Part 1: Memories and Visions

Memories and Visions


Memories and Visions (video)


The dreams came first.

Dark dreams. Bleak. Half-remembered visions of sorrow and shade best left forgotten. Somewhere there is the distant squeal of metal on stone, of a door opening, or something heavy being wheeled slowly into a lightless room.





From far away it seems, there is the smell of harsh chemicals and coppery blood. The icy caress of bare metal. No, those are the senses of someone else, some dim ghost whispers.





How can the void have a voice? How can darkness pour out a vision? But still that cold, lonely horror that grips me is, perhaps, a nightmare of sorts. I don't remember the last time I dreamed, but I suppose this is something like it.

A flicker of purple light, an obelisk with countless names etched into its obsidian surface.





Another flicker, and a hundred skulls resting on shelves turn to face me. Human skulls, animal skulls, the skulls of demons and angels alike, all behind a curtain of mist that blurs my vision. They stare at me a moment. Curious, mocking, and accusing.





Fire. Pain. Agony. The love of a mourning woman. So much PAIN. Enough pain to slay a city, to break a world into endless weeping.





Love.





So soft. A shy girl once, but with a fire in her breast. She abandoned something to come with me, sacrificed everything to see me smile. And a tender caress may have repaid her a thousand times, in her eyes. I tore her from an old, soft life and planted her in this rough and dangerous wandering, but she willingly follows. She was my burden.

But did I love her?





What?





This isn't real!





This isn't REAL!





A hundred accusing fingers, a thousand. TEN thousand! The dream spirals out of control, the visions slipping into a black miasma that binds it all in a valley of tears. Demons, shadows, and slaughter. So much blood. Rivers of blood. Enough to wash the Styx crimson.







I feel my skin peeling, my flesh writhing as scars paint themselves to me. I do the only thing I could do.





I scream.





But even nightmares have their small mercies. The panic and terror melts away into a flash of blue, a tinkling of soft bells. And a woman: a familiar woman, giving me a glance with crystal blue eyes. Her silver hair and azure tresses ripple in an unfelt wind.

Her eyes close, and she turns away from me quietly, those soft chimes fading in the distance as the world grows dark again. Her back is turned to me as she vanishes from sight. That single glance, so full of sorrow, so live with anger, is the only thing she gives me. It's cold as the winter storms and smooth as frosted glass... the only thing she is willing to give.

And it all slips away.







I rest.










*twitch* *twitch*