Saber Marionette Fan Fiction ❯ Drowining Ophelia ❯ Pansies for Thoughts ( Chapter 2 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Lady Aoi 
Anime/Manga: Saber Marionette Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 09.14.2002 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 322 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Saber Marionette Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 09.14.2002 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 322 | Status: Completed
Drowning Ophelia
Chapter Two: Pansies for Thoughts
A SMJ fan fic
by
Lady Aoi
Summary: Hanagata sinks further into depression and delusions after the return of the Marionettes.
Rating: R for violence, angst, yaoi and language.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not even the letters.
Spoilers: Spoilers to the end of Saber Marionette J.
Lady Aoi's Notes: No lemon. Just angst.
~*~*~*~*~
"You're getting closer
To pushing me off of life's little edge
Cause I'm a loser
And sooner or later you know I'll be dead.
Your'e getting closer.
You're holding the rope and I'm taking the fall
'Cause I'm a loser..."
~ 3 Doors Down "Loser"
~*~*~*~*~
For the first time in weeks there is a change in the air. The sky is leaden, but empty and dry enough to allow me to leave this apartment for the damp and earth-pungent streets of Japoness.
I don't want to stay in that room anymore. Things are slowly beginning to come apart... when I'm not awakening from some horrifying nightmare I'm struggling to determine whether or not the things I'm seeing are real or simply projections of a deeper reality...the shadows behind my eyes, the monsters I have seen only through the dark glass of my own suspicions.
Not that this darkness was always readily visible. I used to be such a little fool. Yes, little boy, driving around in his fancy motor car to prove how special he was...little did I suspect what I was really running from; this mouth of despair and guilt gnawing away deep within my gut. Because I sensed my own hollowness -- I see that now -- even in those early and care free days when all that mattered to me was money and intimidation.
I suppose we must all pay for our sins eventually... and somehow, deep within me, I suspect that my time of reckoning may be close at hand.
It is with no great sense of loss that I shut my door and draw my cape around my shoulders. A few moments of this bitter cold, and my face thankfully passes into the welcome musty darkness of a black wool hood. In the past, I never cared for this gauche garment -- a shallow gift of "practical clothing" from an equally shallow and practical father. But today I am suddenly thankful for the protection it provides -- both from this knife-like wind and the equally piercing stares of passers-by. And yet, I have no power on this earth to drown out the torrents of their bitter words.
As I make my errant progress through the wind and mist-swept streets, I am greeted by a realization far more obvious and disturbing than any I have been questionably blessed with in these past three weeks. It is so poignant, so powerful that it brings tears which are quickly blasted away by the wind. All of my life, it seems, people have behaved as if I were both deaf and dumb. How many times have I been faced with a disgusted look, a cruel remark or even physical violence and simply ignored it as I would a crying child or a part of the landscape? I have become so used to being called things like "the idiot Joshuya boy" (a title that, to most of my countrymen is far more recognizable than the name Mitsurugi) that these words have lost their meaning altogether. And if I am deprived of my popular name, then what do I have?
As a child -- when I was Yumeji's age -- such things cut me far past the quick. A brutal remark was enough to send me into melodramatic hour-long paroxysms of tears (in much the same way they do to Yumeji now). And I suppose, in my own childish way, I had every right to them. What did I know of life in those days, when all existence could be summed up by a milky tempest in a mug of hot chocolate? All I knew then was that the name of Hanagata Mitsurugi had been bespoiled with words like "idiot" and "sissy" -- words which clouded a young man's future and made things ugly because they destroyed his very identity, the sole light in the dark waters of all things yet to be.
But strangely, all things, all names, became irrelevant the day I became his, the day in which I sold my soul not to the devil as the old books say but to a beautiful angel made of marble and glass. Oh, Otaru-kun... in the end is that all you ever were? And is that the greatest thing I can claim in my life -- that I loved neither wisely nor too well? Because I loved you beyond well, Otaru-kun... I would have given my eyes to a stranger if it meant you would have looked at me.
