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Seven Years in Hell
Your head is a dizzy mess as you attempt to push yourself to your feet, but your body is complaining, screaming for your to stop whatever it is that you're doing because it hurts and stings, and everything in between.
No doubt, you want to reach your hands up to your face and just feel your fingers stick, bound by the half-crusted over layer of tissue and broken veins just for the satisfaction of knowing those wounds are very much real and this was very much reality, rather to tell yourself that you've always been wrong about everything.
You very much want to poke at the wounds on the side of your face that is now dried, but pry a little deeper and you'll feel blood, flesh and everything that is alive under there, despite how broken you really felt at the moment, because you are one stubborn man with an even stubborner heart.
You tell yourself no, but your body knows better- every moment that hurts you, every tension that makes you ache, every thought that slips by suspicion and hesitance is a result of your ignorance, of the truth staring you down.
You are very physically restrained with the chains and the cold; hard stone walls but you don't notice those features very often, because closing your eyes makes everything better, you see less, feel less, and dream about everything that could have happened but never did.
You, Malcolm Graves, are one dumb son of a gun.
Your cell is cold and you bet it could freeze Hell over if it wanted to but you don't question why you are there, how you are there, and why you are still there.
Burn wounds, scab wounds, whip lashes and healing scars litter every inch of your body and they've been painted on so many times, under so many scenarios that you no longer feel-or care when a few more are added into the mix because you know the sensation way too well. You've just accepted it, come to terms with the pain and emptiness that fills your body and heart.
Your lips are cut, torn and currently bleeding, or at least you think they're bleeding again because you have scented the metallic taste once more, but you won't raise your hand and object to the pain's presence because you physically can't, and emotionally won't do such a thing.
You don't say anything, because your shadow makes for a bad conversation, but more importantly, whenever you open your mouth, whether it is to hiss out occasionally in pain or to ask the cobblestone walls why, you think of him.
And when you think of him, it brings back a whole other layer of raw sensation like salt on a wrist full of tiny cuts, or a dull nail slowly working out the insides of your gut, or being shot, but in a continuous loop so that you only feel that last moment before the bullet makes contact with the side of your skull and eats you inside out, so intensely and there, that it is only right when it happens again, and again, then once more. So you'll always feel it and know it does exist, and it does hurt you enough.
The cell is too dark and eerie silent, followed up with the feeling of suffocation and just the presence of it sends dread and disgust down your spine but you've grown use to it.
You know every crevasse and cobblestone block by heart. You've pressed your palms against it, and sometimes your whole body, whether for warmth or just trying to hold on and get by until the next sunrise. It doesn't matter, because the wall are currently reflecting you.
It's the only thing that doesn't want to hurt you one way or another.
It doesn't make you bleed, it doesn't tear up your heart. It doesn't remind you too much of the past, it just stands there, its sole purpose to exist and you like it that way; there is no judgment or lies, there is no betrayal or the pain of losing more than a fragment of yourself, but also of a whole other person that you had cared deeply about.
The person who sold you out.
You've been staring intently at the face of a wall for several hours now, and you realize a numbing pain emerging from the pits of your stomach, and with a pang, you remember that you're hungry.
If Death were to knock for you, you'd never go, because there is unfinished business here. You're still stubborn and hanging on, if not for your own pity and self-loath, then it's for you.
Every physical part of you feels dead, taste dead, but your mind is still active and alive, thoughts like a volcano on the edge of overflow.
Only now, are you awakening, finally seeing everything through eyes of broken glass, sparks fly and sober sight.
It just had happened one moment, then washed you over the next in everything that hurts, stings, and makes your heart raw and bleed crimson.
One day, after years you kept believing, giving him the two thousandth second chance that he never deserved, that you have gave out so graciously in the dark, you know he's probably whispering in every other ear right now.
Give him up, you're sick, hearing those lips tell you those twenty-one lies. All those twenty-one lies that you've believed and whispered back.
And you finally realize the goal that has been nagging at you from beginning to finish.
Your mind has cleared and you know what your purpose you bring to this universe.
Release the dove, surrender love.
Kill him, make him pay for everything that he has granted you.
XxX
In the back of your head there's a dull pain and you don't deny there is one, because every time you wake, your hands close around thin air and cold, nothingness.
You read him like a book and decoded him down into so many little layers that you believe you know him better than you know yourself.
You tell yourself that he's the one who offered his heart on a gold platter specifically for you to break, which you did and that the situation has absolutely nothing to do with you.
