chapter 5

The pain

All he can see is the pain etched out before him

He cries out but hears only silence

he watches the world with eyes tightly closed

he hears the voices that do not speak

They whisper to him of things he cannot understand,

of things he will not understand

“Wait one moment.” The darkangel turned from his drawings and strode towards an overfilled closet, pulling out an assortment of clothing and obscure items whose purposes the prisoner could only guess. Finally, he lifted a long over-coat, shook out a layer of dust and handed her the garment. She felt the worn cloth in her hands and looked up at him in confusion.

Her nose twitched. “What’s this supposed to be?” She turned the coat over and traced the back’s silver insignia—an intricate coil of interweaving and overlapping thorns, crowned in the center with a crimson flower’s bud.

“It’s a gift, for you.” The darkangel came and sat down beside her, climbing over a stack of large multi-lingual dictionaries. Despite the gift, the prisoner could not help but feel a small sense of foreboding.

“But, I don’t understand….” She held up the jacket in front of her once more, noting the ludicrous array of straps and buckles lining the sleeves, then looked towards him in confusion before placing the gift on the floor.

“Humans generally do not; you don’t have to understand it. In fact, it would be better if you did not—I would prefer if you did not.” He clasped his black gloved hands together and stared at the floor, obviously in deep thought.

“What are you talking about?” She fixed the darkangel with an inquiring glare, demanding an answer, but all he did was turn away from her with a small twitch of his lips and jump off the stack of books in a single leap. Her next question came quickly, with a shake of her head: “Are you just going to lie to me again and keep me in the dark like you always do?” Clambering off her seat of books, she ran after the retreating vampyre.

He stopped and turned to watch her pursuit and a moment’s silence waited. “No,” he began, his eyes following a mark on the ceiling, “it is I who am kept in the never-ending darkness. Not you. Never you.”

He turned and walked from the room, retreating to the dark from which he claimed to deliver her.