http://noh-dancer.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
noh-dancer.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tampered2006-10-05 11:47 pm
noh-dancer.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2006-10-05 11:47 pm
Log: Complete
When; No when ( Dream Time )
Rating; NC-17 for graphic imagery, and sexual assault ( ( You Have Been Warned )
Characters;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
noh_dancer Scarab, bitingnightmare, The Corinthian, redhorror Pyramid Head
Summary; Don't let the light shine on me
I am the poison that feeds life to you
Don't let the light shine on me
I am the demon that waits inside you
Don't let the light shine on me
I am the ghost that reminds death of you
Don't let the light shine on me
I am the darkness that crawls into you
Log;
Running, always running.
Can't stop.
Her hand is agian a mess of torn flesh, splintered bone, and pain.
Her lungs are burning, begging for oxygen.
Can't stop. Can't stop running...if I stop, he'll catch me.
Turning a corner, she is forced to stop for a dead end.
Buildings without windows bar her way, and before her is the cathedral's wall.
The rebar is there. The wings are already painted. All that is missing...is her.
Agian her legs give out and she drops to her knees, staring up at the empty bars,
the blood that is slowly winding it's way in droplets down the wall.
Even the ground is splashed with blood, all spreading out from the bars, the wings, the wall...
It is silent except for her labored breathing...She is alone in this place...alone with her horror.
Until a sound grates the silence.
A halting, mettalic sound.
--
She will see. I will not see. I never see. I always see. I see everything. I am everything. I am nothing. Only a litle longer. Soon, so very soon. I will see so much more. I will see the inside. I will see all of it. Open up see what's inside.
Judge and Judge, and sentences to be carried out.
Judge and Judge and never alone. No no, never alone. I am always alone.
She will come.
Be mine
Be no ones.
Be one. The same. Alpha Omega
Omega.
Omega.
Omega.
The Red Judge, The Great Knife, the calling and the return.
He never runs.
Never has to...he knows where she is, where she will go, and when she will stop.
His time now, his place. In here, only the silent survive, and she can not be.
Mine. Mine to worship, mine to spoil. My marks on her, my thing, my arm, my hand, mine mine mine
There she is, running away, running but no matter how fast she is always chained.
He can always find her, He can hear them, can hear the rattling, He can smell her sin.
Judged, and sentenced, but not sentenced.
She is strong, she could be his, and she could do so much more.
Just have to cut the chains, have to show her how.
I can wait. I always wait.
--
The Corinthian had fallen into what had started as a dreamless sleep, the best for his kind really. Somewhere along the way, what had been a queer excuse for pleasure no strings attached, had become a bare arm draped over bare shoulder. The couch remained empty the last few nights, a resting place for the Englishman's beaten coat. He stirred slightly but only trailed the tips of his fingers along John's back, sleep. And dream.
He was no longer in the studio, no longer in The City. He was somewhere, home? No, not The Dreaming, at least not the one he knew. It was dark here, as cold as the silent drops of cave water, as warm under his nails like the steaming flesh of a freshly eviscerated corpse. Was he himself, or that other man, the man he once was. One and the same, but different. He thought he felt a breath against the back of his neck, not the magus'. Something rank, something wet. Very wet.
--
Tears of desperation.
She knows there is no way out, nowhere to run anymore.....and he is coming.
The sick feeling of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach, the burn of oxygen starved lungs keep her on her knees.
She can hear him. Knows he is close, but she can't turn around. She wants to. Wants to turn and see, turn and fight, but her body won't respond to her brains' commands.
All she can do is stare at the wall, and know that when he reaches her, she will be back there agian...
The scream of metal over concrete lurches nearer....nearer.......
He is just behind her now, she can tell by the cold feeling dancing down her spine.
Come ON! Turn around, turn around and face him!
She can't...only her eyes widen, her breath becomes short....and she feels it;
The now familiar steel grip on the back of her neck.
-
Massive grisly grey-toned hands close on the back of her neck, so large the fingers encirle it completly and touch again over the front of her throat.
The great knife raised...poised.....
And the world lurches with reality's twist.
This is his place, his world, and here He governs the warp and weft of of the fabric, perception's alter on his whim.
The wall turns, cranks as though on hidden gears, and flattens to become horizontal.
The rebar shifts, stretches, hooks and climbs to become a bristling nest of clawed blades; all hungrily stretching for her, creaking and moaning with stuttered movement.
The monster lifts her by the throat effortlessly, and her own hands begin to scrabble at it's hold; begin to fight him when he starts to advance on the stygian surgical suite.
Her mouth works, but no sound is permitted, not yet; the screams were for later.
Reverently, almost gently, the monster leans the great knife agianst the concrete table's edge.
No such treatement is accorded for the judged. There is work to be done, and she has been fighting this for far too long.
The now freed hand takes hold of both of her clawing ones, easily grinding the delicate bones of her wrists together in one grip.
Her tears are warm and sweet as they trickle across the knuckles of the fist encircling her throat.
Mine. All mine, you'll see, you'll know, you'll fight, and you'll fight, but I can always find you...always, always always.
A soundless scream is beautiful to him, and now that she has had the proper appreciation for his tools, he raises her; One hand about her throat, the other forcing her arms behind her, and throws her face down across the wall-the table- the garden of squealing hooked blades.
One hand releases her throat and she coughs, gagging, crying, trying to scream and failing.
The hooks raise above her, squeal and spark as on rusted hinges they grab at her; cutting flesh, removing the suit a strip at a time, and curling around her ankles like creeping vines of razor wire.
--
Tears of desperation.
He knew there was no way out, nowhere to run anymore....... and he was coming.
Pale hands graced his bare shoulders, tender as only a lover could. The stick of a kiss to his throat, how beautiful the dark mirror and his reflection, lapping tears because he wouldn't dare allow blood to grace his skin. The Corinthian was a clean creature, professional murderer, leave the mess to the executioners, the waking world's primitive tortures of rusted metal and rape. He could not deny however that he was being invited into this nightmare, someone else's artistic madness, a different kind of tapestry woven from the flesh strings of the living. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
Mine. All mine, you'll see, you'll know, you'll fight, and you'll fight, but I can always find you... always, always always.
