06-22-2013, 04:30 AM
The nights are dark, and full of terrors. Jack knows that very well indeed. Long-boned Jack. Raw-hide Jack. Jack with no face. Sneaky Jack. Nobody's Jack. Jack of Nobodies. Nobody of Jacks. Nobody was a Jack. He's thought about changing his name into Nobody before. The others'd would say: a Nosferatu called Nobody who can tell them apart anyway who wants to. The smarter others'd would say: Hm. And the even smarter others would say: It's a name like the face we're probably going to see. It isn't real and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
He has been so busy, but tonight he has set aside to tend the (tiend the [tithe to the]) hunger. Because you've gotta do that. If you don't do that, It gets you between its teeth and gnashes until there's no line and You're just Gone and then when it spits you back up like a naked bone you find maybe that it's swallowed a piece of yourself and you are less and there're only so many pieces and it's a bloody fucking mess and everybody's got a limit and. So.
Tonight he has set aside time.
--
Tonight he isn't noticed and goes unseen on the suburb's street. The commute from Denver proper is - what - fifteen minutes. The neighborhood he wants is maybe another twenty minutes' walk from the station. Every minute counts in summer when the nights are short and the enchanted sleep's longer, the drowning hours insufferable. He does a circuit: one, two, three. The family inside owns a dog, but after it barks - stranger! my territory! stranger, stranger! - he makes a point of making friends. Ten minutes, fifteen. You've gotta be nice to animals. It's a rule. Well, no. You can be cruel to animals but they always pay you back. Animals know things, right. Jack knows that.
The security is laughable: usually is, houses like this - in neighborhoods that are poor but not too poor - the lower middle class, content with itself - as if a simple lock was protection against someone whose fingers have followed the evolution of the lock like the evolution of a lock has a precise and knowing shadow.
The door creaks, but he's lucky. Nobody wakes up, they stay asleep. They: family of five, judging by the picture on the hall table. The hall table's cheap, from ikea. But there's a nice television hutch, something scrimped and saved for, or maybe inherited from one branch or the other of the family. Five, though. He thinks: that's good. That's a good number.
There's a cellphone charging on the kitchen counter. He unplugs it, then turns it on. It casts an eerie light, but he didn't unplug it for the light. He unplugged it so it would stop charging, and lose its battery. Give them something to argue over in the morning, some little squabble to have that'll distract from any misstep he might make. He listens. This is hunting, for Jack. This is a game, and the shadows are its witness, right?
Jack opens the refrigerator, and it's more light. He takes out the carton of milk, lip curling because it's thin stuff, no froth the way he dreams he remembers, unappetizing but maybe it's better without froth, and Jack leaves it opened on the counter. Another thing to squabble over. Who left the milk out. Not me. Not me. Well someone did. Don't lie. Angry people don't notice things. He's sorry for the waste of milk and he considers taking it. But that strikes him suddenly as a rule, too: You don't take from the enchanted table you just gather up what you were tasked to take no more, no less, certainly no more. Less would offend the monster.
Jack isn't here for milk.
--
Imagine this. You're asleep. You're fast asleep: NREM, delta sleep, so you won't be imagining anything. You're away. You're inside. Then: REM sleep. The sharp prick of euphoria - of delight: waves of. The - imagine this, okay? - dream is intense but you don't resist it because why would you. Because you can't. Maybe some sleep-brambled words try to bloom out've your throat but something over your mouth muffling you, maybe not, and you're sleepier, and then it's over.
Maybe you just slip back into delta sleep, or maybe you wake up, heart fluttering like a caged thing, but you're tired and if you sit up, maybe a little dizzy, and by then it's already go--...what? There is no it. You don't imagine that. Why would you?
--
Jack is not immune to it: the ecstatic sensation - the sheer visceral delight of taking the blood. But he knows it for a trick.
