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Here in the Temple of Life, flowers bloomed. Moths and butterflies flittered about, as the trees like birds chirped in the morning.
From the bed of silk and feathers, slowly lumbering, rose a head behelmeted. Eyes closed, visor darkened, against the light of a new-rose day. Reluctant as always to move, a hand slowly, shakily came up. And brushed strands of cocoon silk out its owner’s face. The stuff was comfy, and soft and gentle. But awful annoying if it got in your face. And it always did.
It’s harder to forget the pain, in the mornings. That takes some effort’ y’know? Maybe agony really was worse, in the mornings. Before the body was broken in, you couldn’t tell it “no, we have to do this, come now” before you really woke up. As oblivion as sleep could sometimes be, it left you unprepared to nosedive right back into life. Even if, as they say, you never hurt in a dream (a lie, he knew) it was still such a scam. Such a brief escape, from the pain life brings.
Ah, but.. Ah, enough of this talk! Best to not spend the morning malingering, better instead to focus on life! Life, even. Proper. Life herself. Who shooooould be resting somewhere, in this shed cocoon and pit of wings. Wipe the sleep and strands from his eyes, and dig through the fluff to find…
There it is! Just the fluff the death-never-dying was looking for! The fluff in the fluffstack, the fluff that lives and breathes. Ooh, she’d fucking hate fluffstack, write that down.
The fluff in the fluffstack… slowly, slowly breathing as Lenny watched. Glad she had slept in, eyes closed like this. Count… just three today? Well, alright, less to keep shut. Glad they were shut, as to not glance him before he finished the ordeal of waking.
When he felt up to a smile, Borbo leaned over, and gently lowered a hand onto the slumbering Life’s shoulder. One eye shot open at once, as the setae beneath the shirt detected those fingers. But the other two, they opened more gently. More a haze left in them. Lenny’s smile brightened; he really was glad, when they got to wake up like this. Calm, quiet, and safe.
“Morniiiiiiiiiiin’, sunshine.” he spoke low and quiet, unsure Lepi even had ears out to hear right now.
“Hmmmmmmmnnnn” the voice hummed, in both their heads. Lepi closed her eyes again, just a moment longer.
“hehe, You really up?” Borbo asks, leaning in closer for no perceptible reason.
Their eyes all scanned this, suspicious. “euuugh… Yes. A moment, is all.”
“Alriiiiiight~” Lenore stayed just as close, watching them. But they managed to dismiss the oddity, to close two eyes at least another minute. And the third just a sliver, and-
Lepi’s hand caught Borbo by the throat. Of course, in the moment of weakness, they would strike; lips approaching just as she lowered her guard. Not even completely too, the eye clearly still open, as now again they all were.
He looked surprised for a second, then embarrassed. Eyes closed even as Lepi’s stared into them. “Ehehehe...”
The interloper so brash, so bold, to think that would be enough. To think she would allow this, with even an ounce of defense, a sliver of one eye on him.
“Pathetic. A worm is a thousand times more cunning than you.” He glowered at the other, whose eyes opened once again. Looking right into Lepi’s, as well two could see three.
“Given what you think about worms, I’ll take that as a compliment. Mind letting go of my neck now? Or is this some kinda- G’eh!” With a shove the harbinger released. And, being free of obstructions, rose.
Her dim eyes shifting back to stereoscopy, assuming her normal posture and gaze; down, at everything, but most of all the man feeling his neck in their bed. “I will make coffee now. You will not try that again, until it is finished. Understand.”
“Whateeeeever you say, honey!” Lepi left the room, not looking back as Lenny too got up, to groom and dress.
The grinder, a set of dry teeth with only molars, let out the coffee as usual. And the plastic, heated in a machine made of itself, dripped over soon after. About ten minutes, Lepidoptera had after that, before it was ready and Lenore had purview to bother him again. Always a bother, that one, but never more than a nuisance. That limit, a solitary positive.
