And Dreams Empty
Perseus
I
"You might feel a little sting here." She said.
The nurse's thumbs smartly rolled the worn bandages from his face, exposing the gnarled wound beneath. A putrid odor of decay filled the air as the raw wound was laid bare. The nurse had insisted it was knitting together well, but the stink emanating from it said otherwise.
"Just let me know if it hurts. We wouldn't want any sort of discomfort, now would we?" Her hands moved gently but deliberately, careful not to rip any adhesive from Perseus's gaunt face. "Yes, it's healing very nicely, very nicely indeed." She sounded the very model of motherly and with a cheeriness in her voice so forced it almost curdled. It was so painfully disingenuous, just more pity, an oversweet dish of which he'd had plenty of already between the nurse and that Section III agent, he could hardly stomach another bite of it.
"Sounds good," Perseus muttered, his empty tone reflecting well the pit in his heart. That titanic emptiness still sat steadfast in his chest, weighing him down, crushing him. Sometimes it felt like it took effort just to breathe. He wanted to dig his hand into his chest and tear his heart from its home, squeeze the meat and let its slime slide through the slats of my fingers. He imagined his heart bursting in his fist, the crunch of the tissue, the heat of the flesh splitting in hand, the red mush oozing down his forearm.
He held up the small looking-glass to watch the nurse's handiwork. Despite her most gentle efforts, the bandages still tugged at his skin, even taking some with. She lightly dabbed the green gel across his wounds with a small cloth. Fire ran across the broken half of his face as the phosphorescent mold seeped in and got to work. It took all his concentration to hide the discomfort, but he was determined to put on an impassive face all the same.
"You know, girls love scars." The nurse mentioned idly.
Just shut up and do your damned job, he wanted to tell her. Instead, he kept in his silent brooding.
"It's true." She insisted. "They're dangerous and cool, a sign of manhood I tell you." The surplus of pity in her tone hadn't dried up one bit. "I bet the girls will be all over you."
Surely girls also love a man with an intact face, you empty-headed fool.
"This here is a symbol of your courage." She patted his face with a damp washcloth, wiping the excess gel coagulating on his cheek.
The scars you're thinking of are small scratches along one's cheek, not empty eye sockets, you daft bastard. Her attempts to see the sunny side of midnight were utterly maddening.
The nurse finally took the hint of his lack of acknowledgement and, for a blessed moment, graced Perseus with a silence. She finished with her application and, looking it over, seemed rather content with her work.
Good, he thought, maybe then this performance is nearing its end.
But the silence she'd gifted him hadn't lasted half as long as it ought. The dimwitted nurse was quick to pick up the prattle right where she'd left it. "You know, Perseus, I've got a couple sons about your age. They're great boys, wonderful truly." The nurse continued. A cold bead of gel dripped down his cheek like an icy green tear. "Did you have any siblings growing up?"
"No." Perseus replied, his tone still empty. Why is she telling me this? Give me silence! Just bandage me up and let me rot, hells, no need for the bandages even, just the rot. Her pity was seemingly bottomless. And it enraged him. It made him want to lash out, to thunder, to scream till his throat turned raw. I am not such a piteous l thing.
"Oh, I think a boy should have brothers, someone to wrestle with ya' know." A kindly smile crept onto her face and tugged at her lips as she wiped the last of the gel from his scars. "Did you ever want some? Brothers I mean." The nurse asked carefully as she began fitting fresh bandages around his wound.
Perseus shrugged noncommittally, mostly just wishing this pained conversation would end.
Her tone shifted suddenly from an aggressive bubbliness to an awkward curiosity. "They'd make wonderful friends as well, and… well…" And Perseus began to understand. Ah, now the chatter starts to make sense. "I was wondering if you'd consider…" Consider what? I'm to live out here in the highlands with you and your happy little family, is that right? "Coming to stay with us?" She finished, her eyes as wide as a begging puppy dog's. "I think it could be good for you."
He was at a loss for words but made sure his face betrayed no hint of the confusion or sadness or rage he was feeling. "I- I don't quite know what to say." He sighed. He knew exactly what to say, and none of its kind.
