poly_chromatic | 006 - Deserted Like the Wharves at Dawn

Current Mood: depressed
Current Location: STILL in a Cell

Entry tags:

blood plus - karl fei-ong

006 - Deserted Like the Wharves at Dawn - Video

DAY 1/1:24 AM

[The feed snaps on to a surreal image. Five fish in a glowing blue fish-bowl. A pale hand traces the glass, almost caressing. In the background, an eerie crooning is heard. "Five minutes ago, the sky split wide/I raced to this place, hoping she'd be inside/I found it was crowded with others like me/Weeping and shouting and gnashing their teeth...". As Karl hums, the fish dance in the water, mouths opening and closing. They seem agitated. Karl chuckles, as if amused by their antic fluttering.]

~Now now. We mustn't fuss. Death's an inevitable part of life. But is it inevitable in this City? We'll see...

[His palm splays flat against the bowl. The fish swirl wildly. And the feed snaps off.]

DAY 2/4:34 PM

[The video opens to a disturbing sight. The fish spread across a table. All motionless and shriveled. Dead. They seem to radiate a sickly, neon-silver glow. In the background, Karl's shadow is seen. Pacing to and fro. Tensely waiting.]

Hush, hush. Not long now. Not long. We'll know soon. We'll know if it's true. I can endure this ticking till then. I can. Ssh. SSSH. [As he keeps up his feverish muttering, something odd happens. As if by magic, the fish begin twitching. A few feeble jerks at first. Then sharper spasms. One by one, they flop across the table, dying anew as they're reanimated into a world without air. Their mouths gape, as if in silent screams.]

What...?!

[Karl hurries to the table. His eyes are alight with horror.]

No! Nononono! This is wrong! HOW CAN THIS BE?!

[In defiance, the fish keep flailing. Karl watches, aghast.]

God… why? Is there no death here? Am I never to know PEACE?

[There's no answer. Jerkily, Karl steps back. The fish are thrashing harder now. He can’t tear his eyes off them. His breath hitches. Suddenly, he begins to scream.]

NO! IT’S WRONG! IT'S ALL WRONG! I CAN’T ABIDE BY THIS!

[His cry reverberates through the cell. The fish keep flailing.]

DAY 3/5:00 AM

[The fish are back in their bowl. Alive and shimmery. Huddled in a corner, Karl watches them. His hair falls tangled around his face, eyes and cheekbones in deep shadow. He seems caught in a listless stupor. Half-dead, almost. For a long time he stares, without blinking. Then, his eyes slip shut. Very quietly, almost without moving his lips, he hisses:]

I just can't do this. I can't. I can't.

[OOC: A certain deathseeker just learnt the City!Dead rule is TRUE. And is now wretchedly emo over it. Feel free to bug him/yell at him for ~~unsuccessfully~~ killing his fish. He needs cheering up ^^b]

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Oh, don't be dull, you shall.

[She had reminded him of himself. Now he reminds her of when she had first learned that news, how angry she had been.]

You should have burned them.

[His voice is raspy, as if the vocal cords are torn raw from screaming.]

I wanted to.

...

There were no matches.

[Her own voice is an uncharacteristically affectionate whisper. There are very few troubles that she has empathy for, but this is one. The sense of being trapped in living.]

They'll stay dead. There are ways, they're just ugly ways.

[Karl doesn't even open his eyes. He recognizes that voice perfectly by now. His voice is a near-whisper.]

I can't. Not at this rate...

Ways?

[In a lethargic motion, he lifts his head. Ugly or no, it doesn't matter to him. He just wants a permanent end.]

What ways? Please, you must tell me...

More your pity, thing. I refuse to see the soul I bought hosted in a wreck.

[Her lips part, but even without knowing how he's monitored, she wouldn't say it on this device. She knows exactly how easy it is to hack a line.]

They return as they are. Ashes are ashes.

[They return as they are: so take their eyes and tongue, scoop them hollow. Just to be safe if you can't burn them. Just to be safe. She doesn't wish undeath on anyone.]

[There's a moist noise as Karl swallows.]

I'm afraid you've made a bad bargain. I've always been a wreck. Diva often said I was. It was why she never loved me...

[A sigh.]

As for souls... well, one can't buy what isn't there to sell.

That's right. And dust is dust.

[He seems to ponder all this for a moment. For his kind, there's but one true death. And it comes from the blood of the Queen. Their bodies become red dust and crystal. Frozen fragments of blood. But if beings in this City return as they are...]