From his human mouth came its fingers, knuckles knotted, skin transluscent from being in the dark. Blue veins ran up its forearms as elbows made its way between his teeth. The Corinthian heaved onto the hard floor, or was it carpet soft with the tender meat of a woman? White fluid leaked from his lips, his teeth eyes. It knew what it was doing as its head emerged, as white and glowing as the moon, three mouths housing sharp irregular teeth. It pulled a shoulder from the man, enough to turn around and unhinge its jaw so that it might consume that who was conceiving it. It ate him like a snake would its pray, swallowed him whole till his human feet disappeared down its gaping maw. The loyal phantom had to dress appropriately for this place.
The new creature walked with a limp, its talons clicking gently as it traversed the dream fabric, dripping nightmare, to answer the call of a woman, her voice silenced but her mind so achingly clear. It approached 'the scene' as it were, fingerclaws milky white gently tapping at its chin, as if this were no different from a whore being whipped by her dominant master.
Teach her. Teach her well.
--
She was fighting still, because of something deep and instinctual was screaming at her that giving in, accepting this would not make it end faster....not by a long shot.
Throwing shoulders back and forth, rocking her weight to try and wring her wrists from the things hold...something...anything!
But it wasn't working, and the razored vines, senuous wires, were cutting painfully into her ankles, the cold, sharp fingers still sliced away strips of her suit, and some were voraciously scoring deep lines into the flesh of her hips, her thighs....
Cheek pressed to the rough stone, she bared her teeth, and pulled at the searingly painful shackles..maybe, maybe if she pulled hard enough she could force the undulating wires into cutting through at least one foot, and she could escape.
A chastising squeal emitted from part of the writhing nest, and her legs were spread suddenly and very forcefully.
Now she was denied what little purchase she had gained, and more sturdy hinged blades where forcing her hips up, forcing because if she tried to resist the honed edges would easily disembowel her, close as they were to doing so now.
She opened her eyes, and once a fresh tear of humiliated, horrified anger cleared her vision she could see the third party.
Wait....you...your not supposed to be here?
--
While the creaking, screeching wire-vines set about thier work of restraining the judged, the Executioner fine tuned his work.
Bared handed, he snatched a squirming rattling cluster of razor wire, which squealed in protest, and brought it up over her shoulders to secure her hands.
Once given a taste of the flesh, her flesh they twined her wrists quickly, and recoiled with twanging snap.
Now she was spread wide, the creaking geared hooks nearly finished with thier part, though the Judge had to slap more than one away from being to tempted by the especially tender morsels between her thighs.
Patiently it worked, meticulous in the details, and the canvas was layed out. Stretched on it's frame, cleaned, and nearly ready.
Hands now free, The Red Judge was able to fine-tune the razored wires..shallow cuts here, a deeper there, and the blood was starting to flow, not too much, not yet, but the paint needed to mix.
Two thick nail-less fingers pressed fiercely into the hole in her shoulder.
Had to get the proper shade...had to be thick enough.
Drawing out those fingers, the Judge, the artist pressed it's fingerprints into the long ragged scar that decorated her back...where the great blade had kissed her the first time, and drew down, raking vertebrae as they went, and forcing her to bow her back at the grating sensation.
Not too much, not yet....
--
I am, this IS me.
The thought trilled sweetly in its head, perhaps her head as well, like a song born from violins warning the people of nightmares to come, the hoof beats of the hag and its rider, a pale white-haired creature with teeth. So much teeth.
It was her tear that had caught its attention. Not the blood, not the massive executioner preparing his paints, his brushes, not the parting of her thighs like a canvas cranked taut. It was the single moist drop of humiliation, anger, defeat, maybe revenge? Everything that made the mirror, clear and smooth like glass. The helmeted thing craved a serrated edge against supple skin, the white moon reveled in anguish, sadness, vengeance, violation, everything in one single tear. Its roll from her cheek, its fall to the ground, cracked the glass like striations in the eyes it did not own, cracked like spider veins to the very edges of its hooked toes.
It reached down to run a fingertip between the cracks, to touch the wetness squeezed from her crying soul, crying fool. He tasted it, bitter, salty, sweet..... Familiar.
--
Brown eyes.
Deep brown eyes, free of thier implants, because here, now, she wasn't Scarab...here she was Keico.
Nineteen years old, barely a woman, barely much of anything ...
The executioner, the Red Pyramid had been here for a long time. She knew that, and feared the night, feared sleep because on the other side of her subconscious it was always waiting.
This one....this new one....it was new...
You....Your....
Brown eyes widened in recognition as dreaming and waking connected to form an image, a face...a name...
Alex!....No, no not Alex....
Her expression hardened from humiliated anger to a numb sense of betrayal.
Corinthian....Cori....
Betrayal turned felt cold, and in this moment the razor-vines trilled to one another in confusion.
The condemned was not thiers' now, the condemned was taking them away!
This isn't you. This isn't you....it's not...not all of you.
The taut wires were loosening, gibbering and squealing in confusion.
You're Cori...You are my friend.
And through the tears, through the horror of the apparitions who both invaded her mind, she could see
Beyond the white bladed claws, the sharpened teeth, the bone-white flesh, as though superimposed, a ghost of a ghost, there stood Cori in his signature white tank top, blue jeans and sunglasses.
A cigarette caught in his lips....
--
The Executioner halted.
Frozen in mid-action, and when the artist ceased, the tools would become only that; tools.
Slowly....as though the monster's very sinew and bones were rusted from dissuse, the great helmet swivelled to regard the interloper.