The chill in the air become stronger as I leave the streets of Japoness for the greying countryside. When my shivering becomes a threat to my progress, I half-heartedly draw my cloke around my body, attempting to ignore the heaviness left in my all-too aparent bones.
Otaru-kun... it is a shame we cannot choose whom we love, isn't it?Or even that when we love we can never say exactly why. If I only had a reason, that would be enough. In the end, did I truly love you because of some divine spark, or because whenever I looked into your eyes I could see nothing but my own reflection moving forever into the future?
Finally, it is the roaring of the struggling autumn river and not the cold air which guards it's swolen banks that pulls me from this otherwise inescapable reviere. For a moment, I cannot tell where I am due to the ghosts inside me. And then, slowly, I come to the realization that my feet, or perhaps my heart, have lead me to this future.
The bridge creaks little beneath my feet as I make my way to its center and the granular aid I meet in the boards tacitly informs me that this will be a winter of baren and impenetrable ice. A fitting and pathetic parallel, it would seem.
As I slowly hypnotize myself within the swirling waters beneath me, I become gradually aware that I am not alone on this bridge. And I do not need my eyes to identify my silent company, either. While they remain lost within the troubled waters beneath me, I feel my heart beginning to turn with a similar chaos. Truth be known, his appearance is the one aspect of him to which I have devoted an insignificant ammount of study. But his presence, his scent, the sound of his breath -- the very energy that crackles between us even when we are facing separate directions -- these I know far better than the rhythms of my own heart. If, that is, such a thing ever beat to begin with.
We are both silent for a long moment, backs to one another, eyes fixed on the swolen autumn river that rages beneath us. The water churns in on itself, and I wince as another painful memory rises from my gut to stab at my already weakened mind. ONe year ago, he and I stood on this very bridge prepairing to fight one another. Of course, he defeated all of those lackies and money grubbing bastards I had the ignorance of calling my friends at that time within moments. And he would have easily thrashed me soundly too, had it not been for the fact that he lost his footing and fell from the bridge.
Otaru-kun... every night I turn the final battle of our childhood over and over in my mind. Had it not been for my arrogance, you would never have fallen into the water and never found Lime... and the two marionettes which came after her. And perhaps -- had I just been a little wiser perhaps today you and I --
We stand silently, our eyes worlds apart yet focused entirely upon the Universe oposite us.
And at last, he speaks. "You look well."
I nearly laugh at his greeting. "Well"? I haven't eaten in three days, Otaru-kun, and I cannot remember the last time I had even an hour of decent sleep. If anything I still mock the manerisms of living, but as for being "well"... no, I am not well. I am about to tell him these thoughts, when pleasantries take control of me.
"Thanks. So do you."
I do not see him do so, but I can feel him nod.
"It's... it's good to see you."
I wonder if he can feel the heat that shoots through my stomach at these words of his. As if we were family, separated by distance or warfare! I am your next-door neighbor, Otaru-kun and your next-door neighbor with a hole in his wall! If seeing me were truly such a blessing, you could easily do so any time of the day or night, had you the initiataive. And fool that I am, I would welcome the sight of your eye peering through that hole, even if it fixed on me only for a moment.
"Thanks." And this is how I sum up my thoughts.
When the silence that follows this plesantry stretches far beyond unpleasant minutes, I can feel his resolve weakening. At last, he turns around to face me.
"Look, Hanagata -- you have to stop doing this."
I don't want to answer him, but the laugh that escapes my freezing lips is as brittle and cold as the air that rages through us. "Doing what, Otaru-kun?"
"Dammit, Hanagata! Turn around and look at me when I'm speaking to you."
Who can he possibly be kidding. "If I do that, how can I know you won't just look right through me?" And he would, too. Even the muddy water in this choked river is more interesting than this nameless, formless creature who inhabits the crawlspace beyond your vision, ne, Otaru-kun?
But this accusation seems to anger him. "Look right -- Hanagata, what the hell are you talking about?"