Butterflies flit around in the garden, through the open window. Paneless window, really. The flowers they flocked to, bloomed in the house these days too. There was no need for glass, no need to keep the areas separate. Domo de Vivo, this place was all his house, after all.
Lepi poured two mugs, and made them as both liked. Hers saccharine sweet, like nectar. Lenny’s black, unadorned; but of course for the poison.
A little experiment she’d wanted to try, on their guest. Her captive. Every day, it felt like, these embarrassing stunts. These slights against her, nuisances. Like buzzing voices in their ears. Little acts of defiance, ignorance of the situation’s truth. That Lepi was the captor, and Lenny captive.
It was difficult to tell these tells, that people had. When they lied, and spoke falsely, wore personae like actors in a play. With Lenny Thaddeus, it was even moreso difficult. Every slight, every hesitation and little look her way before he acted. The glances always felt like a tiger ready to pounce. And if Borbo truly was acting toward a pounce, scrutinizing every act for a weakness in her trust? It was Lepi’s job as captor to know. To ascertain.
So with its own spoon, he stirred in poison. And handed the mug, carefully tracked, to Lenny as he returned to the table once again. Just as he did every day, with Lepi handing him his coffee. Not a word was needed any more, the process so perfect.
Just the type of process, to test this contemptuous blight’s awareness. If Lenny refused the poison, on taste or smell or suspicion, Lepi would know just how deeply the scrutiny ran.
And, if he took it? And drank the whole thing? Then Lepi would know, he is had. The captivity forgotten in the mundane, this simply his captive’s life. Without a thought of escape, of keeping himself safe, of smelling cyanide on his morning coffee. Lepi stood by his seat, diagonal to Lenny, watching his every move.
The once-was harbinger relaxed, then took the handle of the mug into his hand. Fingers curling around it, grabbing it tight. Leaning his elbow on the table, leaning forward into it, and- Stopping. Stopping. Arm up, so close to his face. Shooting Lepi, standing beside, a glance and a little smile.
“Hey bud. You starin’ for something?”
“No. I am. simply still awakening. Go on.” Lepi sat down, and grew more eyes to watch all around. Both the butterflies, the diversion; and two still watching Lepi, who shrugged.
And drank.
The liquid passing his lips. Like a hook and line pass those of a fish, like an oath passes those of a doomed, damned prince. Lepi smiled, near as he smiles, and laughed a soft cackle alone in his head.
As Lenny drank the coffee, Lepi drank the sweet taste of victory, such victory over another living soul. He also too drank coffee, and pride in the work of her captivation. She spoke, soliloquous aside only to himself, thinking in her head.
Heh, pathetic. He’s gone so soft, he’ll drink anything, right out of my hands. It’d be funny, if it wasn’t so pitiful. Such a-
“Coffee taste off, to you?”
Lepi’s eyes narrowed to catlike slits. “What. Whyyy do you ask?”
“Oh, nothin’.” Lenny took a drink from the mug. “Just a weird flavor note. Sorta like almonds? It’s good, you’re fine. I’m just wonderin’.”
Life settled back in his chair. He hadn’t realized how much he’d tensed up. Not much, barely perceptible to anyone with but two eyes, or no knowledge of their mannerisms. But Lenny had been with him so long, if he’d paid attention, he’d most certainly notice.
But Lenny finished his coffee, in a final swig, with no hesitation. Of course he would. The fool. Put his trust in vipers, in carnivores. Put his trust in captor’s claw, his care in any hand that fed him, held him, gripped him. How easy it was, to walk up to one who’d sold the world for mumbles that are promises; and hold them in one’s grip. How easy to take, and have, and hold, and own. Possess, encapture so fully; that he’d let you poison his coffee. And he’d drink it.
Lepi leaned on her elbows, thinking about this. Then, after a minute, and finishing her own cup, stood to fill Lenny’s again. Antidote, this time, to avoid any real harm. Lepi’d seen enough, established where she stood. At the peak, so truly deserved.
