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3 ghostly figures appear in a half rundown city not knowing who they are or why they exist |
| [Introduction]
Curslings Three ghostly figures appear in a half run-down city not knowing who they are or why they exist. They live among the people invisible and without purpose. The only touch they know are each others. Each are aware of something sinisterly dark within them but they are unable to uncover the truths of it. That was until they heard the call. With no will to refuse it they had to respond... |
The old abandoned skyscraper was his permanent living quarters and had been so since the beginning. It's immaculate architecture was the best in the city, Sky had read, and was also the same opinion of the people. His interest in the place ran a little deeper though. The people of the city gazed up at its magnificence daily with a look of sad wonder of its desertion, whereas he gazed out its windows as its prisoner. It's mysterious gravitational pull wouldn't allow him to move past the city. It had a dark hold over him like an invisible umbilical cord fastened to his body. Sky was not its only detainee. There were two others like him in his position. One thing he knew for sure, they weren't human. The closest word to describe them was ghost. Sky sometimes wondered if they were echoes of their former selves, but nothing was certain. It was coming close to a year now of not knowing what his real name was or how he came to be here with his familiars. There was also the peculiar energy they each emit and every energy was different. Where there would normally have been outer walls, the entire top floor was one big window. The night was still but stormy. Sheet lightening filled the sky. It flashed high above them like a broken light, giving him plenty of radiance to see passed the shadows inside. Walking up the dark passage, Sky saw out at the city where colored lights littered the ground. The window acted as a mirror, reflecting the inside of the passage without him in it. It was strange looking at a reflective surface feeling as solid as the floor but not be able to see the replication. None of them knew their own face, but they were able to see each others. They'd described his dark brown hair as dreadlocked, thin but sleek. It was long enough to brush over his brow, ears and back of the neck. His eyes a pale grey-blue. There was a scar from his left eyelid and finishing over the eyebrow, causing a thin hairless line through it. Not for the first time, he was patrolling the floors with no destination in particular. Sleep was only for the living, but every night he felt the tired souls below. The day he arrive with the others was the hardest. His mind and body confused the cities tiredness as his. The more he expected to sleep, the worse it was. As soon as he accepted he'd be awake for the rest of his eternal years, the insomnia ebbed away. There was no off switch, only on. Coming to the end of the passage, Sky felt he was moving closer to one of his familiars energy. The energy had an empty feel to it, almost like still water. Describing it was different to feeling it. It was profound and dark, and recently continued to darken with every passing day. He followed it around a bend and was unsurprised to see Arcturo a little way ahead, staring down at the lights. Sky scanned his exterior, checking for differences in his appearance. Naturally, nothing had changed. Nothing changed with any of them. Not a new wrinkle or change of clothes. Arcturo looked the appearance of a twenty two year old; Sky a little older than that. Whether that was true or not was a different matter. He wore neutral colours, dressed in boots, black pants, a shirt and jacket. Odd bits of his light brown hair were matted with what might've been sweat, some tendrils forever stuck over his brow and temples. His eyes were a light shade of grey, and the skin around his eye sockets were a darker brown than the rest of him. Sky had no intention to stop and talk to him, though he did wonder where he wandered outside the building for days. He saw less and less of him lately. Sky passed by him. "Oi..." He was almost out of ear shot when Arcturo spoke. Sky stopped, turned to listen. Now that he was looking his way, he saw Arcturo smiling although there was a slight cringe to it. "What is it?" he asked firmly when the silence began to drag out. Arcturo leaned his arm horizontally against the glass, rested his forehead against it and slammed his other fist on the glass. It cracked under the pressure to the size of a plate, though his hand came away uninjured. Sky didn't flinch but wore caution. Months had taught him to wear it when he got like this, though he wasn't always intense. They shared local stories; things they'd seen on the street, heard in an inn, exchanged theories on what they were... "I refuse." Unable to comprehend, Sky narrowed his eyes. "Refuse what?" Arcturo laughed, low and strained, and the look on his face looked almost sad. "That's all you need to know." He pushed himself off the glass and walked to him. Sky never took his eyes off him, even as Arcturo punched him on the arm and kept walking. Sky didn't linger on his words. Arcturo often said things that only made sense to himself. |