--
What use did he have for names? Unlike Dream he did not collect names like he did friends. The nightmare was a solitary creature, the thing that brewed in the backs of everyone's minds, reflecting guilt and fear and disgust and violence and desire. Demonthing. Bad dog. Get back to where you belong. If he could he'd join the Red Pyramid, a shard of glass with a deadly edge, unassuming in its neat gloss, free to be depraved with holy justification. That was if he wanted it, and there was something eating at his skin, tingling between each vertebrae, telling him he didn't want it.
Doushita no.
The words came to him naturally, because the dream fabric had woven three ways. This wasn't his place, but this was his function, conscious of his actions or not. The white creature stared at the executioner, touched its claws to its teetheyes, looked to Scarab again.
Keico.... (anata ni aete yokatta).
When the helmet turned to face him, he pointed a single claw at it. No one did The Corinthian's job better than himself, and no one should ever even try. The moonlit flesh decayed, some sliding from his body, other parts flaking as they dried under his control, doomed to melt away into the cracks. He stood tall, in jeans and a tank top, certainly. Without his sunglasses.
"Get away from her."
--
Cori....
The razor vines gibbered and screeched, churning agianst one another with a cacophany of rasping mettallic hiss.
They were loosening on her wrists, retreating in milling confusion as her thoughts were turning away from despair, from the inevitable.
Brown eyes, shining with tears widened in comprehension suddenly, and with a speed that startled the creaking hooks under the soft flesh of her stomach she ripped one wrist from theier grasp.
Getting it under her quickly, she came up awkwardly, and without thought, her voice returned.
" RUN!"
The shout broke the spell of milling confusion; both artist and tools reacted.
The wires hissed as one malicious sound and fell on her in a weaving scream of wire-on-wire, followed by a strangled sound of pain on her part.
Twining around her wrists, her torso, her legs, anywhere they could gain purchase, they circled and cut, sawed and bit until the wall ( the table?) became nothing but a mass, milling squeal of glinting blade edges.
--
I-mine, this is mine, this is no ones, it is not yous, never mine, always mine, NOT YOURS
No eyes with which to see, but the hulking executioner saw, and saw and saw
Guilty Guilty Guilty
One greyed-flesh arm reached into the mass of living razor wire with a speed that one wouldn't usually acredit to such a large creature, the massive blood-blackened helmet never moving away from the Interloper.
Brutally the hand snapped back with a handful of her black hair, the tension from the grabbing , dragging wires enough to bow her back and steal the scream from her throat before she could draw breath to release it.
The Red Pyramid, Right Hand, Executioner, hauled her up by that handful of hair, and following along with thier artists' intentions, the wire curved and arced, elongated and contracted to bind her and twist her until when the creature turned fully to face the corinthian, she was bound and hanging before him, a living , writhing mess of blades, and bloodied flesh.
The wires snaked across the ground and supported her enough to force her back into the spine-cracking bowed position the creature had first favored.
Show you, see you, she will show you, she will see you, doesn't need you, doesn't WANT you, unwelcome, show you, mine, mine mine mine, show you show you mine, she doesn't need you, doesn't want doesn't want DOESN'T WANT YOU
He would make it clear who this condemned belonged to, show the intruder whose realm this was now.
A sudden twanging 'snap', and the wires parted enough to show the deep lacerations that crisscrossed her in a macabre web of pain, parted and held her for the artist to sign his work.
Brown eyes screamed what stolen voice could not...when the monster drew her into a one-armed embrace, heedless of the slicing razortips, and pressed it's bloodied fingers between her legs.
Another vicious thrust up, and her scream finally found voice.
Scream for me, only me SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
--
He kept his own hand up, Red Right Hand, unassuming phantom in his uniform of plain mortal clothes. No cloak did he use, no Dream Helm. He was just a nightmare whose bite was certainly worse than his bark. The mass of razorwire didn't faze him, and one might even think he was trying to communicate with it, to make it question just who was the master around here, if just enough to make the Pyramid Head question its loyalty and punish the unworthy metal serpents, make them rust and brittle.
This was a dream realm, people didn't die here from their wounds (only from fear), and maybe that was the worst of it. Still, only the strongest survived, whether by physical strength or mental will, and The Corinthian was not about to let his be beaten down but such a rank blood butcher.
Listen to me, I have to do this to you. No hard feelings.
His voice sounded calmly. Her violation didn't faze him, though it angered him on a deep and personal level, his mouth barely twitched. He stepped forward, over the arms of many young boys, their lifeless hands just barely tugging at his heels. So many of them, beautiful, innocent, eyeless, some bleeding between their thighs, hot warm blood. He felt the urge to impale them, through the eye socket. No, he felt the urge to show this one, this Red Pyramid, how to handle true horror.
*You barely scratch the surface, butcher.*
-Let me show you how it's done.-
A young trumpet player from a distant memory, a Harlem night club. He loved that boy, enough to kill him. The ghost grasped at the nightmare's ankle. He willed himself to lift his boot and gently, gently press the ghost back into the ground. He loved that boy enough to feel guilt, remorse, and move on.
"Itai," a young girl uttered. Seico, was that her name? She was dying on the floor of a restaurant, again. Dying but not finding the solace in Death's embrace. So long as this one hooked her into his fleshy dream realm, anchored by razorwire, she could go nowhere. Unfair, denied life, denied release. Perhaps Keico wouldn't scream like a cold iron ripping her from the inside, but she might weep, and in it find her strength.
He couldn't rely solely on the battle for illusions of course. He fashioned his own weapon in the shape of a sleek curved blade from his right arm, and twice its length, as sharp and reflective as glass, as hard as the stone cold countenance of what he was. Not Alex, not Cori, but Dark Mirror, The Corinthian.
--
Pain.
Pain of the mind, of the body, and the soul.
There was nothing but the pain; pain from the wires, pain from the stygian wave of solid-thought that rolled off the monster who held her, pain from the hard tearing invasion between her legs.
The monster had built a wall of pain around her, and reinforced it with the chains of guilt.
Her mind kept conjuring images of past mistakes, past misdeeds...
Blades in the dark.
Blood in the water.