"Please think about it, Perseus. This world can be a cruel place and crueler still when you've no one looking out for you. Though I suppose you might understand that well enough." He stared at his grotesque reflection as the nurse rewrapped the left half of his face and watched as the faint green glow of his wound disappeared behind fresh, white bandages, sheet by sheet. "I think it would help." She finished the gauze wrapping and tied it snug.
"This world is all the crueler with people looking out for you." Perseus murmured. I've learned this lesson half a dozen times now. He thought, remembering his mother and just how their relationship came to an end. What she told him. What the voices told her. Those that look out for you will close their eyes sooner or later…
"Please Perseus, I only-"
"Enough!" Try as he might to contain his fury, it slipped out of his mouth like sick. "Who do you presume to be to me? I'll forget you as quickly as you step from this barn of a room. You're not my savior, you're not my saint, and you're certainly not my mother, you're no one to me, you're nothing." You're mud. He crossed his arms sullenly, suddenly feeling excessively petulant at his outburst. A child you are.
A frail sadness replaced his rage then. "Leave me be." He told the nurse with a feeble murmur. He closed his eye and curled small and listened as the stifled sobs of the nurse dimmed to naught as she escaped from the room and up the stairs.
That frail sadness was, in turn, supplanted by a seismic guilt. You rat piece of shit, he thought to himself. And he was left alone in his nagging solitude and nothingness.
How ironic that feeling nothing could make you so sad, Perseus mused. And that's what he felt. Nothing.
His physiological workings of emotion had been completely severed from the conscious perception of them; he was just an empty husk, an unfeeling soul with a feeling body, and Perseus was powerless to do anything but meditate on this emptiness within. It felt like there was an abyss in his chest where his heart was supposed to beat. It felt like tears were always threatening to fall but couldn't actually form. It felt like an aching depression permeated every inch of his self but as distant and cold as the dark side of the moon.
It felt utterly empty. There was no other way to describe such qualia, any and all attempted descriptions failed to do justice. Empty, this was the best approximation of the sensation that language could allow. Empty. He was empty. He was nothing, and he was mud.
Perseus
II
He dreamt he was a mountain cat. prowling across Mother over rock and snow. The air was thin and cold this high up, but he hardly felt a breeze through his thick coat.
With a fluid kick of his hind legs, he effortlessly scaled an ice crusted ridge. From atop, he could easily survey the domain that spilled out before him. The muted tones of gray, black, and white grew to peaks and sank to valleys.
His ears perked up at the cawing of birds while the scent of a feast had caught his nose.
Cresting snow covered-rocks, he came upon said feast, a hundred naked corpses of man. Ravens were freckled about the theater and sky, having their fill. He plodded towards over the thin crust of snow, paws crunching through an icy toplayer. The ravens fled at the sight of him, and let their displeasure at an interrupted dinner be known through an incessance of caws. The summer sky was clear blue and the birds looked like black shooting stars against it.
Over ivory colored snow his delicate paws tread. Perseus approached the first dead man with timid sniffs. The cold had delayed their rot. They seem fresh enough, he considered.
He licked the dead man's shin. It was cold as stone and tender as a lover's kiss. He circled the corpse thrice times more before stopping beside the stomach.
Then he gorged himself.
Tearing a hole and ripping entrails from the gut, cracking the bones and sucking the marrow. Never had he hungered like this, and never had he tasted something so rich, so sweet and savory. It was enough to make him nauseous with gluttony. But the taste was ever worth the ill. The flesh of man tasted of milk and honey. The feast didn't end till the man was but bones and bowels and the other inedible bits, save for his head.
The head and brain would be the sweetest yet, dessert it was. He craned towards to finish his meal.
Atop the skeleton sat his own face, his human one. Bashed in and broken, the left side but jellied gore. Reddish white slop dripped from what had been his eye socket. A chill managed through his coat.
A pair of half eaten hands flashed and he felt ice around his throat. The corpse was choking the last bit of life from him. His vision grew to a pinpoint as the dead hands tightened. He felt as small as a kitten then.
Perseus
III
Had it been days or weeks since his outburst with the nurse? And whatever difference would it make? He had stopped eating since then, losing his appetite to the emptiness. He found the hunger pains oddly comforting, lending themselves to some sort of feeling and control over such.
