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Someone calls your name as soon as you step through the iron doors.
The women sprints over, a clipboard clutched to her chest, long blonde hair bouncing around her inquisitive green eyes like a waterfall on a cliff. Even without makeup she’s beautiful, dangerously so.
She beams, her friendly visage not fooling you for a second. You have been to this establishment a few times to know that not everything is as it seems; it’s one of the main reasons you always come back after all.
“It’s so great to meet you.” She says, her voice a velvet melody.
You shake her outstretched hand, “You must be Rika.”
“That I am!” She replies, “I hope you’ll be alright with me giving you the tour. Is it alright if I call you by your first name?”
A laugh escapes you, “Of course.”
“Wonderful—oh!” She quickly looks behind her, “We should hurry, the boss wanted to see you before we got started.”
“It’s a wonder you were able to arrive safely, what with all the weather trouble we’ve had these past few months.” The superior of this facility states, her hair swaying in her high ponytail like a pendulum marking the seconds, the hallway echoing with every step forward.
Her voice is formal, a strictness that forces all breath to slow to a calculated rhythm, lest you awaken the predator you are aware she can become.
“It was a struggle, but one not too difficult to overcome.” You explain, quickening your steps as she turns a corner.
“So, it would seem.”
The both of you pass doors and doors with little windows for observation, multiple rooms in a lineup, all locked for security purposes. The people in each ignore your presence, unaware to their surroundings. You are familiar with a few of the faces, memorized down to their reasons for being here.
A young man with ridiculously long white hair sits in the very back corner of his padded cell, a shivering mess.
You continue to stare ahead.
“Anything bothering you?” She asks, not looking at you even when she asks.
You shake your head, a smile playing on your lips, “Not at all.”
The world twists and shatters against his fingers, splinters of reality scratching his skin, laughing.
Rainbows of darkness fly amongst the voices living within his head,
Demanding his attention, his control.
They want surrender, for them to break and scar all those that made him stay.
In his fantasies he is an angel; meant to swim among the clouds, taste sugary sweetness on his tongue, clear blue heavens in his eyes.
His scars are his wings, broken heart fragments his talons.
He drinks the vials containing his apparent salvation.
Only one allows his freedom of confinement; his savior amid beasts.
Her halo flows like a field of evening primroses, eyes gleaming promises.
Her hand is always out to guide him towards the pride of darkness.
Will you not expose redemption?
He sinks in the perils of his ties, his reality tangles like fine linen against his mind.
Deception. The only truth.
There is no doubt to his decisions.
No falsehoods or uncalculated superstitions.
He is the embodiment of numbers, a dictionary of pristine.
White silk soothes him, the humming hallucination of a feline.
His goddess stays with him forever in this bleak fortress, button eyes watching over his every confession.
Cords of freedom taunt him with the release from these walls, trying their hands at wrapping his limbs and tugging him to ink paper.
Their upbeat lies twist his gut. Disgust spews from his lips.
They do not know real love.
Their love is a slave, a temptress best left untouched.
He does not need the contract to the throes of another’s greed.
Will you not show possibilities?
His eyes meet his own in the sparkles of his self-doubt.
His heart screams for another while his mouth loves only himself.
There is no greater depth to him then the mystery of his glamour.
But, for him, the indecision of his past questions the enamor.
When will his true beauty be seen beyond his shining visage?
He sings to ignore the void’s knowledge.
With him he has no one but himself, a circle of mirrors as he yearns for attention, acceptance.
Understanding.
Will you not see the truth beyond the surface?
She jitters and shakes, outside her countenance breaks
Papers, documents, responsibilities fall,
Afar her sanity calls.
She knows the truth, heard it swear,
But behind these walls she stalls.
There are more secrets for her here,
They lure and spur
Her forwards the duties of fur
She yells for freedom, yells her woes
Towards her caffeine of respite, she goes
Will you not brake the chains of responsibility?
He leans side to side, imagination in hand.
The screen says his time has ended, his family has accepted.
They have left their son to stew in his allusions of a cousin, of her over shining care.
They know there is no escaping, once his heart was captured there.
But true, she is no cousin, no ties of blood hold, but new relations do mold.
She is his future, who he wishes to be.
And when she is no longer there, he sits inside the virtual, unaware.
His mind is innocent, his heart is new.
He has never faced such hardship, that is what he tells you.
But within these smiles and lies, there is pain, suspicion,
Born from such trauma that he convinces is his own mission.
Will you not show care?
He captures pictures, for art is what he has learned.
He did not prefer, these talents so admired, but time was what has curved.
It may not make sense to you or me, but then he murmurs, as though free:
love. An abstraction.
Are you not what he needs, so lost in this fiction, that he does not know he feeds?
His eyes are blind to what others think,
his mind full of pinks,
Of blues and greens, of the sky so falling,
But the most important of all, remember,
That light in the sky,
The mother, the warmth
“The faithful mine.”
Will you not promise truth?
She was abused, taunted inside and out,
Her mind was torn ever since she could doubt.
Her efforts were ignored, her explanations denied with everlasting shouts.
She had no escape, no place to call home,
but in the prison her family shone,
a broken, inked dove,
she found what she thinks as “love”.
Among this she saw the light, saw the power of affection.
However, the brighter the light, the darker the absence of protection.
She could not escape, did not want to leave,
This abyss that dwelled made her safe, left her bare.
She now believes she’s a saint, a savor of the tortured.
Her followers are blessed, she has now ascended,
For since she has spoken, awoken the fears,
she now has the admiration of her peers.
Will you not acknowledge darkness?
He does not believe his insanity.
Out of his mind? Untrue, but again, who are you?
He dances and laughs, pranks and disguises, alighting him a star.
But a star is only so well amongst the darkness of night,
in the vast universe so far and wide,
that not even you can see his true side.
But perhaps you might, there is still time, for the future he seeks is the one where all this is left behind.
He tells of the truth, his own perception, of his home world from where he was so soon rejected.
He does not know why, can not speak how, but one day, he says so passionately, he appeared and could not reverse this curse.
For those paths were not his to choose, and those minds were not his to lose.
How, he sometimes pleads, voice so sullen and fearful, how did this come to be, so far away from “me”?
You can not tell, for you do not know, not yet, oh no, for you have not yet awoken.
But do you speak, among those frozen?
Are you not a lie yourself, hidden with their pleas?
For are you not the epitome of misfortune, the goddess of lies
A joker of deception.
Or are you a god, playing to forsake those so open,
Those that once devoted their hearts and souls to your “noble” compassion?
Will you not leave them there?
To rot with redemption
To ignore possibilities
To doubt behind all the surfaces
To be kept bound by responsibilities
To live without care
To miss truth
To be kept within their darkness
To be left there.