by catch » Thu Jan 26, 2012 6:07 am
He held her little hand in his. There was the muddy, unreal feeling, the presence, of a precipice, and yet it could also have been a hole, a deep and howling hole that at once seemed familiar. Like all dreams, it was difficult to tell; like all dreams, only the immediate was apparent, was certain, and all else was that terrible and impenetrable fog that had yet to divulge it's secrets.
Catch held her little hand in his, and she, his little Star, was suspended over this precipice/hole. She weighed as nothing, and Catch knew that, but now she far exceeded his prodigious strength, pulling painfully at his arm, crushing him. Rhin chirped at him, and her curious chirp was mangled with fear, her pale eyes turned downward at the vast, black Nothing. Catch was certain he mouthed comforts to her, but past his own, pounding heart, he couldn't hear.
This was a contest, between him and the dream, the sour fear that filled his mouth until he wanted to vomit with it. As they always do, the dream one. With a soft, rippling sigh, it was Rhin's arm that gave first, perfect and pale skin peeling away, the snarl of tendons and veins, the glistening, rounded protuberant of bone. It was red that marred her hide as she fell, her little wings fluttering in vain, too small to support her, leaving Catch with nothing but the still-spasming, child-chubby arm in his grasp.
Catch came to his senses with a strangled scream, swimming up from a nightmare. He had not entirely been asleep, for he slept seldom, but his exhausted body had forced itself into a lassitude, drowsing away the stress of the past week, and what sleep could be attained was now utterly ruined by the nightmare.
It was not a terrible cell, nothing at all like dank or dripping, with a nice, comfortable cot that he now sprawled on. And Renea had done her best, too, so that it was littered with pretty, potted plants, their scent dissipating the cold, virgin smell of stone, and the little bars of iron set in the sturdy, wooden door.
Those bars. In the (months? years?) they wouldn't stop chattering at him. They called him nasty names, even now as he levered himself up on his cot. They called him a thief, called him a murderer, told him things from cell-mates that had come and gone. That he would be chopped to bits, or burned with hot coals, and they only laughed when Catch told them that his friends would do none of those things. Catch had tried to shut them up with his fingers, but the iron was covered in all those little mouths, and their sharp teeth bit at his fingers.
Catch only vaguely became aware that his hands were in his mouth. That the sour fear he thought he had tasted in the Nightmare tasted, now, much like his blood. Catch pulled them free, and looked at them, the knuckles bloody and gnawed, his fingers streaked with blood. They didn't hurt, and Catch quickly sat on them.
Where was Miss Renea? Without her, Catch fidgeted, his eyes roving over the same points they had always roved over, seeing nothing new, nothing for his addled mind to latch onto or puzzle over. In that indescribable amount of time, Catch found his fingers in his mouth again, and tasted fresh blood to match the metallic old. His fingers were terrible to look at, yet he did, and his ruined hands gave him a strange, itching idea, one that - for once - dampened the chattering voices all around.
Carefully, his bloody, knuckle-bared hands pulled to his chest, catch chewed on the strong, wooden frame of his cot. Yes. Yes, this felt good. The nightmare slipped away as his jaw worked, as his powerful teeth left indentations, cracked the wood, left globs of slick drool behind.
His body moved without his mind, and Catch could not say when his mind slipped away from him, floating through the crack in his skull to watch him as he tore about the cell like an animal, making no noise save the noise that came from his teeth. He chewed the cot to pieces, and chewed the plants as well. When he had nothing left to chew, Catch gnawed on his hands again, his arms, in a wild frenzy of activity, a release of energies that were used to chopping wood, to running free in the forest at all-hours.
And he attacked those bars, though it pained him to slip his teeth around them, froth and saliva slicking his jaws, his chin, his eyes gone to a mad and wild place. He felt their sharp, little teeth cracking to pieces under his, heard their sudden screams of dismay. He chewed and chewed, tried to destroy them all, because like himself, they could not flee.