Lenny glanced over, from behind screens on his screen. “Oh, you don’t have to do that, it’s alright.” This little dance they both did, every time they had a morning like this. Every morning together. Whenever Lepi got their second cups. A three step dance, a strike-feint-strike. With not a thought-spoke word, Lepi continued anyway.
The ritual of it, was useful. To this morning’s plan, and in general. It built some trust, from the visored man. A favor, needless and convenient. But always refused, and refusal refused. Lepi did it to show his captive he cared, in some little way. It made taking that trust so, so much easier.
Lepi sat back down, setting both mugs before their respective owners. But, Lenny reached out, and slid his back toward hers. “Really, you didn’t have to.”
“...What.”
“Yep, I’m good. Nooooo more coffee for me. Thanks, though!”
This wasn’t supposed to be how this would go. No, he was supposed to, Lenny was…
“But… don’t you drink two cups, every day? You always do that. Why aren’t you doing that.”
Borbo leaned back in the chair, old hinges squeaking, then grabbed & shuffled the old newspaper he’d shuffled a hundred times already.
“Eh, don’t feel like it. Doctor Thinkybits says I should, uh how’d they say… break out of some ruts? Add some variety to my life, some pizaaazz~! Says it might help this whole prison feel like less of a prison, hehehe! :)”
Not good. Definitely not good. Lepi opened a few more eyes to watch. “Perhaps… routine would be better, in this instance?”
“Eh, nah. I’m good. Thanks.”
The eyes, saw his diaphragm tighten up, spasm once then tighten. His breath being shortened, by the poison’s effects. Most certainly he’d be feeling something now, starting to feel it in his throat, his stomach. He needed the antidote soon.
“I made it up already. Drink it.” Lepi tried to play cool, look down at his hands. Two eyes still on Lenny.
“It’s just *hic* just black, right? You can mix some sugar in, take it *hic* yourself, if you don’t wanna waste it. It’s just coffee. Mostly plastic.”
You wouldn’t say it’s mostly plastic if you realized what was in it, you damn fool. Just drink… The hiccups were a symptom, too, as it took hold. Just drink, and they’d stop. Don’t drink, and they’d-
That was most certainly a heave, as Lenny dropped the paper down to hold his stomach. His frame bending around the pain he could never say he didn’t feel at all. Always a bit, reflexively.
“Are you alright? ...Drink your coffee, you’ll feel better.”
“Ehehe, I’m fine, just… cramps, maybe. Stomach kind. Something I ate maybe? Something that tasted kinda *cough*… funny?”
Lepi’s face took some blush. Was he… on to them? She drank more of her own coffee, to subconsciously encourage mirroring behavior in Lenore. Even as Lepi watched, and Borbo struggled to keep down his first cup, and breakfast. It’d be better, even, if he hacked it up now. The dosage would be lowered, it would get out of him, but he kept it down. Picked up the thousand-read paper, and kept it-
Down, he went, forward, with a thud. He twisted, body writhed, thin limbs pulled in. A dance of musculoskeleture, a rite of pain and dying common to any animal that winds up on its back. Thin legs like a spider’s he had, pushing against the ground. As Lepi went on knees to his side.
“You are not okay. Just uh..” Lepi grabbed it off the table. “Drink this, and we’ll get the doctor or whatever, to come and-”
Lenny reached a hand up and stroked their face. Traced the little filaments that covered them like bug’s hair. “Yyyou’re cute, honey, knnow tha*COUGH COUGH* eughhh… that?” The hand fell weakly against her body, down into her lap. Held onto her thigh, with the last motion it could make.
Something rose in Lepi, and she reared up over Borbo, shaky-breathed Borbo, eyes half closed. “CALL ME THAT AGAIN AND I’LL- I’ll. Just do what I say. Drink this, and it will stop hurting. Open your mouth.”
