|Regardless of what they Say|
By InSilence

Final Stage:
Ante Nihil

How can it feel this wrong
From this moment
Storm... in the morning light ,I feel
No more can I say, frozen to myself
I got nobody on my side
And surely that ain't right
Oh, can't anybody see
We've got a war to fight
Never found our way
Regardless of what they say

Foggy. Fresh and light. Landscape in some early morning. Mist on green leaves. Floating over soft clouds, hands caressing the gentle moist tissue, wind whispering, touching. Flying into dawn, the sun lounging gloriously behind wooded hills, breathing life. Wild horses running below, gallopping, the ground living freedom under their sailing feet. Naked legs in endless wilderness. Flying hair, played with by the winds, hands reaching for the clouds, touching earth - becoming one with her, and her spirit within.

First there was darkness and then it gave birth to the light.
Silence gave way to fear and peace was exchanged by pain.

Thick smoke in sticky lightness. Waking into the ache of swollen tissue and into the agony of torn skin. Tears washing light on dirty cheeks. Rain beating forgotten on corrugated iron. Shivering. Voices close by - laughing.

Kaoru carefully palpated his aching forehead. Blood on his fingers and its taste in his mouth. He was tied to a rusty grating, the rope cutting into his arms. But there was something else the feeling of a nervous itching, a nauseatic weakness, a burning in his veins and a dryness in his brains. Somehow the frightening realisation that he knew the rotten smell of his prison, and the two awful faces staring down on him, knew them - but had never seen them before.

The smaller one grinned with brown teeth and Kaoru could smell his breath as he spoke.
He chanted sermons as the bony fists of his tall compagnion stroke down on the tied man, but somehow the pain was only a distant sensation to Kaoru whose eyes were fixed on something terrible, which lay broken and torn on the dirty floor.
They stopped beating him and laughed hoarsly walking over to the shadow figure laying in its blood.
'Hey Kaoru found your little sweetheart?' said the smaller one, kicking the lifeless form.
The dress torn, hair tousled, limbs pale as death.
They laughed and the tall man grabbed the thick mess of black hair and pulled.
'Don't sure though your little girlfriend here's worth the 500 dollars, man.'
In the dimmed light Toshiya's eyes were large and very dark. They were open, staring at him, as through thick vailes, as numb and as lifeless as everything about him. They had lost their light, their fascinating glimmer, their fire and their high shelters which were now broken - the walls which used to protect him from his everyday. From his misery, which he lived as if he had chosen it that way. Eyes which had seen everything but never realised; now they were open, seeing and glassy as the eyes of a large overgrown puppet. His face was swollen and discolored from the punches of a large fist and the perfect young body Kaoru had admired and enjoyed as so many before, suddenly looked wasted and painfully frail. They had ripped his dress open at the rear and dark blood ran over his thies, black and scarlet where it mixed with the bodyfluids of his torturers. The masquerade of the lusty sensual young man, who had cast his spell on him vanished and finally revealed the boy, still half a child, who lay now broken and violated in his own blood.
His fire extinct. His magic wasted. The spell broken.

Kaoru felt his outside wander in and his insides emerge on the surface. His whole being twisted and something cold and brutal clutched his guts and ripped him open. With Toshiya's dead puppet eyes on him he vomitted, shaking violently and drifted back into the dark coziness of his unconscious sleep.

Bitter poisoned rain burned on his tongue as Kaoru awoke into the grafitti-smeared grey calmness of an uncounted backstreet. The sky was grey with the starless sparkling of the citylights and emptied itself of his sorrow by pourring oceans of sour rain on the grey walls and creatures. Kaoru washed his eyes in its bitterness and slowly became aware of something trembling and weeping close to him. Toshiya. The cold shook his pale bones and as his eyes lay on him it was as if they were seeing through him as through milky glass. As Kaoru carefully moved closer, his arm extended and raindrops exploding in his palm Toshiya howled under tears as a hurt animal. His body strained and moved away from him with all the strength of his broken soul.
As Kaoru tried to touch the bright cross which the monsters had smeared on the boy's forehead, he huddled backwards, his teeth clapping painfully.
'No.' he pressed out under clenched teeth while shivers shook his frame.
'But Toshiya... It's okay...I. I'm so sorry...' Kaoru heard himself say through the rain.
'No! No! Don't...Don't touch me!' Toshiya howled.
'Keep away - don't touch me.' He cried.
'But...I...' Kaoru could only whisper.
'No!' Toshiya's scream echoed through his bones and he watched the boy fall under violent shivers to the cold pavement of the grey city. 'No...please.' he muttered and started to cry.

Kaoru never knew what made him turn and walk away. From somewhere indifference had gripped his heart and the wish to leave that miserable creature behind to return to his home and Lucy and his secret fixes against the cool tiles of their bathroom. He shrugged as he left the crying boy behind and walked out of his life forever.
Only a distant vague memory remained of a beautiful serene fantasy with firy dark eyes, who had once danced for him with rosy legs in the tide.

Lucy smoked on the couch as he opened the door and her calm watery eyes watched him with composed interest. She was not stupid and too wasted to be naive. As she traced the light bruises on his face and took in the faint smell of perfume which remained on his rain-washed body her simple mind and her alert instinct made her embrace her lost husband who soon wept uncontrollably into her lap. Slowly she rocked him caressing his wet hair. Also he had once been younger and full of energy and dreams of a bright future. She remembered wistfully how he had loved her passionately in the small bed in her parent's house. How she had admired the prominent features of his face and had loved the way he would laugh. Lucy shook her head with a light smile and patted Kaoru's head. ' You're still the little stupid boy of those times, in some way...' she murmured more to herself than to him and brushed her red nails through his hair until she heard him breathe silently in quiet sleep.
He was still sleeping as she closed the door behind herself and merged with the night, which was to her, both enemy and friend.

Kaoru danced again as he wandered under the crying nightsky. His heart was strangely light and carefree his mind as he enjoyed the colored dull world which the drugs in his blood made him see. He danced as he approached the gigantic cathedral and laughed as he climbed the narrow stairs to the roof. How much he had feared that building and the world! And how beautiful they actually were. He opened his eyes wide and spread his arms as wings as he overlooked the grey city under permanent rain.

Somehow nothing ever makes sense and then again it does. Life. Lucy. The rain. And even Toshiya. We only walk these colored grey streets driven by the powers of coincidence - which is when you look closer - almost the same as fate. The winds play us fortune, misery, love and life according to their moods, and we are not more than leaves sailing on their waves, here destined to dance when we fly and there - to fall.

Kaoru marveled at the pure beauty of the dawning day. Far away where the sky broke in endless shades of light and darkness, in a fantastic firework of gentle colors. A show only performed for the sake of life, and big things as eternity, infinity or time. God's private drama in a world of millions of souls who hardly ever stop and reflect upon its incredible beauty.
Kaoru breathed in the healing freshness of the newborn day and reached out for the pure blue of the horizon. He knew the light there stroke endless green meadows and murmuring trees under which wild horses were running free. Suddenly a memory from far away. Soft black tendrils, Lucy's melodic laughter, pink seashells and dark eyes in which shooting stars danced, a gentle hand caressing his hair and love - whatever it was.
In that moment Kaoru understood for the first time the meaning of true beauty and true peace as he opened his arms and flew to embrace the warm sun and the gentle blue sky at the distant horizon.

As Kaoru lost the ground beneath his feet and jumped, the sun melted the thick clouds over the city.
Time stood still and continued.
And the rain stopped.
Simple as that.

[FIN]

A story by InSilence
Comments please to: insilence@tokyo.com
http://www.oocities.org/cytomi/