Post by Non Compos Mentis on Apr 10, 2015 19:04:23 GMT -5
“-hands off it you fuck!” The call came from floor two of St Jude’s sleeping quarters. The rooms were a reasonable size but normally housed four of the temporary residents, and sometimes those four didn’t cohabitate as well as hoped for. There was still an orange glow on the horizon when I stood up from my desk, still I grabbed my torch and headed for the corridor. I hadn’t had chance to sleep yet, but I doubted I’d be getting much that night.
Just a couple of weeks back and Foley was already poking the bear with a sharp stick, waiting to see if it’s old teeth were oiled and snapping or creaking and dull. Well, he stuck the point in once and I stirred, I met his challenge and walked away, winner winner chicken dinner. Despite that, I knew the tip of that particular spear was going to get sharper by the week and my sleep would be harder and harder to come by.
Walking out onto the landing from my very own room, I saw the light flooding into the darkened aisle to show where the disturbance was coming from. Quickly I hurried along the stained, worn indigo carpet toward the hubbub and watched as two other occupants fled the room to avoid collateral damage. Sharp flying objects, blunt five-fingered flurries, all manner of fluids both bodily and not… all were encountered on a weekly basis and I didn’t blame them for making an escape. The disturbed duo clung to the wall as I turned the corner to see…
“Get your stinkin’ hands off it, nigga!” One of the newcomers on this particular Thursday night clawed at a half-consumed bottle of the cheapest whiskey money could buy. On the other side of the bottle, with an equally tenacious grip, was Godfrey.
“This is a dry house, let go or get the hell out!” Barefoot and dressed in black lounge-pants and a plain red t-shirt, Godfrey somehow ignored the filth from the man’s mouth and kept something of a level head. Neither man would give an inch and the homeless drunk bared his rotten teeth like a mongrel to an especially vindictive postman. Unclipped nails scratched at glass. The stench of hooch, sweat, vomit and grime hung in the air like pestilence waiting to happen. We offered showers, but many vagrants declined the invitation and stuck to their foetid ways.
“Friend, just let go of the bottle and you’ll get it back in the morning if it’s that important to you.” I chimed in from the doorway and watched as the alcoholic’s eyes flitted panicked between the bottle, Godfrey and myself. Did he trust my words? Enough to give up his precious alcohol and put faith in its return?
The two continued their night-time tug-of-war with no sign of abating. In the battle of addiction vs morals there was no clear winner here, as it seemed with life most of the time. Sometimes morals needed a helping hand from good old fashioned blunt force. I stepped forward from the door and, before the dishevelled hobo could react, shoved a scar-mottled hand in his face. Pushing him back with moderate force he instantly let go of the neck of the bottle and Godfrey stumbled backwards with the release. I didn’t hurt the man, apart from a bruising his dignity, and he knew from my size and the look on my face not to push any further. We had what we needed and if he played nice he would get it back soon enough.
“Now be quiet and get some goddamn sleep!” Godfrey hollered from the door, uneasily clutching the bottle at his side. While I told the man that he could collect his treasured possession the next morning, my partner made his way out of the room and spoke to his escaped roommates. Leaving the disgruntled vagrant and his less-than-impressed bunkmates, I met Godfrey in the hall just in time to hear his parting grumble. “Bitch.”
“You want me to take that?” The bottle looked heavy in his hand, heavier on his mind. We all had issues, some permanent and others that only came to us when it was put in our hands. My temporary issues were overzealous, incompetent management, The Black Hand intent to dismantle everyone in their path and being placed in competition with those I’d made tenuous alliances with. The ever-looming shadow of insanity over my shoulder, the prospect of ending up the inverted dark-loony cousin of Dollface, now that was the one issue always there.
“Yeah, I suppose so. Keep it locked up, I don’t reckon he looks the type to take orders easily.” His reflex was a little too quick to be considered natural, as if he’d been wanting to lose the bottle since the moment he’d first touched it. He pushed it into my hand and we walked toward my small single room, a benefit of being a trusted associate of The Jude.
