1.2 Inscriptions (1) - Alternate 2

This isn't real. This isn't happening.

She isn't in my head anymore.

My mother art.

There is sound, and then, there is the shrouded emptiness.

Hollow, hollow emptiness.

When I wake up, I am out of the box.

When I arise, I am in the box.

When I wake up, I do not belong in the box.

And I am away again.

When I get up, I am in the cabin.

And I am no longer starving.

"The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts," said Mr. Wilde.' I recoil, holding high with pained arms clutching, falling once more. ¹

Her eyes burn into me. Red, heartbroken eyes. I can finish her sentences. "You are speaking of the King in Yellow," I groaned, with a shudder. And I see her hair fall down her shallow cheeks, the flutters of an ichorous material bouncing around in waves and straight lines. ¹

Her spectral shade kneels before me.

"He is a king whom emperors have served." ¹

I understand what God means. My ten nails shimmer. The door behind me breathes with a soft, ruined sigh. I must rebalance the scales. The missive delivered to me, the will to her power, the deliberation of her existing rule. Wind blows upwards, rough against the hull, light and heavy, dusted walls of self-containment. These days, I must make numbers of. A genocide of the highest order, for the sake of art.

The outside world fades into underlying recognition, a subconscious sound already replaced by the beat of the breath expelled.

I understand what God means. My nine, eight, seven- my ten nails shimmer. Roomy beauty breath, light in light and lightless shadow, a bathe of a low flickering glow emanates from twin fireplaces. Flames muted, controlled, they cast spells of a subdued eerie echo and hold hands with unarmed walls. Together, they may form a deceptive light. An old hum wherein voiced remnants of something alive, something that once thrived has been left to decay in slow, steady solitude. An inch at a time, I touch the wall with unnecessary tension, and climb, blinking slow with the leftover strength I may muster grand after gorging myself on her, fatigued with a full belly.

Help me.

 My limited room is hardly a cabin at all. It is more deranged than that. 

Above the farthest hearth hangs a painting. A painting dominating the wall, an oil of a city unlike any I've wished to know. My beauty is a chain, a grand, twisted metropolis. In her arcs, smok-ed buildings rise onto fog-choked skies. Neon glints snake their way through dark veins and electric heartstrings bear a cold world with heavy smog and heat. There is a temperature tempered between the heat of dream and the temper's biting chill of the night, kisses and green lights, the city of all I've ever asked. Before me, she sprawls. My lady labyrinth of rooftops and spires, ettered edges softened by the artist's brush, quiet and brash in their little defiances of the horizon. The sky above her is a radiant canvas of cerulean and alabaster, clouds smeared in hasty strokes that drift even within the frame.

Golden light kisses the edges of the buildings, pooling in recesses where puddles of light begin to slip. Each rooftop is overwhelming in shapes and colors. Greens tarnished by time are reapplied by unnatural lights, reds burnt by countless sunsets are given glory once more, and the pale gold of domes that rise in promises remain their ever-shining luminousities inattainable. In the violet distance, there climbs a colored upward streak, culminating in a citadel that pierces the heavens, its grandeur of awe and oppression– a god's throne, unreachable and all-seeing. The throne God left for her children is scraps, but scraps to us are all we need to feed.

Below the painting, a golden plaque gleams faintly, bearing the inscription: "They are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves."

Near the painted body.

There's a red cape draped over the back of an old chair, worn and weary, frayed at the edges where time itself has taken its mangy little teeth and gnawed at the curves. Dust gathers in thick creases, baseless reminders of battles past, inches of pocket glories that have since crumbled into memory, remnants of care. Upon the dirty vassal's imposing shoulder rests a helmet black as midnight, inscribed, "Etoria Iustitia." The crown spirals upwards in dark tendrils, twisted metal forming two lion-like creatures, little bodies entwined. The helmet exudes. Death. Insistent.

Few feet higher than the chair, a battle-axe gleams. Faintly in the firelight, her ichor glimmers, the edges lined in a soft, spectral red, stained with the essence of blood that no water could ever wash clean. It's immaculate. A real weapon, he speaks of violence, a raw and terrible potential coiled within its polished steel. It's a beast restrained, a weapon that seems to breathe with its own purpose, waiting for a hand to once again claim it. Its leather-wrapped grip shines from use, yet it too has been abandoned, left here to haunt.