But the realization that she wasn't alone in hell had been enough to stir something else beyond the guilt, the despair and sadness:
Concern.
Cori was here somehow. The real Cori, not just another piece of her memories come back to haunt her.
She had seen him, for just a moment, but she had seen him.
......and now could hear him.
No hard feelings...
She could see agian.
Back in the restaurant...back in Kyoto...and Seico dying in her arms.
Something about the memory felt ...real, and Keico held onto that fragile thread of sanity.
Held onto it, and let the past unfold agian:
Sorrow over Seico's needless death, shock over the speed of it....
....and rage.
Rage. Pure and all consuming.
--
The wires shivered as one, and started to squeal agian.
Squealing and hissing, pushing and fighting with one another.
Confused agian.
The condemned wasn't their's, the condemned wasn't accepting!
Hissing and creaking in obsequious submission, they started to swirl away from the Red Judge.
Stoic, and ever-impassive he let them go, and let the canvas snap off of it's frame.
The wires were slithering back, hiding themselves from the fury in the condemned, and from the master.
All gone, all gone...all cowering from the strangeness, the fury.
Released from her own bonds, only the Judge held her up now, and as brutal as he had been moments ago, he was now equally gentle in releasing her.
Easing her down from grey-toned hands, the Judge let her rest in a limp huddle of naked, lascerated flesh at his feet.
Once finished, he simply reached one massive arm behind him.
Grasped the great blade...
.......And brought it back to bare directly in front of him.
Judgement: Guilty
--
*Feel that, Keico, feel him try to take her with you. How DARE he touch HER soul, those who've already passed.*
-Are you ANGRY yet, Keico? Show me your TEETH, girl.-
His voice was vicious, uncaring, daring her to rise up against both Red and White Horrors. He held onto that single thread of sanity, her rage, like a lifeline, even if it meant betrayal of her privacy. Desperate times called for desperate measures after all.
The nightmare raised his mirror-finished blade and raced to slash up along the Red Pyramid's wrist, not across the street but rather down the road they say. He didn't think he would be doing much, drawing the butcher into physical combat, but it was enough to buy Scarab time.
Seico clawed her hands against the floor as the razorwire slashed her ankles, climbing up her calves, to her tender thighs. No… they receded, squealed as the awakened conscious pulled them away, shrinking from her fury. The young girl crawled her way towards her friend. Dead hands still able to caress Keico's torn flesh, dead eyes still capable of crying. The dead girl wept for her living companion, wept and whispered into Keico's ear.
"You need to wake up now," said her voice, distinctly female, but far too aware of their surroundings, "I can't hold him off forever."
--
The Red Judge took the slice to it's wrist, deadened flesh parting under the sharpened blade to spill quagulated wet chunks of rust - like fluid.
It's free hand snapped out and fisted in the intruder's shirt front, hauling him up to face the great helemt.
Guilty
.....this one begged for judgement, pleaded for punishement, and the Executioner would oblidge.
The Judge raised the condemned; the interloper until it's feet left the ground.
Raised the great knife, and took precise aim ...the knife would kiss this one too; grant it redemption.
--
Seico...Gomen, Seico
It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and the rage was getting stronger.
One shaking, bloodied hand rose and touched Seico's cheek...Keico opened her eyes, and smiled grimly at the phantom....but the smile faltered, faded, when Keico noticed Seico's eyes.
There were no eyes...
...Just two sets of teeth...
All of a sudden; she understood.
Another caress in parting, and Keico was stumbling, crawling, getting to her feet.
She could see the Red Pyramid, the knife, and the Corinthian being held up as she had been, about to be impaled as she had been....
No!
She was moving before thinking, running toward the tableau....
...The rage made her fast, made her strong, and made her a weapon.
She didn't consider it, simply reacted, a long gleaming katana blade forming directly from the flesh of her hand.
She didn't slow to take stance, but rather used her own momentum, her weight, to drive the blade into the monsters back, only stopping when the hilt caught on the spine.
A feeling more than a sound emitted from the thing, a sensation of pain, and.....betrayal?
Red lensed eyes sought out teeth-eyes from around the great monsters bulk, and smiled.
Get out of here, Cori. Run.
Another smile, a warm hearfelt one of thanks, and Keico- no...Scarab closed the doors of her mind.
Now it was only the blade
The Judge.
...and her.
--
The serpentine voice was his own, a tone from over ten years passed, a plea he could not ignore.
Hurt me. Punish me. Stick a loaded gun in my mouth and rape me.
Punishment, yes. He ached to be punished, wanted to be forced into indignity for all the crimes he committed under the faulty reasoning of his former self. But The Corinthian did not seek bloody redemption at the hands of this butcher. This one didn't stand for the innocence he slayed, for the father he disappointed, for teeth eyes that looked back at him every morning, for forgiveness. The Red Pyramid was not his deliverance, his rescue. Someone else held that title, unknowingly, maybe more than one.
He gripped the red horror's wrist with his free hand, his palm stinging like a thousand little teeths gnawing away at flesh bit by bit, acidic. Even as the thing lifted the nightmare off his feet he just stared at it, long and hard with snarling mouths, a stand off. He hooked the tip of his mirrored blade under the end of the welded helm, threatening to rip it off the butcher's head. Would it crack? Shatter? Rust away to reveal the thing's rotting visage? Or would The Corinthian suffer blood and impalement before being granted such a slice of victory?
*Bad dog, little horror.*
-You turned away from your prey.-
Teetheyes taunted with absolute pleasure as he watched Scarab rise again from over the Pyramid Head's shoulder and run her sword through the creature, into its spine.
What?
"What!?" The blade on his arm crumbled away, turning into a pile of sand at his feet. He felt his body being lifted, to be impaled, but the impact yielded only a shatter of tan and crystal. The Corinthian's body dissipated into nothingness, just dream sand in the air.
((OOC: Translation:
Doushita no.= "What's wrong."
Keico.... (anata ni aete yokatta). = "Keico (I'm glad that we met.)"