“Oh I know the type, trust me. I got half a mind not to give it back when he comes hollering in the morning.” There was a time when I was that person, some might say I was still that person for disrespecting Foley and choosing to defy the PCW establishment, but now at least I was doing it for the right reasons. Dollface and I stuck it to Foley, the Black Hand and now apparently we were about to stick it to each other. In the middle of thinking about my upcoming match I noticed that Godfrey was staring at me with a squinted look. “What?”
“You know better than to play games with desperate people, Sean. It’d be like taking away his God.” He was right, desperate people do desperate things when you take away what they’re dependent on. You take away their idol, their God, and you take away hope. Whichever way you look at it, a person without hope is a danger to themselves and everything around them.
“Yeah, I suppose I know that.” We kept walking, down the hall and to the end where my room sat. Opening the door, we filed into the room. The walls were still bare even after six months of living there. I’m not a man that carries around trinkets and reminders of his past, I guess that’s understandable knowing how tempestuous that past has been. All there was in the room was a single bed with a creaking metal frame and stained sheets, a flimsy wardrobe and chest-of-drawers combo, an equally shaky desk and a deceptively comfortable wooden chair I bought myself from a charity store in Schenectady.
The desk contained a lockable drawer, a place to hide all the contraband of a hard nights work, the key for which was always taped to the bottom. I went straight to it and opened the drawer, noting that the empty space meant we’d been having a quiet week to that point.
Watching Godfrey as I took hold of the bottleneck, I couldn’t help noticing that his gaze stayed with it. He had bigger issues than my Dollface or Frank Foley, he had a little thing called whiskey running through his mind. “You picked a funny old job for a guy who doesn’t like hanging around booze, you know that?”
For a moment he looked serious, but then a sly smile cracked across his face as the bottle descended into the drawer. The look of relief on his face when the lock turned was not only visible but I felt it in my soul too. “Naw, it ain’t that I don’t like it, it’s that I like it too much. Like I said, you take the bottle away it’s like taking away a God. You can stop praying for years but if you get in-front of an alter long enough… well, sooner or later you’ll get on your knees.”
I made sure the key was stuck back in place thoroughly. Yes, Godfrey was an alcoholic and he knew where the key was to any confiscated liquor, but we’d developed a trust. You might say we were sponsors for each-others fucked up pasts. While he enjoyed placing his faith in the lord high above, though, I preferred to place my faith in my own two hands. “Yeah, well I don’t so much put my faith in Gods anymore.”
Many years ago, decades really, I may have considered there to be a Guardian Angel looking out for me somewhere, but I’d seen too much demented shit over the years to believe anymore. No more Gods fighting my corner, only me and anyone I could convince to join my side. That’s why Foley had put Dollface against me for Trauma, we both picked a side to fight for and now he was punishing us for it.
“Really? So tell me, you taken your pill yet?” I gave Godfrey a look of confusion, a look of ‘the fuck does that have to do with price of tea in China?’ His only reply was a raise of the eyebrows as if to tell me to answer anyway.
Knowing his ‘wise old black man’ routine, clearly there was a point at the end of it and no way to find out unless I answered. “Sure, took it when the lights went out.”
“Show me.” He requested softly, thought it was more an order from my fuck-up sponsor than a real request. I showed him. I grabbed the foil packet my Clozapine pills came in and extended it to him. Every day he checked, sometimes at night and sometimes in the morn, that I’d taken my pill. He knew how many were gone out of any packet and his memory for the number was always impeccable.
“Good, good.” Yesterday there were four pills missing, now there were five. I hadn’t missed a dose in months but still he checked and I was glad for it. It kept me in line, made sure I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It had become an irreplaceable part of my life. “Now you tell me how your devotion to that packet is different to someone praying to a big ol’ white dude in the sky? Or that guy clawin’ at his booze? Everyone’s got their own Gods, Sean, yours is Clozapine… and I reckon you’ve got a few more.”
