Far Goes The Farrago

Guilt And Its Parents

The demon was so much taller than their master, so much thinner, so much paler. Their eyes were a cold white, poignant, matching the iridescent tunic covering their slim body and leaving bony arms naked for the viewer. Their empty irises stared ahead, at nobody else but Maximilian who had turned around, startled by the flash too. In that fleeting moment, their gazes met. The event, that exact event, caused a grunt coming from Maximilian. He'd raised his hand, closed his eyes, turning his head in the exact opposite direction. And then, right there, he kept his lids screwed shut while in a sudden, delirious frown; it was disfigured in its wrinkles and voiced in hefty breaths, fizzling through clenched teeth, all of which culled Zachariah's blood frozen still.

His heart dropped, hanging and throbbing low in chest. He'd managed to place one hand on Maximilian's shoulder, just enough to scrape comfort against him and somehow begin consolation. That was when a hoarse holler was heard,

"Drop your weapons! All of them!"

The professor had never shouted so loudly, and never had Zachariah cared less for them.

Maximilian complied immediately; the knife was dropped and it clinked in somersaults over the floor, as well as his gun, which he'd rushed to reach in his belt and simply toss away. His hands were shaking, and even when he was finished with discarding, as they remained mid-air, fingers trembled loose. Despite the blur of his head's shaking, his face was seen, as was its scowl, deepened and worsened.

Zachariah's legs were drained of any feeling. He grabbed Maximilian's shaky hands, tangled their fingers like rotten weed. How to pluck out the dreaded trouble?! For his friend was barely there, barely himself.

On legs of foul columns, all in shudders, stood Maximilian's bent frame, and its crowning roof his ill face. Eyes were purely lashes tightly smashed into each other, underneath arches of brows collapsed. Hair fell like weeping rains, bangs and hairs astray, their atmospheric shroud seeping in black and blond strands. And on cheeks rested red specks of dust, arisen from the fall and settled on his skin.

Zachariah could hardly sustain the crumbles; his hands, they were shovels miniature in face of demolition, and his words, resonances to be lost. He called comforts to soothe the calamity,

"Everything will be okay. Breathe. Breathe. Everything will be okay." He spoke in echoes, pale and petty, and they remained mere clatters among the wrecks. The fact could not be changed: the man before him was a ruin.

The least he could do was follow his long-adopted practice, to begrudgingly unclasp the many trembling fingers, and grasp his face, cup his cheeks, whisper, firmly, to compensate for Maximilian's disorder,

"Everything will be okay. Look at me. Everything will be okay."

He stared at Maximilian with eyes wide open, unyielding, unblinking. In return, white eyes peered through lids, hesitant and probing.

"Watch me! Everything is okay," he whispered, his voice a shiver too long.

It was in moments like these that Zachariah's smiles meant well. And was it well?

The tower of a man was gaining balance, gaining posture, gaining order and gaining peace. The seams were conjoined, fractures brought back to a whole, and breaths that gave them life, finally became a breeze.

"Thank you," he whispered back, once again letting his eyes flutter shut, but this time, with no wrinkles and no frowns to ruin the ethereal sight that was his face. In thankfulness, Zachariah was mesmerized - Maximilian's smile, sudden and pure, showed itself, only to escape, as if eternally endangered.

With fingers lingering along the porcelain skin, the brunet let go. Maximilian followed in reverse, moving himself away, not one bit fazed. All present had stopped, and observed the two's séance; Radoy with dread, as he always did, the other two, with confusion.