I want to touch it. I don't think I can.

There's a lone desk too, lowly high and deity imposing.

There, resting upon its polished surface, is a single book.

It lies in stillness, left deliberately.

Placed there to be found, to be touched.

Its cover is dark, aged, tall. There are black crevices where the light shines in tapestry. The curves of her dust wait patiently in the dim, suffocating warmth of the room.

This, I am meant to touch. And touch I do. I let my fingers graze the cover, feeling each indentation, the aged leather smooth in some parts and gritty in others, bumped beneath my touch like skin worn from too many grasped hands. It feels as if this has been waiting here for me, waiting a long, long time.

'The Premeditated Desire to Die.'

The words curl around my fingers, their inches spreading cold through my veins, a sad, quiet numbness, here to prepare me for the noise I am scared to face. I don't hesitate long. Seconds pass. I open it.

'You selfish monster. You'll destroy everything.'

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

The rest of the book was devoured in minutes.

"In the heart of Haita, the illusions of youth had not been supplanted by those of age and experience." I sat down. Read it. "His thoughts were pure and pleasant, for his life was simple and his soul devoid of ambition. He rose with the sun and went forth to pray at the shrine of Hastur, the god of shepherds, who heard and was pleased." The static in my ears died down as the story continued. Pages and pages, I ate. But, the lines after the story finished were less cohesive.

"So he had lived since he could remember. He could not rightly conceive any other mode of existence. Equity of creation and destruction. Mankind suffers in his quest for growth."

On the next few lines, words became more sparse.

"I'm still waiting for you," was left on one page. "Every society will decay. Every sun will set," on another. "Hand me the sickle, Jonathan," was scribbled in cursive, a diagonal line attributed to two whole pages. "I will see you again at the end of the world. We will reunite, as we always do," was left on the second-to last. And the last page was penned in an altogether royal font, rolling in swirled ink of solid gold making one paragraph, dedicated all to me.

'For Jesse. The xiezhi is a thing of her myth brought to this grotesque, impossible life– a creature born of kindness and just means, a manifestation of her law twisted into true, honest flesh. The left is truth and lie. The right stands good and evil.

You may decide which to pull. -Das Mondlicht'

So much art. God must love me. She even gave me a puzzle.

There were no keyholes or pieces to place around me. Twisted city, captured on canvas. Hares and foxes, dogs and wolves. Doesn't sound like xiezhi, and doesn't have anything to press. Just to be certain, I tap the plaque in multiple areas, pressing down on the words.

Not a thing happens. My head hurts. I feel blood dripping down my nose.

Conference with my God is too blissful.

Cape draped across the back of the old chair. No xiezhi there.

Above it, the helmet– dark, towering. Lions twisted around each side. My heart thuds in euphoria. I can feel the sweat on my palms multiply, puddle, and form reservoirs. I wonder if my God is watching me now. With a nervous swallow, I hover over the left figure, feeling my heart rise.

"Well. . . here goes," I mumble. Letting my fingers rest on the dulled metal, bracing myself for the judged touch. Phalanges press down, metal shifting beneath fingertips with soft groans. It's been waiting ages for this. A shuddering clicks through the helmet, a sound that coils into itself, an agent of gears grinding in every action of the machine. My heartbeat stutters in the low turning, a hidden underlie coming alive, teeth clenching into place. The lever snaps back into position with a tight, decisive click, a lock twisting shut on itself, a sigh that settles into the cabin walls. The faintest whirring hum follows, a ghostly whisper echoing through the room. She is soft and hollow like the inside of a wind-up doll.

Then, music. Gentle and spectral, it announces from nowhere at all. It drifts through the dust motes in the air, weaving itself into wood and spine. A high and delicate disc, a winding tune lilting down sides of dusty petals like something out of a dream, a music box tune that spills notes like tiny microscopic words, a melody slipping through my veins, he washes over me in slow, haunting waves. The song floats, bittersweet and searching, each note trailing behind as though reluctant to leave, and yet it pulls forward, a lonely progression that aches as it moves. It hurts. I wipe the dredged pools of blood from above my lip.