Listen: It's real, this delight. But it's a trick just the same it's a trick that says see isn't this pleasant a trick that says keep going a trick that says forget it all and a trick that says give up a piece of you just a trick to make this shadow world seem more enticing, and it is an enticement but it's a trick and he's familiar with it. They're almost friends, the trick and Jack, friends who have an old argument that neither'll ever really win, but that doesn't stop one or the other from bringing up. The trick wants him to keep going, even though there's only a small measure of time before it's too much, but Jack's generally scornful: He's got dignity. He's not mastered by a fucking trick. Besides. (He knows ugly worlds have good things in 'em sometimes. Hell. Remember the time. He n' Roma n' what's his name Jones.) He doesn't want to go deeper yet.
This is why five is a good number.
--
He pokes around before he leaves. Traces his fingertips across the ikea hall table. Looks at the mirror in the living room, reflecting back gloom and gloaming, and he grimaces and pinches at his cheekbones, manipulates his ears and his chin as if he were clay, dragging at the coarse ramshackle skin, and he checks out the books. Traces his fingertips across the lid of the piano, leaves behind faint trails in the dust and he wipes his fingers on his jacket, eying the clock. He leaves carefully, each movement deliberate, because there's no point in getting sloppy now that he's almost free of it.
There're some who prefer the violent skirmish: dragging blood in a short conflageration of pleasure. But why? He imagines it's the same as the difference between fast food and a meal cooked in a restaurant. Besides being wrong, more opportunities for the other to be hurt. For the trick to have a better hand.
Silly tricks. The moon is for rabbits.
Jack still has a few hours left. He set aside time and it's repaid him.
--
3:30ish am.
He visits with a person or two (or maybe just a corner or three), then ends it all with an impromptu visit to Nancy who's of course working. The face he gives her is an ugly one but it could be worse and it's familiar and she's often been happy to see it though tonight she's having a bad night. Jack's like a magician when he reveals a bag of donuts ("Thanks. You want one?" "No, thank you." "Trying to make me fat?" "Aw, Nancy. You know there's no right answer when a gorgeous woman brings up her weight." Wink. "Tell you the truth, I just thought of you and wanted to do something. Next time, roses?") and a cup of coffee. He's sincere, without being self-conscious or over-earnest. He's a welcome break. He knows how to make himself welcome.
--
Pre-dawn, Jack's on his way home with a can of cat food in his pocket when the earth shivers and trembles, shudders and shakes, and he doesn't like it at all. His nostrils flare and his eyes go narrow. There're screams somewhere -- some people just have no sense of what to do when the earth moves. Jack's mind goes downward. The next quake hits not long after and maybe it's worse because that's the way these things go and part of him wants to go to Richthofen and investigate it's foundations. He's amused enough at the impulse to kill it with a smirk and the sure knowledge - can't you feel it, the lightening behind the horizon - that he doesn't have time.
But there's an anxious knot once he's tucked away in bed wide eyed and watchful. He'd had time for a preliminary sweep of his home and now he had to trust that the surface would hold. That the ground wasn't groaning a prophecy.
The sky's almost - nearly, not quite - light when a skinny orange tom squeezes its way into his hideyhole and makes a noise half-way between silence and a chirp. The cat's back is high and its tail is brushed and it flirts sideways before lowering its body into a slink and mincing toward Jack. Jack hauls reaches out a finger and scruffs the cat's chin, feels the vibration in its throat and smiles.
"Another day closer, Boots," he whispers, optimistic. The sky's almost - not quite, nearly - light when Jack opens the can of cat food and pushes it to the side. Boots noses at the can, then at Jack's fingers, then settles itself down to eat. Jack scritches its back and it isn't really hungry because it leaves the can as soon as Jack lies down again to sniff at his jacket and to paw and knead and finally subside purring its fur still on end.
Jack doesn't slip off into slumber, content with the sound of cat-purring. He doesn't slumber. Day arrives, and the enchantment's over - or the enchantment's upon him. Life sluices away, and he'd forgot to close his eyes so they're still open. He doesn't move. Not even a breath. The cat's purring grows in anxiety until the next quake comes, but Jack doesn't wake.