Besides, the hunger was good, it allowed him to just fade into himself, his muscles and fats would dissolve away leaving behind a weak, pointless corpse of skin and bone. Maybe he'd even be lucky enough to die in his sleep where his witless body couldn't shriek at him to continue on, he could just slip away into his dreams.
His dusty prison cell of a room hadn't become anymore familiar despite the countless days he'd spent within and the almost cruel unchanging nature of it. Dust still floated in the air, it still reeked of a barn, he still shared it with countless spiders whom weaved their silky hammocks across damn near every inch of the place. And yet each time he opened his eye he felt as though it was his first time waking here, in some alien prison cell.
A particular spider had caught his attention in the high corner of his room. It was a fascinating thing to watch. When some unlucky fly found itself caught, the spider would yank on its web to identify the area in which the prey had landed, strumming on the silk like a guitar string, before scuttling over to wrap the poor bug up into a bewebbed coffin.
Pyrrha visited often, though, thankfully, she hadn't much to say. Not that her silence spared him any. All she had to do was look at him with that sorrowful stare, the one that said 'please' and he wanted to sob, he wanted to scream and tear the hair from his head, he wanted to scratch what little flesh was left from his face.
He wanted to die.
And seeing the nurse was worse still, he hadn't collected the strength to apologize and the awkwardness when she would come to change his bandages was a hard thing to bear.
Gods, he hated having people who cared about him. Can't they see I'm already dead. He just wanted to be left alone. He wanted to decay.
Right on cue, Pyrrha walked in holding a tray of brown toast, gray oatmeal, and a tall glass of orange juice, ah, good, more food to ignore.
She set it down on the makeshift end table next to Perseus's bed, the contents came to rest with a rattle. He was quick to grab the glass of juice and swallowed half the cup in a single gulp, the citrus burned passing through cracked lips. He didn't mind that pain either.
His hunger made the rest of the rather boring meal of toast and oatmeal smell as good as steak and fried potatoes, yet he compelled himself not to touch it all the same.
Some strange and confused part of him liked Pyrrha worrying about him, to care whether he lived or died, another part of him hated it.
He just wanted her to hug him and hold him while he cried like a child with a skinned knee, he wanted her to stay. And more than that he wanted her gone. Never to return. Yet the moment she disappeared behind that door he wanted her back. And of course the second she was back he wanted her gone again. And round and round it went. His brain was a broken muddled mess of paradoxical desires. Whatever does it matter, mud, they're hardly your thoughts at all.
IV
Pyrrha
The boy had given up eating. He just laid in bed, fixated on the ceiling, studying it like it was some old work of art, all the while his body wasted away. Sedentary and starving, If that was how he meant to die surely there were less painful ways to succumb.
Having retreated from his cot, she watched him distantly from across the room. He looked small, practically floating in the rusted linens. They had gone through this little song and dance more than a dozen times before, he would ignore his food, letting it grow cold and stale before she swapped out his untouched breakfast for lunch, a lunch that would surely go untouched as well. She would try her hand at connection and he'd bat it away like a pesky fly. Then she'd meander above ground in failure.
She again summoned the courage to break the silence.
"How are you doing this morning, Perseus?" He shrugged noncommittally, his usual reply. His sunken gaze fell down to the white bed sheets that were draped across his emaciated form, he looked almost apologetic. Like a dog that's been beaten one too many times.
No natural light could make its way into the basement, all the light they had was a weakly shining yellow bulb that bathed Perseus's gaunt face a shy gold. The dimly lit room, adorned with its cobwebs and other forgotten crap, was already as dreary a sight as any, the boy needed out, out into the daylight, away from this suffocation and gloom. "What do you say about getting out of bed today and maybe upstairs, some movement and sunlight would do you good I'd wager." She offered.
The boy said nothing, captivated as he was by the topography of his bedsheets.
She just wanted to hug him, cradle him like she had once done for her sweet Caspian, how he'd hate that, she thought to herself with glum humor. "Please, Perseus, It's not good for you to just… rot down here." She put every ounce of care into her voice she had so as to not sound piteous. But still the boy gave no response. He doesn't want you here, you do him no good… She continued despite his silence and her own discomfort. "Come above with me. Enjoy some sun on your cheek." Stretch your legs before they wither.