The melody begins like a distant breath. There is a paint bucket's rattle, a yarn string strumming, and a brush stirring against the walls from the depths of a waking dream. Notes drift into the air, light and delicate with different textures and half-joined choruses. There is a fragile resonance in the music box chime– each hand echoing alone in the stillness carries the weight of a thousand more things. The timbres creep in like a slow mist, curling around the edges of silence where each tone lands in the water with certainty, deadened footsteps on frost-covered earth. There's a subtle distortion to it, an eerie falter in the notes. The mechanism itself has aged beyond time. The song loops, and with each repetition, it feels a little heavier, a little darker. The melody remembers something it dare not say aloud. I wonder if it is God speaking to me.

The thick around her lilts, and even the quiet seems to shiver. Soft mechanical clicks punctuate the melody akin to a heartbeat too slow, or a clock winding down– yes, yes, that would be art. An echo of time's relentless march, pulling everything into its slow descent. Oh, but yet amid this sorrow, there's a faint glimmer of hope, a candle flickering in the darkest corner. The tune rises and falls, where the darkness still gleams! A delicate waltz between despair and something close to yearning, as though it reaches for the creator who set it spinning, a lonely plea for purpose, or redemption, or meaning! Yes, my God, I understand you now! Each note feels like it drips with loss yet lingers with the softest hint of grace, something raw and haunting– and in the spaces between– those aching pauses where sound fades back into silence– there's a breath– a breath? Am I even breathing–? a shallow gasp as though the song itself is alive, trapped within its own looping refrain, waiting, endlessly, to be heard, to be freed! Where I stand, I do not move, and yet instilled in me, I cannot catch my breath from the mental feets' dance. My head tries, tires itself to keep up with the notes as they build, something beautiful but unreachable. I feel as if I'm hearing a voice I knew before, only now it's fractured, cut up into tiny musical pieces, and I'm grasping to catch each fragment before it fades. My chest feels tight, each heartbeat fitting into the spaces between the notes.

It ends, abruptly, the melody lingering in the silence like a shadow left behind. But, then follows the shudder. The whole back wall trembles, a low, thunderous groan. Dust swirls and particles cavort, thick in the air where ballgowns and tuxedos combine in dueted pixels, their partners rising in great plumes as mister wall shifts, creaking with the strain of ancient mechanics forced to move by hands that have not commanded them for years. I shield my eyes, the painting sliding up, whisked away by unseen strangers, and where my city gorgeous once rested, the dust now clears just enough for me to see a corridor open, leading into the empty space beyond.

It all falls silent as I stare into the abyss waiting there. I am left with the weight of what's hidden beyond. Herein lies the truth and lie I was waiting for all along.

I step forward into the waiting dark, and it consumes me without hesitation, the cold velveety smoke biting down my shoulders and arms, submerging me as though I've slipped beneath the surface of the sea. The last glow of the cabin fades, and I am alone in the vast silence, thick and unyielding, a suffocating weight that presses in from all sides. I can't tell if I'm moving or if the world propels me forth.

Then, faintly, a sound trickles through the silence 'gain. Delicate, fragile, drifting, soft and haunting God, her notes spiral deeper in a quiet, mournful dance. The repetition tugs that something, that ache at the bleeding corners of my nose. She winds forward, driveling like clockwork rubble, each note a precise, measured step in an aeriant ghostly waltz.

Within her rhythm, a dim light flickers to life on either side of me, no more than a faint glow against the surrounding dark, libero spazio struggling where the dust wishes to take hold. Then another pair, pulsing in time with the music, casting timid halos into the abyss. The lights bloom one by one, stretching forward in a path, glowing fired bellies revealing hints of a room. Gasps of carved wood along the walls, glints of gilded metal dulled by dust, details emerging from the shadows only to vanish again.