Itai = "It hurts"
Seico.....Gomen, Seico = "Seico...Sorry, Seico" ))
Rating; NC-17 for graphic imagery, and sexual assault ( ( You Have Been Warned )
Characters;
noh_dancer Scarab, bitingnightmare, The Corinthian, redhorror Pyramid HeadSummary; Don't let the light shine on me
I am the poison that feeds life to you
Don't let the light shine on me
I am the demon that waits inside you
Don't let the light shine on me
I am the ghost that reminds death of you
Don't let the light shine on me
I am the darkness that crawls into you
Log;
Running, always running.
Can't stop.
Her hand is agian a mess of torn flesh, splintered bone, and pain.
Her lungs are burning, begging for oxygen.
Can't stop. Can't stop running...if I stop, he'll catch me.
Turning a corner, she is forced to stop for a dead end.
Buildings without windows bar her way, and before her is the cathedral's wall.
The rebar is there. The wings are already painted. All that is missing...is her.
Agian her legs give out and she drops to her knees, staring up at the empty bars,
the blood that is slowly winding it's way in droplets down the wall.
Even the ground is splashed with blood, all spreading out from the bars, the wings, the wall...
It is silent except for her labored breathing...She is alone in this place...alone with her horror.
Until a sound grates the silence.
A halting, mettalic sound.
--
She will see. I will not see. I never see. I always see. I see everything. I am everything. I am nothing. Only a litle longer. Soon, so very soon. I will see so much more. I will see the inside. I will see all of it. Open up see what's inside.
Judge and Judge, and sentences to be carried out.
Judge and Judge and never alone. No no, never alone. I am always alone.
She will come.
Be mine
Be no ones.
Be one. The same. Alpha Omega
Omega.
Omega.
Omega.
The Red Judge, The Great Knife, the calling and the return.
He never runs.
Never has to...he knows where she is, where she will go, and when she will stop.
His time now, his place. In here, only the silent survive, and she can not be.
Mine. Mine to worship, mine to spoil. My marks on her, my thing, my arm, my hand, mine mine mine
There she is, running away, running but no matter how fast she is always chained.
He can always find her, He can hear them, can hear the rattling, He can smell her sin.
Judged, and sentenced, but not sentenced.
She is strong, she could be his, and she could do so much more.
Just have to cut the chains, have to show her how.
I can wait. I always wait.
--
The Corinthian had fallen into what had started as a dreamless sleep, the best for his kind really. Somewhere along the way, what had been a queer excuse for pleasure no strings attached, had become a bare arm draped over bare shoulder. The couch remained empty the last few nights, a resting place for the Englishman's beaten coat. He stirred slightly but only trailed the tips of his fingers along John's back, sleep. And dream.
He was no longer in the studio, no longer in The City. He was somewhere, home? No, not The Dreaming, at least not the one he knew. It was dark here, as cold as the silent drops of cave water, as warm under his nails like the steaming flesh of a freshly eviscerated corpse. Was he himself, or that other man, the man he once was. One and the same, but different. He thought he felt a breath against the back of his neck, not the magus'. Something rank, something wet. Very wet.
--
Tears of desperation.
She knows there is no way out, nowhere to run anymore.....and he is coming.
The sick feeling of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach, the burn of oxygen starved lungs keep her on her knees.
She can hear him. Knows he is close, but she can't turn around. She wants to. Wants to turn and see, turn and fight, but her body won't respond to her brains' commands.
All she can do is stare at the wall, and know that when he reaches her, she will be back there agian...
The scream of metal over concrete lurches nearer....nearer.......
He is just behind her now, she can tell by the cold feeling dancing down her spine.
Come ON! Turn around, turn around and face him!
She can't...only her eyes widen, her breath becomes short....and she feels it;
The now familiar steel grip on the back of her neck.
-
Massive grisly grey-toned hands close on the back of her neck, so large the fingers encirle it completly and touch again over the front of her throat.
The great knife raised...poised.....
And the world lurches with reality's twist.
This is his place, his world, and here He governs the warp and weft of of the fabric, perception's alter on his whim.
The wall turns, cranks as though on hidden gears, and flattens to become horizontal.
The rebar shifts, stretches, hooks and climbs to become a bristling nest of clawed blades; all hungrily stretching for her, creaking and moaning with stuttered movement.
The monster lifts her by the throat effortlessly, and her own hands begin to scrabble at it's hold; begin to fight him when he starts to advance on the stygian surgical suite.
Her mouth works, but no sound is permitted, not yet; the screams were for later.
Reverently, almost gently, the monster leans the great knife agianst the concrete table's edge.
No such treatement is accorded for the judged. There is work to be done, and she has been fighting this for far too long.
The now freed hand takes hold of both of her clawing ones, easily grinding the delicate bones of her wrists together in one grip.
Her tears are warm and sweet as they trickle across the knuckles of the fist encircling her throat.
Mine. All mine, you'll see, you'll know, you'll fight, and you'll fight, but I can always find you...always, always always.
A soundless scream is beautiful to him, and now that she has had the proper appreciation for his tools, he raises her; One hand about her throat, the other forcing her arms behind her, and throws her face down across the wall-the table- the garden of squealing hooked blades.
One hand releases her throat and she coughs, gagging, crying, trying to scream and failing.
The hooks raise above her, squeal and spark as on rusted hinges they grab at her; cutting flesh, removing the suit a strip at a time, and curling around her ankles like creeping vines of razor wire.
--
Tears of desperation.
He knew there was no way out, nowhere to run anymore....... and he was coming.
Pale hands graced his bare shoulders, tender as only a lover could. The stick of a kiss to his throat, how beautiful the dark mirror and his reflection, lapping tears because he wouldn't dare allow blood to grace his skin. The Corinthian was a clean creature, professional murderer, leave the mess to the executioners, the waking world's primitive tortures of rusted metal and rape. He could not deny however that he was being invited into this nightmare, someone else's artistic madness, a different kind of tapestry woven from the flesh strings of the living. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
Mine. All mine, you'll see, you'll know, you'll fight, and you'll fight, but I can always find you... always, always always.
