Horror Pandemonium

Nineteen

Nineteen

Despair surged around Jared like the pale glow of the Silver Bullet in his hand and crawled around his flesh like some kind of parasite looking for a way into his body. As kind as the release from the straight jacket had seemed, the pain from his wounds dug into his mind and almost forced him back to the floor in agony. I'm alone again. The memories that he had previously thought were subtle rushed through him constantly now, shifting scene to scene through his faltering eyes. The door at the end of the hallway looked distant. Jared felt that it continued to get further away the more he walked toward it, stopping occasionally to rest against the wall. His vision blurred into a surreal mess of light and shadow and glowing eyes. They seemed to all be accusing him of abandonment, but there was no sound here except the denial racing through his head.

I see a door, but how do I get there? His feet felt heavy. Every step was like a nail being driven through his foot into the floor and then pulling it out again to go forward. Another nail. Then another. And another. He slowed to almost a crawl and began to feel the pressure of the darkness around him Let me out. I want to get out of here.

As he collapsed to his hands and knees, Jared was rammed with the thought that he was trapped here in this room of eyes, every one of them looking right at him, unmoving, unanswering, unmerciful.

Let me out of here.

"Then get up and walk."

The voice sounded from the darkest corner of the room. It sounded familiar to him. Where have I heard that voice before?

"Get up, Jared. You cannot reach the door unless you are on your feet. It's as simple as that."

But every time I look at her, every time I look at her picture, all I see is what's missing. He looked up at the picture in the center of the wall. Feelings poured out of his soul, onto the floor and into a puddle of blood. Why is she gone? How can I still love her so much?

"That's called Love, Jared. It never dies. It merely bleeds to some insane measure of unconsciousness. You will never stop loving any of these people, but you do have to move on." The voice paused, dramatically or not, and the silence left behind seemed to fill the room with tension that made Jared look up toward where the sound had come from. "You must know that it is not her. You must know what is in your heart is not the same person that tortures you in this place."

But the memories ...

"The memories will remain. You will have to choose which ones to keep. How do you want to remember her?"

I don't want to remember her, goddammit! I want to hold her.

"You can't."

The tears flowed again from Jared like a wellspring of torment. He knew that the Voice was right, but he couldn't bring himself to believe it. No. She's not gone. She's right here. She will always be here. I don't want to let her go.

"You have to. Someday, you have to."

I know, Jared sobbed. He felt like his heart had been ripped from his chest yet again. How many times has she torn it from me? I can take it. I'm strong enough to take it. There was no response. Silence. But he knew that the strength was beginning to leave him, and he felt the warmth of the Bullet grow more intense in his fist.

He opened his eyes and saw that the glow had begun to fill the entire room. In the faint silver light, he could see the display of pictures, the fireplace, the benches, everything that the gallery held for his reflections. Jared looked around for the origin of the voice that he heard. There was no one in the room but him.

Then he saw the door. It doesn't look that far away now. And then it opened.

Rose? The outline of a woman appeared in the doorway.

"Come to me, Jared."

Rose? His mind was drawn to the sound of her voice. His soul seemed to pick him up off his feet and carry him across the room.

Rose? How is it that you ...

"Shh. Come on," she said quietly, taking his hand. "I want to lead you home."

Jared held on to her hand tightly. The warmth of her hand intensified cold warmth of the Bullet that was held between their palms. Jared barely noticed, as he looked at her and she smiled back at him.

"Come on. We're going home."

Rose turned and shut the door to the gallery behind them. She put her hand on his shoulder, and they began to walk through a smaller hallway.

"Wait here. I want to lock the door."

Jared stood there waiting. He looked down the hall and could see the golden light of day shinning from one of the rooms to one side. He had prayed for this day for so long. Rose, back in his arms again. He had waited for so long for her to come back and redeem him from his misery.

Lost in his thoughts, Jared began to remember all the times they had held each other so close in the night. How many times had they fallen asleep together just in silence, enjoying the sound of each other's breathing? He couldn't remember. The peace of knowing that she was to be back in his arms again was enough to calm his fears.

It was then that the pain of the steel sliding into his lower back left him unable to scream. He tried to twist around to see his attacker and all he found was Rose, staring at him with such anger and hatred that he couldn't shake the feeling of numbness that was quickly overtaking his body. Why, Rose. Why?, was the last thought he could manage before the blackness overcame his senses.
 
Twenty

Twenty

Black turned to fire which turned to fear when Jared opened his eyes. Even the pain that wracked his body was numbness compared to the horror that flooded over him when he tried to look around the room. His lungs felt inadequate to compensate for the stifling air, and his heart was racing to a beat of some insane drummer that he couldn't see. The sheer torture that ran through his body was marked by what he could see stuck into his arms and legs. By the ...! No! He brain reeled from the truth and his head fell back against the wall to which he realized he had been nailed. Every nerve screamed as he fought for the air that rushed around him. It scourged his throat and tore at his eyes like a desert blast.

Jared faded in and out of the pain, the darkness rescuing him for moments that seemed like an eternity, though not long enough. Every time he opened his eyes he thought he could see something new in the room. His vision flowed with the erratic shifting of a bad stop action movie, jumping in and out of his consciousness with the sharpness of the blade that stuck him in the back. I remember now. He mind skipped back to the hall where Rose had taken him. Why, Rose. Why.

"Because I can. Because you let me. Because you do it to yourself."

He opened his eyes and saw her there in the corner of the room, just barely perceptible in the shadows. She moved only slightly toward him where the light cast a deadly ray over her. She looked stiff, awkward, wooden. Her face was twisted and misshapen into that evil and desperate smile that shook his memory. She seemed unwilling or unable to come closer to him.

"What makes you think that you are anything to me? What makes you worthy of me?" She taunted him from the distance.

Rose, he managed to whisper.

She stayed quiet for a moment as the sound of his voice seemed to float towards her.

Why me?

"Shut up, you selfish bastard," she abruptly screamed at him. "You never think before you open your mouth."

A figure detached itself from the wall near her and moved slowly towards him. Jared could see that it was a naked man, a grotesque mask the only thing he wore. There was something familiar about him, though the flash of blood-covered steel in his hand gave him a more sinister appearance. There was purpose in his movements.

"Let's see how long you last before you break," he heard her say. Her cruel laughter filled the room.

The figure moved closer to him and without reason slashed at Jared's leg, memories spilling down to the floor from the rip in his skin. He saw flashes of Rose in the bathtub, the two of them laughing at some picture he'd taken of her.

"Do you love me?"

Yes, his pain tearing into his mind.

"You wouldn't know love if it bit you on the ass. You should have stayed a little dog at my feet and just said, 'How high' when I said 'Jump'. This all would have been easier."

But I ...

Jared felt the tendrils of agony shoot up into his skull and heard the sound of cracking bone as his torturer struck him across his face. He thought his jaw had come off his face and blood began to trickle faster from his mouth. He tasted the thought of her kissing him as they stood in the parking lot after lunch that Spring day. "I'll see you tonight," she had said. The memory of her smile was disrupted by the feeling of hands around his throat and the air sucked out of his lungs as he was lifted up, straining against the nails in his body that held him fast to the wall. His agony was being pushed to limits far beyond what he thought he could imagine.