[A shadowy smile crosses his lips.]

Someone must promise to scatter my ashes if I succeed...

[He half-frowns.]

I...I recognize you.

We've spoken before.

[She doesn't promise. She doesn't like to make promises, but she'll remember that he said it. She has extracted a similar vow out of her roommate, made him promise he won't let her suffer in a reanimated body again. She trusts him to honor it.]

[He tilts his head in a musing way. Normally, his conversations with those in the City are inconseqential. A way to endure the grind of time. Time without Saya. But this woman... he remembers her distinctly. The anguish in her voice as she huddled in her room. The sad familiarity of that scene.]

Ah yes. I believe we have.

[It's out before he can stop it.]

What did they do to you, I wonder...?

[The ones who'd made her afraid to be alone. Broken her, in that fundamental way he was broken.]

[She's quiet for a moment, but he won't be the first that she's said it to, it's not precisely a secret,]

I fell in love.

[It was just one man. Just his greed that she had been possessed with, drained by.]

Ah. That.

[He makes a noise somewhere between longing and contempt. More a hiss than a laugh, really.]

A terrible malady. But one like no other. Without it... without that her or him, life's nothing. Even when they tear you apart. Even when they make your life a misery.

Best pull yourself together or risk going 'Reinfield'.

[She recognizes that sound. She makes it, often. Her voice dips low,]

He was everything.

[His lips twitch briefly.]

Heh.

I must confess, I'm not sure whether to sympathize with you, or congratulate you. Such a fine line between love and hate. Yet either one's enough to keep some of us going...

[The Dracula reference doesn't escape him. But it doesn't make him smirk, as it normally would, either.]

I'm afraid I've no birds or spiders to collect. Simply strange little fish that refuse to die. Like everything else in this City...

True death is a rarity here.

But...

But I heard tell...[From a certain lady.]...that it can be managed. It's just filthy and wretched and can't be accomplished alone...

I hate him too.

[She shrugs, a certain anxious tension in her shoulders. Normally this topic would have her clawing miserably at her own skin, trying to comfort herself through the rush of emotion and heartsickness. But she has been in this city for months now, separated from the man who was poisoning her with just his existence. There are people here who watch her for signs of her self-harm, and there have been alternatives extended to her. She is trying to control herself after an episode which frightened even here with its violence and irrationality.

She had slipped, a few days before, when he had watched her curled on the bed and left her to her thoughts. Twenty-four hours forced to live like she once had... it was too much to expect she wouldn't comfort herself somehow.]

...??!!

Wrong.

[He's not as perceptive as his brothers. But he knows those tell-tale signals of strain. The ugly byplay of memory, and the sick rush of emotions that accompany it. At least the Object of her Torment/Obsession isn't here. At least she has friends. Karl cannot say the same.]

It's allowed. It's understood. Sometimes it's even expected. Love twists us into something so vile. So despicably beneath ourselves. Why shouldn't we hate them for defiling who we were?

[The humor in Luke's tone is a harsh dissonance to the bleak silence in Karl's head. He frowns, eyes slitting.]

What do you mean?

It's untrue then? It can't be done?

[His tone is disquietingly calm. Not a happy sign.]

[She goes still, like the words surprise her before she laughs bitterly, often it almost sounds like she's crying except for the miserable mirth that curls to her mouth. Oh god. No one has ever said it to her so accurately. He had ruined everything she was, everything.]

I was perfect. [More laughter bubbles out of her, and she grins sickly, a hand pushing into her hair, jerking slightly. It doesn't ground her immediately, but there is something important to remember here: that someone understands.

Her eyes return to the camera, her smile going soft and dazed.] My name is Carla.

[He absorbs the laughter with an abstracted fascination. Like it's a language he can't speak, but can comprehend through pitch and emotion alone. In his long years, he's laughed like that often. That painful blend of sorrow and sick delight. Like his life is a secret Cosmic Jest.]

I'd never say I was perfect. But I was whole. In all the ways that mattered. [He returns her smile. Shy, almost childlike.] Delighted, truly. I cannot tell you how much. I am Karl Fei-Ong.

[It's funny, seeing this woman's expression. A look he's probably only seen in mirrors. He won't ask what circumstances made her this way. What damaged her. Instead, he'll accept-- perversely grateful, even--that somehow, she's very much like him.]

They almost always resurrect, it just takes longer.