When silence alone answers him, I feel the boards creak as his weight shifts. I can feel him thrust his hands into his pockets and hunch his shoulders up in the pose he reserves only for the most trivial forms of consternation. I can even feel the flesh of his brow furrow in response to the narrowing of his eyes... ah yes, those deep hazel eyes. It seems they are the locus, the prime mover of his body.
"Is that all you're gonna say?"
"What do you want me to say?"
He swears, a phlegmy curse roaring from the sinewy insides of his throat. "I wanna know why you're acting like such a freak! Why you don't come over anymore, why you never talk to me, why you don't even --"
"Even what? Stare at you through the wall?" My throat feels like ice breaking in the river as I laugh. "I don't have eyes anymore, Otaru-kun. Can't you understand that?"
"You -- Hanagata you're not making any sense, dammit!"
"Why, isn't it apparent?"
"What the hell kind of sick game are you playing, Hanagata?" When I only shrug he rages on. "You wall yourself up in your apartment for three weeks, you don't go outside, hell you don't even talk to anyone anymore! And then when I finally get through to you to ask what the hell's going on you all you'll give me is this bull about being blind or whatever when you and I both know that's not true!"
That's what I love about you, Otaru-kun... no matter how hard I listen, no matter how direct you are, I understand you perfectly enough to know that I've never understood a word you've said. Strangely enough, this gives me a unique perspective. Like Cassandra, I know everything before it happens when it is far to late to do a damned thing.
And I can hear it in your voice now.
"You love them, don't you. Her in particular."
It's not a question, Otaru-kun. It's the only true thing I have ever said or will ever say.
"Hanagata --"
I suppose he expects me to cut him off here, to scream, protest, throw myself on my knees to grovel at his feet and bind them fast to these icy boards.( Is he so fantastical that he expects me to use the forces of nature to enslave him now?) Or at the very least to look at him. When I don't peform my part, however, he seems unsure of how to continue until my silence forces him to improvise with the only thing that can cover a man who has fallen victim to his own certainty; the truth.
"Yes, Hanagata. I do."
It is enough for me to even dignify that with a nod. "And now that you know, now that she's taught you about the lost ceremonies, have you set a date?"
"October First, Hanagata."
I wish he would stop repeating my name, as if that gesture alone were enough to placate me, as if that word alone could somehow return even a fraction of that emptiness inside me. He must think himself to be so altruistic....
"Hey... Hanagata... how did you know?"
Again I can't help but laugh, as if the world were ending around me slowly enough to both assure me of my doom and to give me enough time to laugh at the cruel joke that some divine sadist had played by giving us life in the first place. By giving us eyes... "There are a lot of things I know," I tell him. "You can't keep secrets from the blind, you see."
The only thing that surprises me is that this moves him enough to recognize me. In a frenzied moment, he's grabbed my hair in a vice-like grip and pulled my head back to the swirling clouds above.
"Have you been spying on me? Have you?! Huh?!"
I have no idea to answer this and so I just pretend I am looking up. Do you see now, Otaru-kun? Do you see their absence? The empty sockets, painted blood running down the face I've happily molded into a painted smile or when I couldn't manage that, a vapid nothingness just so you wouldn't have to feel guilty? Just so you wouldn't have to use your eyes? It was my mistake and at least I can accept punishment for what I've done.
Apparently he does see it, however, because he becomes enraged then. As he piles curse upon curse on my head, he smashes my face into the railing, all the while screaming accusations that I have spied on him, on her, on them, in order to plot their downfall for my own perverted fantasies.
I wonder vaguely if I should tell him I have no fantasies anymore unless they consist of the reality of splintered wood and shattered ice amid and meat. But somehow I know he knows this already, because the more silent I am, the louder he screams and the harder he thrusts my head into this beam.
I hate to tell him this but he should be careful. Some people within viewing distance might think we are making love.
