Ruin Maketh Me

53 - The Chasm

The room spins as if I'm the only one in this world who's unmoving, immovable, or perhaps I'm the axis point around which everything is revolving uncontrollably and revoltingly. This... how long has it been? Surely they've had enough? I'm sick. I shouldn't find that strange; I was sick before. What audacity did I possess to believe I'd change this life, or me?
     I cup Ralphus's heavy head and stroke his sweat-filled hair gently, "Young master Kade, that's quite enough."
Lutra's nonchalant stare brightens with the fizz of sadistic delight, "What Human, you can't bare it anymore?"
     He's still spinning like a carousel, the colours of his face, his eyes, all an incomprehensible muddle, "He'll die if you carry on."
     "Death?" Even his voice spins amongst the buzz of all the background noise, "This much isn't going to kill him."
     A laugh, sharp, whetted on the blood and lust.
     "No, no." The whisper leaves my mouth before my mind can register the syllables, everything becoming clearer in a upside down sort of way, "Ralphus isn't going to die, it's you isn't it? You're going to die."
     Lutra's movements slow and yet sharpen like the edge of a scythe, "What are you talking about human? If anyone's going to die, it's you."
     "Maybe." I run my fingers through the short white hair, "But you too."
     The fool called Zus glances at me keenly, eyes refusing to move an inch away from my face, a coolness drenching his sated pleasure and satisfaction. I raise an eyebrow at him. So this information is indeed important in some intangible manner. Lutra's life and my life.
     Lutra withdraws from Ralphus stickily and reaches out towards me, teeth bared, "I've changed my mind, as long as you die, I don't care about the consequences!"
     A string of blue magic wraps itself around Lutra's wrist and yanks him back.
    "The fuck?" Lutra growls at Zus, tearing the navy light apart, "Why would you—
    Violet light swaddles around Lutra like an inflatable swimming ring, "I won't warn you twice." Julius's voice rings dead cool like the toll of a bell from the bathroom.
Lutra blinks like he's barely able to register what's happening, the broken red in his eyes scratching over Julius's wet hair like he's a stranger at a cross road.
"Out. Now." Julius disappears through the air without so much as a look backwards.
As still as a statue, Lutra turns his eyes around the room blankly, to Zus, to me, to Ralphus, his anger stripped away completely for a transient moment. Then he's gone. Disappeared from the world like the last obsessions of a ghost.
The clear, transparent and yet dirtied glory of the chamber melts away. The white columns collapse, the marble floor blends away into hard wood like a twisted chimera of two rooms, the space warps, twists, comes to life, breathes and dies to silence.
The world finally stands still in front of me.
We're in Ralphus's room. The snake-skin illusion has peeled away. We had never left, it seems, we were always right here.
Zus slides off the sheets to the familiar, dusty floor, "It'd be in your best interest not to provoke Lutra." His eyes cut across my face like mercury, "We can't have you dying just now." And he, too, is gone with the whisper of a breeze along the creak of the floorboards.
I clamber to Ralphus's side and untie the various cuffs and bolts and infuriating chains, "Ralphus? Ralphus, tell me where it hurts."
He presses his hands to his face and refuses to turn over, "I'm fine." He whispers, voice harsh and rasping.
The cage around my heart creaks and threatens to break, "We have to get that thing out of you. Being erect for too long can cause necrosis."
"I can do it myself." He mumbles into the sheets gratingly.
I avoid the already darkening bruises and grasp his right shoulder and hip firmly, "In this condition, no you can't, you'd only hurt yourself. Now, cooperate with me would you?"
He gives a grunt, but with my pull, flips over onto his back. His fringe has all but come loose and is covering his eyes again, but even so, he whips his head to the side and brings up his arms.
"Shit." The image of the rod burns through my vision like a glare on a photo, and my stomach clenches fiercely, "I'm going to sterilise my hands, I'll be right back."
I scramble off the bed and stumble into the bathroom. Shoving my hands under the tap, I stare at my worn reflection in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes, pale skin clammy with a sweat, muscles tensed in a perpetual expression of falling through holes, and holes, and more holes; Alice in wonderland, down the hole. But this isn't wonderland. And I'm not Alice. I turn away, rinse every nook and cranny of these small hands. I hadn't realised, was that how I looked this whole time? Was not my face a mask of stern disregard? Does full control of this body flail away from me yet? I shouldn't have looked like this, my heart felt, and still feels like a rock. My face should've been rock like in its emotions too.
     My feet pound back to the bed and the Ralphus grappling with the rod.
