Rhys' space, innit?

Still Life Part Two- The loss, and the fall

IV- Moonlapse Vertigo

Already, the whispers had started. The defiling freak had returned, come to steal the fair damsel Melinda.

Together, we comforted one another, warming our bodies by lighting a lantern and pressing close to one another. Hopefully this warmth would stay, yet I felt a sense of-of what? Of trepidation? I felt none, assured my deeds were good and whole.

I could see their words were starting to bite at her as they did me. They spoke of Melinda the whore, Melinda the adulteress. Why should she receive these curses for aligning her heart to me?

And so I thought. I thought for a long time, as she slept. Thought about the other souls exiled, lost and in want of company. I was determined to keep her safe. As safe as she felt wrapped in the warm folds of my cloak which covered her as a blanket.

They scorn me, yet they do not see that I save her from them. I do not, steal her, I rescue her from deeds of spite.

"Nothing of this is in vain"

V- Face of Melinda

She awoke, and although she tries to hide her face, her tears began to make their graceful glissando along her cheeks, soft and reflecting in the moonlight.

Her dark and elegant hair- black, occasionally running to red- masked her face, creating a funeral veil to disguise her grief.

I attempted to discover the reason behind this sadness, wondering what had caused these unceasing tears.

She told me that while her heart belonged to me, she had made her betrothal already. She was committed into marriage away from myself, bound to one she was not meant to belong to.

Choking through sobs, she told me how she felt like a harlot upon this plain, her soul as tainted as the townsfolk had deemed it.

Still, I could not let her go. I must escape with her. I must.

"My promise is made but my heart is thine"

It was turning out to be a rather bad day. The phone pounded, but to be answered only by the unreal imitations of the city birds. They were used to these devices, having had their homes destroyed by their aerials. Five minutes passed, and still their incessant voices drilled into his head.

Alex woke up. He had had Enough.

Apart from the rage disrupting the otherwise calm- eerily calm- waters of his brain, waking up had proved to be rather boring. It was ALWAYS boring. There was nothing. He lived alone, hiding himself from what he didn’t know what, working as a nihilistic tabloid journalist.

And so he woke up to another day of bias and lies. His latest slander campaign against the Monarchy- last week it had been the right wing- was becoming quite successful. He didn't care. In the real world, he knew no one. His readers were the intellectually stunted, and he was above them. He knew it, meditated on it perpetually, but hated himself for lying to himself about himself.

And still the birds continued.

Alex didn't want to. He exited his bedsit with which he was so malcontent, hopefully for the last time. He bought a sheet full of his own excrements- read what he had become. This was better than any mirror, he thought, not realising how true this was. He walked heavily down the street, towards the bridge. Now, in a strange sense, he was happy. He now had a purpose, which up until now he had been sorely lacking.

He reached the bridge, and thought. He reflected in the water of the river, and in his head. Both the waters were now calm, serene. He looked around, not making eye contact. The city had woken up before him, and was too settled into its routine to notice. There was somewhere better than here. Nothing, pure black, would be better than this.

Safe in this knowledge, he jumped. The moment lasted the rest of his life, frozen in a calm sea, in a body under disturbed water. The birds continued to call to each other in the warm spring morning air.