Rest Without Peace [0]

[ωΘĿƒ]

Among the bleached, lichen colored tombstones and the mausoleums with their china-marble pillars, there sat Le Cyll. He was quiet, but it was not out of respect for the dead, or in the interests of peaceful contemplation at all.

To be perfectly honest, which the wolf was very rarely in his life, Le Cyll had come here to be alone.

Yes, alone in the silence. This may be a peaceful place, but he was not at peace here. He needed the space, and he did not want even the living birds to see him now, in this state.

It was not an abomination so much as it was a fit of hilarity. A spasm of make-believe, you could call it. Or, you could call it that if you weren't the wolf yourself. For him, this was very real, and that was precisely the problem. He would have liked reality to come along any time now and proverbially smack him across the face, but alas he was kept away from her cold, harsh embrace by the vicious, hot tongs of his own mind.

To be more clear, he was hearing things again. That voice... was bothering him. It had gotten so much worse now.

"Well aren't you the valiant warrior, hiding away from everyone in this rotting dead place. Despicable!"

"What? I'm not hiding. I-"

"Ah! Don't say it! Never say that you don't hide! You hide... you hide every fiber of your being, you sick little puppy. Poor thing. So lost, and he has to put on his mask for the world to be kind to him."

"I ask not for the world's condolence." Le Cyll growled. "I only ask that it leave me be. Much like a certain figment of my-"

"No! Don't say that either! I'm real! Real! Real! Don't lie to yourself, wolf! You've already lied to everyone else!"

"You know nothing of my lies..."

"Ah yes. The deceit. The scathing, writhing agony of that sentient presence so close to you... and you can't stand to look people in the eye; so filthy are you... I know... Know..."

This, as you can imagine, was remarkably unpleasant. Le Cyll had never heard voices until a few months ago, and he was rather not enjoying it now. It was very malicious, this sound. And yet, it had a sort of truth to it that clawed into him and refused to relinquish it's grasp.

And that is how you become mad, isn't it? By listening to the voices.

"I had to leave class because of you today," the wolf droned, unpleasantly.

"Oh yes! The dissection! Tell me, how was that? Was it fun? Do you want to try it again? Come on... You know you want to..."

"That's not the point. I-"

"No! More Lies! Don't lie to me! I can hear it! I can hear the truth coming from your head! I am your head! I am you! And then I am not... We are separate."

This was... not going anywhere. He had started talking to himself in class, and that was never a goo thing for the general public to see, so he had removed himself post haste and come here to be alone.

And so he was alone, and he was not alone. He was here, and yet there was another.

"Are you going to tell me to kill myself...?" The wolf asked, hopefully.

"No! No death! I need you alive! Pay attention! Watch! You must be here for this!"

Oh, how sad. No suicide. He could hope, right?

Le Cyll grabbed the side of a mausoleum and pressed his aching head against the cool, hard stone. The marble felt like a wall of relief, and after a long moment of just sitting there and quelling the pain of his head, he raised his head perhaps an inch from the marble surface and banged it back against the coolness.

"Oh, this is the end... I'm going crazy..."

"Quiet! I hear someone coming!"

[0]

Ah...the silence....

The Necropolis was a peacefully somber place.

Everything was turning darker, with shadow from the gray clouds in the sky above, and moisture from the rain that fell slowly, pattering softly against the masonry of the brick building that lay in the center of the hilltop.

The wire fencing surrounding the hill’s graveyard stood tall, pointed spikes jutting out from its top, bars slicing through the mud gathered up around them. Wet with water, the brickwork of the path winding through the graves had become a deeper shade of red. Embedded in the ground, headstones changed to dark hues; white marble to silver and silver granite to gray.

A slab of dark gray stone, stuck in a dip at the crown of the hill, was soaked halfway up in rainwater. It overlooked the lake’s shore and the nearby docks, which was currently empty of people and their water vehicles. A tree was beside the dark, wet tombstone, and underneath its branches sat a heartwood bench. Lying on its back on the bench, hands behind its head, rain prevented from falling onto it by the dense cover of leaves from said tree, was the solid form of a young adult female...human?

No, it was more than that. Something in disguise...a beast. A skin over its true form.

The shell of a human lifted its head, in response to something it had heard. Something that was breaking the silence of the graveyard. The quiet that she so often liked to just lie and dwell and sleep in; to immerse herself in it was a vital part of her life.

Today...she had decided it was a break day. No school for her. College. She could choose what she wanted to do now that she was in it. Skip any class she wanted; receive no trouble more than perhaps a near-failing grade. No doubt she might not make it through first year.

Back to the noise, however. It was an unpleasant sound, and slowly it grew louder, from a whisper into a shout. She turned over on the bench, burying her head under her arms.