"Tell me, Jared. How does it feel to be obsessed over, to be handled by someone that you don't want near you?"

He could feel his lungs collapsing over the distress that wounded him from the inside. His voice gurgled through the blood, How?

"Speak up, Jared. I can't hear you very well."

How can you do this to me?

Her wooden features seemed almost broken. "Me? I'm not doing anything to you. Watch."

Jared felt the slice of the blade as it cut through his side. The flesh peeled away from his ribs like yesterday's memory of their day in the park. Blood poured from him as if it was merely the wine that Rose and he shared at the restaurant the evening of their own anniversary. His face twisted in agony at the sound of her laughter at his terror.

"Do you feel loved yet? Do you feel me through your bones?"

The shadowy figure moved with such speed and Jared felt another crack and the memories shot up his arm from the break as he felt his own hand slap the side of his already broken face, blood splattered across his nose. On top of her again, pushing slowly into her, feeling her hands on his back as she moaned softly in his ear.

"I bet you feel it now," she taunted him some more. She paused for a bit, waiting to see if there would be more Jared had to say. "Oh, you bore me. Selfish people always bore me."

Gasping for air, Jared watched as his tormentor returned to his Mistress's side and sat down at her feet. His body began to shake, sending the excruciating pain shooting through every nerve as he saw the mask removed.

He was looking at the face of himself.
 
Twenty-One

Twenty-One

"Jared." He heard her soft voice in the fog of his anguish. "Jared? Can you feel me?"

He felt her. He felt the soft skin of her thighs as they rested against his hips. He felt the pressure of her breasts on his chest. He felt her lips on his cheek. He felt the caresses of her hands on his chest. He felt her rip a section of skin from his shoulder down into his chest and the rush of blood and memory that escaped from the wound. Jared screamed again, writhing in excruciating pain that left his chest exposed to her torture, the nails in his body preventing him from getting away from her.

Temptress. Angel. His Soul's Destruction. Mistress of his Dreams.

He begged her, Why are you doing this to me, trying to look into her eyes for some sign of humanity and affection.

"Because you wouldn't give me what I wanted."

I gave you everything that I could. Jared's mind was aflame with memories that cascaded against the sides of his skull, back and forth through time his thoughts raced to see every last event that he could remember with her. He felt that it might be the last time. There was not much more he could take before it was over.

"But you love this. This is your life. To return to the fire and be reborn again in that fire, over and over again. Didn't you realize already that when you play with fire, you get burned?" Her tone changed to a soft, loving tone again. "My precious Jared. How you have done so much for me. I've loved so much the time that we had together." Again, she changed. "You just don't get it. It wasn't enough. You left me alone to go to her. You left me alone to have to fend for myself without you. You left me. You walked away at night. You let other things stand between us. You didn't give me what I wanted."

But I loved you with everything that I am, he whispered. The air continued to put pressure on his lungs and he felt they would implode. The heat that the room contained burned through him and the anger that she let out forced his body closer to the point of losing consciousness.

"Love." Rose spit in his face, the trace of moisture ran down his blood-soaked face and onto his lip. "What do you know of love?"

I know ... I know that I loved you, he forced out slowly.

"Love is not what you gave me. Love is jealousy. Love is possessive. Love is demanding. Love is exclusive. Love is something you could never understand in a million years. You didn't have a single trace of love for me in your heart." Her voice screeched at him compulsively. She was almost on top of him, riding him in some aetheric way.

And then she fell quiet for a moment, staring at him as he hung there, helpless and bloody.

"Your heart. Yes, I still have that don't I." Rose giggled like a giddy schoolgirl in heat. "I have it right here."

She pulled out the burgundy box from out of his line of sight and held it like it was the most precious thing in the universe. She caressed it, licked it, rubbed her check on it. Finally, she opened it and took out his heart.

"I bet you want this back, don't you."

It's yours. Jared could barely talk at all.

"Oh, no. I think you should have it, if only so that I can rip it out again. This time you will feel it."

She took Jared's heart and placed it back in his chest through the hole that she had created in stripping off the skin. He felt the blood immediately begin to fill it and start pumping at a slow rhythm. Waves of memory crashed over him and twisted his nerves into little spikes of turmoil throughout his entire body. Jared cried out at the sensation.

"Now. Watch as I do this magic trick and pull a heart out of what used to be a man."

Jared's combined passion and anguish sent him into convulsions as she reached back into his chest and tore his heart from the horrid tentacles of memory and feeling that had already reconnected themselves in the brief minutes she had allowed him to feel his own heart again.

His gasping breath bearing allowed him any ability to talk to her at all, but he managed to push the words out. No matter what you do, I will love you. He saw her face go soft for only a brief second.

"Get off him now," a sinister voice from the far side of the room yelled. The look of momentary terror crossed her face, and Jared thought he could see a trace of humanity under it all.

Rose's body flew off him like it had been pulled by invisible strings attached to various points along her extremities, a macabre dance of insult and obedience. In that single instant before her body disconnected from his, he saw a terrifying change. Her face became twisted and smiling, a facade of her beauty, lined with bloody wire marks and vicious lines of animosity. Her body twisted and mechanical, flew back to the dark side of the room where Jared could barely make out the form of the Jester standing, waiting for her recoiling body to reach him. Her fingernails desperately reaching for something to grasp, ripping through the skin of his face and taking a good portion of it with her. Again, he felt the pain of memories run down what was left of his cheek.

"I said to throw darts at his pathetic life, not rub your body all over his carcass."

The Jester left no doubt of his intentions here. Jared could feel the hatred from across the room. There was no need for darts to be thrown at him. The anger and Fear? Is it fear that I feel? Through his torment, he could feel them standing there looking at him in his distress.

"Pathetic," the Jester leered. "You were right to leave him here." He flicked his wrist and Rose's hand went to her head like a feigned motion of heartache.

"I'm so broken over him already," she responded lifelessly.

"Come on, lover. There's nothing more that you could do than to leave him with one part of him still intact and not understanding that he will die here -- alone."

Jared watched as they walked out the door. Rose looked back one last time before the door closed, leaving him in silence and darkness once again.
 
Twenty-Two

Twenty-Two

Eternity turned into seconds, and they moved as slowly as possible for Jared. His body began to suffocate on fear as his pores leaked futility. How long have I been here? The room was still dancing in the light of an invisible fire. Everything seemed red and chaotic to his mind.

"Do you want to get down," a voice calmly asked from the darkest corner of the room.

I don't ... I don't know how.

"What is it that holds you there?"

I'm in pain. Jared felt the strain of his body against the nails. His left arm was separated from the wall since his doppelgänger Was it really me? had broken it and whipped it around against him, but the rest of his body held firm. He felt he had been left to bleed to death from the memories ripped out of his very skin. I can't let go.

"You must if you wish to be free of the pain."

But I can feel.

