Post by Laughing on Jan 2, 2009 17:51:01 GMT -5
Of The Phoenix
My name was once Alyss, now it is nothing
I am the fleeting imagination of children and the misted memories of the dieing. I am the cause of the weeping down the street where a once married man cradles his children and doesn’t know how to tell them that their mother is gone.
I am a daughter, a mother, a grandmother.
I am the beginning of a generation that creates great man after great man. I will be the only one standing when those generations have passed.
I am a beginning and an end.
My name was once Alice, now it is nothing.
“Why, why do we exist if all we do it cause pain and wretch out hearts? Why do I have to watch my own children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren grow and fall from these eternal eyes? I should just not return one day. I should just stop existing and end this drama.” As I rant I suck in painful breaths, suffering. My eyes blink and a groan shudders from my gaping lips. Even though each movement of my tongue makes me ache and each syllable said is the most painful experience since the last century, I continue. I will always continue, no matter how many times I relive this scene. “I should go out right now and just end everything. I can’t stop it if I don’t go. I won’t—“
“Be able to end this circle of sadness,” the male voice cut in, causing me to twitch my lip and make a disgruntled noise. “You say it every year. Just shut up and save your energy, unless you’re going to let me do it.” I made myself groan again, a noise to show my distaste at such a concept.
“Are Felix and Damon coming around soon? You probably won’t be able to get up by yourself,” I grunted out.
“They said at a quarter to six,” he muttered back quietly, though loud enough so I could hear.
I rolled onto my side to see his face--to show him my face. But as my muscles extended and pulled me onto my hip, I nearly let out a screech. But I was used to this; the memories grew and floated beneath my eyelids. I h ad screamed before, the first and the second time, and the third. Now I hissed between my teeth and pushed my tongue against the roof of my mouth.
“Would you care if I didn’t come back?” I asked, my fingers trembling from the influx of adrenaline to remove the pain.
“Yes,” he said as an immediate answer. “It’s been seven hundred years. If you suddenly were swept off? I’d be the next one to go.”
I laughed so softly and then threw out my hand to reach out to him. I ignored the pain, forgot the burning sensation that stiffened my fingers. They jutted out in the open space between us like stiff white sticks, notched and smooth. The next moment his came along to gently grasp mine, both of us knowing what pressure would do.
“I’ll make it back, promise,” I muttered, slipping my still fingers through the gaps between his before drawing them back to me.
“You better. Leaving me with Felix and Damon won’t last me long,” the man chuckled but I had closed my eyes, leaving me blind to his expression. “They’re coming. I can hear the sound of a car… and now faint voices.”
I couldn’t hear them, but I knew that the way my left ear worked was never so well and that was the one turned on the door. But what I did hear was the door creak open and voices call into the room, greeting Aaron and I when we were spotted.
“Hey, Felix, Damon,” I called out, not able to mask the grimace that immediately came across my face.
“I really don’t understand why you both have such pain,” Felix said sympathetically, though I could trace the mocking in his voice.
“Shut up, Felix.” I was glad to hear Damon defend us.
As I turned around to see Damon, I felt a hand curl up against my cheek, making me open my eyes to find the owner.
“I can go, you know, you don’t have to force yourself to struggle.” It was Damon who was standing above me, looking down with worry and affection.
The memories bubbled beneath my eyes, the shadowy remembrance of a hundred years past. The way his blue eyes had locked into mine now was with the same emotional background as they had years before. And the touches back then resurfaced now, the hands curled against my cheek were rather against my arms, the lips that were stretched in a small, worried frown were smiling, leaning closer to mine. I forced them back, knowing that I had relived these before, knowing that I had made the mistakes at an earlier time.
“Don’t worry. Besides, I can go now that you can keep watch over Aaron for me. He’s not feeling well either. But is he ever?” I laughed; touching the hand against my cheek before seeing and feeling it lift away.
“You’d better go now, it’ll take you a good twenty minutes to get into town,” Felix was the one who spoke up, I could see him out of the corner of my eye, looking at Damon and I.
“Of course,” I said, waving two fingers at the heads up.
I glanced upwards to find that Damon had retreated to Aaron’s side, neither of them looking at me. I creased my brow in Damon’s direction before slowly rising to my feet. I could feel each muscle scream as I rose, but only allowed a small wince to show my discomfort.
