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Post by spilledchemicals on Jan 12, 2008 3:38:46 GMT -5
D-ah-mah-neesk D-ahm-n-ee-el
My eyes wrenched open, I sat straight up. My hands instinctively went to my head, the only thoughts in there broken half steps into dark pathways. "This can't be real. This can't be real. This can't be real. I know this can't be real." But the burning pain in my arm, and blood dripping from my nose begged a different response.
Chapter One. The Dawn.
"Hey, Daniel, good morning!" an overly high pitched voice called from behind my back. Great, a few minutes into the day and I already have to tolerate these people.
I spun around on one foot, and with a broad grin, said, "How do you do today? Fine I hope." I have always been sarcastic, and if people want to take what I say for truth, so be it.
"Well, I've been feeling kind of under the weather lately, I'm not"... This is going to turn into a one-way conversation..."but it may just be from what I ate last"... Smile and nod, good, throw in a concerned look now and then, I am going to get out with minimal deviated focus..."Chineese food doesn't agree with me for some reason though."
"Well I'm sorry to hear that, I hope you feel better." She looked at me for a moment to see if I would carry this any further. I didn't show any indication of furthering, so she turned her attention to another pressing matter, talking to people other than me.
My high school if fraught with these quickly moving mouths of anti-thought. There is always a new rumor they want to spread, and like a disease, anything that has any relevance is caught by all 600 students here. I do try to be polite to them, but unfortunately, they take this act of tolerance as an act of kinship, believing that I truly am interested in finding out who is dating who.
This school day will pass like any other, I thought, sleeping away periods to boring to be cared about. Looking back on how I tear through the textbook the first month of school, and take a break the rest of the year. Seeing how everything in them is basic knowledge and assumptions you can make by thinking for a minute anyway, breezing through the curriculum is no trouble.
I will do all that is needed of me, and I will smile, if only to maintain appearances.
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Post by spilledchemicals on Jan 30, 2008 1:25:59 GMT -5
Chapter 2: The Dream
If there ever were such a thing as hell, this must be it. The red sky and red earth blended together well, but the craggy mountains in the distance looked as though they were the teeth of some feral beast. Bloody from a fresh kill.
My arm was out of it's socket, and I didn't much enjoy the prospect of popping it back in. Not that I had much of a chance to do so, fleeing for my life had left me with very little time to much more than run. Why was I fleeing? What had happened to make my arm pop out? The ocean water washed away those thoughts as the sea mist surrounded my face. I was being pulled down, drowning. The irons chained to my feet would not give, I would not leave this crushing tomb.
My eyes opened. I was surely dead, corpses were to all sides of me. I stood up in this mortuary, the sickly green grass matched the color of my companions flesh. They would come for me, that is what will happen. They will stand up and devour me and gnaw on my bones and I will die and I will be dead. But the horrid scene did not come. As in response to my thoughts, the graves melted away, and up grew skyscrapers in their place. Wait, they were not growing up, I was falling down. I had flung myself off the side of one of these concrete giants. NO!
NO! NO! NO! I would never do that. I swore to myself that that option was so foolish it was to be laughed at. So I laughed, and the world laughed with me. Someone else would have to cry alone tonight. NO!
I can't get off track. Ohh horses at the race track, I have big money riding on number NO!
This is my mind, my dream. I control it, it does not control me. I had finally wrestled control from myself, and I could finally train here all I wanted, until the sun rose once more. Once again the world changed, but it did not to sway my mind, instead, it formed a mental gym. A perfect place to start, I thought.
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Post by spilledchemicals on Feb 1, 2008 0:27:42 GMT -5
Chapter 3: The Drink
The bodies hung high from the hooks placed in their ankles. So gingerly were these polished steel curves inserted into the cool flesh of our now sallow friends, that the proprietors of this particular establishment were able to lift them softly into the looms of the roof, held on only by the bulk of tendon behind the bone. This building was one of many buildings made to sate the appetite of this disturbing new trend, so popular now that this distillery was the third to arise in Alex's fair sized city, with more still being in some form of creation.
The underground culture was rife with temptations, but this pleasure was made for only the elite class of underhanded dealers, rich with ill gotten money, and unable to resist a fresh taste in their mouth, if only to wash away the afterburn of their last drink. It was called Vampires Delight in the lower circles, wretches unable to the reach the high life, but able to reach for the bottle, so they may know what it is to be someone else, escape their crumbling lives, if only for a few blissful moments. The higher culture of this society knew it by another name, but it was rarely spoken fully, and so the whispers of it, escaping to the common man who visits such places, spoke of "Soul."
It was marketing after all, they certainly couldn't bring the two parts together under one hedonistic roof. To know themselves to be better than all others, the powerful paid for a stronger tap on this business. There was little difference in the chemicals that made up the liquid, but Soul had something in it which can't be measured by scientists in it, after all.
This drink, which filled men with love and women with lust, which brought the greatest works of that time into being, which brought all who has not braved the terrors of life and death to shudder, was a very simple concoction. It was a sanguine absinthe, brewed not from the simple grain or fruit of common drink, but of a simple liquid, easily obtainable by anyone. All you need to do is prick your finger to find the ingredient which had made this drink famous.
And so, over a mass of wires, tubes, funnels and drains were the pale bodies of those fresh from hearing their own obituary. The viewings were rushed for each of our dangling merry makers, for the taints of preservation would foul the drink. Cremation was the next step on their trip to eternity, and the few ounces of ash stolen away from them would not be missed by the distraught families.