“Clozapine ain’t my god…” I scoffed. I relied on it for my sanity but I didn’t think it created the earth and all its inhabitants. A tiny yellow pill was no deity. If it was then Kelli Starr might be going to hell for not worshipping at the feet of some kind of medication, her fantasy life had flown that far out of control.
“Yeah it is, every day you take it and every day you live in fear of what happens if you turn away from it. It might as well be a God. And you really should treat that bald-ass boss of yours like one too if you don’t want to be smote.”
The scoff I produced this time sounded more like a snort of laughter. “Foley ain’t a God either, he’s some middle-management schlub who failed upwards.”
“And he controls your fate, he is everything to you and you really should be acting a little more… god fearing.” Fearing? I didn’t fear Foley. I’d faced off with legends, I’d bartered deals and thrown punch at Presidents far more formidable than him. He hid behind the men he’d given power to, The Black Hand, and they were the real issue.
Dollface and me had taken a stand again The Black Hand, hell you might even stay we took a stand against so-called-Gods. Not Showtime, Grimm and Sadistic mind you, but those they represented. The shady overlords of their organisation who pushed around their global-sized chess pieces of hate. We, Kelli and I, put a dent in their plan and yet we remained, un-smote and standing righteous. Now their lackey placed us in a match as punishment? We would do our jobs but at the end of the day we would, hopefully, still be on the same page.
“Foley is a kid with a magnifying glass, trying to burn ants. He’s playing games, pitting me and Dollface against each other, trying to distract me from going after him by putting me in the Icey Invitational… it’s all bullshit.” Bullshit it may have been, but even I couldn’t deny that Foley had that ability to do damage. He held sway in PCW and he could bring pain upon me… but he didn’t have the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ or the ‘Ten Plagues of Egypt’ to make me fear him.
“Frank Foley is as much a God to you as the liquor is to me. I fight it every goddamn day, the longer it’s out of my sight the better and yet if it came back to my life it’d rule it.” The lines of care and passion on Godfrey’s face were all apparent now, even in the semi-dark. He’d been through hell, I knew that well enough, and he wanted to help people avoid their own demons. He knew me better than to bow down at a cross and start praying, but that wasn’t his point.
“If he’s a God then I sure as hell am not running scared. I’m looking him in the eye and taking everything he throws at me. He can throw Dollface at me when we were starting to make a stand against his shit and the Black Hand. He can try to pull all that crap but I’ll come through the other side and beat him and all his challenges.” His point was to get me to accept that I couldn’t fight the whole world, that I had to pick my fights.
Gods didn’t come around often, but corrupt and bungling authorities with power hard-ons? They came around plenty and they were desperate to cling on to their importance by any means necessary. By now it was clear, I wasn’t backing down but I had more than my fair share of experience in this kind of fight. Godfrey knew it, he saw it, and he smiled at a point made if not entirely accepted. “Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t be the God Fearing Human type. Worth trying at least…”
“There isn’t much I fear, and Foley isn’t even on that list. Not Dollface. Not Sadistic, Grimm or Showtime.” I sat not on the bed, which would have been far more welcoming, but on the chair and leant back in tiredness. I didn’t fear Dollface, as excellent a competitor as she was, and in fact I looked forward to competing with her. The Icey Invitational was something I’d sought for my whole career and I knew if I was to win it I would have to earn it. She was a worthy fighter, a worthy winner even, and her technicolour kaleidoscope colour palette and candyfloss k-pop didn’t disguise that to me. She’d be a challenge, and more than that she’d be a good ally to have in the war ahead.
And nor did I fear The Black Hand for all they’d done. I’d beaten all three in a previous life. I’d never been ‘Snap, Crackle and Popped’, I’d never been subjected to a classic Dillinger beat down or Showtime’s over-active ego trips. When they were apart, I had faced them all and it wasn’t The Black Hand and all their members that came out triumphant, it was Non Compos Mentis. So they’d allied themselves now, under a banner of darkness, it meant nothing. Alliances form, cracks sneak in and they crumble.