He just shook his head and so sadly. She was powerless to that. He beats himself like there's glory in it.
Might as well get on to the rejection, she decided. "Have you given joining me to Etruria any more consideration?"
"No." He said coldly. No surprise there. Cassander won't be happy with me taking my sweet time here and pointlessly.
"I know it can't be easy, but-"
He scoffed. "You know?" The calm of his voice eroded ever so slightly. "Have you ever killed a man?"
"No." she said without a beat. She could feel Caspian's dead stare on the back of her neck in judgment.
"Have you ever lost half your face?" For the first time since she'd found the boy he sounded damn near alive.
She shook her head and looked down. "No." She said again, though this time she didn't need to lie.
"Then you don't know." He said matter of factly. The deadness had crept back into his voice by then. "How could you?"
As his words hung in the air, Stoney and cold, the boy's eye returned to his sheets, his silence holding.
"I was a field agent in post war Gaul, you know, out in the west. Our occupation was rather short lived, but my time out there was none short enough." Her hands slid together nervously. "I learnt many a lesson, and saw many a thing I wish I hadn't. It taught me what this world is like."
Still he said nothing.
"I was in North Ana Tusk." she continued despite. "Keeping an eye on some warlords there. Evil bastards, truly evil, the sort you wouldn't believe existed til' you saw them as I did. One day I watched a sobbing woman approach a couple Etruscan Soldiers, her babbling was so incoherent they could barely manage to make out a word of it. Eventually they calmed her down enough. And they…" She paused, not sure if she wanted to finish the story. "Eventually they calmed her down enough to hear her story and learned some bastards had covered her son, her five year old son, in bear fat, tossed the boy on a stake and burned him, burned him alive, all because he wore the Iron X. He probably didn't even know what it meant." She watched Perseus's mouth open as if to speak only to close a moment later. She allowed a tinge of anger to invade her voice. "So trust that I know what this place offers.
"She came to us expecting justice but we had none to offer. The soldiers just shrugged and sent her on her way. No justice, no help, not even a kind word. She'd wash up in the river a few days later." She finished the story. She wasn't sure what she had expected to see on Perseus's face. But she saw very little there.
"And you want to save this place? It'd be kinder to let it burn, if you ask me."
"Perseus!" A precise glimmer of rage ran through her and her tone certainly reflected it. "I want to keep anything like that from happening ever again! Don't you get it? It will all happen again!"
He answered her with silence.
Pyrrha rose from her seat atop a crate. "Please, Perseus." She knew she sounded helpless. She was. He doesn't want you here. He wants you gone.
After a long silence she bowed and strode from his room.
Perseus
V
He so badly wanted to rise, to chase after her. It would be easy enough, just move yourself. Rise, damn you. He didn't even flinch at the command, instead he lay still as ever beneath dirty linen sheets and slowly starved.
He listened as Pyrrha's creaking footsteps faded and eventually disappeared as she ascended wooden stairs. Follow her you bastard, call to her, she just wants to help! No words came out. No ions rushed in call, and no muscle cells constricted in movement. For why, you wretched mud?
And wide were the wounds for which the spiders call home. O' Peers and I know'th naught in the shape of night and night is all. Come thy spiders and clot our minds to brutalize these connections.
Bleed us and bleed us.
A spider in the top corner of his room was wistfully spinning a web. 'Good luck' his mother used to say about a spider inside. 'Now be respectful and take him out.' She'd add. And he would. She was always careful to give Perseus and the lucky little spider in hand a wide-berth.
I am overwhelmed with luck it seems. He thought, looking around at his tomb and counting the webs.
He tossed to his side and closed his eye to sleep.
It came quick.
In distant dreams the world moved in a blur, it was like watching the world pass by in a train car, moments turning beyond the reach. Dead things rose from the earth, a mountain cat prowled, the mountain called Mother shuddered with rage, and a snow fell across the world.
Shadows danced and bled. A knight clad in iron armor ahorse such a noble steed slayed a dragon. And snow fell.
No one thinks about you when you're not making noise.