From his human mouth came its fingers, knuckles knotted, skin transluscent from being in the dark. Blue veins ran up its forearms as elbows made its way between his teeth. The Corinthian heaved onto the hard floor, or was it carpet soft with the tender meat of a woman? White fluid leaked from his lips, his teeth eyes. It knew what it was doing as its head emerged, as white and glowing as the moon, three mouths housing sharp irregular teeth. It pulled a shoulder from the man, enough to turn around and unhinge its jaw so that it might consume that who was conceiving it. It ate him like a snake would its pray, swallowed him whole till his human feet disappeared down its gaping maw. The loyal phantom had to dress appropriately for this place.
The new creature walked with a limp, its talons clicking gently as it traversed the dream fabric, dripping nightmare, to answer the call of a woman, her voice silenced but her mind so achingly clear. It approached 'the scene' as it were, fingerclaws milky white gently tapping at its chin, as if this were no different from a whore being whipped by her dominant master.
Teach her. Teach her well.
--
She was fighting still, because of something deep and instinctual was screaming at her that giving in, accepting this would not make it end faster....not by a long shot.
Throwing shoulders back and forth, rocking her weight to try and wring her wrists from the things hold...something...anything!
But it wasn't working, and the razored vines, senuous wires, were cutting painfully into her ankles, the cold, sharp fingers still sliced away strips of her suit, and some were voraciously scoring deep lines into the flesh of her hips, her thighs....
Cheek pressed to the rough stone, she bared her teeth, and pulled at the searingly painful shackles..maybe, maybe if she pulled hard enough she could force the undulating wires into cutting through at least one foot, and she could escape.
A chastising squeal emitted from part of the writhing nest, and her legs were spread suddenly and very forcefully.
Now she was denied what little purchase she had gained, and more sturdy hinged blades where forcing her hips up, forcing because if she tried to resist the honed edges would easily disembowel her, close as they were to doing so now.
She opened her eyes, and once a fresh tear of humiliated, horrified anger cleared her vision she could see the third party.
Wait....you...your not supposed to be here?
--
While the creaking, screeching wire-vines set about thier work of restraining the judged, the Executioner fine tuned his work.
Bared handed, he snatched a squirming rattling cluster of razor wire, which squealed in protest, and brought it up over her shoulders to secure her hands.
Once given a taste of the flesh, her flesh they twined her wrists quickly, and recoiled with twanging snap.
Now she was spread wide, the creaking geared hooks nearly finished with thier part, though the Judge had to slap more than one away from being to tempted by the especially tender morsels between her thighs.
Patiently it worked, meticulous in the details, and the canvas was layed out. Stretched on it's frame, cleaned, and nearly ready.
Hands now free, The Red Judge was able to fine-tune the razored wires..shallow cuts here, a deeper there, and the blood was starting to flow, not too much, not yet, but the paint needed to mix.
Two thick nail-less fingers pressed fiercely into the hole in her shoulder.
Had to get the proper shade...had to be thick enough.
Drawing out those fingers, the Judge, the artist pressed it's fingerprints into the long ragged scar that decorated her back...where the great blade had kissed her the first time, and drew down, raking vertebrae as they went, and forcing her to bow her back at the grating sensation.
Not too much, not yet....
--
I am, this IS me.
The thought trilled sweetly in its head, perhaps her head as well, like a song born from violins warning the people of nightmares to come, the hoof beats of the hag and its rider, a pale white-haired creature with teeth. So much teeth.
It was her tear that had caught its attention. Not the blood, not the massive executioner preparing his paints, his brushes, not the parting of her thighs like a canvas cranked taut. It was the single moist drop of humiliation, anger, defeat, maybe revenge? Everything that made the mirror, clear and smooth like glass. The helmeted thing craved a serrated edge against supple skin, the white moon reveled in anguish, sadness, vengeance, violation, everything in one single tear. Its roll from her cheek, its fall to the ground, cracked the glass like striations in the eyes it did not own, cracked like spider veins to the very edges of its hooked toes.
It reached down to run a fingertip between the cracks, to touch the wetness squeezed from her crying soul, crying fool. He tasted it, bitter, salty, sweet..... Familiar.
--
Brown eyes.
Deep brown eyes, free of thier implants, because here, now, she wasn't Scarab...here she was Keico.
Nineteen years old, barely a woman, barely much of anything ...
The executioner, the Red Pyramid had been here for a long time. She knew that, and feared the night, feared sleep because on the other side of her subconscious it was always waiting.
This one....this new one....it was new...
You....Your....
Brown eyes widened in recognition as dreaming and waking connected to form an image, a face...a name...
Alex!....No, no not Alex....
Her expression hardened from humiliated anger to a numb sense of betrayal.
Corinthian....Cori....
Betrayal turned felt cold, and in this moment the razor-vines trilled to one another in confusion.
The condemned was not thiers' now, the condemned was taking them away!
This isn't you. This isn't you....it's not...not all of you.
The taut wires were loosening, gibbering and squealing in confusion.
You're Cori...You are my friend.
And through the tears, through the horror of the apparitions who both invaded her mind, she could see
Beyond the white bladed claws, the sharpened teeth, the bone-white flesh, as though superimposed, a ghost of a ghost, there stood Cori in his signature white tank top, blue jeans and sunglasses.
A cigarette caught in his lips....
--
The Executioner halted.
Frozen in mid-action, and when the artist ceased, the tools would become only that; tools.
Slowly....as though the monster's very sinew and bones were rusted from dissuse, the great helmet swivelled to regard the interloper.
--
What use did he have for names? Unlike Dream he did not collect names like he did friends. The nightmare was a solitary creature, the thing that brewed in the backs of everyone's minds, reflecting guilt and fear and disgust and violence and desire. Demonthing. Bad dog. Get back to where you belong. If he could he'd join the Red Pyramid, a shard of glass with a deadly edge, unassuming in its neat gloss, free to be depraved with holy justification. That was if he wanted it, and there was something eating at his skin, tingling between each vertebrae, telling him he didn't want it.