"You will feel what you choose to feel," the voice said, fading out into a faint whisper, the last word emphasized only by the sound of the door to the room opening.

Through the haze of blood that ran into his eyes, Jared could see a woman's form standing in the doorway. Xanthe. Her form was outlined by the glow of hall beyond and overshadowed by the flare of red that emanated from the room itself. She was the angel of war and the angel of mercy wrapped up in the solid profile of a woman.

"Jared." The look of concern was apparent on her face. She moved toward him quickly, her outline blurring in his vision. "What have you done?"

I ... I came to die.

"Not yet, Jared. Please not yet."

He stared at her. She stared back. Locked in her gaze for what could have only been a moment still felt like hours to him. He didn't want Xanthe to see him this way, but there she was. She made no move to help him. All she did was stare.

"You've got to get off that wall," she said finally. "I'd rip you off it myself, but I think that might do more harm than good."

Don't touch me. This is my pain.

Jared tried to move his shoulder and the agony ran through him toward the break in his arm. The nail pulled loose just enough that he could feel the tension release from the skin. Fresh blood poured down his arm and chest. He closed his eyes, took a breath and shoved his shoulder forward again as hard as he could muster the force from within him. The nail slid all the way through his body, staying firmly lodged into the wall. The force of his motion, however, was too great and his body fell forward at a rate from which he could not recover. With the popping sound of a thousand cells exploding, his body ripped free of all the nails piercing his tissue, and he collapsed on the floor.

Xanthe bent down and covered him with a blanket. Sitting down next to him, she pulled his head into her lap and held him, rocking him ever so slightly like a baby.

I can't go on.

"Shh. You can," she told him quietly. "And you will."

But ... what about ...?

"Hush now. Everything is fine for the moment." She smoothed her hand over him and spread the blood around. The shapes that formed were surreal and malformed, but the images that soaked into his flesh gave him a sense of release.

She'll come ba...

"No. Tempest is being Miss Becky Badass outside the door. No one will come in here. She's got this look on her face. And if I know her, she's willing to ensure peace in here at any cost."

Jared tried to laugh. The pain racked his body and he coughed. Xanthe caught the blood that spilled from his lips in her hand. Closing it into a fist, she held it out for him to see.

"You see? Memories never leave you. People never leave you." She opened her hand. The blood had turned into a rose. "Ironic, isn't it? That pain can be turned into such a beautiful thing in the right hands."

Jared watched for a moment and then saw the rose begin to wilt, fade into black ash and a slime.

"But even that beauty can have a darkness that we can ignore. You can't ignore the darkness, Jared. You have to face it."

The door opened with a slight sound and the face of Tempest peered around the corner.

"We need to go. Now. He needs to be in the library. Everything is clear."

Tempest walked over to where Jared's body lay crumpled in Xanthe's lap and helped get him to his feet. Together, the two women managed to get him walking, and they left the room. The door slammed shut, tearing through Jared like a shock wave.

"It's down there," Tempest said quietly through the echo.

As they moved along the hall, Jared could hear the two of them talking, but he couldn't understand anything that they said. They hadn't gone far down the hall before he could see they were taking him to a doorway on the right. He stumbled slightly as they approached. As his weight fell against them, they let him go, and he careened dangerously, almost falling on the floor again.

Thank you. I didn't think I could make it this far without ... He paused and looked back toward the women. They were edging backwards slowly, holding each other's hand. Where are you going?

"This is up to you now," Xanthe said. "We're done here. It's all up to you."

And they were gone in an instant.
 
Twenty-Three

Twenty-Three

Jared looked blankly down the empty hall for a moment before turning and walking into the library. The expanse of the room was overwhelming with the spines of a million books lined up on shelves that covered each wall. He looked around the room, and the sense of familiarity returned to him. The desk, the display case in the center of the room, a free-standing globe of the world, the soft glow that filled the room. Jared looked down at his hand. The Silver Bullet was lodged in the palm of his right hand, its glow permeating the room with an uncomfortable peace.

Walking over to the display case, Jared looked through the glass at the books there. Thirty-four volumes entitled The History of Chess. He stared at them for a moment, blood dripping from his face onto the glass, each splash forming a memory that he desperately wished he could hold on to in his suffering. The case opened slowly at his touch, and he retrieved the first book from the inside.

Jared sat for what seemed like hours as he poured through book after book, rising each time to retrieve a new book only as fast as his body would allow in its broken state. At times, tears almost flooded the words on the pages, and other times laughter weaved its way around the books that lay listless on the shelves around him. Memories of wins and losses, strategies and schemes, made all the recent events seem to fit right into place. Occasionally, he would nod and mutter to himself, scribbling something down on a pad of paper near the dark lamp.

Standing up to stretch, Jared winced as the blanket ripped open the wounds and blood began to run down his chest again. He'd been reading for so long, he'd forgotten how deeply the pain reached into his muscles and nerves.

He walked around and looked at the room in the pale glow of the Bullet. It continued to feel warm in his hand. It was a comforting kind of warmth that filled the room in almost puzzle-piece patterns as he paced along the shelves of books. He stopped by the globe and spun it. He watched the blur of the spinning sphere until he thought he could see right through it to the other side of the room. It was a magnificent vision that drew him into what seemed to be a flashing light within the globe.

Jared stuck his hand out and forced his finger down on the surface of the globe. It stopped. He picked up his finger and saw that the bloody print was directly on a country. Wales. Figures. I wonder if she knows that is where I wanted my heart buried. And now it's buried in her. He heard a sound behind him. As he turned he saw a section of the wall begin to shift and move away from the rest of the shelves. There was a warm golden glow that emanated from the ever-widening space that opened up. Jared moved closer to the opening as the section ground to a quiet stop. There was a stairway that led down, and although the glow didn't brighten, it seemed to give off a slight shimmer that bounced in and out of the shadows. He just stood there for a moment in silence and stared at the stairs.

If anyone could have looked deep into his eyes, they would have seen the glimmer that shot through them like a comet. It was brief but enough to have caused a change in his whole demeanor. Jared turned and limped back to the table, sat down and opened the book in front of him. Flipping to a blank page while he picked up the feather pen that lay on the table, he wrote a line, paused, then wrote another line. He sat back and looked at the page. Suddenly, in a fury, Jared scratched out what he had written and, with a hardened look on his face, penned something else. On the center of the page was written:

Love is a game,​
and we are all merely pawns.​
​
But we don't have to be.​

Jared stood for a moment and looked at the words. Then he turned and walked down the passage behind the books.
 
Twenty-Four

Twenty-Four

At first, there was no sound at all as Jared descended the cold steps into the warm light. Even with every nerve raw, there was a sense of peace that covered him as he found his way closer to the bottom of the steps. Then suddenly he could faintly hear water. He stopped on the last step and listened. There was running water somewhere ahead of him.