God is a showoff. The music changes, deepening, growing bolder beneath the wondrous heels, and the lights respond, sparking to life with sudden urgency. I feel the air shift, and there, at the far end of the room, a low stage looms, uncloaked in the bated glow of illuminated light-faces. Upon it stands rows of tiny figures, barely visible in the wavering glow. Dolls, delicate and still, arranged in perfect symmetry. Their eyes glimmer faintly, empty yet aware, as if they are watching me even now, glassy stares piercing through the darkness. They're frozen in place, poses poised and unnatural to perform something for me. The music dims around my ears, each note quieter than the last, and the dolls with their twisted limbs and hollow eyes, stand sentinel to the song's endless diminuendo, silent witnesses to a power that reaches beyond reason, beyond life itself. Oh, God, and I am trapped in its wake, held by the gaze of a thousand empty eyes.

The art is endless.

The music box winds up again.

Then, with a single, unified motion, they raise their arms, clockwork joints moving with eerie grace, each one standing poised at the ready.

The tune rises, the music box churning out a new refrain, faster, more insistent. My pulse quickens with it, the tension building in the air, a charge that feels so alive that the death of it would bring me grief.

Die Bewegung, das Uhrwerk, sie alle starben. A doll is pushed off the table and shatters into rotating gears and circles. A black dress of wood lies dead on the floor. In the resonance of the body's tiny gears clicking, limbs jerk to life in firm, rigid rhythm. Her companions' heads tilt, eyes snapping open to reveal depths as dark and hollow as the room around. One by one, their arms lift, moving with eerie precision, a silent, chilling choreography that aligns with the song. The tempo swells, each beat striking a heartbeat, loud and omnipresent. The dolls shift, aligning themselves in rigid stances, an army of clockwork figures poised to enact. It is like their fallen companion was never a part of the routine. There is not even a gap where the black-dressed girl was once meant to stand. Their faces remain blank, beings empty of thought, yet, yet. There is a responsibility for their existence they must take. There is coherence in their movements. There is unity that speaks of something beyond their tiny, mechanical bodies. A will that has dragged them from the depths of silence, bringing them up from hell and binding them to the music again. The will of powers, the enactments of my God.

But then, the song stops again.

One of the dolls darts forward, their fleshy, metallic hand moving with deliberate slowness, one tiny, articulated finger pressing down on a silver button that clicks beneath its touch. A sharp, mechanical whirring hums to life, and from the box– cracked and tarnished, with a window worn dull from years unknown– a voice emerges. It is the voice of a girl, her words flat and steady, drenched in the heavy stillness of grief, forced to drain herself of every other color but this hollow gray. Her voice carries out, haunting and fragile, and the air seems to tighten, wrapping around me in a shroud of invisible smoke.

"A Premeditated Desire to Die. Chapter One."

I do not understand why, but I feel as though I have stumbled into something meant to stay locked away. This was meant to be a secret. I. . . wasn't meant to see this, was I? Did my God mean to show me this?

Then, with a creeping rise, the music returns.

Low at first, the delicate notes of the music box interweaving with the voice, but I hear it all. A strange, unnatural harmony that hovers just at the edge of sanity.

I drop to my ass, sitting down on the cold steps. My lungs feel like they're being crushed. But, the concert, I enjoy just the same.

What is happening to me? Please. Please. Stop it.

The melody shifts, blooms into something darker, something laced with an old, crackling decadence. Jazzy undertones slide beneath sorrowful tune, luring me deeper, each note curling around my mind with its tendrils of fog. It reminds me of the sound of another world, a time of endless smoke-filled lounges and dim lights. But I've never known a world like that. And yet, it feels like something I've carried with me, buried beneath my skin, something that's come to life in my dancing room of shadows, the inspiration digging in me the will to power.

I watch as the dolls, their mechanical bodies clicking and turning with unnatural precision, begin to dance. One of them, smaller than the others, draped in a black dress frilled with lace, stands at the center of the stage, her tiny face expressionless, glass eyes wide and staring. A replacement for their dead companion. Where the girl fell before, there is nothing left. No cogs. No dress. No clockwork corpse. Somehow, it's been cleaned up without my notice. The others assemble around the new girl in perfect formation, their limbs rising and falling in practiced synchrony, each step measured exact, as if they've rehearsed this dance many times in the depths of their darkness.

