(no subject)

[ashtreelane]

...







-- LIGHT --

It's not the labyrinth. It's just a house like any other.

Carpeted floor, upholstered furniture, curtained windows -- it's a perfectly ordinary living room. A living room; a room for living in.

The door they've just stumbled through is gone.

Comments

[grimy-brian.livejournal.com]

Where is the way to the dwelling of light?


Brian stops so fast he almost falls over, almost takes them both down together onto the floor of the house, with its carpet and its wallpaper and -

"...dude, we're out." Slow dawning joy in his voice, like sunrise, like new beginnings, like all the good things in the world tied up in brown paper and string. "Dude, you're out!"

He grabs Johnny around the middle, hugs him tight, their matching grins like

mirror images.

"It's done with you."



And darkness, where is its place?

[truantjohnny.livejournal.com]

And this, this transition, this is something else, something entirely beyond, and looking at normal, white walls, and my hands, my hands tangled in this perfectly ordinary carpet, soft and scuffed, warm against my cold, cold hands, and then my brother

Brian is throwing his arms around me, and there is some strange noise now, some rasping sort of honk, and I realize it's me, it's my voice, and I am laughing, something hot and wet on my face, stinging, and it's tears, and I don't know whether it's relief or sadness or joy, but there is light, real light, warm light, and maybe I'm safe now, my lips hurting, my hands hurting, the cold that seeped into my bones gradually uncracking its grip.

"Did we make it?"

All that dark. All that cold. All those years. All that blood and madness. Is this really how it ends? Peace and light and laughter? Have I deserved that? Have I really?

[ashtreelane]

Everything is bright, and warm, and quiet, and stable. The walls stay still; the floor doesn't move.




Until it does.



Slowly, so slowly, the carpet ripples up and back down in a long slow wave like something breathing quietly in its sleep.

(a living room; a room that lives.)

From the spot on the wall where the door used to be, the ash-black of the maze is beginning to spread outward like spilled ink, first staining and then annihilating the palely painted walls, the windows, the ceiling.

The floor underfoot.



The walls writhe, and close inward with enough force to splinter the bookcase closest to the corner.

[truantjohnny.livejournal.com]

And the laughter, if that's what it is, chokes off, dying in my throat, leaving a taste like rust and old blood and bile and fear, all copper tang and tobacco-scratch, reborn like some dark phoenix as a scream, and I'm hauling Brian, now, to his feet, on this treacherous ground, and I think I can smell it, the dank strench of rot and years, the thing behind us, reaching for us now, and I'm running, dragging him with me, no words now, we're beyond words, some other place that not even dark languages will go, no word for this fear, for the floor falling away from our feet, teetering on the very edge of oblivion.

I wonder if there's a ground, if there's something to hit at the end of that void.

[grimy-brian.livejournal.com]

He wonders if there's a ground, the floor rippling beneath their feet like

(I think god is moving its tongue)

something else entirely, and something is reaching for them, something isn't done with them. Him.

He wonders, should he fall (the floor falling away from our feet), if he'll end up home again.

(Hen to pan: the one, the all.)

He wonders, as his fingers slip through Johnny's and he can't quite catch hold, if there's something to hit at the end of that void.

(My end is my beginning is my end.)

[ashtreelane]

(God I've never been afraid like this.)

The shaking continues, worse than ever: walls cracking apart and melting back together again, floors buckling and splintering upward, only to subside as the ash-black of the inner house spreads outward to engulf them. Worse, the remaining colors and shapes in the room seem to be softening and melting like chalk drawings in a hard rain, flowing into the rising blackness.

Perhaps I will alter the whole thing.
Kill both children.

(There is no Daisy here, no Delial to rescue or fail to rescue. Just the two of them, and the house, thrashing blindly in what could be death throes or birth pangs or both.)

Murder is a better word.

The floor is sliding back under Brian's feet like a treadmill gone mad, pulling him back two paces for every pace he advances.

[truantjohnny.livejournal.com]

"No!"