“Hey, steady now,” a light grip kept me from swaying over. Felix’s rough fingers were the ones that steadied me right-ways.
I smiled weakly but gave no response, moving away from him and to the door. Each step was another ache through my legs which then found its way up through my body like travelling through my bloodstream. When I finally clasped my hand over the doorknob, there was a faint chuckling noise from behind me and a hard, painful gasp clinging to my lungs. I shot a glare behind me, undirected, and then eased out of the house. If it was that painful getting out the door, how would I make it to the town?
Sheesh.
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I heaved Felix’s car to a shuddering stop, feeling myself lean forward a little bit as the beast of a vehicle steadied itself on the brake. I blinked slowly in the dimness of the descended night and to chase away the dots that had shrouded my vision. My eyes had found their way across two abandoned black cars and the distant brightness of a flash-light near-by. I didn’t hear anything else.
The time was ten forty and my attempt to find someone in the town was a failure. My heart beat was racing from nerves and from the fact that I had to actually move throughout the whole town. My breath escaped me in white bursts of condensation; I hadn’t turned on the heat. The people in town, at my opaque questioning of ‘do you want to die?’ had laughed at me and said that I was crazy. I wasn’t crazy though, I was looking for a copy, but none of these people drew me in nor did they behave like a typical copy should. However, I knew what the feeling of being tugged by a copy was, and for some reason, when I looked at these cars a faint feeling of being pulled came over me.
It was the way that the two black cars looked on the side of the road that was what drew me to question where their owners were. They were half-way swerved into the surrounding forest, one of the wheels still spinning on the vehicle that had shuddered its way up the hill probably moments before. But they were going in the direction away from which I came, indicating that I wouldn’t have seen them at an earlier time.
I narrowed my eyes at the car clock, watching as the dull, digital green numbers flickered onto ten forty-four, knowing that I was going to go out and look for the people who had driven these cars.
I swung Felix’s car door open and stepped out, rushing forward towards the bobbing flashlights in the distance. The tugging was getting incessant; the pounding that made the fine hairs on my arms raise and pull was getting closer. I could taste the gas in the air as I passed the cars, causing my lungs to wheeze for a moment. The smell only made me go faster, ignoring the fact that I was pulling my body forward so quickly that my muscles were screaming.
I looked forward only, ignoring the slash of a low-hanging branch against my cheek as I slipped through the opening in the wood. There was only darkness in the air before me, the flashlights had gone away or had been shut off. But my eyes were stuck on the area where the lights had been bobbing up and down. The cold night air numbed the pain slowly, still causing me to wince as I continued forward.
By the time that I could see distant figures, my breath was ragged and my lungs were burning with each gasp. I had to lean against one of the trees to have the ability to stand right at the moment. My legs were just about to buckle beneath and send me flailing to the ground in a fit of torn—or the feeling of torn—muscles. But I had made it to see the figures, and still it tugged me forward.
I stumbled a couple of clumsy steps and then fell to the ground in a thud that only crunched the thin layer of snow beneath me. My arms had stretched out to catch my fall and the palms of them grew numb as I rested them in the white ice. I could hear the conversation carry from the forms over that-a-way.
“—why did I take you out here? To kill you, what did you think?”
Wonderful, just wonderful. My copy was either a murderer or on the verge of being murdered.
“I didn’t have anything to do with that murder, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the other’s voice was the one that compelled me to look up and my head to ache as it pulled my form forward internally. This was it, this was the copy. But still… there was the problem that he was possibly going to be murdered.
“You were the one who killed my kids and now?” I knew what the answer was to that question. “I’m going to kill you.”
I pulled myself up, knowing that I had to move forward if that voice squeaked up again. Maybe it was the fear that it withheld that made me want to go forward faster, or maybe it was just the fact that the person was a copy. I don’t know, but I struggled against the failing of my tendons and pushed forward against the ground, attempting a steady walk towards the conflicting sides.
“I don’t know why you think I killed your kids! I don’t even know where your street is. We worked together, Sheard, and even in work we were not so close,” the copy’s voice forced me another painful step forward, the panic that highlighted his tone crawling under my skin.
“Don’t lie to me, bastard. You took them, you even took little Grace. You murdered them, you son of a bitch. I’ll kill you… I’m going to fucking kill you for that!”