I find it interesting that marionettes bleed the same as human beings, even if they are meet of a different mettle. In the end, if you cut us open, aren't we, all four of us, made of the same stuff -- cables and wire are just a more durable form of tissue afterall. I should know this even better than those dolls do, having been a doll longer than they have.
Finally, just as things inside me are beginning to swim as much as the world around me, he tires of this new game. With one final threat, he throws me face first into the icy boards and punctuates his last curse with a kick to my side. I jump a little at that, but it's only because of scientific principles. I'm not putting on a show anymore. How can I when my strings have been cut?
I think he spits on me then, it seems the final baroque thing to do. And when I don't get up to play again, he storms off, leaving only the bridge to quake with his energy long after he is gone.
And strangely I can still feel his presence when the darkness finally lifts into the far warmer darkness of the night and the rain-smelling water.
It is raining again, a cold and soothing rain that attempts to bind me to these boards, the boards I myself took for granted on my way too and from each self-important mission of love.
Even I can be cruel, it seems.
I can hear the river's music now, and somehow, in this darkness, I sense that the water is crashing only meters below me... it would be so easy to bind myself to a different thing now... in one movement I could rust within a silent and endlessly dark home without this parody of vision...
I would no longer be reminded, at least, that I once possibly had eyes.
And I admit the thought is tempting and I almost suffer this sea change gladly... but not yet... all things must run their course and I have a few final wires...
Strangely it doesn't hurt when I manage to pull myself to my feet. I know a few gears are broken, a few cables snapped beyond repair but it all seems so incosequential now. Marionettes, Otaru-kun, are truly the least valuable commodity of modern life. They serve their purpose, and perhaps some mad men like that sensei of yours, Soemon Obiichi, cry a litle when they break. But you must understand that they are so beloved because they are readily replacable. Break them and someone either above or below will always make more.
I wonder if I can repair my face so at least I can pretend to be whole again. Can such wax ever be reworked to be in any way pleasing?
It is a troubling thought and one that preoccupies me on my way home and long after I have fallen into a deep and endless sleep where for once I dream not of you but a dark and endless electricity.
What they say is not quite true, Otaru-kun. Marionettes do not dream of electric sheep.
They dream only othe endless current.
~ End Part Two
Chapter Two: Pansies for Thoughts
A SMJ fan fic
by
Lady Aoi
Summary: Hanagata sinks further into depression and delusions after the return of the Marionettes.
Rating: R for violence, angst, yaoi and language.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not even the letters.
Spoilers: Spoilers to the end of Saber Marionette J.
Lady Aoi's Notes: No lemon. Just angst.
~*~*~*~*~
"You're getting closer
To pushing me off of life's little edge
Cause I'm a loser
And sooner or later you know I'll be dead.
Your'e getting closer.
You're holding the rope and I'm taking the fall
'Cause I'm a loser..."
~ 3 Doors Down "Loser"
~*~*~*~*~
For the first time in weeks there is a change in the air. The sky is leaden, but empty and dry enough to allow me to leave this apartment for the damp and earth-pungent streets of Japoness.
I don't want to stay in that room anymore. Things are slowly beginning to come apart... when I'm not awakening from some horrifying nightmare I'm struggling to determine whether or not the things I'm seeing are real or simply projections of a deeper reality...the shadows behind my eyes, the monsters I have seen only through the dark glass of my own suspicions.
Not that this darkness was always readily visible. I used to be such a little fool. Yes, little boy, driving around in his fancy motor car to prove how special he was...little did I suspect what I was really running from; this mouth of despair and guilt gnawing away deep within my gut. Because I sensed my own hollowness -- I see that now -- even in those early and care free days when all that mattered to me was money and intimidation.
I suppose we must all pay for our sins eventually... and somehow, deep within me, I suspect that my time of reckoning may be close at hand.
It is with no great sense of loss that I shut my door and draw my cape around my shoulders. A few moments of this bitter cold, and my face thankfully passes into the welcome musty darkness of a black wool hood. In the past, I never cared for this gauche garment -- a shallow gift of "practical clothing" from an equally shallow and practical father. But today I am suddenly thankful for the protection it provides -- both from this knife-like wind and the equally piercing stares of passers-by. And yet, I have no power on this earth to drown out the torrents of their bitter words.
