Monday morning and I bring you a little more. Idek. I tweaked the things around a little bit in part 3. Hope you like this as well, etc, its not very good. -Orphant
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There isn’t a day when he is free from hunger, from pain as it digs its claws in deep and rends, shredding at iron control and discipline, tipping rationality down the drains until it was all he could do to stumble away, prevent himself from feasting and gorging himself silly.
He’s much better at it now as he grows older, blaming paleness and trembling on a lack of breakfast, or a low blood sugar. He still gets dizzy, and sick, from the hunger as and when it strikes, but he is so much better at covering it up now. Its just the work, he says. Long flights, little sleep. Nothing a good rest cannot fix.
He does not allow himself to forget what he is.
He frequents the hospital, volunteers in it. To keep the elderly patients company, to read to the kids. They are all familiar with him, as they greet him whenever he drops by. He catches up with the old patients, and makes friends with the new ones, amuses the children. They like him, for his candid personality, the stories that he brings from a place they once came from beyond a metal framed bed and snow white sheets. He is familiar with the identical halls and corridors, the smell of sickness and sharp antiseptic as he passes by rooms and doors, through a world living on borrowed time. He talks, he amuses, he waits.
Waits for when the borrowed time runs out, and the heart falters, and stops.
The soul is a beautiful thing, if anyone were to ask him. It is pure, in all its being, without conscious form or thought, a living thing without a goal or motivation, shimmering and swirling with colors and light. It is what makes up a human being, their emotions and drive, and what is left of them when the flesh dies. No one sees them, or notices when they detach away from a body that has finished serving its purpose, not through the tears, the grief, the regret and the pain. Martin does, and he would cup his hands, carrying the soul carefully, reverently. Admire it, watch the colours swirl in it, before lifting the cupper hands to his lips, tipping it in, down his throat, swallowing the blues and the greens, the yellows, the pink. Sorrow tasted bitter on his tongue, and happiness was sweet. He got to know them through his tongue, tasted their fears and dreams, before settling for digesting a life away. More often than not it was always people he knew: the old woman in room 206 ( heart attack ), the little girl in 501 with the ponytails ( car accident ). It sated the hunger, for a while. Gave him dreams, of what they used to be, used to do. Glimpses and flashes of their lives before they were well and truly gone. His stomach settles, the colour returns, and he is able to sleep better than most days.
The hunger is sated, but it does not make him any less of a monster.
He does not know what he is, not specifically, but he is old, older than the rest of them put together around him, and he does not remember anything from his previous time. He isn’t sure that he wants to know, and leaves that particular door in his mind locked as it is. Sometimes, he dreams, of people and names and places that do not exist where he now lives, but when he wakes, they slip away like sights seen in cobwebs, put there by the fairies, leaving him with nothing but a vague sense of loss as though something has been taken from him. He tries not to dwell on those dreams too much, and concentrates on the day instead. On days like that, he brings out his flight manuals, and reads them from cover to cover, committing each word and procedure to memory, letting his love of flight anchor him to the present: Martin Crieff, Captain of MJN Air, the only employee in Icarus Removals, the pilot in the attic for the many generations of students living there.
He does not allow himself to think of anything else.
On certain days, he would wake with a terrible pain in his belly, wake up gasping, shuddering from dreams dark and damp and vile and not know his name. Those were the bad days, the danger days. His control was fragile, on days like that, and it takes everything in him to not reach out to take what isn’t his, isn’t time yet. He takes to pacing his room, talking to himself feverishly, reciting the emergency procedures, the flight manuals, models of planes. If that doesn’t work, it turns to repeating dates, the ones that mean something to him. His birthday, the day he took his CPL for the first time, the day he finally passed, the day he fell out of a tree and broke his arm… When he is calmer, he dresses himself, combs his hair, and looks at himself in the mirror, before heading to the hospital once more, his gut twisting, a strange ache in his heart. He tries not to think of who would die, or to hope for someone dying just so the pain would stop. Tries not to think of what he is doing, will be doing. It is necessary.
A little bird had flown into his attic, one day, and he had reached out blindly, starving, seeking. When he came to, it is nothing but a mess of feathers and bone on the ground. He scraped it off, and kept it in a jar, sealed the opening with glue and cork. A mistake he will not make again.
He tries to feed himself as regularly as possible. It would not do for the hunger to strike in the middle of a flight, with his friends and crew around him, in an aluminium tube 6,000 feet in the sky. They trusted him with their lives, and he would not betray their trust, no matter what. Douglas. Carolyn. Arthur.
He will not steal from them what isn’t his to take.
