In The Dark Of Night

Chapter Twenty One - Fallen

Chapter Twenty-One

Fallen

The days and nights come apart. I feel them corroding at the seams. 

~Markus Zusak, I Am The Messenger

The dream was of old blood, leaking through the cracks of an ancient wooden floor, its almost black hue glistening in the moonlight. 

The dream was of split innards, soaking the night, their smell permeating the thick, soupy air. 

The dream was of death - the frail bodies of weak children laid neatly across the floor at precise angles, waiting for unsuspecting passers-by to happen along them.

Senseless deaths.

Gruesome deaths.

And he stood in the middle of it; golden orbs shimmering to black, and a heart that was once, though broken, pure, spilling at the brim with blackened blood. 

The signs of the unholy - of the occult. 

He knew this. 

He'd been taught it in his youth.

But the teachings had reached him to late - she had saved him too late.

The darkness had already taken root.

And it was always there - lurking in the shadows of a good day. Waiting to take over. Waiting to make the body its own. 

And some days - even on the good days - he was ever so close to letting it.

And here, surrounded by blood and ichor and the sickly sweet smell of corpses... he felt at home. 

More at home than he ever had in his life.

The blood was crawling towards him now, seeping along the floorboards to his leathered boots, bubbling and frothing and oozing, like a thick, red wine. 

And he bent, fingers reaching to it, wishing for only a sip - a sip, he knew, that would take him to a new depth... a depth he could never return from. 

It would be so much easier to give up the fight - to let go.

And what was he fighting for anyway?

"Have you really forgotten, Schatten?" 

He spun at the sudden intrusion, eyes flashing as they fell across the plump, blond woman, whose face was so familiar and so foreign at the same time, polluted with bruises and careless cuts. 

Her skin looked clammy and wet, as though she hadn't seen the sun in years, and her lips parched and dry, vacant of liquid.

He almost offered her some of the blood in the view of her pitiful appearance. 

"Forgotten?" He asked her, voice gravelly and deep - otherworldly... dangerous.

She took a step forward - over the mangled body of the youth, closer to him.

She never looked down.

But that was okay - he'd splattered the walls with their blood too. 

"Forgotten everything I've told you." She explained, her soft eyes caring - motherly. 

He did not know her.