He moved slowly toward the turn in the walkway ahead of him. His eyes were caught by the symbols that seemed to slither around the tiles that lined the walls. Serpents, boars, foxes, elephants; all kinds of creatures both recognizable and unrecognizable seemed to crawl around their individual tiles like they were seeking escape from a cell. There was something uncomfortable about seeing them there, as if viewing a great massacre that had not yet happened, but was already set down in history books. As he turned the corner, Jared was filled with a sense of wonder and awe. What he found before him was nothing like he imagined should be beneath his home, if indeed this was actually beneath it at all. He had a strange feeling that he was not exactly underground, but he wasn't above it either, almost a feeling of being between the worlds of wonder and reality.

Through the golden glow, there was the color of silver that permeated the room and reflected off the water of the pool that lay before him. The area closest to him seemed almost like a normal pool. It was squared off with steps that led into the water. Beyond that, it began to change, to shift in a strange way as if it was beginning to roll into a natural rock of chaos and motion. As far away as Jared could see, there was a mist that covered what appeared to be the back of the whole room yet the front of a cave. The waterfall that was noticeable -- and yet fell from what seemed to be a darkness where the ceiling should be -- partially covered the entrance of the cave. There was movement within the water, yet a calm over the whole face of the water.

Jared heard a soft sound like music. It wasn't music, but it rang like something that soothed him down to the fibers of his skin. It drew him toward the water, and he stepped closer to the edge of the pool almost involuntarily. He listened for a little bit longer, trying to figure out the sound.

He stepped into the water, and it seemed to caress him gently, reaching up to pull him closer in with invisible hands of liquid peace. He felt drawn deeper into the water as his body moved further into the strange mixture of gold and silver light. Jared looked around him and thought that he could see motion under the surface of the water. He stopped and tried to make out the shapes that were around him. They seemed like figures of people, ghostly people that swirled around his submerged legs and hips. He didn't move.

There was something happening in the water, he could tell. Every time one of the figures brushed up against him, he could feel a surge of emotion and pain. It was pain that did not hurt and an emotion that did not pain his soul. It was a feeling of healing, and he started to notice a change in his body. The wounds inflicted upon him by Rose were beginning to close up and the skin to repair itself in an almost mechanical manner. It was a fusion of water, blood and liquid breath that merged into a graft of immeasurable ecstasy. He began to move again toward the back of the pool, the sound of the music gaining strength along with the muscles in his legs. He felt the skin returning to his chest, neck and shoulders. His face pulsed with the blood and flesh that liquefied and solidified in smooth motions around his features.

The music became stronger in his ears, and he pressed forward toward the waterfall. He could see that the source of the golden glow was actually from behind it. The symbols on the tiles of the room and the strange motions under the water seemed to reflect the glow while the water itself was the source of the silver light that seemed to cover it just enough to merge them into a amalgamation of hope.

Jared stepped up on what was the semblance of a rock and yet was the essence of marble. Water fell from his body as he lifted himself out of the pool. He noticed that his wounds were gone, but there were scars that patchworked his skin like tattoos. They were weird marks -- a cross of symbol and word, lovers and loves, friends and companions, all memories that scarred his body as they had previously scarred his mind. They would never leave him, but he could finally go on without bleeding to death from the overpowering emotions that he felt for them all.

He seemed dry when he passed through the waterfall, as if the water fell around him or through him without touching his skin. The waterfall took an eternity to walk through, with an ongoing flux of sights and sounds reflected in every droplet -- his whole life in each one.Jared reached out to touch memories as they fell through his hands and down to the floor. Then it was gone. He had entered what appeared to be a cave. The only light was a large crystal of gold in the middle of this amphitheater made of warped rock or dark black-veined marble. It was expansive and the vertigo of the space overcame him.

As the dizziness washed over him, all he heard was a soft voice, "Welcome to your own nightmare and your own redemption."
 
Twenty-Five

Twenty-Five

The sound of music weaved itself around his flesh and transformed his doubt into a comfortable desire. Jared sat and stared at the room around him. Everything was quiet except for the song that filtered through his mind and lulled him with serenity. The glow of the crystal seemed even more intense, if only because it seemed surreally out of place, the colors clashing in a harmony that was more like an oil painting on a chalkboard than anything natural.

Jared stood up and moved closer to examine the movement that he thought he could see within the crystal itself. It was a smooth rock yet it seemed to have carvings on its surface that moved and changed as he walked around it. A trick of the light? They seemed carved on the face of the crystal and yet somehow they seemed to be floating inside it, moving closer and then further away from him, in and out of the glow itself. A woman holding a sleeping man. A child running through a grove of trees. A man reading a book. A woman painting. Two teenagers having their first kiss. An old couple on a porch. A man and a woman, her love in his eyes and his cock between her thighs. A mother and a newborn child. And yet intermixed in all the images were strange words and numbers and what appeared to be mathematical formulas. Jared continued to circle the crystal with a look of silent wonder and curiosity and a feeling of calmness that he hadn't felt in a while. It was comfortable and the music distracting in a subtle way.

"Nice place, isn't it." The soft voice came from behind him.

Yes. It is. I like it here. There is no pain here.

"You know, I've often found you here in the past. But I imagine that you don't remember those times, do you?"

I've been here before?

"Many times. You come here enough to almost call this your room of choice."

Why?

"You've heard the phrase 'Denial isn't a river in Egypt?'," the voice asked him.

Yeah.

"It isn't. Nor is the Siren's Song what keeps you going. It is an illusion to which you succumb on occasion in order to hide from yourself and your pain."

Siren's Song? The music became clear and Jared could hear a female voice floating softly within the sound of the notes. He couldn't understand the words, but he could feel their intent and the song continued to quiet something that was raging inside him.

Jared turned to the voice. The figure stood there, robed and hooded, featureless except for the flow of the robe around what appeared to be a muscular build. Despite the illumination of the room from the crystal's light, the face of the owner of the voice remained enshrouded in darkness.

Who are you?

"Someone you know very well and yet know so little. We used to talk all the time, until you decided to talk to your self instead."

Why don't I remember?

"You will in time."

Jared turned back to the crystal. Then what is this place if not a sanctuary?

"Reason is a lie. You can only go so far trying to explain it to yourself. You look at yourself in the mirror and find only that which you think will satisfy you. You haven't reached deep enough to transform your pain into simple understanding. You are still looking for a way out rather than the way in."

But this place feels like sanity.

There was noticeable silence that suddenly hung in the room. Jared could feel it, as if something was poking him in the ribs. He looked back around, but the figure was gone. What the fu...? It was then that he noticed two doors on the far wall. The torches that hung on either side of each door seemed to flicker with an understanding of being watched by someone who had a choice to make, and they appeared to throw their flames higher, each trying to outdo the other.

Both doors seemed identical except that the flames of the torches that illuminated the right door, with its ornate patterns, appeared to glow with a subtle green and gave off a light that swam around the door inviting him to open it. The other was a lit with a glow of red and orange that looked more natural and yet eerie, if only because the light refused to reflect off the door, leaving it dark to his eyes.

The grass is always greener ..., he thought to himself. He wasn't sure why that thought crossed his mind, but it seemed to fit somehow. He looked at the dark door and continue to wonder why it called to him. He began to walk closer, and the music increased in his head. It kept calling to him to return to the crystal and stay within the room. He struggled to ignore the sound.

