Mated to Morpheus

o.MTM.4

life within the tomb

Chatter. Babble. Pratter.

It all sounded the same to him—their feminine voices had finally moulded fully into one, and it seemed as though the volume of them had grown tremendously lighter with each year that had passed. Each word they spoke went in through one ear, and then out of the other almost as fast as it was uttered. There really was not much care left to give, and maybe there was a lot in the very beginning, but there was none anymore. He felt nothing, but he had never felt something before, either. And, they knew, albeit their understanding was represented through silent prayers and dreadful weeping, but they knew.

He knew, too, no matter how hard it was to swallow such a tormenting truth.

The years had all passed with an ache so slow that he found it hard to recognize what time of day it was, which soon had turned into not knowing what month it was, and then finally turned into not wanting to know what century had already been wasted away. It was safe to say that his toes had stopped twitching once they realized that the ground was not as close as it seemed, and the idea of walking, running, standing was eventually considered an impossible wish. That being said, his fingers had also stopped reaching forward as though they were searching for something when his hope dwindled down to a sliver, but they still cracked from time to time with a phantom quiver. It was when his eyes had stopped rolling beneath his eyelids, however, when he started to think that they were now completely useless.

That, he was now useless.

Although he could barely tell the difference between feeling hot and cold anymore, he would frequently desire the warmth of someone else. It would often ignite him on the odd days that were boiling to the touch, with a sun so bright that it would burn the land's grass with a glimpse and would dry up the vastness of the great ocean with but a subtle glance. His first instinct was to try to understand the inner worship of his mind, but he would always question it and promptly curse it as though it was disease that would rot his very heart from deep within its core. He could not fully understand how such a craving for heat could encompass his soul the way it frequently did—despite it being so natural to his kind.

There was a chance that he felt it stronger than most, as the calling never stilled nor did it ever stray. He wondered if there was another being that felt the same, but he assumed that they would believe it to be a sickness with the way it would affect them, like a corruptive flu. They would likely lie awake at night, sweating through their sheets and shredding their throat with a painful, dry cough. That was all he could imagine. It was all he thought he was worth.

And, on the most loneliest of nights, or the calmest of mornings, or even the most boring of afternoons, he would whisper his name through a mere exasperation of bated breath. Morpheus. Through exile, his voice would break free and roam as his spirit cried out in misery. Morpheus. He would hold his chest until he felt his lungs beg for forgiveness, for mercy, for leniency. Morpheus.

He would never be gifted a response besides a shift in weather, and his name became a reminder of what could have been because of it. If he behaved, would he have liked his name? If he behaved, would he have been happy? If he behaved, would he have been betrayed? He did not know the answers, but he knew that his name would forever be stained in the blood of those that haunted him.

There was a trivial part of him that questioned such a strong emotion. He did not believe that he wanted to die, rather, he wanted to live, but not like how he lived before. He did not want to be welcomed by responsibility, branded by the power of his overbearing mother, nor kept captive by expectations. He would have been content to live such a demanding life in the past, but this was now the future, and he did not yet know what to make of it. The imprisonment had tortured him, and he would be forced to spend the rest of his life trying to escape. It was then and there that he deemed his life, as it was, unworthy of even the slightest bit of consciousness.