No...no...I came here to get away from all that! All this NOISE! The word boomed in her head, causing a slight ache in the forebrain that quickly went away with her thoughts.

As the yelling did not stop, she soon decided to step off the bench and stand. Looking around, she caught the source of it: a young male, also within the cemetary. She sighed, shaking her head. Would it not stop? Slowly, she came to start to approach the human.

She stopped, at an angle to not be seen in his peripheral vision. Behind it, to be precise. The shouting increased in intensity. She cringed at it. Then her eyes widened, for he had started banging his head against concrete walls. She couldn't bear to watch; she turned as if to make off, but instead found herself walking towards him.

"Hey...." she began, but her voice trailed off into nothing. She halted a little ways from the boy, no more than ten feet, and looked on at him warily, unsure.

[ωΘĿƒ]

Drawing away from the stone now, very quickly - perhaps with a quickness that was in itself frantic and wasteful, Le Cyll stood there, in the dusty quiet; the rain the only thing that could be heard as it pattered so softly against the dead, rotting grass.

He blinked, trying to think of something to do. What to do... What to do... The voice did not help him. It screamed inside his head like a child on a tantrum, and although no one could hear it but him, he stil felt the sharp sound, and he still cringed slightly.

"No! No! What are you doing!? Look at her! Chimera! Kill her! She looks tasty!"

This had been degenerating for a very long time now. Normally, the need to actually eat someone else was rather small and only slightly daunting at best. He was not exactly sure why he liked to eat people, but he had for a while now and it seemed that slowly, this voice had assimilated that need into itself and become that need in a way - personified it.

Instead of the small, tickling itch that he felt, now there was this voice... Oh, he hated this voice... Why would it not leave him alone? Why not? What had he done? Something wrong? Something to deserve this torture? He could think of nothing, besides the occasional slice and dice; but he had been so good about that since he came here.

He hadn't done anything... Not a thing.

"More lies! All the people! Dead because of you!"

Again, the wolf blinked, confused, tired, and now soggy which was not to his advantage as his jacket retained much water and caused him to slowly become drenched. He looked at this creature that was not a girl but looked like one so very much, and he tried to form a useful sentence to communicate with.

"What... are you doing here?"

That was all he could do. No more. What else would he have said? He was glad she came? He did not want her to be here while he beat his head against a slab of rock? While these were all interesting options, he had no desire to think about any of them. All he could seem to wonder is why?

Why was she standing there, and why was she coming towards him?

"I say you eat her."

"Shut up," The wolf muttered, lowly enough so that she couldn't hear him.

[0]

The girl inclined her head slightly to the left, squinting through the rain that ran down her face, dripping down her eyelashes and past her blue eyes. The silence before and after the boy had talked seemed to engulf her, shrouding her in it.

She almost seemed to be drifting off, and looked as if she wouldn't say anything back to him. She swayed on her feet slightly, lights flickering within her field of vision as the boy stood there. Strings of color flashed past her.

She shook her head to clear her vision, and muttered beneath her breath, "Damned ha--...." At least they aren't that bad...yet, she thought.

She looked up, remembering the boy, and said quickly to him, "I...was resting here. Then I heard...and saw..." She looked at him with a confused expression. Glancing around, she saw no one. Who had he been shouting to? Himself?

Maybe...was he a hallucinator? Bi-polar? ...A 'crazy'?

Oh, no, she thought. This isn't something that can spread, is it? Not some sort of infection, I hope...!

She shook away the thoughts, deeming them ridiculous, and stared at the boy again. She wondered if it would be wise to mention his shouts and seeing him bang his head on the mausoleum's stone.

"...and I came here...." she lamely finished her broken story of how she came to be there. Being an introvert, her face was almost blank of emotion, as she was very skilled in hiding her thoughts, but not so much her long pauses in conversation. But...there was a chance this human could be a mind-reader, which must mean he'd be a monster, right? In disguise, like her?

Oh, stop it! her mind cried to her, generally warning her not to make such quick assumptions.

[ωΘĿƒ]

Le Cyll just continued to stand there, through the rain and the loud, loud yelling. So loud. So piercing. He could hardly hear the rain now. It was simply so painful to endure... and it was an audible, understandable lashing of constant, bickering thought. In a continuous stream it poured out now, nearly turning the painful screeching into white noise.

Le Cyll let the sound fade into the background like it always would, shrill, ever-present, but contained.

Kind of like it wasn't there at all.

"I'm here. Never leave... Never leave..."

But it was. The wolf narrowed his eyes, trying to find out how to deal with this newest intrusion.

"Kill her!"

He could ignore her.

"Kill her!"

He could talk his way out of this place.

"Kill her!"

Or he could...

Kill her?

"Yes! Yes!"

No, no! He meant befriend. He could simply pretend to have a conversation, pretend to care about all the boring little things that she might say, and pretend to smooth over this rather odd situation.