Doushita no.
The words came to him naturally, because the dream fabric had woven three ways. This wasn't his place, but this was his function, conscious of his actions or not. The white creature stared at the executioner, touched its claws to its teetheyes, looked to Scarab again.
Keico.... (anata ni aete yokatta).
When the helmet turned to face him, he pointed a single claw at it. No one did The Corinthian's job better than himself, and no one should ever even try. The moonlit flesh decayed, some sliding from his body, other parts flaking as they dried under his control, doomed to melt away into the cracks. He stood tall, in jeans and a tank top, certainly. Without his sunglasses.
"Get away from her."
--
Cori....
The razor vines gibbered and screeched, churning agianst one another with a cacophany of rasping mettallic hiss.
They were loosening on her wrists, retreating in milling confusion as her thoughts were turning away from despair, from the inevitable.
Brown eyes, shining with tears widened in comprehension suddenly, and with a speed that startled the creaking hooks under the soft flesh of her stomach she ripped one wrist from theier grasp.
Getting it under her quickly, she came up awkwardly, and without thought, her voice returned.
" RUN!"
The shout broke the spell of milling confusion; both artist and tools reacted.
The wires hissed as one malicious sound and fell on her in a weaving scream of wire-on-wire, followed by a strangled sound of pain on her part.
Twining around her wrists, her torso, her legs, anywhere they could gain purchase, they circled and cut, sawed and bit until the wall ( the table?) became nothing but a mass, milling squeal of glinting blade edges.
--
I-mine, this is mine, this is no ones, it is not yous, never mine, always mine, NOT YOURS
No eyes with which to see, but the hulking executioner saw, and saw and saw
Guilty Guilty Guilty
One greyed-flesh arm reached into the mass of living razor wire with a speed that one wouldn't usually acredit to such a large creature, the massive blood-blackened helmet never moving away from the Interloper.
Brutally the hand snapped back with a handful of her black hair, the tension from the grabbing , dragging wires enough to bow her back and steal the scream from her throat before she could draw breath to release it.
The Red Pyramid, Right Hand, Executioner, hauled her up by that handful of hair, and following along with thier artists' intentions, the wire curved and arced, elongated and contracted to bind her and twist her until when the creature turned fully to face the corinthian, she was bound and hanging before him, a living , writhing mess of blades, and bloodied flesh.
The wires snaked across the ground and supported her enough to force her back into the spine-cracking bowed position the creature had first favored.
Show you, see you, she will show you, she will see you, doesn't need you, doesn't WANT you, unwelcome, show you, mine, mine mine mine, show you show you mine, she doesn't need you, doesn't want doesn't want DOESN'T WANT YOU
He would make it clear who this condemned belonged to, show the intruder whose realm this was now.
A sudden twanging 'snap', and the wires parted enough to show the deep lacerations that crisscrossed her in a macabre web of pain, parted and held her for the artist to sign his work.
Brown eyes screamed what stolen voice could not...when the monster drew her into a one-armed embrace, heedless of the slicing razortips, and pressed it's bloodied fingers between her legs.
Another vicious thrust up, and her scream finally found voice.
Scream for me, only me SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
--
He kept his own hand up, Red Right Hand, unassuming phantom in his uniform of plain mortal clothes. No cloak did he use, no Dream Helm. He was just a nightmare whose bite was certainly worse than his bark. The mass of razorwire didn't faze him, and one might even think he was trying to communicate with it, to make it question just who was the master around here, if just enough to make the Pyramid Head question its loyalty and punish the unworthy metal serpents, make them rust and brittle.
This was a dream realm, people didn't die here from their wounds (only from fear), and maybe that was the worst of it. Still, only the strongest survived, whether by physical strength or mental will, and The Corinthian was not about to let his be beaten down but such a rank blood butcher.
Listen to me, I have to do this to you. No hard feelings.
His voice sounded calmly. Her violation didn't faze him, though it angered him on a deep and personal level, his mouth barely twitched. He stepped forward, over the arms of many young boys, their lifeless hands just barely tugging at his heels. So many of them, beautiful, innocent, eyeless, some bleeding between their thighs, hot warm blood. He felt the urge to impale them, through the eye socket. No, he felt the urge to show this one, this Red Pyramid, how to handle true horror.
*You barely scratch the surface, butcher.*
-Let me show you how it's done.-
A young trumpet player from a distant memory, a Harlem night club. He loved that boy, enough to kill him. The ghost grasped at the nightmare's ankle. He willed himself to lift his boot and gently, gently press the ghost back into the ground. He loved that boy enough to feel guilt, remorse, and move on.
"Itai," a young girl uttered. Seico, was that her name? She was dying on the floor of a restaurant, again. Dying but not finding the solace in Death's embrace. So long as this one hooked her into his fleshy dream realm, anchored by razorwire, she could go nowhere. Unfair, denied life, denied release. Perhaps Keico wouldn't scream like a cold iron ripping her from the inside, but she might weep, and in it find her strength.
He couldn't rely solely on the battle for illusions of course. He fashioned his own weapon in the shape of a sleek curved blade from his right arm, and twice its length, as sharp and reflective as glass, as hard as the stone cold countenance of what he was. Not Alex, not Cori, but Dark Mirror, The Corinthian.
--
Pain.
Pain of the mind, of the body, and the soul.
There was nothing but the pain; pain from the wires, pain from the stygian wave of solid-thought that rolled off the monster who held her, pain from the hard tearing invasion between her legs.
The monster had built a wall of pain around her, and reinforced it with the chains of guilt.
Her mind kept conjuring images of past mistakes, past misdeeds...
Blades in the dark.
Blood in the water.
But the realization that she wasn't alone in hell had been enough to stir something else beyond the guilt, the despair and sadness:
Concern.