The music bites high and spits lower. I feel it seep into me, mano destra, mano sinistra, heavy as the voice continues, the girl's words spilling out in ink, portamento, sliding down her vocal chords in liquid piles of sound. Her voice paints images behind my eyes,

"The door is rusty and nailed shut. Brown, lightly fired, and stained by the years of decay that eats wood. Insects homes', termites' heaven, and a long metal handle that hasn't been disinfected in a decade. There is nothing else in existence as restricting as the door that is rusty and nailed shut. It is nails, and it is iron oxide. I do not remember the last time it opened, but I know it will open again. I dread that day. I dread that day dearly."

There is a tremor in her words, an agony so complete that I feel it ripple through my entire body, only stopping when it catches in my throat. Her voice is young, but there is nothing young in the weight of it, nothing that belongs to innocence.

"I do not believe I have ever learned to write, and too honestly, I have never learned the words in order to read. It is out of this grand torture that the words progress from small ideas into scriptures and from there, they blossom into undying things, immutable and incomprehensible. They are lost things sealed behind the door, but to me, by my calling they long to be free. It is a torturous dynamic the door and I have. She is my obstacle, but I am simply her resident. I am unsure what else we could be. After all, there is a warmth in being locked away, a warmth that destitutes and resonates and punctures any rebellious artery, a warmth that incites in me the desire to lay down and simply accept my fate, waiting for the next implantation. That is human existence under these gods. I am only an animal waiting for the next drink to be poured down its gullet with no desire to quench the viscous urges all vicious and miserly. That is why our dynamic would never change."

In the words she speaks, the doll in the black dress moves with her, arms rising and falling in delicate, tortured gestures. She is performing the words, embodying the weight of them, her movements jagged grace, pulled and pressed by invisible strings to the rhythm of the spectre in her programming. The other dolls dance around her in a grotesque mimicry of ballet, their feet clicking softly against the stage, their bodies bending and turning in eerie precision, no worries about pinkie toes messing up their syncratic routines. Not an idiosyncracy to be found, not here, not anywhere. A few of them hold instruments, tiny violins and flutes carved from bone-like ivory, and they play along to the music, the song twisting and bending, taking on a new rhythm, something mournful and maddening, driven by the beat of words that are as haunting as they are relentless. I want my thoughts to be. . . art. But, I think I am a sick person. I feel like vomiting after how I react to her. I want to be an artist. Not cruel. The lungs inside of me cannot breathe.

"The days pass on ugly. They are damp, warm, and wet. Now, I was born slick, but it was not until about eight that I became infected with the same illness that caused my birth. The Godly infection. The time of mortal man. There was a time before me, but there will never be a time after. Nothing can be the same, my darling spirit. Nothing will remain unchanged by the longing to be pure. That is an illness that would rot the world if I knew anyone else. That is why I am kept locked away. That is why we cycle in bounces."

"But, it is more time to give me verbiage to my own thoughts. Therefore, I may give the illness once blessed a solemn chance to flower equally in these sickly wounds, in the hopes that I may deliver them liberation."

"These are all what men call falling-leaf thoughts. They are premeditated and planned by the subconscious who lives inside of me, that disastrous little seed who made herself plant. That little seed who grew by the waterings of lashings she wished to be given and the master manipulator inside of my little heart. My baby girl, little love. survivor's guilt. She, my premeditation, is the truest form of me. This little aching heart she belongs to, my, my aching heart. She is living in a shack by the sea, in an ocean of my own creation and a bleeding world waiting to die. We are all hanging in the precipice of her bleeding, bleak crack, and here, we all may begin to breathe in the arms of my subconscious premeditation. On the edgings of that stone sky, there is a light. It shines brightly in the prisms of space, and on that beaten rock, there is a face staring down at me, a face that shines through layers of drywall, stone, and concrete. A face I may see even in the dredges of this cellar. A face that I may call my own, but I fear dearly. This face is God."

Please. Help me. Where am I?

I retch and cough and choke on the fluids running down my chin, what are they? This ichor of hers, this ambrosia of godly fluids, the madness drips! Down my nose, the blood, down my eyes, the tears, down my nails these claws do extend. 

"Creaking the basement door, it havens the decraven and depraved. The little games we play, slipping in the dust of sunlight artificially given, and it is not there."