You tell yourself that his stupidity is what got him thrown into the depths of Hell, that you were only the messenger.
Hours of staring into the mirror, whispering those words to yourself, reassuring that his death was all too essential to the plan does not reassure you of the many sins that you have thrown him into.
You see yourself staring out of the corner of that ridiculous brimmed hat, at your own reflection and you have a sudden impulse to break that mirror, and every ugly truth that it reflects upon you and makes you feel suffocatingly guilty.
Tobias Foxtrot, you are no joker, you're just a wildcard.
Now, you only hide under the mask of Twisted Fate, but you were once human, and had a heart of flesh and blood too.
He should have knew when he stumbled upon a winning hand, but he had followed you so truthfully under the drugs of love that you almost feel sorry for him.
He should have knew you were as unpredictable as you were unresistable; he probably knew, but then, he's probably gave you every second chance that you never ever deserved.
You took everything that you've wanted, at every cause you've dared to wager, which was all. You tell yourself that he's replaceable, just another pawn on the chessboard, that he's just another essential that's going to get what you've only dared to dream about just years back.
Now that you've reached your goals at staggering price, you can't seen anyone you've known even miles from you. It's just you and your shadows of regret and shards of sorrow and pain; the feelings made no less than breaching Hell.
You are in Hell and you just wish for your traitorous body and heart to stop what it's doing, to just cooperate with you, but on every second thought, your mind wanders to him, and you can only imagine what you've done to the man who had loved you so dearly.
Every time you place your palms against the jagged walls of Bilgewater, you can so clearly see, half a million miles away, a wall similar to that you are touching, with the palms of a man pressed against it; cold, bleeding, and still believing and holding on for a person that has already died inside.
Just those degrading thoughts sends shivers down your spine and you have you remind yourself more than twenty-one times that it's not your fault, but his own stupidity.
You both know now, that, that is only an excuse hiding the hideous truth beneath, rotting and overdue, waiting to be dug up, but you are a man of many plans; you were born from the prevarication that you have told all and you won't let those thoughts hold you down.
If winning hard would to be a form of triumph, then slipping, tripping and watching the grief and guilt collide with your tired body shouldn't feel this agonizing, but it does.
Too typical, you should have foreseen the aftermath, but honestly, for once in your life, you didn't plan that far ahead, because you have assumed you have already gained.
You have outdone yourself this time.
Those hours you spend, staring into the corners of those pubs, alone, your hands catching around thin air, or those times when you walk down the dark alleyways and you're afraid, afraid he'll come right back. You tell yourself that he's as good as dead behind those doors of steel and those walls of stone, but those thoughts are only so much of a remedy on the unsettled soul.
Or those times when you wake up in cold sweat, your eyes flickering to every corner of the inky blackness and you have to remind yourself once, twice, three times in a row that he is as good as dead, if not, dead already.
You have to remind yourself that you don't owe him anything, and he should have known the consequences the day you two signed the contract between life and death; binding you two as partners in crime, the full understanding of decease in mind as only another factor.
When he leaves, your heart is begging him not to go, but on the outside, your expression is none less than bored.
You're probably ninety-eight percent lies, but he's seen the good in those two percents, and you just think, how gullible and innocent he is, in comparison to you.
True, both partners have known Death as their neighbor, but when it comes to Love, she never looked him in the eyes, just like how Lady Luck has never spoken with you.
All those nights you and him have spent those times, swindling the living daylights out of the rich has not been forgotten in your sea of thoughts; and you cherish it, and you hope he'll understand what you have done to him has been for your best.
Year after years of being locked away in your own mind, you really question who has come out on top.
You have sung words to him, as natural as taking a breath, but you feel as if those words have stabbed you and somehow, your own heart has sold you out.
Lights and sounds, every face is blurry around you, and you like it that way.
You don't think, you don't question the truth and the mounting dread because you know it's going to happen. As unlikely as it seems, you know one day Malcolm Graves is coming for you and one of you is going to most definitely die.
One twist of fate and realize, Twisted Fate, that you have outfoxed yourself this time.
You tell yourself to open your eyes and see, what has become of you, and how much more ruined you are going to be, because of him, because you loved him.
You have told yourself that all of this was a game, something you can simply break away from, but you have gone too deep; way too deep for you own good.
Then, you have finally realized what this lingering pain that resides in your heart finally is.
You loved him, and you still love him.
Release the dove and surrender to love.
He's going to kill you, and you won't stop him.