As I make my errant progress through the wind and mist-swept streets, I am greeted by a realization far more obvious and disturbing than any I have been questionably blessed with in these past three weeks. It is so poignant, so powerful that it brings tears which are quickly blasted away by the wind. All of my life, it seems, people have behaved as if I were both deaf and dumb. How many times have I been faced with a disgusted look, a cruel remark or even physical violence and simply ignored it as I would a crying child or a part of the landscape? I have become so used to being called things like "the idiot Joshuya boy" (a title that, to most of my countrymen is far more recognizable than the name Mitsurugi) that these words have lost their meaning altogether. And if I am deprived of my popular name, then what do I have?
As a child -- when I was Yumeji's age -- such things cut me far past the quick. A brutal remark was enough to send me into melodramatic hour-long paroxysms of tears (in much the same way they do to Yumeji now). And I suppose, in my own childish way, I had every right to them. What did I know of life in those days, when all existence could be summed up by a milky tempest in a mug of hot chocolate? All I knew then was that the name of Hanagata Mitsurugi had been bespoiled with words like "idiot" and "sissy" -- words which clouded a young man's future and made things ugly because they destroyed his very identity, the sole light in the dark waters of all things yet to be.
But strangely, all things, all names, became irrelevant the day I became his, the day in which I sold my soul not to the devil as the old books say but to a beautiful angel made of marble and glass. Oh, Otaru-kun... in the end is that all you ever were? And is that the greatest thing I can claim in my life -- that I loved neither wisely nor too well? Because I loved you beyond well, Otaru-kun... I would have given my eyes to a stranger if it meant you would have looked at me.
The chill in the air become stronger as I leave the streets of Japoness for the greying countryside. When my shivering becomes a threat to my progress, I half-heartedly draw my cloke around my body, attempting to ignore the heaviness left in my all-too aparent bones.
Otaru-kun... it is a shame we cannot choose whom we love, isn't it?Or even that when we love we can never say exactly why. If I only had a reason, that would be enough. In the end, did I truly love you because of some divine spark, or because whenever I looked into your eyes I could see nothing but my own reflection moving forever into the future?
Finally, it is the roaring of the struggling autumn river and not the cold air which guards it's swolen banks that pulls me from this otherwise inescapable reviere. For a moment, I cannot tell where I am due to the ghosts inside me. And then, slowly, I come to the realization that my feet, or perhaps my heart, have lead me to this future.
The bridge creaks little beneath my feet as I make my way to its center and the granular aid I meet in the boards tacitly informs me that this will be a winter of baren and impenetrable ice. A fitting and pathetic parallel, it would seem.
As I slowly hypnotize myself within the swirling waters beneath me, I become gradually aware that I am not alone on this bridge. And I do not need my eyes to identify my silent company, either. While they remain lost within the troubled waters beneath me, I feel my heart beginning to turn with a similar chaos. Truth be known, his appearance is the one aspect of him to which I have devoted an insignificant ammount of study. But his presence, his scent, the sound of his breath -- the very energy that crackles between us even when we are facing separate directions -- these I know far better than the rhythms of my own heart. If, that is, such a thing ever beat to begin with.
We are both silent for a long moment, backs to one another, eyes fixed on the swolen autumn river that rages beneath us. The water churns in on itself, and I wince as another painful memory rises from my gut to stab at my already weakened mind. ONe year ago, he and I stood on this very bridge prepairing to fight one another. Of course, he defeated all of those lackies and money grubbing bastards I had the ignorance of calling my friends at that time within moments. And he would have easily thrashed me soundly too, had it not been for the fact that he lost his footing and fell from the bridge.