Cori was here somehow. The real Cori, not just another piece of her memories come back to haunt her.
She had seen him, for just a moment, but she had seen him.
......and now could hear him.
No hard feelings...
She could see agian.
Back in the restaurant...back in Kyoto...and Seico dying in her arms.
Something about the memory felt ...real, and Keico held onto that fragile thread of sanity.
Held onto it, and let the past unfold agian:
Sorrow over Seico's needless death, shock over the speed of it....
....and rage.
Rage. Pure and all consuming.
--
The wires shivered as one, and started to squeal agian.
Squealing and hissing, pushing and fighting with one another.
Confused agian.
The condemned wasn't their's, the condemned wasn't accepting!
Hissing and creaking in obsequious submission, they started to swirl away from the Red Judge.
Stoic, and ever-impassive he let them go, and let the canvas snap off of it's frame.
The wires were slithering back, hiding themselves from the fury in the condemned, and from the master.
All gone, all gone...all cowering from the strangeness, the fury.
Released from her own bonds, only the Judge held her up now, and as brutal as he had been moments ago, he was now equally gentle in releasing her.
Easing her down from grey-toned hands, the Judge let her rest in a limp huddle of naked, lascerated flesh at his feet.
Once finished, he simply reached one massive arm behind him.
Grasped the great blade...
.......And brought it back to bare directly in front of him.
Judgement: Guilty
--
*Feel that, Keico, feel him try to take her with you. How DARE he touch HER soul, those who've already passed.*
-Are you ANGRY yet, Keico? Show me your TEETH, girl.-
His voice was vicious, uncaring, daring her to rise up against both Red and White Horrors. He held onto that single thread of sanity, her rage, like a lifeline, even if it meant betrayal of her privacy. Desperate times called for desperate measures after all.
The nightmare raised his mirror-finished blade and raced to slash up along the Red Pyramid's wrist, not across the street but rather down the road they say. He didn't think he would be doing much, drawing the butcher into physical combat, but it was enough to buy Scarab time.
Seico clawed her hands against the floor as the razorwire slashed her ankles, climbing up her calves, to her tender thighs. No… they receded, squealed as the awakened conscious pulled them away, shrinking from her fury. The young girl crawled her way towards her friend. Dead hands still able to caress Keico's torn flesh, dead eyes still capable of crying. The dead girl wept for her living companion, wept and whispered into Keico's ear.
"You need to wake up now," said her voice, distinctly female, but far too aware of their surroundings, "I can't hold him off forever."
--
The Red Judge took the slice to it's wrist, deadened flesh parting under the sharpened blade to spill quagulated wet chunks of rust - like fluid.
It's free hand snapped out and fisted in the intruder's shirt front, hauling him up to face the great helemt.
Guilty
.....this one begged for judgement, pleaded for punishement, and the Executioner would oblidge.
The Judge raised the condemned; the interloper until it's feet left the ground.
Raised the great knife, and took precise aim ...the knife would kiss this one too; grant it redemption.
--
Seico...Gomen, Seico
It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and the rage was getting stronger.
One shaking, bloodied hand rose and touched Seico's cheek...Keico opened her eyes, and smiled grimly at the phantom....but the smile faltered, faded, when Keico noticed Seico's eyes.
There were no eyes...
...Just two sets of teeth...
All of a sudden; she understood.
Another caress in parting, and Keico was stumbling, crawling, getting to her feet.
She could see the Red Pyramid, the knife, and the Corinthian being held up as she had been, about to be impaled as she had been....
No!
She was moving before thinking, running toward the tableau....
...The rage made her fast, made her strong, and made her a weapon.
She didn't consider it, simply reacted, a long gleaming katana blade forming directly from the flesh of her hand.
She didn't slow to take stance, but rather used her own momentum, her weight, to drive the blade into the monsters back, only stopping when the hilt caught on the spine.
A feeling more than a sound emitted from the thing, a sensation of pain, and.....betrayal?
Red lensed eyes sought out teeth-eyes from around the great monsters bulk, and smiled.
Get out of here, Cori. Run.
Another smile, a warm hearfelt one of thanks, and Keico- no...Scarab closed the doors of her mind.
Now it was only the blade
The Judge.
...and her.
--
The serpentine voice was his own, a tone from over ten years passed, a plea he could not ignore.
Hurt me. Punish me. Stick a loaded gun in my mouth and rape me.
Punishment, yes. He ached to be punished, wanted to be forced into indignity for all the crimes he committed under the faulty reasoning of his former self. But The Corinthian did not seek bloody redemption at the hands of this butcher. This one didn't stand for the innocence he slayed, for the father he disappointed, for teeth eyes that looked back at him every morning, for forgiveness. The Red Pyramid was not his deliverance, his rescue. Someone else held that title, unknowingly, maybe more than one.
He gripped the red horror's wrist with his free hand, his palm stinging like a thousand little teeths gnawing away at flesh bit by bit, acidic. Even as the thing lifted the nightmare off his feet he just stared at it, long and hard with snarling mouths, a stand off. He hooked the tip of his mirrored blade under the end of the welded helm, threatening to rip it off the butcher's head. Would it crack? Shatter? Rust away to reveal the thing's rotting visage? Or would The Corinthian suffer blood and impalement before being granted such a slice of victory?
*Bad dog, little horror.*
-You turned away from your prey.-
Teetheyes taunted with absolute pleasure as he watched Scarab rise again from over the Pyramid Head's shoulder and run her sword through the creature, into its spine.
What?
"What!?" The blade on his arm crumbled away, turning into a pile of sand at his feet. He felt his body being lifted, to be impaled, but the impact yielded only a shatter of tan and crystal. The Corinthian's body dissipated into nothingness, just dream sand in the air.
((OOC: Translation:
Doushita no.= "What's wrong."
Keico.... (anata ni aete yokatta). = "Keico (I'm glad that we met.)"
Itai = "It hurts"
Seico.....Gomen, Seico = "Seico...Sorry, Seico" ))