"Nothing is there."

The girl's voice drones on, each phrase steeped in desolation. There isn't. . . art here. It's all just noise, torn apart and sewn back together. The music pulses around her voice, the dolls sway in perfect time, their bodies bound to the rise and fall of her voice. But, it isn't art. It isn't art at all.

The one in the dress pauses, her tiny face turning towards me as if she sees me, as if she understands that I am watching, the fact that I am drawn in. Her glassy eyes are blank, but there is a strange intensity to her stare, a spark of something trapped within, something that. . . cannot speak but yearns to be heard. Again. My attempt at art feels cruel. I think she knows that. She's judging me for it too. I just want to hear what she has to say.

The girl falls to the ground in misery. The clockwork instruments overwhelm her, the ballet dancers tripping her down as she stumbles and falls, getting up just to be shoved to the floor again.

"Please, Marcille. Keep it together with me. You don't need to do this to yourself."

The doll rises again.

"So, she sighs. She breathes in the dusty smell, tries on for wear the oxide poison, and decorates herself in the sheets of a cracked bed. It is a silent sensation, and she feels alone. Alone, my butterfly dreaming, alone in the halls of her nightmare, and alone. Alone inside her. All alone. Me. I am Marcille. My hands are Marcille's, my eyes are Marcille's, my breath is Marcille's. I am Marcille. But, I am only the conscious. I am not unconscious Marcille. She is more than me. So much more than me, and she is waiting to be seen, waiting to be unkicked and unbeaten by the dynamic of Gods above. I've heard there is an entire world out there. She longs to feel it. But, she is locked away. Locked away by me. Where are my siblings? One was put in charge of me."

"Strange, isn't it? There's a whole world out there. A big, snowy world. A big, empty world waiting to be discovered, to be explored, to be tasted and to taste it all. I have always wondered what it would look like. But, it doesn't exist. I am not worth seeing it. I am not worth it. I am Marcille, but what I hide is inconsistently my own selfhood illuminated in the white snow, blackest shade beneath my skin, something I don't need to share. There is a worth to hiding, and there is a purpose to fleeing too. I deserve to be alone. I don't want to hurt others. I don't want to be hurt. I don't want anything at all. I just want this emptiness. I want to be discarded in my own emotions I've repressed. I want to sink in the depths of my malice and distance, I want to bathe in the little warmth I've made for myself in the dreaded cellar, and I want to die. That is my wish. To die and take unconscious Marcille with me. To take away everything at all. To just let myself burn."

"Please, God. God, let me burn."

She continues, at times her voice growing softer, barely more than a whisper, at others, stronger than steel. She speaks a lot. Most of it, I don't understand.

She calls out to someone- God. Not my God, but a different one.

Begging for release, for some end to the slow erosion of us. Of ourselves.

Her voice trembles, and in that tremor, I feel her desperation claw at me. Does she judge me too? She is trying to pull me into her prison, to make me feel the bars pressing into my own skin. I don't think I want to feel that art.

"The night is here again. My radiating soul hasn't arrived. I am still bathing in darkness. I see her visage through the cracks, the nightlike beauty, the goddess beseeching the stars, the luminary descender! God, almighty God, allow me the privilege to burn! Allow me isolation. Allow me peace. Allow me everything I have taught myself to be. Allow me to rip apart my own skin and desecrate this homeliness into something. . . new. Something unbetoken and unbestowed. Let me speak to you, God. God, God, dearest God. I am Marcille, and I ask to speak with you."

"I see you between the cracks of my cellar. God, I see you."

"Dearest, dearest God."

I remember something, dearest God."

Please.

The music shifts again, gathering strength, rising into a crescendo that fills the room, heating with a dark and twisted energy. The dolls react to it, their dance frantic, their limbs twisting and snapping into new positions, the music itself inputted into them. They bend their tiny forms into shapes. It is beyond cruelty.

They swirl around the doll in the black dress.