| In his dream, Arcturo leapt out the window and unfolded his wings, catching the updraft and soared from the skyscraper into the golden glow of dusk. In his dream his wings were real and made of dark blue feathers, they had weight to them which felt peculiar. His body was almost weightless, as a result of his meager existence, his body had been stripped down to almost the barest essence of his soul. He almost didn't exist in this world and so his flight was possible, although the flight was surreal it felt right, if one should be so cursed, there must be some balancing factor. Strip away the self, become an echo, a ghost, weightless, at least you can fly. It made sense in his dream, as it often does. His eyes took in the golden hue cast over the city from the setting sun, giving the dead city the illusion of beauty, of life. He circled the skies in great sweeps feeling no need to leave it, reflecting on the irony of beholding life when he had nothing. He could appreciate only what he observed, but never be observed himself. He could watch and acknowledge but never be acknowledged. He didn't wake from the dream when he began to plummet. He dropped like a weight, pulled to the earth at breakneck speed. Some say that if you die in your dream you die in real life. He had never found this to be the case. He was plagued with dreams, nightmares in which he died over and over again, often he would simply wake up in a fret or continue onto another nightmare. Although it was possible he was just an anomaly and regular people died in real life after dying in their dreams. He could never really ask anyone, they simply wouldn't hear him. His two familiars weren't particularly chatty either, which suited him just fine. It wasn't the dying part that had him worried, however, instead what he concerned himself with was the reason why he was dropping at all when he was nothing, he suddenly felt like he had substance, something pulling him to the world below him. He felt something, a twinge of familiarity. And then it dawned on him, he felt like he was a normal person, no longer just an echo, but his body was whole again and he was dropping like any normal person below him would if they were in the sky. For a moment he could see his own hands, his own body. He shut his eyes the moment before he hit the ground and smiled. Arcturo woke with a start, his heart pounding in his chest and his eyes flew open. He took a moment to orient himself, feeling the dream fade quickly into his subconscious. He checked the old alarm clock, the one he had seen on the bedside table for at least the past hundred years and never moved from that spot in all that time. He himself never changed, as far as he knew. He had a moment of victory, he'd gotten in at least a good hour of sleep that time, it was almost a record. It was torture for him and his familiars to try and get through the nightmares but he never gave up, it was his moment of small victory, fighting through his circumstances. He was sure the others didn't try anymore, it was truly a mindfuck when you woke up feeling worse than before the sleep, especially because they didn't need it and it didn't actually feel like sleep if you could even get to that part, but it didn't stop him. There was nothing he could remember about the time before he had lived in the skyscraper, but as he walked the empty halls, trailing one hand along the cold grey concrete walls and the other along the floor to ceiling windows looking over the lights of the living city below, he thought about enduring another day and how he might try to end it again today. The sun was beginning to rise and the black sky was becoming an inky blue. He had been alone in this desolate tower for exactly one hundred years and zero days. It was an anniversary slash birthday of sorts, one not worth celebrating. The other guy that lived in the skyscraper with him appeared some time in the 80th year much to Arcturo's amazement, and Sky was the most recent addition to the skyscraper. They had moments to share words with each other, a relief to have someone else know you existed, but it did little to ease the burden in the long term. As far as the other two knew, he had been there for less than a few decades but he could never find the words to tell them he had existed unchanging for a century, and that it seemed they had a long and infinite imprisonment ahead of them. He didn't want to tell them that he had spent every day for a hundred years seeking answers and it was a torturous and frustrating search that yielded absolutely nothing. With the appearance of the others he had been hopeful that they had answers, things to tell him but they were just as blank as he was. Often he simply presumed he was dead and this was his afterlife. Sky often spoke of the energy he could feel coming from them but Arcturo couldn't feel it unless he concentrated, and even then it was faint. He had the feeling they were often careful around