Cosmic Love (Tag: Dahlia) (Casual)

[dahlia]

Wordlessly- though that was a given- Dahlia began to walk, gesturing him to hurry behind her. For a moment, their hands almost touched, but she seemed to flit away every time they were close. They were walking through parts of the city that would normally be crowded, and yet only a few people cluttered the streets. Down from his Hollywood-worthy home, past the church, and around the corner, down a street he knew all too well.

She barely looked back at him, out of any source of light now but the weak light of a far-off window and an occasional passing car. She raised her arm again and pointed to a large stone building, its roof just peaking over the hill behind the church. It was as if she had stepped back and was now telling him to lead the way.

Everything was darkness as they approached the building, and yet in his mind's eye, Damien was flooded with memories. It seemed that all the people, sounds, sights... they were all there, subdued and colorless in that blackness, but there all the same. Words echoed in the night, of God and the Christ, drilling, drilling, drilling like the children were some sort of construction project funded by this godforsaken, black, lifeless city that his mind's eye had created.

[mephi]

It was like walking into a dream... Or more like a memory. Both painful and happy. Here was were he made friends, and lost them. Here was where he had found Christ, and eventually lost him. Here was where he had found peace, and had subsequently lost it.

Why had she brought him here? What was her purpose? To provoke his dark past to reach the surface and breakthrough, so that he had a mental collapse? He had both loved and hated this place as time had progressed, loved when he was a God fearing boy, and hated when his father had showed him that God existing was an impossiblity.

So many conflicting thoughts were scattered around the darkness of this place. It spilled over his heart as he walked around the campus, remembering every detail of the place as if it was only yesterday that he'd left. He remembered more innocent times, when he thought the world belonged to God and people were kind.

How he wished to go back to those times, when he didn't owe anyone anything and his life wasn't corrupted beyond recognition.

"Why did you bring me here?" he whispered, as the wind whipped around his face, staring at the glowing moon.

[dahlia]

For a moment, it sounded like she was talking, as the wind brushed the word, "I-" from a nearby street into the echoing blackness in the schoolyard. But she had said nothing. She hadn't moved an inch either, but it seemed that she was farther from him now.

The wind seemed to pick up, or maybe it was just the suddenly heightened senses of the pair, as they walked onto the turf that separated the upperclassman from the little kids' campus. There was a small brick building standing behind a playground. Everything in this light seemed an elongated, slanted blue, and the wind moved the tire swing and see-saws, as if the ghosts of the past were still playing there.

"All alone, buddy? Huh? Where's your daddy to come rescue you, huh?"

Dahlia was suddenly aware that the voices echoing in her head were Damien's memories as he was seeing them, and she looked at him for a moment. He had killed someone on this very turf, when he was an older boy of sixteen.

Her eyes said, But sixteen is not old enough.

Slowly, her thin, bony arm raised again, ominously like a scaffold raised for the gallows. Her finger twitched a moment and then straightened, and the sound of harsh metal-on-metal rang through the air a moment, as if her own memories were trying to squeeze out of her. Memories sharp as glass and hard as metal- and about as easy to swallow, too.

She was pointing to the roundabout, which was slowly turning. That was where he had done it.

[mephi]

Damien recalled it vividly. That was what he was trained to do by his family of course. His family believed in remembering every kill, every harsh crime plastered on the pavement. They said it would make him stronger, more determined. It only made him all the more a coward and a failure.

The other boy wouldn't quit taunting him. No, his father wasn't coming. Of course not. No one would come for him. His mother wouldn't even do that much for him. She was a coward, just as he. That must have been where he got it from.

He had been alone on the roundabout, until the other kid came up to him. It was peaceful, being alone. There was no one else on the playground. He had taken the moment to be in solitude, something he would achieve to avoid in later years. He was far too afraid of what he'd do to himself, and others, now than he was when he was sixteen years old.

"Go away, Jake," he said to the boy, crawling up fully onto the roundabout and spinning himself so that he was farther away. He stopped, but he could feel Jake stomping over to him, on top of the mechanism.

"If you think I'm going to leave you alone, you got another thing coming," he said. He jumped off the roundabout and landed in front of him. He grabbed the handles and prevented him from spinning further.

"I said go away!" he yelled, glaring at Jake with the piercing eyes he would become known for.

Jake smirked. "Not going to happen!" he cruelly spun the roundabout at lightning speed, Damien trapped inside with no way out. His vision blurred, and he became dizzy, all the while hearing Jake's insane laughter echoing in his ears. He grimaced, and wanted to hurl. That was so very unsanitary.

More spinning, and he couldn't stop it. The anger built up into his system. He was ready to boil over!

"HAHA! IS YOUR DADDY GONNA SAVE YOU NOW?!"

He calculated his position, timing himself. In a split second, he shot his feet out and kicked Jake in the guts.

He only expected him to back off. He didn't expect him to stumble forward and crack his skull on the handles of the roundabout.

... The memory... The memory of the blood spilling over him and the gravel, the way the handles kept hitting the dead boy until it slowed to a stop. The way he couldn't move afterward, until he heard someone coming. The way he fled the scene like a coward, running to his brother and hoping he'd make everything right...

It was too much.

He wouldn't show it on his face, but his head was pounding, and his heart was crying out. He turned to Dahlia with a stern expression. "Can we leave? Now."