Special orders would come in once in a while, for lost lovers, wanting to recapture the spirit of their better half inside themselves. Smaller rooms in the back of this unassuming building tended to them, as no other market had yet to open up for these grieving souls. The process was only slightly different for them, but for the price it took for a private bottle was so high, the company felt it justifiable to give this brew more kick.
The effects of drinking this distorted wine brought the lover closer to his or her soul mate than possible in the world we live in. It also caused one to lapse into a light coma, not waking for days. There was also a mortality rate for the partakers of this fine merlot, but only those who had not known the deceased from which the liqeuer had been drawn seemed to be in this queer statistic, but few knew this deadly secret. Those whose loss had been of their mate feel whole afterward, and nearly all of them never felt the hunger for the flesh or love of any other.
This was not the case for the lower forms of our favored liqueur, no, there was always the feelings of loss afterwords, of coming so close to perfection, only to have it snatched away when at your most blissful time. Those few seconds were worth it to many though, as evident in its popularity. One might remark how these people only feel alive when they draw so near to death, but in truth they never will feel life, for as they drown in their gluttony, they huddle around the last flicker of life before it quietly passes on into that sweet night.
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Post by spilledchemicals on Feb 1, 2008 6:51:22 GMT -5
Chapter 4: Into that Sweet Night
A dark purple haze drew itself over Alex as he entered the club, the haze carried with it a sweet, welcoming scent, and made the lungs warm. This was a back alley and staircase away from the life which concerned most people in his prosperous city. Alex wore a black jacket, zipped up to hide the shirt underneath. His jeans were the darkest hue of blue he had ever found, the deepness of the color was what had drawn him to buy them. His face was young, but there was knowledge behind his eyes, so dark and foreboding, that to look at them threatened to draw you out of your world and into his, which to most would be a much more frightening world to be in.
No one turned toward Alex, his youth did not seem to set him apart from the patrons here, most of which easily twice his age. He had lived long enough to learn how to deal with all the different types of people, and he walked in here as if he were a regular costumer. He sat himself on a stool, close enough to the hard whiskeys that the bartender would only have to reach behind herself to grab the bottle Alex so desperately needed.
A young, exotic looking woman , with a welcoming smile that faded into disappointment the moment she saw Alex's face. "I need to see some I.D. Can't handle getting arrested for selling booze to a minor," the bartender casually informed Alex. The statement was purely superficial, and Alex knew it. This bar was stocked with enough contraband that the owner would be in for a long time if they were ever caught, this sixteen year old was the least of her worries. Alex threw a wad of cash on the bar, fat enough to pay every person's tab there three times over. If she felt shock, Alex couldn't tell, for as she looked up from the money the vibrant smile had returned to her face. "Forgive me sir, I didn't see you clearly because of the light, what'll you be needing."
Before she had finished her sentence, the money had already slipped from the bar into her pocket. Alex could have ordered all of the liqueur she had now, and as long as he could pay for it, she would gladly sell it to him. The normal whiskey's and vodka's stocked behind her were not what he was here for though, they dilute the human soul, he mused, what I'm here for strengthens it.
"I'll need a bottle of your best Soul," Alex replied, with enough force so she knew he was not joking with her.
She was startled by this, Alex could see it in her temporary silent disbelief. A glass of Vampire's Delight was more expensive than most of the seedy eyed drunks in that club could afford, and to order a whole bottle of Soul was unheard of in such a small underground club. He laughed to himself about her wondering who he stole the money off of to afford such an expense. She could never guess that this dark clothed young man had earned this money honestly.
She responded. "I'm sorry sir, we don't have that, may I interest you in another beverage, we have a vintage scotch which has been setting since two thousand five." The offer of a fifty year old drink that powerful would draw most people away from their original position, but Alex needed Soul, so he went on.
"I'm sorry, but I am a bit tired of wasting my time here, I suppose I'll move on to another club, perhaps to 'Paradise Lost'"
She couldn't stand to lose a customer which had paid her latest set of bills in one night to her closest rival club. She sighed, and he smiled.
"One moment, sir, let me open the safe here."
She bent low to reach the refrigerated safe kept safely under the bar. With the turn of a key and a password, the safe opened to reveal three bottles. One of Soul, one of Vampire's Delight, and one of her husband. She had never brought herself to drink him down. Her memories kept her from opening the bottle, even after ten long hard years. She realized that she would never be able to, and because of her, he would never be free of his glass cage. She tortured herself whenever she opened this safe, his safe. He would be trapped forever. She felt sick at herself. I'm sorry, my love, that I have not let you go, I want you to be free. Then it hit her, this boy can free him.
"Here you go sir, this is a ten year old Soul which I have been saving for a special occasion, but you ordered the best."
She could barely contain her emotions as she handed him the bottle, after all this time, she would finally be able to move on. The cost of his sanquination had put her severely into debt, but she always felt it was worth it, to have a piece of him with her always. Now she had let go of him, and was left with recoverable sadness, she would find happiness once more, and it gave her hope.
The bill for the aged Soul was much higher than Alex had expected, and the bartender almost seemed reluctant to let it go. He paid the tab, he had not come this far only to quit when he had the bottle in his hands. He smelled the purple haze one last time before walking out and looking into the night sky, glad of what he had done.
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