Otaru-kun... every night I turn the final battle of our childhood over and over in my mind. Had it not been for my arrogance, you would never have fallen into the water and never found Lime... and the two marionettes which came after her. And perhaps -- had I just been a little wiser perhaps today you and I --
We stand silently, our eyes worlds apart yet focused entirely upon the Universe oposite us.
And at last, he speaks. "You look well."
I nearly laugh at his greeting. "Well"? I haven't eaten in three days, Otaru-kun, and I cannot remember the last time I had even an hour of decent sleep. If anything I still mock the manerisms of living, but as for being "well"... no, I am not well. I am about to tell him these thoughts, when pleasantries take control of me.
"Thanks. So do you."
I do not see him do so, but I can feel him nod.
"It's... it's good to see you."
I wonder if he can feel the heat that shoots through my stomach at these words of his. As if we were family, separated by distance or warfare! I am your next-door neighbor, Otaru-kun and your next-door neighbor with a hole in his wall! If seeing me were truly such a blessing, you could easily do so any time of the day or night, had you the initiataive. And fool that I am, I would welcome the sight of your eye peering through that hole, even if it fixed on me only for a moment.
"Thanks." And this is how I sum up my thoughts.
When the silence that follows this plesantry stretches far beyond unpleasant minutes, I can feel his resolve weakening. At last, he turns around to face me.
"Look, Hanagata -- you have to stop doing this."
I don't want to answer him, but the laugh that escapes my freezing lips is as brittle and cold as the air that rages through us. "Doing what, Otaru-kun?"
"Dammit, Hanagata! Turn around and look at me when I'm speaking to you."
Who can he possibly be kidding. "If I do that, how can I know you won't just look right through me?" And he would, too. Even the muddy water in this choked river is more interesting than this nameless, formless creature who inhabits the crawlspace beyond your vision, ne, Otaru-kun?
But this accusation seems to anger him. "Look right -- Hanagata, what the hell are you talking about?"
When silence alone answers him, I feel the boards creak as his weight shifts. I can feel him thrust his hands into his pockets and hunch his shoulders up in the pose he reserves only for the most trivial forms of consternation. I can even feel the flesh of his brow furrow in response to the narrowing of his eyes... ah yes, those deep hazel eyes. It seems they are the locus, the prime mover of his body.
"Is that all you're gonna say?"
"What do you want me to say?"
He swears, a phlegmy curse roaring from the sinewy insides of his throat. "I wanna know why you're acting like such a freak! Why you don't come over anymore, why you never talk to me, why you don't even --"
"Even what? Stare at you through the wall?" My throat feels like ice breaking in the river as I laugh. "I don't have eyes anymore, Otaru-kun. Can't you understand that?"
"You -- Hanagata you're not making any sense, dammit!"
"Why, isn't it apparent?"
"What the hell kind of sick game are you playing, Hanagata?" When I only shrug he rages on. "You wall yourself up in your apartment for three weeks, you don't go outside, hell you don't even talk to anyone anymore! And then when I finally get through to you to ask what the hell's going on you all you'll give me is this bull about being blind or whatever when you and I both know that's not true!"
That's what I love about you, Otaru-kun... no matter how hard I listen, no matter how direct you are, I understand you perfectly enough to know that I've never understood a word you've said. Strangely enough, this gives me a unique perspective. Like Cassandra, I know everything before it happens when it is far to late to do a damned thing.
And I can hear it in your voice now.
"You love them, don't you. Her in particular."
It's not a question, Otaru-kun. It's the only true thing I have ever said or will ever say.
"Hanagata --"
I suppose he expects me to cut him off here, to scream, protest, throw myself on my knees to grovel at his feet and bind them fast to these icy boards.( Is he so fantastical that he expects me to use the forces of nature to enslave him now?) Or at the very least to look at him. When I don't peform my part, however, he seems unsure of how to continue until my silence forces him to improvise with the only thing that can cover a man who has fallen victim to his own certainty; the truth.
"Yes, Hanagata. I do."
It is enough for me to even dignify that with a nod. "And now that you know, now that she's taught you about the lost ceremonies, have you set a date?"