"You have always had a fire within that burned everything around you," Rose had said to him that night they spent lounging around her place. "One can't help but want to reach out and touch it, even if they get burned."

He reached the door and pushed it open.

Then he walked through it.
 
Twenty-Six

Twenty-Six

Beyond the red door was a darkness that was brighter than the sun and more subtle than the new moon on a hazy winter night. The deceptive quality of the shadows fell along the narrow passage that lay ahead of him. There was a dull brilliance that fused with the glow of the Silver Bullet lodged in his hand, both of which gave off just enough light for Jared to see about ten feet in front of him. The dank stonework of the walls loomed on either side with a sense of dark comfort and familiarity. The air was oppressive in a peaceful kind of way, a way that left him feeling as if these self-made chains of soft steel and satin bedsheets were around his neck, slowly draining him of consciousness, yet forcing his life to flash before his eyes in a final spasm of memory.

Jared moved along the passage. While he moved his hand along the wall to steady his going, the rough stone snagged his skin and the abrasions formed thoughts that he felt were better left to the forgotten past. Images of his childhood flashed in his head. Memories of his teenage years long-abandoned ran along corridors of his mind that mirrored the halls in which he walked. Life budding into an adult swamped him, and he began to realize that he was tortured by a past that no longer existed, save in his own thoughts.

The passage came to an abrupt end at a crossing, a new passage stretching out to the left and to the right, both equally elusive and inviting. Jared stared down them both, alternating between hesitation and decision. Thought turned to ash and memory to an impenetrable fog. He heard the advice he'd been given once before speak quietly in his ear, "Always go left at every turn. To the right is the substance, to the left is the shell. You must face the emptiness before you can be filled with joy."

Reluctantly, but with a sense of purpose, Jared turned left and walked into the darkness.

It seemed like hours of turning left, sometimes after a long stretch of hall and other times almost immediately. The choice at every intersection the same. Filled with thoughts, his feelings were pushed out of the way except when he met another junction and they came rushing back at him with a force that tried to force him to his knees sobbing at the choice he had to make. Through each hall, details of his life opened up by small cuts of the stone across his hands and feet, bruising his ego and pulping his soul into a raw mush.

Jared came to an abrupt stop when the soft light around him revealed that he was standing in front of another wall. It was a dead-end. He stood there for a moment confused, trying to figure out if he'd missed a turn somewhere. He turned and began to walk back. Then he noticed that things seemed different. The walls didn't seem to be in the same configuration as they had been when he passed this way before. Openings where he hadn't seen any before, hallways that he'd passed through now gone and replaced by stone and shadow.

He stopped in a junction that held passages in eight directions, and he stood there in a state of silent confusion. There was no choice harder and no voice in his head this time to help him choose the correct path. Each one looked the same as the others. Jared closed his eyes and held out his hand, clutched tightly into a fist with only his index finger pointed out. And he spun. The dizziness washed over him, and he felt the world inside his mind begin to spin out of control. As it gained speed and whirled insanely, his body couldn't resist the force any longer and he fell. He opened his eyes, looked around and saw that the opening he faced was now the only one available for him to enter. The others had vanished in some swarm of choice and predetermination.

As he entered the opening, he could tell instantly that something had changed. The passage was no longer straight and narrow, but seemed to have a concave feeling that encompassed him like a tube or a womb. It was a canal of darkness through which he slowly walked, trying to get his bearings as it wound in a serpentine manner, rather than directly as the other before had done. There was no longer any fixed choice of left or right, but only something vaguely resembling left-ish and right-ish, branches that curved off into other directions that Jared felt officiously begged for his attention, but which never revealed anything of comfort to his confusion. The dankness was gone, replaced by the dryness of his soul searching for both a way out of and into the darkness. Jared felt the light dusting of ash on the stones that now seemed almost polished and clear rather than rough and slimy. It was like a painted desert rather than a winter cave.

He moved along the twisting passages, time all but forgotten in his trek through more darkness of being, his direction lost in the sense of calm fear and irrational comfort. The visions of memories stretched out over more time and distance than he cared to remember. They faded in closer to overwhelm his sight, blinding him at times to the path before him; fading out of his reach as he struggled to grasp them and understand. The ashes of his past covered his skin, the scars seeming to stain with the black and gray in a desire to be permanent comments on his life and loves. But as the ash almost completely covered his body, Jared realized that it was taking on a different property -- stiff, yet comfortably flowing to his flesh like ... leather?!

Jared looked on, as the ash-covered skin began to swell and mutate into black leather, lifting itself from his muscles and forming around him, leaving fresh skin behind in its place. The muscles instantly reacted to the new skin and bonded in a strength that jolted him into a state of awareness of his own nerves on a very minute level. He felt vulnerable and invincible at the same time, and he moved forward through the passage again toward more darkness.

It wasn't long until Jared found that he was suddenly standing in front of a large hole in the ground. It completely spanned the passage in front of him and there was no way across it. It was either back or down. Yet another choice -- but without any indication of what lay beyond the hole or within it. He felt all his newfound strength begin to drain from his pores, and he felt alone again in a rush of doubt and fear.
 
Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Seven

Jared stood before the gaping chasm, staring down into the dark. Whispers of solace seemed to filter into his mind and crept into the little spaces that he had kept away from others for so long. His knees buckled and slammed into the stone beneath him. His hands grasped the edge of the hole, keeping him from falling in. The shrill laughter wafted up at him for the first time since it had left him nailed to his own misery. Anger and fear welled up in his muscles, constricting his thoughts into a dagger that pierced the core of his being. Tears flooded his eyes and dropped up to splash across the ceiling, pooling in a small pattern of desperation.

Why must I do this?

The darkness didn't answer him. Only the laughter that swirled around, just beyond sight and almost beyond sound.

You left me here to die. You took that which meant more to me than anything. You feed my hatred, and I will kill you.

The laughter never formed to words, but seemed to continue to taunt him, pulling him closer to the edge of the dark abyss. Finally, it spoke in that tone that shattered Jared's mind.

"Jump, you idiot. Isn't that what you came here to do? Jump and get it over with for us all."

I will not listen to you anymore.

"Oh, but you will. I made you. I am in every cell of your brain. You are nothing more than what I have created. And the creation never defies the Creator."

Fuck you!

Jared jumped toward the hole, diving in head-first, only to find himself falling back and ... Up? He twisted his body to find that he was falling toward what he thought had been the ceiling, only to find that the hole was now above him. He screamed and waved his arms wildly, trying to grasp onto the nothing that surrounded him.

The pitch black essence of the chasm seemed to shift and roll, reaching out to grab him around his waist and pull him back toward the opening, flinging him with a wretched force straight into the darkness. The speed of his body flying through the black space pulled at his skin and flushed his mind and his bowels into the emptiness around him. Thoughts turned to sand. Flesh turned to water. Bone turned to a rushing wind that bound all else up in a primal mud that spun and twisted through the dark at a break-neck speed.