"I remember I deserved it, I deserved it then, I deserve it now, I deserve it here and all thereafter. I deserved it forever. I may deserve it into nothingness, deserve it into the next bloom, and I will deserve it until the champion may rain upon me mercy. Dearest God, I deserved it! I deserved it then, and I deserve it now. If I simply tell myself that, it'll all go away. I won't have these dreams anymore, God."

"Please don't let me have another night of these, God. Do I seek it? Is it true, God? Do I deserve this? Please, listen to me, God! God, please. You must hear me. You must. The entire place is silent. You must be able to hear my scratchy voice, to feel my clawing nails, to know that it is me, Marcille, your counterpart speaking to you."

"You are the only thing to hear me, God. But, there is no answer." The music pulses, low and steady for a beat. The tune is tinged with something sad and sharp. It sways. Rotates. Alternates between gentle melancholy and dark again. A kind word littered in the thing. It is a girl– a song. Song. It is a song built from contradictions. Old and broken. But polished, wrapped in the shimmer of cold metal and midnight fog.

"The entire place remains silent. I attempt to fill the void with Claire de Lune. It makes the silence larger. Tonight is the first night I have spent alone in over a month. I spent my entire life alone, but tonight, tonight, I am burning anew. I have done it my entire life and now, now it is difficult. I feel alone like a dog crawling beneath the porch to die. I feel alone like stagnation. I feel like a girl sitting in my room, waiting for my life to get home. I had a great day today. Today, yesterday, all of it in the incessant loop, the inescapable torture, the hanging man! God, look at me, God! Why did you leave that tyrant king in charge of me? No. No. I will try and think of that instead. Maybe that slight kiss of relief will slip me into the light and lift me into dreams like a soft river. I only long to be in the center of that comfort again. I want to sleep on our little mattress, the greed, the gift, and I. I could enjoy that dream forever. This bed is uncomfortable. It is empty and cold, and I have made it to look at, not lie in."

A deep thrum from a bass violin shivers. The bow is steady, relentless. It is followed by the hollow sound of a xylophone, a brittle click-click-click that stirs. Flutes and clarinets layer in, their tones thin and haunting, winding through the melody. Together, they create the eerie, most hypnotic harmony. Their sound rises. Falls again. Armed with a strange grace that feels my mourning and aching to be beautiful.

"What is it I wish for? The angel's happiness, and the animal heart, but selfishly, selfishly, I would like to be happy too. I have spent my life caring for flowers, and never caring for myself. I'm only a child. I have spent nothing. I have spent my days pruning leaves of pretty bushes. I have spent my days suppressing my own wishes, and denying the world I need. I ran away like a coward, and I run even now, because I wish to be in the comfort of what understands me, to feel shifting alongside what only shifts as my complimentary state, a force that I can no longer know fully, and the force of which blinds me, cripples me, and supports me. I have no care for anything else in this world. I feel so alone that somehow, that unease has passed to me, and I know not what to do with it. I know nothing at all."

The dolls' movements shift in time with the music, their feet barely making a sound as they sweep across the stage in their clockwork ballet. They are nimble and seamless, every joint articulating with an almost mechanical precision that should feel stiff, but instead looks strangely natural, almost elegant. Different than before.

The doll in the black dress takes her place at the center again, standing on the shoulders of her brethren, her tiny figure framed by the dim glow, her lace-trimmed skirt brushing the floor in delicate swirls as she holds her shoulders tightly with the constriction of shame and doubt.

"God, if you're truly, truly out there. Listen to me. As recompense for the sin of making me, I ask that you allow me an easy slip in the night. I ask that you ensure I disappear in a way that will hurt no other. But, I can't, God, I can't. It's a horrific cycle I place myself into. I am a victim to my horrible empathy. I cannot allow others to hurt, to labor, and to suffer. Please, God. Let it be me who suffers the brunt of it all. I do not want the world to be in pain, because I am in so very much of it, and I cannot bear to think that the world feels similar to me. I am in pain, selfish and admittedly, pain that is simply the sensation I describe as loneliness, and if dreams do come, I will try my best to protect her. I will protect her because there will be nobody to protect me, and I cannot bear to let anyone else suffer that same fate. But, I am afraid of losing the comfort I have now. I had it hours ago. It is too good, it is too kind, and it is all gone."

"I am terrified of it all being yanked away."