"No! She knows! She heard you, fool!"

Le Cyll looked at the girl, his gaunt form accentuated by the pulling rain and his gray eyes unusually sharp and distinctive as he pressed her features for an answer to this new inquiry... and found that she had heard.

"Talking to yourself again, are we? People might think you're crazy!"

The wolf smiled, sheepishly, as sincerely as he could manage, and mussed his hair with his hand so as to shake the drops from it. He then combed it back with his fingers into the exact formation it had been before, and shook his jacket out to the best of his ability.

"I'm ah, sorry," he lied, and lied very well too. "I didn't know you were here."

Still focused rather obsessively on his jacket, he zipped it up so his shirt would not get wet as the rain increased in profusion; now causing a smothering mist to appear over the graveyard.

"Don't be so picky. You look like a freak!"

Oh, what he wouldn't give for a screwdriver right now...

"No! No! Can't get me out! I'm staying! Don't hurt yourself, puppy!"

Finding no other words to say to this girl, and really not wanting to bother with explaining himself, Le Cyll instead sat down on a headstone, sighing.

He was so tired. Of all of this. It would be very nice to rest.

Rest in peace. He would like to rest in peace.

"Are you suicidal?!? Stop that!"

"No! I'm not! Stop saying tha-"

He paused, realizing he was saying all this out loud. Then, with the same, tired lackluster, he simply shrugged, closing his eyes and forgetting about the girl's ignorance of any of this.

What did it matter? Not much, if you bothered to think about it. There was a time where he might have liked to appear quiet and sweet and normal, but not anymore. He simply did not care anymore.

"It must be quiet where you are," he muttered, carelessly.

"It must be nice."

[0]

"It's...quite alright."

The rain continued to fall, everything quiet except for its pattering and the boy's voice.

Which had unexpectedly risen. Shouting. To no one but perhaps himself. Or someone else she could not sense. So, he must--!

"Quiet?" Sigma broke her own thoughts. Her own word seemed to echo in the silence. "Yes...quiet," she muttered, thoughtfully. "But lonely...and confusing...." She wasn't completely aware that she had said these loud enough for the boy to hear, but perhaps it didn't matter. Maybe he hadn't heard, after all.

If he was going crazy, and she may have been along with him, what did that make them both? Did he know about her knowing? Could he tell what was inside of her?

Seeing him sit down, she felt herself relax, unaware that she had had her muscles tensed the whole time, as if expecting an attack...of words, or maybe physical. She leaned back against a statue of an angel. Looking up, she stared at its cracked stone, filled with moss and lichen, vines curling around its arms and squeezing the wings to dust.

It wavered, slightly. She started to wobble, her legs shaking. One arm shot out, a hand reaching and grabbing onto the statue's cubed base. Hard enough that the knuckles turned white.

Oh, no--

Her limbs suddenly stiffened, her body stood straight, stuck in its current position. Her mouth hung slightly open. Then everything suddenly loosened, and she crumpled to the ground, a massive headache pounding in her brain, cramps from her stomach up to her chest.

Heavy, raspy breaths...choking, coughing...before it all stopped. And she lay there, still, her vision blurred, a black hole in the center, red around the edges. Still...utterly silent....

Until... "So dark...." she whispered, and a shudder passed down along her spine. Her pupils moved, searching for the boy, now a mere blur in the world. "Can you say...what's wrong...?" And gave out a scratchy laugh. Completely helpless before this boy, for the moment anyhow. Surely that might show what he might really be like -- helpful, kind, a coward...maybe something a little more menacing...or no reaction? She wondered....

Her skin flickered, showing for a split second her true form. Starting to...fail....

[ωΘĿƒ]

Le Cyll barely heard the words the girl spoke. Not because he could not pick them up - his hearing was indeed sharp - but because he perhaps chose to ignore them.

Or perhaps, there was another voice to be heard above hers?

Straining a bit to make them out above the noise now, Le Cyll heard her fall for his lie.

He wasn't sorry. He was never sorry. Why should he be at all disparaged about what or who he was? Was there a point to it? Was there ever a reason to be so self loathing? If there was, he hadn't found it yet. He was narcissistic to the core, and that in itself was helpful to him.

Otherwise, he might have actually killed himself, instead of simply thought of it. In fact, this whole thing - this life of his - it was not so unpleasant because of anything he did. He had done nothing... Nothing... It was just that pain. It would be nice without it.

"Without it you die. You need the pain. You need to feel alive, don't you?"

And now, this thing sounded like a lunatic. Making him a lunatic. It spouted this nonsense as if it were speaking words and it expected him to listen. Expected him to follow unwaveringly, unthinkingly like a puppet on a string.

But he did not play the puppet. He was the puppeteer. There was no way he would bow to this force.