There was nothing left. No feeling. No thought. No function. Emptiness was the substance of endeavor.

Then the muck that was Jared stopped. It hung in place, surrounded by a milky substance where it found rest, in a room on the other end of the hole.

Eternity passed by and came back around to check on the small pile of what was left of him. The pile of dust and filth made no movement. There was a breeze that blew through the room and filled the air with the smell of myrrh and fire.

And then there was silence. Deafening, soul-bending silence.
 
Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Eight

Rose walked around the small pile of refuse that had finally settled on the floor, covered by a white substance that was sticky to her touch.

"What have I done," she said out loud to no one in particular. She felt quite alone in the room.

A voice startled her from the shadows along the far wall. "You have no idea what you've done."

Rose felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up in recognition of the voice.

"Xanthe."

"Yes, you cunt. I'm your worst nightmare, save maybe the knowledge that you've lost the one man who cared about you more than any of us who actually loved him -"“ loved him in ways that you could never have understood."

The fire in Xanthe's voice penetrated her, violated her. The chill in the room seemed to cover her eyes and bring blood to her tears.

"But, I ..."

"But? But what? It's always been that way, hasn't it?" Xanthe stepped out of the shadows toward her. Rose saw that she held a sword in her hand, the soft light of the room shimmering off the blade with a piercing defiance. "You have always had an excuse or a reason or some need that stood in the way of how he felt."

Rose turned her head toward the remains of Jared on the floor. "What's this then? I didn't do this."

"But you did, Rose." Another voice split the room in half. "You did do that to him."

Her body jumped, startled at the new voice, and she turned to find Tempest walking toward her. Her leather coat barely hid the viciousness of her demeanor.

"That's all that is left of the only feelings he ever had for you. Uncompromising, unconditional love. Even to the detriment of other relationships that held so much more potential to make him happy. But it doesn't look like much of worth to you anymore does it?" Tempest spit her words at Rose.

Surrounded by the two women, Rose didn't move. She stood her ground, trembling slightly.

"This was never supposed to be this way."

"Of course not," the sarcasm dripped from Xanthe's words as she confronted Rose, suddenly right in her face. Rose jumped again.

"You always thought that you could keep him tucked away in your back pocket. But then he got loose, and you just couldn't stand it -- that he might actually have a mind of his own that didn't like your life no matter how much he tried to love you without fail."

"But I did love hi...," her words were cut short by the blow that landed across her face from Tempest's fist.

"Don't ever say that again in my presence," Tempest shot back at her. "You left him bleeding for someone to pick up, but then he wouldn't let anyone touch him again."

"Tempest is right. How long have we watched you slowly torture him to death?" Xanthe's words were calmer than Tempest's but held more venom. "How long have you played with him only to run away to your little pets that didn't have half the guts he did to love you? How long have you betrayed him for that which held no love but only sickness for you?"

"I..." Rose bent down to touch the lump at her feet.

"Don't. Just don't." Tempest's command was clear and echoed sharply in the room. She was down on one knee and in Rose's face as quickly as Xanthe's blade was under Rose's chin. "Don't you think you've done enough damage here?"

"You wouldn't ..." She turned only slightly to look at the woman who towered above her on the other end of the sharp metal.

"Test me," was the only response that echoed back.

Rose started to stand back up, and the blade caught the chain around her neck on which hung the ankh. It snapped and fell. Tempest snatched it before it could hit the ground.

"Give it back to me," Rose demanded, her voice almost breaking under the forcefulness that was the first she'd exhibited since the confrontation stated.

"Rose," Tempest's voice softened. "You don't belong here."

"No. You two don't belong here. I'm here because he wants me here."

"But you do nothing but torture his existence here."

"I can't leave. He won't let me go. I belong here." Rose hung her head slightly for a moment before raising it back up in defiance.

The visible anger on Xanthe's face was beginning to take its toll on Rose, and she began to back away slowly.

"You are a disgrace to women. You are nothing more than a desecration to everything that he meant to anyone. Get out!"

Rose hesitated for only a moment and then turned and fled out of the room. The necklace in her hand slipped out of her hand and fell into the pile of what had been Jared. The slush swallowed it, the chain disappearing under the murky surface.

Xanthe and Tempest stared at each other. The silence in the absence of Rose was softening the air and strengthening the bonds between them.

Tempest moved first. Removing her leather jacket, she placed it gently over the pile in a sense of grave reverence. She kissed two fingers and touched the leather lightly, whispering something softly.

Xanthe watched her and then set down the sword on the floor next to the jacket. "May this help you in whatever life you're living now."

She stood back up and faced Tempest. "Shall we?"

Tempest nodded, then they walked back into the shadows, leaving their things behind with the remains of the man they had both once loved.

The room was quiet long after they left. There was nothing to stir the air, no sound to echo between the walls. It was a tomb.
 
Twenty-Nine

Twenty-Nine

When Eternity dreams of Death, each Moment sweats Bullets.
​
Time wove clarity from insanity and crowned his soul with the thorns of purpose. The brush of Fate swept the colors of his being back into towering landscapes and sensual depths of turmoil and tranquility. The room filled with a wind that stirred nothing visible and left all things in place except for a movement that was imperceptible to the human eye. If anyone could have stood in the middle of the room, they would have felt four converging winds that each held a different texture and temperature, each minutely different and vastly similar in nature, none equal to the other. The current was torrential, yet held no substance of note. But there was something here. Something more than merely the wind. It was in the wind, unseen and unheard through the rush of the wind around the room.

Memory stirred first. It was a primal memory of life before sex, before passion, before pain. It was innocence. The pumping of something formless and void in an unconscious effort of survival.

The leather jacket on the ground fluttered. Movement seemed to come despite the rushing wind that refused to reveal what lay underneath.

The howling of the torrent began to splinter stone from the walls and shower the room with a rain of rock and dust. The rushing currents formed figures of chthonic troubadours with a song of an earthy lustration, each reaching toward the center of the room, swirling in and out of character and content.

The arm of the jacket stiffened and straightened. The wind seemed to back away from the movement as if giving it space to be born in the darkness. A hand of torn flesh and muscle grasped for air as it snapped out of the opening. It clawed at the ground trying to find a sense of location and identity. Another hand struck out at the ground from the other side, this one embedded with a small piece of glowing metal. The jacket began to take form, and more muscle pushed against the leather that plastered itself to the unseen mess beneath it. A cry sounded from within the seams and Jared's head finally breached the collar, his face torn and bruised from a journey so desperate and terrible that the scars would remain if even unseen.

The wind began to tear into him, filling the coat and flinging the leather in all directions like a billowing curtain by an open window during a storm. The revelation of his new flesh that was beginning to take form, like sheets of boiling oil running over of his body, left his mind with unbearable agony and pain. Jared watched in horror as the flesh took over his arms and hands like a parasite. His face seared with a heat that rivaled hell as it transformed into something resembling human. He slowly raised himself up to stand. His muscle-bound knees left a mark of blood on the ground just before the skin took over and covered them in a protective layer, a sweep of suffering that was gone as soon as it began.