I froze for a moment, unsure of what I should do for a couple of long moments. What if my copy was a murderer? What if by taking him back I was just letting his reign of murders continue? What if…
I shook my head, reminding myself of the promise. I had to keep it. I had too.
“I didn’t even know that you had kids, Sheard. I didn’t know you had a girl named Grace, I didn’t know,” my copy moaned.
I felt my breath escape harshly into the air, the air in which my breath escaped thin and pressured. Sheard was going to kill my copy. Sheard was going to make me incapable of keeping my promise.
As I had been thinking this, I miscalculated the point between my foot stepping down from the hill and over onto the flatter terrain of the clearing, and tripped rather obnoxiously over the indent in the hill-side and down onto the flatter ground. The moment I fell, face-first into the snow, my surprised screech was a dieing echo. That was, of course, because there had been a noise to drown out my squeal. The sound of a gun being fired at random. The sound that I didn’t hear, but knew it came.
The real reason was the burning sensation that had dipped into the area of my hip, forcing a gasp of pain and shock to rip apart my lips. I fell to the ground with that expression on my face, my form laying flat against the cold earth as the sticky liquid that kept me alive dripped from the wound.
“Oh, s--t,” it was Sheard’s voice. “Oh s--t, oh s--t. Who’s there? Oh s--t.”
I winced against the noise of his voice, which only added to the ache of my head from the wound. I had experienced pain before, probably pain worse than this, but the realization that I had actually been shot was the most of it. My hand had fled to my hip, my numb palm coming to life to feel the heat of my blood warming it.
“Oh shi—” Another falling body hit the ground, though there was no noise from the owner as it collapsed.
I raised my head pitifully, pulling up my upper body with my other palm, which was still numb. The tingling of my cold skin made my teeth chatter, the sound of their grinding like gongs being hit in a windowless room. One hand was still placed on the wound, initiating pressure onto the bleeding hole.
“Who are you?” I asked out in a haze. “Do you want to die?” My opaque questioning would finally be answered in truth.
“No, no, I don’t want to die. Don’t kill me,” the man’s voice was hoarse with shock.
“Good,” I said finally, able to find him, the copy that would solve my problems. “Come over here and help me. I need—we need to go somewhere.” I stopped my trembling lips, stoning my expression to one that lacked pain. If I could get this kid to come over, take me back to the house, and then sit in that house, I could make it back. I could keep my promise.
“W-why? Who are you?” the voice asked, though it came forward without any other problems. I could hear better now, the pain seemed to make me more aware.
“My name was once Aliss, now it is nothing,” I laughed, recalling the words of my mother when the men used to call to her in the streets. “And who are you?”
“D-Dmitri,” he coughed out, and I saw him finally. His eyes were two glittering gems of blatant fear.
“Help me, please, we have to go,” I called out, throwing out my hand which was bloodied from the wound. “You have to come with me.”
His hand hesitantly took mine, our fingers meeting and locking together. “Where do we have to go?”
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We pulled up to the house with five minutes left to spare. Felix’s digital car clock shone the numbers with seemingly more brightness, my eyes transfixed on the glowing time which read eleven fifty-five. Five minutes until the New Year, until a new life. The memories were all back and clouding my thoughts, but I somehow got it straight enough to make my main desire to get into the house and get this done with.
“Come on, inside, go,” I groaned, touching Dmitri’s arm carefully.
The man looked at me from the side of his gaze and then got out of the car when I started to move my fingers towards the door-handle to get out myself. I felt he cool winter chilled air brush against my form as Dmitri opened the door at my side; he took my bloody hand and carefully allowed it to go around his neck, grabbing me by the waist with his other arm to be safe. I leaned into the embrace and felt a serenity of being around the copy settle over me for one moment.
“Inside? Both of us?” he suddenly asked, his teeth coming out to nip at his bottom lip in hesitation.
“Help me, please, help yourself,” I said in a distant voice, staring at the darkness of the house. “Its not deserted, though it may look it.” I seemed to have reassured the man, for he ducked his head in recognition to my words and finally moved us up the stairs and to the door.
He only banged his knuckles against the door once before it was slammed open, the chilling green gaze of Felix looking at me and then at Dmitri. He smiled at the copy, one just like himself, and then spoke. I suddenly realized I couldn’t hear him and it was just a low buzz in my ears when his lips moved.