The Dillingers were hardly the model family, two fucked up hillbilly, Devil’s Rejects-rejects who now took out their frustrations on everyone else when they weren’t beating each other to a pulp. And Mikey? He and Phinehas have a history dating back to the Vikings that makes the Bayeux Tapestry look like a children’s book. They would implode, it was a matter of time and pressure. They were not to be feared, I only needed the right allies. Eira and Dollface made two that I knew I could look to, if only for mutual enemies. Perhaps Gem, though her enigmatic side was even darker than my own. Time would tell.
“What Gods do you fear, Sean?”
Fear is a truly funny thing. It is unique to all of us, and most try to deflect it by saying they’re afraid of heights, or spiders, or clowns. Nobody is truly afraid of clowns. They dislike them, they find them creepy and intimidating when out of context, but fear? No. You can kill a clown, you can step on a spider, you can decide not to climb that ladder.
“…Madness.” I answered after a few moments. The human mind fears most what it cannot comprehend or fight; inevitable darkness, ever-closer death, the loss of one’s self. I’d felt that ebbing away of my soul, the slow dissolving of everything that was ‘me’. It took me to the brink and I’d somehow found a way back. “I don’t want to lose it again, I don’t want to fall down that rabbit-hole again. I don’t want to walk around lost in my own fantasy world like Dollface or Saniti. I lived that life over and over, as happy as they seem I know when reality surfaces they’re going to hit the bottom of that barrel fast. When they do, that fear, it’ll break them.”
“You won’t lose it again, kid. That’s what I’m here for.” Godfrey smiled as his hand rested reassuringly on my shoulder. He somehow found a way to sooth even that darkest thought within me. Me and Dollface would face each other on Trauma, mad or not, and I’d hope that her relationship to Nathan Saniti wouldn’t make her reality snap like a twig before our business with the Black Hand was done. For now though, we’d fight and we’d see if our alliance would survive it. “Now try and get some sleep, I got a feeling it’s gonna be a long night.”
Just a couple of weeks back and Foley was already poking the bear with a sharp stick, waiting to see if it’s old teeth were oiled and snapping or creaking and dull. Well, he stuck the point in once and I stirred, I met his challenge and walked away, winner winner chicken dinner. Despite that, I knew the tip of that particular spear was going to get sharper by the week and my sleep would be harder and harder to come by.
Walking out onto the landing from my very own room, I saw the light flooding into the darkened aisle to show where the disturbance was coming from. Quickly I hurried along the stained, worn indigo carpet toward the hubbub and watched as two other occupants fled the room to avoid collateral damage. Sharp flying objects, blunt five-fingered flurries, all manner of fluids both bodily and not… all were encountered on a weekly basis and I didn’t blame them for making an escape. The disturbed duo clung to the wall as I turned the corner to see…
“Get your stinkin’ hands off it, nigga!” One of the newcomers on this particular Thursday night clawed at a half-consumed bottle of the cheapest whiskey money could buy. On the other side of the bottle, with an equally tenacious grip, was Godfrey.
“This is a dry house, let go or get the hell out!” Barefoot and dressed in black lounge-pants and a plain red t-shirt, Godfrey somehow ignored the filth from the man’s mouth and kept something of a level head. Neither man would give an inch and the homeless drunk bared his rotten teeth like a mongrel to an especially vindictive postman. Unclipped nails scratched at glass. The stench of hooch, sweat, vomit and grime hung in the air like pestilence waiting to happen. We offered showers, but many vagrants declined the invitation and stuck to their foetid ways.
“Friend, just let go of the bottle and you’ll get it back in the morning if it’s that important to you.” I chimed in from the doorway and watched as the alcoholic’s eyes flitted panicked between the bottle, Godfrey and myself. Did he trust my words? Enough to give up his precious alcohol and put faith in its return?