He's not slumbering. Not exactly, anyway. It's the enchantment. It's the curse and the price of this otherworld and he'd stop paying it if he could but.
He has been so busy, but tonight he has set aside to tend the (tiend the [tithe to the]) hunger. Because you've gotta do that. If you don't do that, It gets you between its teeth and gnashes until there's no line and You're just Gone and then when it spits you back up like a naked bone you find maybe that it's swallowed a piece of yourself and you are less and there're only so many pieces and it's a bloody fucking mess and everybody's got a limit and. So.
Tonight he has set aside time.
--
Tonight he isn't noticed and goes unseen on the suburb's street. The commute from Denver proper is - what - fifteen minutes. The neighborhood he wants is maybe another twenty minutes' walk from the station. Every minute counts in summer when the nights are short and the enchanted sleep's longer, the drowning hours insufferable. He does a circuit: one, two, three. The family inside owns a dog, but after it barks - stranger! my territory! stranger, stranger! - he makes a point of making friends. Ten minutes, fifteen. You've gotta be nice to animals. It's a rule. Well, no. You can be cruel to animals but they always pay you back. Animals know things, right. Jack knows that.
The security is laughable: usually is, houses like this - in neighborhoods that are poor but not too poor - the lower middle class, content with itself - as if a simple lock was protection against someone whose fingers have followed the evolution of the lock like the evolution of a lock has a precise and knowing shadow.
The door creaks, but he's lucky. Nobody wakes up, they stay asleep. They: family of five, judging by the picture on the hall table. The hall table's cheap, from ikea. But there's a nice television hutch, something scrimped and saved for, or maybe inherited from one branch or the other of the family. Five, though. He thinks: that's good. That's a good number.
There's a cellphone charging on the kitchen counter. He unplugs it, then turns it on. It casts an eerie light, but he didn't unplug it for the light. He unplugged it so it would stop charging, and lose its battery. Give them something to argue over in the morning, some little squabble to have that'll distract from any misstep he might make. He listens. This is hunting, for Jack. This is a game, and the shadows are its witness, right?
Jack opens the refrigerator, and it's more light. He takes out the carton of milk, lip curling because it's thin stuff, no froth the way he dreams he remembers, unappetizing but maybe it's better without froth, and Jack leaves it opened on the counter. Another thing to squabble over. Who left the milk out. Not me. Not me. Well someone did. Don't lie. Angry people don't notice things. He's sorry for the waste of milk and he considers taking it. But that strikes him suddenly as a rule, too: You don't take from the enchanted table you just gather up what you were tasked to take no more, no less, certainly no more. Less would offend the monster.
Jack isn't here for milk.
--
Imagine this. You're asleep. You're fast asleep: NREM, delta sleep, so you won't be imagining anything. You're away. You're inside. Then: REM sleep. The sharp prick of euphoria - of delight: waves of. The - imagine this, okay? - dream is intense but you don't resist it because why would you. Because you can't. Maybe some sleep-brambled words try to bloom out've your throat but something over your mouth muffling you, maybe not, and you're sleepier, and then it's over.
Maybe you just slip back into delta sleep, or maybe you wake up, heart fluttering like a caged thing, but you're tired and if you sit up, maybe a little dizzy, and by then it's already go--...what? There is no it. You don't imagine that. Why would you?
--
Jack is not immune to it: the ecstatic sensation - the sheer visceral delight of taking the blood. But he knows it for a trick.
Listen: It's real, this delight. But it's a trick just the same it's a trick that says see isn't this pleasant a trick that says keep going a trick that says forget it all and a trick that says give up a piece of you just a trick to make this shadow world seem more enticing, and it is an enticement but it's a trick and he's familiar with it. They're almost friends, the trick and Jack, friends who have an old argument that neither'll ever really win, but that doesn't stop one or the other from bringing up. The trick wants him to keep going, even though there's only a small measure of time before it's too much, but Jack's generally scornful: He's got dignity. He's not mastered by a fucking trick. Besides. (He knows ugly worlds have good things in 'em sometimes. Hell. Remember the time. He n' Roma n' what's his name Jones.) He doesn't want to go deeper yet.
