the way her hair falls in waves like his. 

maybe this is why he complies,   or maybe it’s simply due to the absurdity of the threat.    regardless,   shape stays shape,   dormant  &  content to observe for now.

mask,   noun:   a covering for your face.   his mask;   HE HAD TWO.    one he brought with him always,   the other likewise.    one is latex,   the other is the skin stretched across his head.    one is a false face,   the other is his face.    expressionless eyes carve holes into the man lying at his knees  &   as does his knife.    it breaches bruised skin  &  summons the too familiar,   coppery scent of blood as the knuckles of his left hand,   previously white from tension,   are painted red.    this is when he feels alive          when the unrelenting heaving of his chest  &  the heat of his breath stands in bare contrast to the stillness of a lifeless body being slowly depleted of its prior warmth.    this is when he is interrupted.

he abandons the streak of light curving through the window,   sourced from the street outside.    the darkness allows him to rise unseen  &  the stillness gathered from the corpse allows him to move unheard.     he observes the interrupter.    a boy.    a nuisance,   not a threat.    as he glides through the house towards the backdoor he knocks a glass off the kitchen counter.    he will leave the child alone,   but part of him hopes the boy will decide to investigate,   inevitably finding the ruined body on the floor.    his face remains inert,   but the mask underneath twitches the edges of its lips upward while its wearer remains oblivious.