The two continued their night-time tug-of-war with no sign of abating. In the battle of addiction vs morals there was no clear winner here, as it seemed with life most of the time. Sometimes morals needed a helping hand from good old fashioned blunt force. I stepped forward from the door and, before the dishevelled hobo could react, shoved a scar-mottled hand in his face. Pushing him back with moderate force he instantly let go of the neck of the bottle and Godfrey stumbled backwards with the release. I didn’t hurt the man, apart from a bruising his dignity, and he knew from my size and the look on my face not to push any further. We had what we needed and if he played nice he would get it back soon enough.
“Now be quiet and get some goddamn sleep!” Godfrey hollered from the door, uneasily clutching the bottle at his side. While I told the man that he could collect his treasured possession the next morning, my partner made his way out of the room and spoke to his escaped roommates. Leaving the disgruntled vagrant and his less-than-impressed bunkmates, I met Godfrey in the hall just in time to hear his parting grumble. “Bitch.”
“You want me to take that?” The bottle looked heavy in his hand, heavier on his mind. We all had issues, some permanent and others that only came to us when it was put in our hands. My temporary issues were overzealous, incompetent management, The Black Hand intent to dismantle everyone in their path and being placed in competition with those I’d made tenuous alliances with. The ever-looming shadow of insanity over my shoulder, the prospect of ending up the inverted dark-loony cousin of Dollface, now that was the one issue always there.
“Yeah, I suppose so. Keep it locked up, I don’t reckon he looks the type to take orders easily.” His reflex was a little too quick to be considered natural, as if he’d been wanting to lose the bottle since the moment he’d first touched it. He pushed it into my hand and we walked toward my small single room, a benefit of being a trusted associate of The Jude.
“Oh I know the type, trust me. I got half a mind not to give it back when he comes hollering in the morning.” There was a time when I was that person, some might say I was still that person for disrespecting Foley and choosing to defy the PCW establishment, but now at least I was doing it for the right reasons. Dollface and I stuck it to Foley, the Black Hand and now apparently we were about to stick it to each other. In the middle of thinking about my upcoming match I noticed that Godfrey was staring at me with a squinted look. “What?”
“You know better than to play games with desperate people, Sean. It’d be like taking away his God.” He was right, desperate people do desperate things when you take away what they’re dependent on. You take away their idol, their God, and you take away hope. Whichever way you look at it, a person without hope is a danger to themselves and everything around them.
“Yeah, I suppose I know that.” We kept walking, down the hall and to the end where my room sat. Opening the door, we filed into the room. The walls were still bare even after six months of living there. I’m not a man that carries around trinkets and reminders of his past, I guess that’s understandable knowing how tempestuous that past has been. All there was in the room was a single bed with a creaking metal frame and stained sheets, a flimsy wardrobe and chest-of-drawers combo, an equally shaky desk and a deceptively comfortable wooden chair I bought myself from a charity store in Schenectady.
The desk contained a lockable drawer, a place to hide all the contraband of a hard nights work, the key for which was always taped to the bottom. I went straight to it and opened the drawer, noting that the empty space meant we’d been having a quiet week to that point.
Watching Godfrey as I took hold of the bottleneck, I couldn’t help noticing that his gaze stayed with it. He had bigger issues than my Dollface or Frank Foley, he had a little thing called whiskey running through his mind. “You picked a funny old job for a guy who doesn’t like hanging around booze, you know that?”
For a moment he looked serious, but then a sly smile cracked across his face as the bottle descended into the drawer. The look of relief on his face when the lock turned was not only visible but I felt it in my soul too. “Naw, it ain’t that I don’t like it, it’s that I like it too much. Like I said, you take the bottle away it’s like taking away a God. You can stop praying for years but if you get in-front of an alter long enough… well, sooner or later you’ll get on your knees.”