“Let me inside, now, let me see Aaron,” I said suddenly in a demanding voice that always erupted from my throat during this time of the year.
I saw Felix apologize to the stranger, but invite him inside. I smiled half-heartedly and then took Felix’s hand as he led me within. The expression on Dmitri’s face was not reluctance as he entered, but worry in my direction. He could probably feel the connection that I shared with my copies, he most likely felt something tugging him towards Felix and Damon as well, and Aaron.
“Aaron,” I suddenly whispered out, so softly that I couldn’t hear myself over the buzz in my ears. I glanced around, saw the clock read two minutes until the New Year. Where was Aaron?
Something grabbed my arm from behind and spun me around, a hand that was as burning hot as mine had come to be. The pain was forgotten when I saw those relieved eyes pour into mine and I just stood there for a moment, letting his fingers slide off of my upper-arm, tracing down the skin until they reached my palm. I lifted our hands together and laced my fingers with his.
“I kept my promise,” I whispered, leaning forward to rest my forehead against his while he leaned down. “We always keep our promises, don’t we?”
“Always,” he said right back, his tone hushed as the final minute of the New Year started.
We then burst into the flames that created us, our eyes locked and our fore-heads connected. There was no pain as the fire took us back, only the serenity of being back within its glowing warmth. I did not look away from the only original phoenix left as I extended my hand out into the open air between me and the copies, knowing that even though Dmitri may have not wanted to burn as much as he didn’t want to die, he was going to accept that hand anyway.
And when cool fingers slipped through my burning ones, I knew that he had accepted his fate and gave a giggle, knowing that I had another one hundred years to stare into these eyes, another one hundred years to keep a promise.
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The field around them was completely clear, there was no trace of the house that had been built and burned down for the last hundreds of years. There never was after the New Year. But there lay five forms in the grass, not a single huffing breath coming from them as they lay, as if they had all died. There was no mark on their clothed forms, each wearing what they had the day before, though they did not remember that.
Another long moment passed when out of the blue one of their chests rose and fell-- the newest one. His eyes opened and he struggle up with his arms, gasping for air like he had been choking.
“What happened? Why am I…?” his voice came out in a forced choke and he looked around in confusion. Hadn’t he been in a house? Hadn’t some girl been bleeding?
“Welcome to the family!” a happy voice suddenly rose from the bodies that were surrounding him.
A pale hand that was by his twitched and he followed the arm to see the girl who he had saved last night. She had rose onto her knees and was crawling towards him, her face brightened with a smile. Her clothes were the same and he noticed the dried blood on her hip where the hole in her jeans and in her body was still there.
“T-the family?” he asked hesitantly.
“My name is Alyce! That’s with a y and a c!” she exclaimed, tackling him with a bear-hug. “I’m the mommy.”
“And my name is Aarran. That’s with three a’s,” another voice chimed in, a jovial male voice. “I’m the father.”
No other pair of arms came around him, though he looked up to see the other burning guy from last night smiling at him serenely. The man patted Alyce’s head, but was confused otherwise; it showed in his posture and his slackened mouth.
“I don’t know why this always happens,” a male voice said. “They are so weird in the beginning. Mommy and daddy, I mean.”
“Shut up, they can’t remember much of anything in the beginning, you know that,” another voice argued.
“What’s your name, my dearest copy?” the woman said, her head rising from where it had been buried in his chest.
“M-my name?” the man asked.
“Just use a different variant,” one of the arguing voices called out.
“I-I’m Demetri, with two e’s,” he said hesitantly.
The girl giggled and clapped her hands together, excited at this and then turned on father and gave him a big hug. They two of them looked at him with delight in their eyes, they seemed utterly pleased to have him in their new family. He couldn’t look away from them, though they were a little creepy. These two had, the moment before he had blacked out, been burning alive. His lip twitched, and the girl smiled at this, breaking away from Aarran to crawl closer to him again.
“Welcome, Demetri, to this endless existence. I’m sorry,” her finger ran along his jaw-line, her eyes soft as she spoke. “Welcome, Demetri, to a life that can only end if you choose to take it yourself.”
Authors Note: Hope you enjoy. =]