him sometimes, they seemed to go still until his moment of intensity was over. A hundred years of nothing with no one to watch you tended to make one seem a little insane. He had stopped in front of the window staring through it, trying to see his reflection. A hundred years with no one to stare back at him, a faceless void where he should be, where he knew he was. It angered him beyond belief, and it was that feeling alone that made him feel like he was alive. He pressed his forehead to the glass. Obviously he had seen his eyes before, in some past life, otherwise how would he know that it wasn't there? He felt a ripple as Sky walked past, but he was in his own world, wondering only faintly if Sky really existed and if it even mattered. "I refuse," he told Sky. Clearly Sky knew nothing about what he meant. To be nothing, he thought, to continue on like this, to spend another one hundred years this way, to give up. But he didn't elaborate. He walked away and punched him on the arm to let him know he was alright and then continued down the hallway. It wasn't over, he would spend another day in the city and see what he could find. Arcturo refused to give up on the answers, he wouldn't allow the other two to live centuries this way either. Nobody deserved this. He opened the glass doors onto the balcony and the wind streamed through violently as he shut it. With a hop he got onto the ledge and crouched on the side looking down on the city far below. He reached inside to his inner store of energy and pushed it outwards, launching off the side of the building as wings made of light and energy reached out from his back, and he soared over the city just as the sun broke the horizon. |
By 2:30am, he'd walked less than half of the building. Whenever he was here it was almost an obsession. Sky hated sitting around doing nothing. This kept him productive enough to ward off insanity (although Nora would've disagreed), and make use of his time. It was at that time that Sky decided he was over exploring and decided to follow Nora's energy. Although Nora was technically a girls name, that is what he had called himself. They'd named themselves, and that name was apparently what came to his mind first. It was something that wouldn't make a joke in their world. Nora's energy was the lesser of evils in this place; his energy vibrated neutral feelings. Arcturo's was darkly empty. And his own? It was hard not to read to deeply into such things when it was all they had and might've been the only clue to their messed up existence. Sky's energy was fear. Nora was two levels up. In no hurry, Sky made his way to the stairway that would connect him with that floor. He stopped at the door and stared down at the silver handle. Just as a human was able, Sky could touch any object as long as it wasn't living. It was the case with all of them. He held it in his hand and tried to feel something other than the object being solid. If it was cold, he couldn't feel it. Sky was completely oblivious to the scheme that was about to unfold. He used to think he wasn't afraid of anything. Death? Most likely that was an invalid choice. Loneliness? He wasn't lonely. Being alone didn't bother him but Arcturo and Nora had made life, as it were, brighter. When they laughed, Nora laughed the loudest and it only made Arcturo and him laugh more. Sky was about to discover what he was afraid of. Above him, Nora's energy was fading like water down a drain. Sky sharply turned to look up at the ceiling where Nora would've been positioned, still two floors up. Without another moments hesitation, he burst through the door and took the steps three at a time. His trench coat felt heavier than it really was. A sinister feeling seemed to press against his back, weighed down with the pressure of reaching him. Thoughts rushed through his head. His strongest was to run faster before his energy flat-lined. There was no reason he could put together that would cause this but he was surely close to finding out. Sky felt Nora slowly heading in the directing of the door that he desperately wanted to open. Then Nora stopped. Sky reached the landing, hand already outstretched to turn the handle and flung it open, the door slamming against the wall. Nora's energy died before the door had completely open. Sky's eyes searched the hall urgently, breathing harder more because of the effort of getting there than actual energy used; that and he didn't really need to breath but it was the instinctual thing to do. Cautiously, he walked to the spot he last felt him. Sky didn't walk for long, it was plainly written on the polished concrete floor. He backed away from the area toward the wall and sat down. Sky ran a hand over his face, then back over his hair. He was too late. Everything about Nora was gone, all of it erase except for the mark on the floor where he last was. The clock had stopped for him. With new strength, he cursed angrily at himself, "Fuck!" Sky got up, energy bursting at the seems of his soul. He opened the window, "FUCK!" He hoped that got Arcturo's attention. |
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