This is why five is a good number.
--
He pokes around before he leaves. Traces his fingertips across the ikea hall table. Looks at the mirror in the living room, reflecting back gloom and gloaming, and he grimaces and pinches at his cheekbones, manipulates his ears and his chin as if he were clay, dragging at the coarse ramshackle skin, and he checks out the books. Traces his fingertips across the lid of the piano, leaves behind faint trails in the dust and he wipes his fingers on his jacket, eying the clock. He leaves carefully, each movement deliberate, because there's no point in getting sloppy now that he's almost free of it.
There're some who prefer the violent skirmish: dragging blood in a short conflageration of pleasure. But why? He imagines it's the same as the difference between fast food and a meal cooked in a restaurant. Besides being wrong, more opportunities for the other to be hurt. For the trick to have a better hand.
Silly tricks. The moon is for rabbits.
Jack still has a few hours left. He set aside time and it's repaid him.
--
3:30ish am.
He visits with a person or two (or maybe just a corner or three), then ends it all with an impromptu visit to Nancy who's of course working. The face he gives her is an ugly one but it could be worse and it's familiar and she's often been happy to see it though tonight she's having a bad night. Jack's like a magician when he reveals a bag of donuts ("Thanks. You want one?" "No, thank you." "Trying to make me fat?" "Aw, Nancy. You know there's no right answer when a gorgeous woman brings up her weight." Wink. "Tell you the truth, I just thought of you and wanted to do something. Next time, roses?") and a cup of coffee. He's sincere, without being self-conscious or over-earnest. He's a welcome break. He knows how to make himself welcome.
--
Pre-dawn, Jack's on his way home with a can of cat food in his pocket when the earth shivers and trembles, shudders and shakes, and he doesn't like it at all. His nostrils flare and his eyes go narrow. There're screams somewhere -- some people just have no sense of what to do when the earth moves. Jack's mind goes downward. The next quake hits not long after and maybe it's worse because that's the way these things go and part of him wants to go to Richthofen and investigate it's foundations. He's amused enough at the impulse to kill it with a smirk and the sure knowledge - can't you feel it, the lightening behind the horizon - that he doesn't have time.
But there's an anxious knot once he's tucked away in bed wide eyed and watchful. He'd had time for a preliminary sweep of his home and now he had to trust that the surface would hold. That the ground wasn't groaning a prophecy.
The sky's almost - nearly, not quite - light when a skinny orange tom squeezes its way into his hideyhole and makes a noise half-way between silence and a chirp. The cat's back is high and its tail is brushed and it flirts sideways before lowering its body into a slink and mincing toward Jack. Jack hauls reaches out a finger and scruffs the cat's chin, feels the vibration in its throat and smiles.
"Another day closer, Boots," he whispers, optimistic. The sky's almost - not quite, nearly - light when Jack opens the can of cat food and pushes it to the side. Boots noses at the can, then at Jack's fingers, then settles itself down to eat. Jack scritches its back and it isn't really hungry because it leaves the can as soon as Jack lies down again to sniff at his jacket and to paw and knead and finally subside purring its fur still on end.
Jack doesn't slip off into slumber, content with the sound of cat-purring. He doesn't slumber. Day arrives, and the enchantment's over - or the enchantment's upon him. Life sluices away, and he'd forgot to close his eyes so they're still open. He doesn't move. Not even a breath. The cat's purring grows in anxiety until the next quake comes, but Jack doesn't wake.
He's not slumbering. Not exactly, anyway. It's the enchantment. It's the curse and the price of this otherworld and he'd stop paying it if he could but.