He screamed. I am.

The room went quiet and still. The dust floated around trying to find a dark corner in which to flee from the sound of his words.

Jared looked around him trying to figure out where he was. There was a recognition and yet a strangeness to this place in his mind. There was a purpose and a choice that had to be made. He felt it. He knew it. He had to finish it. He looked down at his hand and saw the Silver Bullet still with him. I remember now. He picked up the sword and crossed the room to a small opening partially hidden by the shadows across the wall.

As he crossed the threshold, his vision was stunned by the sight in front of him.

He was in a large hall that he seemed to remember only imprecisely. The sweeping staircase before him led to some upper region of the house. The fireplace was alight opposite this door and the fire seemed to tower above the tallest of men that he could picture standing next to it. Oriental rugs covered the floor. The ornateness of every detail was immaculate in its perfection.

But it was the horror that possessed the center of the room that overwhelmed him.

Rose?

"Jared, don't ...," she tried to get out, her voice choking on the blood that dripped from her mouth.

Rose was enthroned -- if it could be called that -- in the middle of the room on what appeared to be a golden calf. Her body disfigured by a mass of streaming wires, cables and tubes that looked as if they'd been forced into her extremities. Her once beautiful face, now tortured and sorrowful, had a perpetual smile that betrayed the pain underneath the mechanisms that held her in place, a puppet waiting to dance at the master's hand. Jared felt the need to cry but couldn't bring himself to release the emotion. He was numb. She was the epitome of the Jester's Apprentice. And nothing could save her now.

Where is he?

"Good question. I'll answer that one," a voice cackled from the shadows behind Rose. The Jester emerged, almost slithering around the calf and the sacrilege of beauty that he'd set up on his altar of hatred. "Don't you wish you'd stayed away now?"

This isn't about her anymore. This is between us. You and me. It ends here.

"Oh? You think?"

I know that this is not about me, but about you. I won't be a part of your nightmare any longer.

"You have so much to learn, but you never were a good pupil. I should have left you to rot in that cell."

The Jester seemed taller than Jared remembered. There was a forbidding look on his face that was as twisted as Rose's, though without the help of the devices that held her tightly in the form of the Jester's dream.

Then let's do this, finish this. Here. Now.

"As you wish, you fucking idiot. You have no idea what I can do to you."

Then let's see it.

The Jester lunged at him, catching Jared off-guard but not defenseless. He sidestepped and felt the Jester's hands whisper past his throat.

You will have to do better than that. I know you now. And knowing the enemy is half the battle won.
 
Thirty

Thirty

Jared stood his ground in the face of the menace that circled him like a caged wolf. His sword was drawn and ready, but the calm that settled in his eyes shimmered with an unearthly light, flashing between extremes of the room and illuminating the various details. Although he kept his sight fixed on the Jester, he could see the mutation of the golden calf on which Rose sat. An iron maiden, a throne, a rack, a table of delights, each one moving her as merely another piece of itself, the implements of her own torture shifting to keep her fixed within the mechanizations of the Jester's will.

As he stared at her, he saw that her eyes were empty sockets, the blood running down her face with the look of a maniacal mime. How do you destroy a devil to save an angel who's torn out her own eyes to believe in only his whispering deceit in her ears? The Jester moved behind him and lunged. Jared snapped out of his trance and stepped out of the way in time to bring the flat of the blade down on his opponent's back. The Jester reeled from the blow and fell forward only to catch his balance and turn sneering at him.

"Lucky."

No. Prepared for you.

Jared looked at the Jester and took in the whole of the space around him. Above the fireplace hung four picture frames, the center one larger than each pair that surrounded it.

I see that you've restored the portrait from my gallery that you destroyed. Does that please you?

"You couldn't play head games with me if you tried."

The Jester stood stiff and Jared saw the twin blades snap into place from under his sleeves, one shimmering in the light, the other absorbing every ray of the darkness. The menacing ring of metal rang with a dull vibration that tried to send shock waves through Jared's mind.

But I see that it does. Is this what you've been after the whole time?

"You can't second guess me."

I wouldn't presume ...

"But you have," the Jester yelled as he rushed Jared again, blades flashing like spinning teeth reaching for his soul.

Jared stood still until he could feel the Jester's weapons sweep close enough to his face that he could have looked at himself in the reflection. In a flash, he leapt, arching up and over the Jester. He landed on his feet, slicing with his blade across the back his adversary. The howl that spit from the Jester's mouth was one of agony and anger. He fell to his knees in front of Jared, his back still toward him.

Jared stood for only a moment and then turned to reach for Rose.

"Don't," the Jester's voice said behind him.

He turned back to feel the flesh on his face open up under the edge of the Jester's blade. He stumbled back to regain his position. The Jester seemed taller, bigger in some way. The pain is making you stronger. He parried another thrust, almost falling to his knees under the rain of blows that the Jester then pelted against him.

"You can't have her!" The Jester's voice was insane and pitched.

She's not mine to have.

"You can't take her."

She's not mine to take.

"You can never keep her."

She's not mine to keep.

The sound of searing flesh filled the room as the ring of metal on gold sent a shock through both Jared and the Jester. They both seemed to turn in slow motion to face where Rose sat, her right arm seemed to defy gravity for only a moment and fell to the arm of the throne on which she sat. The wires that held her arms in place had melted from her and hung loosely from the darkness above them all.

The pain that rushed through his body tempted him into the darkness, but he resisted. The blades that suddenly pierced both shoulders drew blood that spilled like a floodgate over his leather jacket.

"What have you done?"

I've set her free from you.

"She can never be free. She's mine!" The fever of the Jester's vehemence reached out to twist the steel deeper into Jared's body.

She's not what you want. You know that. She's not her, the one, that single moment in time that you can't seem to remember without having ever forgotten. Jared's voice was calm despite the pain. He dropped his sword, then reached up and took each of the Jester's blades in his hands. As the blood flowed from the new wounds, he pushed the Jester back and the blades out of his body at the same time. The look on the Jester's face was enough to cause perdition to freeze.

The sound of burning flesh returned to fill the room with the smell of fear and pain. Turning slightly, Jared could see that more of Rose's bonds were freeing themselves and she was beginning to collapse in the seat of the throne, only held up by the tubes and wires that crossed through her head and face.

"You still love her," the Jester spit at him, rushing him again.

Yes. I always will. But not like this.

Jared dropped to his knees to pick up his sword and held it up to block the attack, but the Jester seemed to stumble and falter in his blow. He jumped up and swung his sword at the hesitant back of the Jester as he turned around to face him. The sword seemed to pass right through the skin from scalp to groin. The sickening sound of mud and pus overpowered the senses, and Jared stepped back as he watched the Jester slowly crumple to the ground. The burning sound in the air suddenly stopped and was followed by the dull thump of Rose's body as Jared watched her slump from the throne to the floor, released from her bonds.

A desperate slur of sound from the Jester interrupted his move toward Rose. "Don't touch her. She's mine."