She held the hot coffee to his lips, spilling little bits of it on him, that made Borbo wince. Lepi pulled it away, and held it over the floor instead. And Lenny, only opened his mouth to speak. Struggled, in the throes of mortal pain, to speak. “Lmao.”
“Grrrrr shut up. You total dimwit idiot. Fuck you forever.”
“Hehehe~ Loveyou too :)”
Lenny held his eyes open, just to lock them with Lepi’s once again. Death was such a trivial matter, but it was still so fun to see that look in their eyes as they watched. The last words people chose, despite they meant nothing.
“*cough, splutter* you’d better finish yours cup, Lepi. You’ll... gonna need the whole antidote, k?” His lips curled into a smile, foam drool at the corners. It shook. Lepi never read smiles well but this… he wanted to punch this one. Punch. But soon as it was there, it was gone.
The breaths from the body slowed, but never ceased to hitch. Even as the life went out, faded as it’s faded uncounted times before, they went with pain. “Drink your fucking coffee, you imbecile… why couldn’t you just?” Lepi thought, in a way that to him was like wondering aloud. To very nearly no-one; the one in his arms, closer now to dirt, than his current form of life.
Lepi knelt beside the corpse. Soberly overlooking it, tracing her eyes up and down it. Where once it breathed and moved, and now was still.
Borbo told her one night, as a lesson in Borbo’s form of life, how the respawning would work. When deceased by normal means, by blood loss, injury, or.. poison, the body did not just disappear. It could linger, fully lifeless, for a period of time; until either abandoned, or like any dead body, exposure to its environment degraded it. Broke it apart, into its constituent physical elements. Beyond some certain point in this degradation (Lenny thought it was about half, Lepi figured two thirds), the remaining elements would cease to be. Simply pop out of being. And, from somewhere, would return Lenny. In full health, and usual spirits.
Once, Lenny had died. During some misadventure, or melancholous masochistic plight when Lepi looked away, he had died. His blood all spilled on the floor. Lepi had looked at it for hours, then. The crimson blush against the white stone floors. That which made life, that the heart beat to pump, spilled like plastic in a dump. He was obviously familiar with the sight, but… seeing Lenny here, like this. Seemingly fully dead, though she knew he’d come back soon. Something about it. It could have been days she looked, but it was just hours.
The body had not cleared. Had not gone away, had not disappeared. Lepi knew it did when thrown over edges, thrown out of sight; but in his presence, at least, it stayed. On the surface. Stayed. And Lepi had to do something with it.
Obviously, he should just throw it off the edge. Let Borbo be revived, yell-think about what were you thinking. Threaten so he’ll say never do it again, know in her heart that’s a lie. But part of him, a large part of him. A loud part of him. Just… felt compelled to clean him up.
Like any mess, clean him up. Like any creature slain before the visage of Life.
So, that time at least, he did. With a broom he swept the body, into a bed formed of the walls and some older soil. Swept him in, and pushed the blood thick on the floor behind them. Plastic poured on the floor, mop up the rest. And squeeze it into the hole.
The maggots came first, though they were caterpillars. An unusual chance, for species Lepi seldom got to see, to shape. So carefully structured, painted, the wings of Apatura Iris, the Purple Emperor. That feeds on aphid dew, and oak tree sap, and corpseflesh. Maggots and flies, too, were needed while more caterpillars hatched. Lenny was so thin, so little beneath his skin; but bugs are always smaller, and we always so much compared to them. The flesh of one person, was so much to them. A world, to them, just the skin of one.
Early on, just once, Lepi took the helmet off, since now she was allowed. Could not be stopped. Just once, to see the gray hairs tumble out, see the face with her hundred-thousand eyes. Each type of sight, she tried; though this only took so little time. To lock in memory, permanent as that could be. And then replaced the helmet, the visor to where it belonged. The lips below the visor. Eyes apart by sheet plastic. Lepi took the helmet off just twice.
And then their wings unfolded. Hundreds of the flies, their wings imperial purple. Iris, like the flower, like the eye. As they fed their wings opened, and closed, for they knew not fear here. They never all opened at once; except when Peace had come by for something, and Lepi had left him in the next room to go see.