"October First, Hanagata."
I wish he would stop repeating my name, as if that gesture alone were enough to placate me, as if that word alone could somehow return even a fraction of that emptiness inside me. He must think himself to be so altruistic....
"Hey... Hanagata... how did you know?"
Again I can't help but laugh, as if the world were ending around me slowly enough to both assure me of my doom and to give me enough time to laugh at the cruel joke that some divine sadist had played by giving us life in the first place. By giving us eyes... "There are a lot of things I know," I tell him. "You can't keep secrets from the blind, you see."
The only thing that surprises me is that this moves him enough to recognize me. In a frenzied moment, he's grabbed my hair in a vice-like grip and pulled my head back to the swirling clouds above.
"Have you been spying on me? Have you?! Huh?!"
I have no idea to answer this and so I just pretend I am looking up. Do you see now, Otaru-kun? Do you see their absence? The empty sockets, painted blood running down the face I've happily molded into a painted smile or when I couldn't manage that, a vapid nothingness just so you wouldn't have to feel guilty? Just so you wouldn't have to use your eyes? It was my mistake and at least I can accept punishment for what I've done.
Apparently he does see it, however, because he becomes enraged then. As he piles curse upon curse on my head, he smashes my face into the railing, all the while screaming accusations that I have spied on him, on her, on them, in order to plot their downfall for my own perverted fantasies.
I wonder vaguely if I should tell him I have no fantasies anymore unless they consist of the reality of splintered wood and shattered ice amid and meat. But somehow I know he knows this already, because the more silent I am, the louder he screams and the harder he thrusts my head into this beam.
I hate to tell him this but he should be careful. Some people within viewing distance might think we are making love.
I find it interesting that marionettes bleed the same as human beings, even if they are meet of a different mettle. In the end, if you cut us open, aren't we, all four of us, made of the same stuff -- cables and wire are just a more durable form of tissue afterall. I should know this even better than those dolls do, having been a doll longer than they have.
Finally, just as things inside me are beginning to swim as much as the world around me, he tires of this new game. With one final threat, he throws me face first into the icy boards and punctuates his last curse with a kick to my side. I jump a little at that, but it's only because of scientific principles. I'm not putting on a show anymore. How can I when my strings have been cut?
I think he spits on me then, it seems the final baroque thing to do. And when I don't get up to play again, he storms off, leaving only the bridge to quake with his energy long after he is gone.
And strangely I can still feel his presence when the darkness finally lifts into the far warmer darkness of the night and the rain-smelling water.
It is raining again, a cold and soothing rain that attempts to bind me to these boards, the boards I myself took for granted on my way too and from each self-important mission of love.
Even I can be cruel, it seems.
I can hear the river's music now, and somehow, in this darkness, I sense that the water is crashing only meters below me... it would be so easy to bind myself to a different thing now... in one movement I could rust within a silent and endlessly dark home without this parody of vision...
I would no longer be reminded, at least, that I once possibly had eyes.
And I admit the thought is tempting and I almost suffer this sea change gladly... but not yet... all things must run their course and I have a few final wires...
Strangely it doesn't hurt when I manage to pull myself to my feet. I know a few gears are broken, a few cables snapped beyond repair but it all seems so incosequential now. Marionettes, Otaru-kun, are truly the least valuable commodity of modern life. They serve their purpose, and perhaps some mad men like that sensei of yours, Soemon Obiichi, cry a litle when they break. But you must understand that they are so beloved because they are readily replacable. Break them and someone either above or below will always make more.
I wonder if I can repair my face so at least I can pretend to be whole again. Can such wax ever be reworked to be in any way pleasing?
It is a troubling thought and one that preoccupies me on my way home and long after I have fallen into a deep and endless sleep where for once I dream not of you but a dark and endless electricity.
What they say is not quite true, Otaru-kun. Marionettes do not dream of electric sheep.
They dream only othe endless current.
~ End Part Two