I made sure the key was stuck back in place thoroughly. Yes, Godfrey was an alcoholic and he knew where the key was to any confiscated liquor, but we’d developed a trust. You might say we were sponsors for each-others fucked up pasts. While he enjoyed placing his faith in the lord high above, though, I preferred to place my faith in my own two hands. “Yeah, well I don’t so much put my faith in Gods anymore.”
Many years ago, decades really, I may have considered there to be a Guardian Angel looking out for me somewhere, but I’d seen too much demented shit over the years to believe anymore. No more Gods fighting my corner, only me and anyone I could convince to join my side. That’s why Foley had put Dollface against me for Trauma, we both picked a side to fight for and now he was punishing us for it.
“Really? So tell me, you taken your pill yet?” I gave Godfrey a look of confusion, a look of ‘the fuck does that have to do with price of tea in China?’ His only reply was a raise of the eyebrows as if to tell me to answer anyway.
Knowing his ‘wise old black man’ routine, clearly there was a point at the end of it and no way to find out unless I answered. “Sure, took it when the lights went out.”
“Show me.” He requested softly, thought it was more an order from my fuck-up sponsor than a real request. I showed him. I grabbed the foil packet my Clozapine pills came in and extended it to him. Every day he checked, sometimes at night and sometimes in the morn, that I’d taken my pill. He knew how many were gone out of any packet and his memory for the number was always impeccable.
“Good, good.” Yesterday there were four pills missing, now there were five. I hadn’t missed a dose in months but still he checked and I was glad for it. It kept me in line, made sure I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It had become an irreplaceable part of my life. “Now you tell me how your devotion to that packet is different to someone praying to a big ol’ white dude in the sky? Or that guy clawin’ at his booze? Everyone’s got their own Gods, Sean, yours is Clozapine… and I reckon you’ve got a few more.”
“Clozapine ain’t my god…” I scoffed. I relied on it for my sanity but I didn’t think it created the earth and all its inhabitants. A tiny yellow pill was no deity. If it was then Kelli Starr might be going to hell for not worshipping at the feet of some kind of medication, her fantasy life had flown that far out of control.
“Yeah it is, every day you take it and every day you live in fear of what happens if you turn away from it. It might as well be a God. And you really should treat that bald-ass boss of yours like one too if you don’t want to be smote.”
The scoff I produced this time sounded more like a snort of laughter. “Foley ain’t a God either, he’s some middle-management schlub who failed upwards.”
“And he controls your fate, he is everything to you and you really should be acting a little more… god fearing.” Fearing? I didn’t fear Foley. I’d faced off with legends, I’d bartered deals and thrown punch at Presidents far more formidable than him. He hid behind the men he’d given power to, The Black Hand, and they were the real issue.
Dollface and me had taken a stand again The Black Hand, hell you might even stay we took a stand against so-called-Gods. Not Showtime, Grimm and Sadistic mind you, but those they represented. The shady overlords of their organisation who pushed around their global-sized chess pieces of hate. We, Kelli and I, put a dent in their plan and yet we remained, un-smote and standing righteous. Now their lackey placed us in a match as punishment? We would do our jobs but at the end of the day we would, hopefully, still be on the same page.
“Foley is a kid with a magnifying glass, trying to burn ants. He’s playing games, pitting me and Dollface against each other, trying to distract me from going after him by putting me in the Icey Invitational… it’s all bullshit.” Bullshit it may have been, but even I couldn’t deny that Foley had that ability to do damage. He held sway in PCW and he could bring pain upon me… but he didn’t have the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ or the ‘Ten Plagues of Egypt’ to make me fear him.
“Frank Foley is as much a God to you as the liquor is to me. I fight it every goddamn day, the longer it’s out of my sight the better and yet if it came back to my life it’d rule it.” The lines of care and passion on Godfrey’s face were all apparent now, even in the semi-dark. He’d been through hell, I knew that well enough, and he wanted to help people avoid their own demons. He knew me better than to bow down at a cross and start praying, but that wasn’t his point.