"Bow? No... You will not bow. You will kneel. Be a good dog. Good dog..."

More of the white noise. Le Cyll Did not really hear the girl's response to him. It didn't seem relevant. Not at all.

"No. Nothing she says matters. It's what you think. And what you think is you're hungry..."

Then, looking up, Le Cyll noticed the girl as she began to seize, in a sort of strange, trance-like state.

Of course, he had very quick natural reflexes towards something like this, and of course the voice had some natural reflexes of itself. Both of these inherent signals rung out at the same time, deafening. Both of them telling him what he should do.

Stop the seizures.

"Kill her quick!"

The girl collapsed on the floor, and Le Cyll dropped off his perch to meet her there, catching her before she hit the ground and placing her there gently.

She has to lay still, and straight.

"Yeeeees. You do your little doctor stuff. Good doggy. Need to fix things right? Because you can't stand to see them broken."

Le Cyll tried to stay with the girl, feeling a slight jab of rage at not having brought any of his supplies from the medical wing he had just left.

"Too bad you break them anyways. Can't see them broken unless you do it... Bad doggie."

Sitting there uselessly, now all senses focused on the girl, he waited until she stopped reacting so violently.

And then she lay still. He looked in her eyes, and noticed they were not dilating like they should be. She was blinded for the moment...

What was that? A... vision?

"Oh! Vision! You should cut her open and see why she twitches!"

How could she do that? That was, very interesting. She said something about darkness... and she did seem to be experiencing something beyond any normal seizure or allergic attack.

"Look, she's blind... Doggie be good. Do what I say."

Moving back against the headstone he had been sitting on, Le Cyll rested his back against the hard, cold granite.

"She's just sitting there... Doesn't she look helpless?"

He ran his fingers through his hair, crouching over slightly.

"You've had worst ways to get that fix. Common. She's useless. A piece of meat for you to play with."

Now grasping at his hair, Le Cyll shook his head.

"What? No? Don't want to? Why not? You would... You would do it if I weren't telling you to... You hate me. You loathe me. Why? We want the same things..."

"I ah..."

"What? What is it? Speak up! You've never been shy to jabbering on!"

"I think... I need to go now."

"WHAT?!? No! She's right there! Get her! Your tools are back in class-"

"Yes! I have to go to class now."

"Right! Go get them! She'll wait for you! She's not going anywhere!"

"And I'm not... coming back... Not going to come back."

"No! No! Don't be dense! You'll come back! I'll MAKE you come back!"

"Please don't be here when I get back..."

"You don't WARN her stupid! Then she knows! Tell her to take it easy! Sit there! You're going to get her help! She'll stay! She doesn't know!"

Le Cyll got up, sluggishly, and trotted off. He did not want to do this... Why? He didn't know. It was... it didn't feel right.

Not yet. Nothing yet. Wait for it.

"No! Now!"

He had to leave, and so he did. As fast as he possibly could, he went back to his class.

[0]

Sigma could barely see or hear the boy, her own senses overcome with something else.

But the boy was muttering again...first to himself, then to her. She strained to hear.

'Don't be here,' he said. Not when he got back....

But now she was curious, and frightened. A confusing mixture. What did he mean?

"Weak..." she thought she heard, and the clear ghostly image of a boy -- a different boy -- crouching beside her could be seen. He was not very old, just in his teens, and wore a black suit; she recognized him as a somewhat familiar hallucination.

"Down with the dust...in with the dirt...swallowed by shadow...." His hand passed over her face, shutting her eyes momentarily. When she opened them, he was gone. And she felt somewhat better, but still she did not stand. Not yet. She was thinking, and waiting, watching the real boy as he walked away.

Just another...hallucination...? But it had to have been more than that. It had reached into her body, taken hold of it and paralyzed it, sending her collapsing onto the ground.

Just another hallucination? No. What could it be called, though? Possession? Of what? Of nothing. It was nothing but dark matter and dark energy. That's what the world was. Nothing. A mere hallucination in itself.

Her skin flashed again, this time showing her chimera-side for a longer moment. Her arms curled up in front of her, hands clenching and unclenching. To get up...or not? She felt strangely comfortable and satisfied just lying there, even though the ground was soggy and moist underneath her body, soaking her clothes even more than before, making her a bit muddy.

But a surge of electricity through her limbs sent her shockingly up into a standing position. She stood, she didn't move. She watched the boy disappear, walking out of the cemetary. Slowly, after he had gone, she turned. She walked back over to the bench from before and sat down to think.

Something was up with the boy. Something was wrong: with the both of them.... She wanted to meet him again, but obviously now would not be a good time. Maybe never would be best.

After a while of waiting for an answer from herself, and getting nothing, she decided to stand up and walk out of the Necropolis, in a direction different from the boy.