     "Ralphus! You're going to hurt yourself."
     His head swings my way, wide-eyed through the sway of his hair, "You need not worry about me." He says shoulder tensing.
     I climb back onto the bed and kneel besides him, "You're in no condition to do this yourself."
     He makes no sound, but his hands swing up as I take his manhood gently into my hands.
     "Tell me if there's any pain." I say unyieldingly.
     The hands without destination fall back to his sides with a thump, and I grasp the protruding bulb tightly in my hand. Inching it slowly upwards, I ease the rod gradually out of Ralphus's urethra.
     A low grunt rumbles deeply from his throat.
     "Nearly there." I retract the hard rod completely out, and a forceful spurt of white, viscous semen surges out from the now open hole, "Does anything feel strange and painful?"
     Ralphus shakes his head and shifts wearily onto his side.
     "Good, but keep an eye on it." I pull open the window with a hard yank and throw the cursed rod into the oblivion of height.
The thrum withdraws half-heartedly from my blood, and when I turn to face Ralphus again, the floating abyss of my thoughts dot through my mind one upon another like the beep of an unanswered phone. He tilts his head, his clenched fists unclenching like the unfurling of a flower's bloom, and perhaps he sees something on my face that I can't feel for a faint smile traces the redness of his lips.
"At least I kept some dignity in front of you."
His words echoe again and again into my ears, "Did it not hurt?"
There's a slight pause before his answer, "No."
The diamond cages around my chest shatters into a thousand fragments. You liar. Of course it hurts. It hurts like hell. My gut writhes and my throat is choked tight, tighter. The silence drags like an unanswered question between us, but my voice is drained out of my throat through the hole in my chest. Sorry. Sorry. But that's not right. An apology is not what either of us needs to hear.
"Is it..." Bitterness laces his voice, "hard to still see me as a man? Am I..." he takes a hard breath, "no longer to your liking?"
The musky room is suddenly very cold despite the midday sun streaming through the half opened curtains. In truth, my skin is really very warm, but the air is cold, and all my insides are frozen in ice. I walk towards the bed and the figure on the bed, fighting past the stiffness in my limbs caused by the sudden cooling inside my flesh, "You see, Ralphus, I'm selfish and a coward."
The silky whiteness of his hair falls across his brow, onto the pillow, revealing his jewelled amethyst eyes. He looks at me, not understanding the skeleton of my words, "If you're not a coward, you don't survive on the battlefield."
My fingers twitch even in the coldness. I didn't think this chill would addle my ability to read the look in people's eyes, "This is not a battlefield."
His eyes shift from my left eye to my right and back again, "I wouldn't have wanted you to do anything more. No, I would've rather you locked yourself in the bathroom and didn't come out."
"I used you." My voice, strangely, does not shake from the cold, "That first day here and today."
Ralphus blinks, the expression of not understanding coming over his face again, but I got that wrong before didn't I? It's the not-quite-not-understanding look, "You made the right choice."
The right choice? Nothing had been the right choice. The right choice would've have been leaving everyone in this household alone and keeping to myself. It would've been drawing a line between us the first day we met.
He stares at me seriously, "Wasn't it you who said that there wasn't a way to disobey their command without aggravating the situation?"
     My heart tightens implacably, and I find that nothing I can say now would be right. But how is it that he cannot see that he would gain nothing from doing things like this for me? Only hurt and more hurt, and what could come out of hurt? Even the sweetest love would turn into bitterest gall.
     "You were right." He grabs my hand tightly across the space, "If you had fought, Julius would've torn you apart in front of my eyes. If you had cried, they would've taken much more pleasure from what they were doing. Why should you feel guilty from self-preservation?"
     How does he do that? I tug away from his grasp. How can he voice out the words in his heart so bluntly without an inch of doubt or surely, blame? The logic has turned strange again, "Is your self-preservation not self-preservation?"
     His brows swoop down like a bird preying on the weak, "I couldn't have watched them take you." Then his eyes widen a fraction and his eyebrows swing up.
     I look away, draw my eyes over the wallpaper speckled with sunshine and shadow. He's finally realised the gap. But that's not right again, it's more of a chasm isn't it? A gorge, a cliff, a valley rather than a mere gap. Neither of us could think straight in a situation such as that, but now when it's all over, it's become even clearer than before, "This isn't a profitable bargain. You're getting much less out of it than you're putting in."
     His hand clings onto me again, shockingly hot with the ice in my veins, "I'm not doing this to get something out of it."
     "I don't see much point in continuing a relationship where you're wronging yourself." My eye dance back to Ralphus.