“If he’s a God then I sure as hell am not running scared. I’m looking him in the eye and taking everything he throws at me. He can throw Dollface at me when we were starting to make a stand against his shit and the Black Hand. He can try to pull all that crap but I’ll come through the other side and beat him and all his challenges.” His point was to get me to accept that I couldn’t fight the whole world, that I had to pick my fights.
Gods didn’t come around often, but corrupt and bungling authorities with power hard-ons? They came around plenty and they were desperate to cling on to their importance by any means necessary. By now it was clear, I wasn’t backing down but I had more than my fair share of experience in this kind of fight. Godfrey knew it, he saw it, and he smiled at a point made if not entirely accepted. “Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t be the God Fearing Human type. Worth trying at least…”
“There isn’t much I fear, and Foley isn’t even on that list. Not Dollface. Not Sadistic, Grimm or Showtime.” I sat not on the bed, which would have been far more welcoming, but on the chair and leant back in tiredness. I didn’t fear Dollface, as excellent a competitor as she was, and in fact I looked forward to competing with her. The Icey Invitational was something I’d sought for my whole career and I knew if I was to win it I would have to earn it. She was a worthy fighter, a worthy winner even, and her technicolour kaleidoscope colour palette and candyfloss k-pop didn’t disguise that to me. She’d be a challenge, and more than that she’d be a good ally to have in the war ahead.
And nor did I fear The Black Hand for all they’d done. I’d beaten all three in a previous life. I’d never been ‘Snap, Crackle and Popped’, I’d never been subjected to a classic Dillinger beat down or Showtime’s over-active ego trips. When they were apart, I had faced them all and it wasn’t The Black Hand and all their members that came out triumphant, it was Non Compos Mentis. So they’d allied themselves now, under a banner of darkness, it meant nothing. Alliances form, cracks sneak in and they crumble.
The Dillingers were hardly the model family, two fucked up hillbilly, Devil’s Rejects-rejects who now took out their frustrations on everyone else when they weren’t beating each other to a pulp. And Mikey? He and Phinehas have a history dating back to the Vikings that makes the Bayeux Tapestry look like a children’s book. They would implode, it was a matter of time and pressure. They were not to be feared, I only needed the right allies. Eira and Dollface made two that I knew I could look to, if only for mutual enemies. Perhaps Gem, though her enigmatic side was even darker than my own. Time would tell.
“What Gods do you fear, Sean?”
Fear is a truly funny thing. It is unique to all of us, and most try to deflect it by saying they’re afraid of heights, or spiders, or clowns. Nobody is truly afraid of clowns. They dislike them, they find them creepy and intimidating when out of context, but fear? No. You can kill a clown, you can step on a spider, you can decide not to climb that ladder.
“…Madness.” I answered after a few moments. The human mind fears most what it cannot comprehend or fight; inevitable darkness, ever-closer death, the loss of one’s self. I’d felt that ebbing away of my soul, the slow dissolving of everything that was ‘me’. It took me to the brink and I’d somehow found a way back. “I don’t want to lose it again, I don’t want to fall down that rabbit-hole again. I don’t want to walk around lost in my own fantasy world like Dollface or Saniti. I lived that life over and over, as happy as they seem I know when reality surfaces they’re going to hit the bottom of that barrel fast. When they do, that fear, it’ll break them.”
“You won’t lose it again, kid. That’s what I’m here for.” Godfrey smiled as his hand rested reassuringly on my shoulder. He somehow found a way to sooth even that darkest thought within me. Me and Dollface would face each other on Trauma, mad or not, and I’d hope that her relationship to Nathan Saniti wouldn’t make her reality snap like a twig before our business with the Black Hand was done. For now though, we’d fight and we’d see if our alliance would survive it. “Now try and get some sleep, I got a feeling it’s gonna be a long night.”