(Private)

In the Underground's red light districts, all sorts of desires can be met - this includes the most unimaginable torments that can be inflicted upon another. The workers in such trades: to have their suffering dragged out, dying in a horrific manner, then be returned back to their original whole state and get a chance to repeat (with someone new and or a favorite customer) - it's a dream come true for them.

That's just tip of the iceberg.

There is an advantage to a prolong resurrection: The memory of the passing can be hazy. They can make a choice to remember everything about it or forget.

[Emotion had been foreign to her, once upon a time, and she evokes it with the clumsiness of a second language. She had once been pristine, cold, driven only by her own amusement, by greed and lust and cruelty. It had been perfect, she had been seamless. Untouchable. Now she's this, and it is joke. A cruel fate that even she hadn't deserved.]

I'm sorry you're here, Karl.

[Her own admission of sympathy and recognition. If there were any kindness in the world, they would both be dead. Barbet would have taken responsibility for what he had done, put a bullet anew into her head. Saya would give this sad thing her terrible blood.]

[As he digests this information, his anger wavers. Fizzling out amid a wash of fresh despair.]

Then there's no hope. No hope at all. No matter how many pieces Saya or I shatter into, we'll never know freedom.

[His voice trembles, like a taut wire on the edge of snapping.]

Well, I've no use for these districts. I've been torn apart and put back together aplenty. Hardly something I fear. But not something I relish either. That sort of enjoyment is born only from torment at a Queen's hands.

[He swallows forcibly.]

There must be another way, surely? No death, even for an immortal...it's a pure desecreation!

[His Diva had been a perfect killer. An angel's face; a monster's heart. She'd followed her own ferocious impulses. Slaughtered and raped with a song on her smiling lips. And Karl had worshipped her for it. Only Saya, her twin, had rivalled his Queen in her sheer lust for carnage. But Saya had been like him. Broken and unwanted. Alone. It was why Karl had grown so obsessed with her. Why he'd felt they deserved to die together.]

[Surreal, to see those emotions reflected in a stranger. A human. A part of him fancies that, in another realm, she might've been like Diva. Icy and unreachable. Perfect, as she'd said. Instead, Fate had chosen to chop her off at the knees, the same as him.]

[He accepts her words with a jerky nod.]

Not as sorry as I am. But no sorrier than you are, I'd imagine, for being here too.

[Some creatures were to mangled to fix. Some creatures were better off completely destroyed.]

Take over this world and harness its power.

I've no interest in taking over this world, I'm afraid. Or any other. This life's merely a way-station. A place where so many of us don't belong...

Gain control; have access to countless worlds and timelines.

There are individuls whom your offer might tempt. Brother Amshel, perhaps.

But I'd prefer a world with only my Saya in it...

Think about it.

I have. And I wouldn't. Not unless...

[Hmmm.]

Not unless I could control a realm where Saya were always mine. Our lives eternally fused.

Sucks to be you.

[The Devil's such a classy bastard.]

[He absorbs Kira's image through half-shuttered eyes. The rest of him frozen. Motionless.]

So I'm reminded, over and over...

[At least Karl is really good at providing entertainment. Also, that about not dying is...interesting, to say the least.]

All caught in your own pathos, you'd not have it any other way.

Correction.

This City won't let me have it any other way.

[The bitterness in his tone is palpable.]

M-hm.

Mostly it just allows you to draw it out more and gather an audience for it.

The height of self-pity.

And would you consider yourself a member of said audience, young Kira?

[His affect is perfectly flat. As if he's reading instructions from a manual. At this point, he's past even basic curiosity.]

Captivated and utterly thrilled.

[He can talk in a flat voice, too.]

Perhaps the 666th time is the charm.

666th time?

[Karl tilts his head, blinking slowly. Some hitherto unknown premonition is making itself apparent to him. Some question of exactly who... or what this young man is.]

Either you have a strange sense of humor, or I've a feeling you're telling the truth.

[The latter of which would open a world of disquieting possibilities.]

[He's just smiling, the handsome devil. ~~I swear I'll stop with the 'devil' puns~~.]

Most people who think they know me would probably say: Both.

[ooc: Who am I to deny rubbing?]

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006 - Deserted Like the Wharves at Dawn - Video

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video; //warnings for some self-harm stuff woops introspection

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video; Oh, Carla. You and Karl need to go out for drinks someday xD

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video; Come here, crazy bro.

video; \lmfao sobsob xD

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[ video ] WHERE IS YOUR HMD, YOUNG MAN!? I WISH TO RUB <3 ALL OVER IT

[ video ] .../sets it up