Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2013 17:16:19 GMT -5
Slumped against the cold stone wall, dead gaze affixed somewhere far beyond the corner of the cell he faced, Anil dreamt listlessly of vague echoes. Almost whispers haunted in the hollows of his chest, eating away at secrets that were no longer secrets, and scavenging for the remaining scraps of pride that clung to him like sinew on carcass.
There wasn't much left to find; he'd been picked clean. It had been smelted, burned, flushed, and ripped out of him, every last piece and then some. Some slipped away and were lost, like water through tightly cupped hands. Some fled him like rats from fire. And some were cleaved from him like blade through flesh. She'd taken everything, or near enough that it didn't matter. His spirit was ground to pieces, and his mind, absent, adrift in landscapes of fog and endless desert. There, ghosts approached like mirages, clear from a distance, yet vanishing once they were perceived.
He'd stumbled after them once, clutched at them with desperate hands, convinced that if he could grasp even one of them that he'd be able to anchor himself to something solid and real, and escape from the suffocating mist. The ghosts took blurred forms that shifted as soon as the tickle of faint recognition touched his mind. Some reminded him of people he used to know, their names coming to mind only after he'd stopped trying to remember who they were. Some resembled old acquaintances with whom he was no longer in contact. And then there were the ones he was afraid to name, fearing they'd disappear the moment he did.
But he knew them, all the same. He knew them by the cruel twisting in his heart every time he glimpsed them from the corner of his vision. He knew them by their voices, muted as they were in the fog. They called to him, searching for him, pleading with him until his heart wrung itself dry from fighting the urge to give in. And by god, he wanted to see them. But he couldn't look. If he looked, they'd disappear, and he'd lose himself. And he knew now that he could never, ever find them.
So he lay there, adrift yet shackled, still and alone against the cell wall, on a cot too small for a man of his height, and he let the fog wash all the ghosts away.
There wasn't much left to find; he'd been picked clean. It had been smelted, burned, flushed, and ripped out of him, every last piece and then some. Some slipped away and were lost, like water through tightly cupped hands. Some fled him like rats from fire. And some were cleaved from him like blade through flesh. She'd taken everything, or near enough that it didn't matter. His spirit was ground to pieces, and his mind, absent, adrift in landscapes of fog and endless desert. There, ghosts approached like mirages, clear from a distance, yet vanishing once they were perceived.
He'd stumbled after them once, clutched at them with desperate hands, convinced that if he could grasp even one of them that he'd be able to anchor himself to something solid and real, and escape from the suffocating mist. The ghosts took blurred forms that shifted as soon as the tickle of faint recognition touched his mind. Some reminded him of people he used to know, their names coming to mind only after he'd stopped trying to remember who they were. Some resembled old acquaintances with whom he was no longer in contact. And then there were the ones he was afraid to name, fearing they'd disappear the moment he did.
But he knew them, all the same. He knew them by the cruel twisting in his heart every time he glimpsed them from the corner of his vision. He knew them by their voices, muted as they were in the fog. They called to him, searching for him, pleading with him until his heart wrung itself dry from fighting the urge to give in. And by god, he wanted to see them. But he couldn't look. If he looked, they'd disappear, and he'd lose himself. And he knew now that he could never, ever find them.
So he lay there, adrift yet shackled, still and alone against the cell wall, on a cot too small for a man of his height, and he let the fog wash all the ghosts away.