     An ache travels up my arm as his grip tightens, slowly but surely, "Am I wronging you?" He asks with a bite of something sharp.
     I draw in his face and study the minute movements of true annoyance and an anger found in a sort of frenzied light, "No."
"Then please, do not meddle with my feelings." His hand travels up my arm in a reaching grip, "Do not try to sway me with these inconsequential things. Let me love you as much as I want, let me give as much as I want."
My jaw clenches, frostbite eating away through my organs as much as the fire raging in my mind, "You'll regret it one day, if not immediately Ralphus, because I can't give back as much as I receive. Do you hear me? You'll be cruelly underpaid for all your efforts."
Ralphus's other burning hand charrs into the flesh of my other arm, and he pulls me, closer and closer to the furnace of his heart, "I was taught to love my partner more than they love me, because I have the power to protect those who are weak. Do not insult my strength. Even if you don't cherish yourself, I will."
The ice in my veins unfreeze, and a half-choked laugh shoots out of my throat, "You're telling me that I don't need to return your feelings because I'm weak? That doesn't make any fucking sense!"
His clear eyes travel across my face like it's a newly found land, and the simmering heat atop of everything smoulders into a pile of ashes. This world, these people... they really do make me speechless.
"You do feel something for me." He smiles, fingers brushing over my shirtsleeves, "If you didn't, you wouldn't be so torn over a thing like this, am I wrong?" His face shines with a silent determination, "Even if you don't feel the same, you'll come to love me, even just a little, one day."
     I brush my fingers through my hair and sit down besides him on the bed, a small sigh blooming from my lips, "You... really."
     The stern, heavy calm of seriousness cloaks his entire figure, "I'm the heir to the House of Caesluphius, I have ownership of two castles in Mal, and despite everything you've seen, I am one of the best warriors of Mal."
My lips can't help but curl upwards, "What, you're trying to impress me now?"
Ralphus's eyes glint, "I want to be honest with you."
His deep voice itches my heart, and that fragmented cold withdraws from the recesses of my body. Alongside with it also dissipates the comical disbelief, and all that's left is a stagnant yet lukewarm pool, "I'm not going to lie, I do like you Ralphus." The corners of his mouth deepen, "But with how things are right now, it has no room to develop, and frankly, I find it very hard to act on it. I'm not blaming you for anything, it's just the way things are."
His fingers tumble down my arm in a subtle line of bodily connection, flesh and soul, "I'll find a way." And then his hands are pulling me down, with him, into him like I'm the missing pendant to his chain, "You do find me appealing?"
The half-sigh becomes a full-sigh whirling out of my lips like the last beacon of smoke warring through the remnants of the battlefield, "I suppose love truly blinds," the immobile face I first saw of this man rises phantom-like into my mind, "you've become very different."
The fluttering of lashes shroud the glow of his violet irises, "Thank you," Golden light branches under his skin and the bruises fade half-heartedly, drunken in their movement deeper into flesh, "and sorry." His fingers shiver across the flesh of my skin, seemingly scared to touch it fully for fear that it might fall away altogether, an illusion, "Thank you for allowing my dream to come true. Sorry for not being able to give you something better."
I shake my head, the guilt mixing with the tenderness into a swollen, aching thing that throbs with my heart, one, two, again through every beat, "There's no need to thank me or apologise to me. No, I should be the one thanking and apologising."
He shifts, breathing out deeply, eyes glazing over, "That's what my father always said." The deep purples catches alight, "My mother was killed by an Otherworlder, the Queen of Mal for trying to save her; it broke my father, it broke all of us, and I ended up here." His words grow clipped and bitingly bitter, "Maybe in that sense, her death was fated. If I didn't end up here, I wouldn't have met you."
—burning hair, burning cigarettes, burning food, burning eyes, ugly lips, ugly tears, ugly mascara running down her face like down is the only way they can go like me, down, down, down, down her ugly jaw, "Ash you little bast—
     "You love your mother very much." My words dash out without the question where it should be, "My mother... well." I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her, "I wonder if her death was part of fate."
      I slip off the sheets, my eyes snagging on the lines of light cutting listlessly across the dark wood, "I'm sorry for your loss. Your mother did not die in vain, I'm sure she's at peace wherever she may be. Now," I twist to face him, "shall we get you cleaned up?"
     Ralphus's eyes stare at me as if they've lost focus, godly almost in their look that hints at a loosening of mortal bounds, a hint of red stalks up the roots of his ears, and he takes my hand in his from across the space, and he kisses it.