And it's all I can think, reaching out, reaching down, flailing, almost, snatching at him, screaming at the void, all I can hear, the blood in my ears pounding out that defiance, that plea, no, no, no, not him, take me, you've taken me already, you've taken me for years, Jacob and Esau, now, and it won't have him like it had Tom, it can't,

no, Mister Monster, you can't. Not like this.

My gut is wrenching, tilting, weaving like the floor, like the house itself, and if I let this happen, how do I look at myself in the mirror? Not that there will be mirrors ever again.

[grimy-brian.livejournal.com]

His heart is pounding feet are pounding faster and faster and all for nothing and footsteps and heartbeats together like a

mirror

like an

echo

Like him

and Johnny.

I guess, he thinks, it's my turn.

And he   s l  o   w    s.

S

t

o

p

s

.


(House 1)

(God I've never been afraid like this.)

[ashtreelane]

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
As Brian slows to a standstill, the floor continues carrying him back a foot or so and then for no apparent reason stops. The walls continue their drunken dance around him, tilting, _sagging, s t r e t c h i n g like melting plastic. Oozing back towards the spreading blackness.

Somehow Johnny has reached the doorframe, the house's front door, the only stable thing in all the shifting chaos the room has become.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
The door is shut. And Brian is about two feet beyond his arm's reach.

[truantjohnny.livejournal.com]

And my pulse is thrumming, desperate, frantic, caged-bird breaking its wings, its neck, its heart at my ears, my neck, my fingertips, urging me on, crying to me, praying, all the prayers and pleas there ever were, all madness and desperation and frevrent hope.

There must be something.

My fingers, still frozen from the dark, fumbling at my body. A belt? A belt.

I don't think I could have undone it this fast for Thumper, not for all my yesterdays, all this, light glinting on the buckle, one merry jangle as I toss, a thread, an umbilical cord, ball of twine to find my way back home. Our way. Our way or none.

It is this, or no more mirrors anymore.

[ashtreelane]

The end of the belt arcs out towards Brian, seeming for a moment almost to float in the air between the two, a tether, a lifeline, a hope.

endings are heartless

It happens blindingly fast: the walls snap shut like the teeth of a bear trap on Brian's outstretched hand, splintering every bone in it like a handful of twigs, and spring open again too fast for the eye to follow.
The color that flashes in bursts behind your eyes
The severed end of the belt falls to the floor at Brian's feet, and starts to fade into it. The remaining half trails limply from Johnny's hand.
behind the pain
Blood is dripping -- no, blood is running from Brian's mangled fingers, broken bones protruding through the flesh. Red drops fall toward the swirling dark maelstrom of the floor, and vanish into it as though into liquid.
just before you die

[grimy-brian.livejournal.com]

Brian's face - Brian's expression is indescribable.



There aren't words for this because there aren't expressions for this because no man should feel this no man should know when he's going to -




- his face is blank. This is the easiest thing to say.



calm, no real panic, just acceptance



"Hey, Johnny."


He says it with his voice a little slower and a little duller and a little like he can't believe he can't think he can't feel he can't know (no man should know when) -




- his voice is blank.

"Come and see."

"Look out for Ads for me."



knowing that this was where I was supposed to end, knowing it was right.

him.
and the floor op             ens up beneath













(my beginning is my end is my beginning)

[truantjohnny.livejournal.com]

And just like that

there are no more mirrors anymore.

And I watch, and maybe I scream, and maybe I fall, but I fall back, instead of forward, instead of where I should fall, should have fallen, where he fell, and it's utterly beyond my control, as it ever was, as it always (hallways) will be.

The Minotaur, loosed from the Labyrinth. Atoned? Absolved? Have I earned that? But at this price?

I do not have a brother.

[ashtreelane]

Falling back.
Tree of trees!
Remember (when time comes) how chaos died
To shape the shining leaf. Then turn, have courage,
Wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
With grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
Falling slowly, as though through water, though fog, through light.

Through
my end is my beginning is
the door.