The glint of them. The wings, all open, that covered the corpse of the one she called Borbo. Lenny. Who long-damned angels called Lenore; a name Lepi always hated that others once said. Though could not figure why.
The shine, the flicker, of all those thousand wings. Of butterflies, eating away at his corpse. Molded by her own hands, of the clay of life. The same they now ate away from the bones. By the time Peace paid his visit, the time the cloak, the veil of all these wings unfurled, butterfly wings unfurled around the body of… this one. This one who once again sat as a body before her majesty. By the time they all unfurled, the lips had gone. The eyes, dark, too, behind the mask. One face picked clean, of all its softer flesh, of all its gentle curve and stupid smile and confusing softness. All its charms, o’erthrown. The face alone, and the helmet, lay bare of the wings encircling the body.
The face once there, Lepi looked at again. Down at her knees, dead on the kitchen floor. Had this been where he died before, too? Lepi could not remember. It happened not infrequently. Though normally he had the decency to not… for it to not be…
Lepi stood upright, and paced around the room. A circuit, just one, to get back his bearings. Bring himself out of thoughts, and back into… right. His coffee. Their coffee.
He looked at the half-finished cup, and the one undrunk. They thought about what Lenny had said in his dying words, about the antidote, and- Lepi’s head did feel kinda… fuzzy. Not how it normally was, differently. Maybe he, too, had slipped a poison into her glass, as a morbid prank. And the antidote, to this one. She picked it up, and felt the cup. It was going cold, like the corpse.
Maybe, if she didn’t drink it… maybe Lepi would go cold, too. And when his body was little more than bones and rot, when it all went away like last time… maybe the butterflies wouldn’t fly away. The butterflies that ate him, corpse flies that consumed him, flesh made of flesh that once made him.
Maybe they would stay, a little while longer. And Lenny could see them. Maybe he could see what Lepi saw.
She’d like that.
Lepi poured the untouched cup onto Lenny’s face, while finishing their own. Setting both cups on the table, she grabbed the corpse by the feet; shoving it back & forth a few times to make sure it mopped up any splashes of the coffee; and started dragging it out the door.
Behind her though, near reaching the edge, Lepi heard a noise. A noise that should’ve been impossible, with these ankles in his hands. These shoes against her wrist. These shoes that- moved against her wrists, Gah! Lepi dropped the corpse and turned around.
But it was no corpse now. And the noise, it was a laugh. There were more, and more, and more now. Lenny was rolling on the ground, laughing. Perfectly fine.
Lepi stared, as he calmed down. “Hehehehe, ehehe, ehhhhh… that trick never gets old, y’know that?” He rose, and started to dust himself off, sort out his clothes again. “Iocaine powder? Good choice. Used to take that stuff for fun, ‘til I got immune, nothing hits quite like it. The taste really only shows up in high dose, you really put a horsepill in there, huh?”
Lepi stared.
Lenny looked, figured this was fine, and felt the coffee wetting his shirt. “The mop trick was funny, I like that. Not a household tool I’ve been used as before. Mind if I just, uh…” Lenny loosened his tie, and unbuttoned the shirt at speed, revealing the skin underneath. Lepi watched that skin move, and everything move below it. Saw everything that had been below it, once, in her head again. Ribs that once held cocoons and muscles once eaten by butterflies.
Lenny moved close, tracking the stare. “Sorry for the scare, little angel. You knew I’d be fine, was just playing arOUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuund”
As he spoke and got close, Lepi grabbed his bare shoulders, pulling his frail body quickly towards herself, then shoving it forward after a turn. Chucking the dolt, idiot, stupid fucking idiot, off the cliff just like he’d intended.
Coming back inside, Lenny stood across the room, and shrugged at Life. “Fair. Deserved that. Breakfast?”
Lepi went, without looking, to the stove. Took a pan, and set it onto heat.