One

"secretly"

Under covers, under skin, under wraps my love for you bosoms like a germinating seed

Blue sky- Laxcity

Landry

"I hope this one made you scared. Sometimes I immerse myself in horrors just to remind myself that in life there's always something to appreciate."

He spoke arrogantly as they walked through the town hall. They walked with small strides, seemingly not even lifting their feet off the ground, they walked smoothly and glided as though they were moving on a conveyor belt. Conveyor belt, the very conveyor belt that transported them from world to world. 

There was obviously nudity in almost every art piece. Each figure had either a breast or a member carved out in a deep sedating black. Each figure had their flesh exposed to the eyes of a human wanting to feel just that, human. Alive. Free. 

He had a wedding to plan. It was a lion king themed wedding with red and yellow tool. With red velvet cake and mascarpone icing. Flavours of vanilla and a rich chocolatey sponge. A piece of her died as she imagined him enjoying each and every one of their milestones with other women. It was like a she was trapped in a room fool of sentiment. He had sharpened his chef knives for the event, chef knives that would be responsible for the bloodshed of two people, people that you would least expect.

He got desperate every time he felt cold. Anything to stop the shivering. Anything to feel the warmth of his thirty-two-degree blood against his visceral skin. He got desperate every time he got numb. But he never tripped. Tripping was for Oberon and Oberon definitely tripped more often than a mother ever should. Observing her was like watching a block of ice melt. Like watching a sad wound fester like an abscess. He remembered his times as a young boy, all the people would say to him, 'go home boy' but the thing with Landry was that he had no home. Only his heart and a chef's knife. 

He divided and spread the wedding planning process into four months. Four months of fittings and spending life savings. Savings made through selling scripts. Editing screenplays and fixing scores with score makers. What is life really? All he had were memories of being told to go home. Though he had no home. No backstory. Only a chapel and a scribe on which he was splattered on continuously like the ink he was. Obsidian and black and infinite as black should be.

What is life really? Is it more than a theatrical performance danced in front of one giant spectator. Is it more than a string of monotonous and repetitive days. More than monochromatic outfits, bubble baths and hearing your heartbeat in your ears. Ariem nodded absentmindedly, thinking of one person and one person only.

Vorissa Sekana.

Secretly, he still loved Vorissa Sekana, though their love was reckless and careless. Destructive and calculated, unlike the wayward love of him and Cyan Lerato. He walked through her apartment and sprawled himself on her bed. Then he touched himself, the way Vorissa Sekana had touched herself to the thought of her library boy. Though they had thought of different peopl at different times, secretly, spiritually they had made love. A sweet unforgettable love potent and reckless enough even to awaken Vorissa's voice from death. He realised that the voice was in fact not Vorissa Sekana's but was that of a tape. A tape, so dusty and dark that it would be interpreted as obsolete.

Secretly, I've loved you from a distance. So much so that my heart aches. It's a sad love, that both destroys and heals me from a distance. Oh, my dear library boy, my love for you is a secret just like everything with me. I'm already a sad girl, I can't do a sad love. What I can do is search for peace and unfortunately for me the sort of peace I yearn for, the sort of peace that lasts over centuries and stretches on till the end of time is only attainable through death. And that's why I'm sitting here in a hot bath on a sunny July morning, ready to take my life. Ready to see what lies in Sigma, to those that have loved me vicariously I ask that you learn to love again-.