She was never yours. You just thought she was. You've been chasing your Holy Grail since before Time could keep track of you. Jared watched as the Jester's skin seemed to shiver and roll back from the bone underneath. But there was no bone, but yet another layer of skin, almost like a baby being born. I've never had it. See?

Jared moved closer to the fireplace and raised his sword to the painting that hung above it. He slashed it from corner to corner, opening up a space behind the painting that was empty. At the same time, a wrenching sound of metal and flesh echoed through the room. Jared turned back to see a small object begin to push its way out of the fissure of blood and skin that ran down the middle of the Jester. The face of the Jester contorted in pain and knowledge. As it hit the ground next to his body, the Jester tried to grab the object. The small cup was as ornate as it was plain. The jeweled cup seemed to be empty save for almost transparent stains that played with the light of the room.

Your Holy Grail was always with you. But you want something you can't have. She was never yours. She was never mine. She left you for me, never looked back and you've been trying to blame me ever since.

Jared stopped and watched the Jester desperately trying to keep hold of the Grail with his shaking hands, his skin folding back from the new body revealed underneath.

I've never had your Grail. It was never mine to have, hold, take, steal. It's always been yours. He walked over to where Rose lay crumpled on the floor. Reaching into her, his hand slipping into her skin between her breasts, he pulled out an obsidian chalice from within her. Mine has always been the Chalice of Lillith.

He tipped it over and poured its contents on the floor, blood spilling out into a pool that seemed to move on its own and surround Rose's head. The last drop fell on her forehead and disappeared into her skin. He lifted the cup back to his mouth and drank, lines of blood escaping and running down the sides of his mouth and chin. Always empty, and yet perpetually full. It is the lot of my life, the curse that I chose to accept and embrace.

The Jester groaned and flailed trying to release himself from the conflicting skin that still bound him. "She's mine," he continued to squeal, helpless to reach the prostrate figure in Jared's shadow.

No. She belongs to no one but herself. Jared moved to the Jester and stared down into his face. A mistake that will drive you to your own grave ... brother. His hand flung out to point accusingly at the figure on the floor. The Silver Bullet dislodged from his hand and flew into the Jester's forehead.

The scream that issued from the Jester's lips seemed to split the universe in half. And then it expired as quickly as it began and silence was all that his corpse returned to the room.

It is finished.

Jared turned to move toward the lifeless body of Rose.
 
Thirty-One

Thirty-One

Jared stood above her looking at her body. There was blood everywhere and the wounds that gaped in her skin from the Jester's manipulations oozed and spilled the sticky fluid around her. He knelt down and brushed her hair from her face. There was a peace in her features that only death could bring.

He wept.

If only you could have known ...

He stood up and his arms flew out to either side of him, screaming in pain and release into the darkness. The stairwell split in half and the wall behind it began to tear from top to bottom, the ceiling folding back to reveal the sky above. The light blinded the room and formed a cross over his body. Blood burst through his hands, feet and scalp. The blood rushed into his eyes as he felt the stab reach through him to slay the past from his nerves. Crucified on the shaft of light, he felt life begin to crawl back into his brain and open his understanding as the ripping sound of leather and flesh shattered the scream from his lips. The aethyric wings that split through his muscles expanded out to fill the cross-section of the room before folding over his shoulders, casting a soft shadow over the body of Rose.

And in my wings shall you find rest.

He picked up her form and his eyes flashed with an evil and an innocence, rearranging his home and his world in a scene of order and chaos that fused into the landscape of his will. The floor began to erupt and the stonework melted away as the slab of transparent rock pushed its way up into the room. The light that emanated from within the altar of his past stopped and held its peace. Jared reached it and laid out her body, positioning every limb so to diffuse her deformities and present her to the universe as he close as he could to her remembered beauty.

You will always hold a place here. But you are not bound to my soul any longer. You are free from everything that caused you pain.

He put his head down on her chest, his cheek grazing her breast where he'd lain asleep so many nights. He looked at her face, its radiance no less than when she was alive. He felt the movement under his head and raised up to see the small burgundy box force its way gently from within her body. He took it as he stood back up. Opening it, he found his heart. She'd given it back to him in her last effort of reconciliation.

I love you, but you will haunt me no more. Let this be our peace.

Jared picked up his sword and opened the torn remains of his jacket and shirt. Running the blade across his chest, he opened up the skin and muscle to reveal the emptiness inside. He picked up the Chalice that he'd retrieved from her. Placing his heart inside, he put it back into the hole of his chest. He could feel the arteries of both flesh and memory twist to reaffirm that it was his to keep and the blood began to flood his heart bringing back old memories in a new way. He felt alone. But he felt love. And, more than either or both, he felt free.

He bent down and kissed her bloody lips.

Goodbye, lover. May you find that which I could never give. Another lifetime perhaps. He paused. But don't count on it.

Then he turned and walked toward the double doors at the far end of the room.

As he opened the doors, the light was blinding, even more than what had shot through the broken room. The wings that had appeared from within him dissolved in the brilliance of the sun, and he walked through the doors into the open expanse of the front steps.

As he looked around his estate, the beauty and expanse overcame his senses. It was as if he'd been reborn into a paradise. Something stirred at his feet, and he looked down to find Eros beginning to wake from sleeping on the top step.

"Daddy?" The little boy's voice sounded soft and longing.

"Eros." He swept the child into his arms and held him tightly.

"Daddy? I've been waiting. You promised we could go."

"And so we shall, my son."

Jared didn't put the boy down, but instead threw him up to his shoulders, the pain that he remembered now gone.

The two of them walked through the brightly lit labyrinth of bushes and laughed as they reached dead-ends and turned around to explore more of the garden path that twisted and turned every direction. It was no more than an hour before they reached the center of the maze. The fountain that stood in the middle of the clearing was bubbling with life and foam.

Jared put his son on the ground and watched as he ran to the fountain to chase bubbles. They both laughed and he moved closer to sit on the edge of the fountain. His hand reached in to take a hold of a pile of bubbles and recoiled slightly at the sight of blood on his hand. He put his hand in the water and watched as the liquid rushed around his hand. The water remained clear as it washed away the stains from his skin. He felt the clarity of life wash up through his body.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you." Little Eros' face beamed as he stood next to his father with a sly smile.

"I love you too, kiddo."

"You're my best friend." Eros dove at his father trying to cover him in bubbles that he'd hidden behind his back.

"You're my best friend too."

He fought off his son's attack and picked him up to tickle him.

"Come on, Eros. Let's go. We have a lot to do now. We have a whole life ahead of us to explore."

Jared looked at the fountain one more time. The angelic forms that made up the centerpiece seemed to flutter at the knowledge of his departure from their sanctuary. The sun was just passing over the apex of the sky, and shadows were beginning to form again on the ground. Life was not going to pass him by without a fight. And this time, Jared knew there was a sense of purpose in his going, even if it was into the unknown before him.

Hand in hand, father and son walked out of the garden and into the future.
 
Remarkable. I read this about 4 months ago, and I still remember the story distinctly. I'm really impressed by this. Do you write for a living?
-pssvr
 
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