Fill 2/?
Idek. I tweaked the things around a little bit in part 3.
Hope you like this as well, etc, its not very good. -Orphant
---
There isn’t a day when he is free from hunger, from pain as it digs its claws in deep and rends, shredding at iron control and discipline, tipping rationality down the drains until it was all he could do to stumble away, prevent himself from feasting and gorging himself silly.
He’s much better at it now as he grows older, blaming paleness and trembling on a lack of breakfast, or a low blood sugar. He still gets dizzy, and sick, from the hunger as and when it strikes, but he is so much better at covering it up now. Its just the work, he says. Long flights, little sleep. Nothing a good rest cannot fix.
He does not allow himself to forget what he is.
He frequents the hospital, volunteers in it. To keep the elderly patients company, to read to the kids. They are all familiar with him, as they greet him whenever he drops by. He catches up with the old patients, and makes friends with the new ones, amuses the children. They like him, for his candid personality, the stories that he brings from a place they once came from beyond a metal framed bed and snow white sheets. He is familiar with the identical halls and corridors, the smell of sickness and sharp antiseptic as he passes by rooms and doors, through a world living on borrowed time. He talks, he amuses, he waits.
Waits for when the borrowed time runs out, and the heart falters, and stops.
The soul is a beautiful thing, if anyone were to ask him. It is pure, in all its being, without conscious form or thought, a living thing without a goal or motivation, shimmering and swirling with colors and light. It is what makes up a human being, their emotions and drive, and what is left of them when the flesh dies. No one sees them, or notices when they detach away from a body that has finished serving its purpose, not through the tears, the grief, the regret and the pain. Martin does, and he would cup his hands, carrying the soul carefully, reverently. Admire it, watch the colours swirl in it, before lifting the cupper hands to his lips, tipping it in, down his throat, swallowing the blues and the greens, the yellows, the pink. Sorrow tasted bitter on his tongue, and happiness was sweet. He got to know them through his tongue, tasted their fears and dreams, before settling for digesting a life away. More often than not it was always people he knew: the old woman in room 206 ( heart attack ), the little girl in 501 with the ponytails ( car accident ). It sated the hunger, for a while. Gave him dreams, of what they used to be, used to do. Glimpses and flashes of their lives before they were well and truly gone. His stomach settles, the colour returns, and he is able to sleep better than most days.
The hunger is sated, but it does not make him any less of a monster.
He does not know what he is, not specifically, but he is old, older than the rest of them put together around him, and he does not remember anything from his previous time. He isn’t sure that he wants to know, and leaves that particular door in his mind locked as it is. Sometimes, he dreams, of people and names and places that do not exist where he now lives, but when he wakes, they slip away like sights seen in cobwebs, put there by the fairies, leaving him with nothing but a vague sense of loss as though something has been taken from him. He tries not to dwell on those dreams too much, and concentrates on the day instead. On days like that, he brings out his flight manuals, and reads them from cover to cover, committing each word and procedure to memory, letting his love of flight anchor him to the present: Martin Crieff, Captain of MJN Air, the only employee in Icarus Removals, the pilot in the attic for the many generations of students living there.
He does not allow himself to think of anything else.
On certain days, he would wake with a terrible pain in his belly, wake up gasping, shuddering from dreams dark and damp and vile and not know his name. Those were the bad days, the danger days. His control was fragile, on days like that, and it takes everything in him to not reach out to take what isn’t his, isn’t time yet. He takes to pacing his room, talking to himself feverishly, reciting the emergency procedures, the flight manuals, models of planes. If that doesn’t work, it turns to repeating dates, the ones that mean something to him. His birthday, the day he took his CPL for the first time, the day he finally passed, the day he fell out of a tree and broke his arm… When he is calmer, he dresses himself, combs his hair, and looks at himself in the mirror, before heading to the hospital once more, his gut twisting, a strange ache in his heart. He tries not to think of who would die, or to hope for someone dying just so the pain would stop. Tries not to think of what he is doing, will be doing. It is necessary.
A little bird had flown into his attic, one day, and he had reached out blindly, starving, seeking. When he came to, it is nothing but a mess of feathers and bone on the ground. He scraped it off, and kept it in a jar, sealed the opening with glue and cork. A mistake he will not make again.
He tries to feed himself as regularly as possible. It would not do for the hunger to strike in the middle of a flight, with his friends and crew around him, in an aluminium tube 6,000 feet in the sky. They trusted him with their lives, and he would not betray their trust, no matter what. Douglas. Carolyn. Arthur.
He will not steal from them what isn’t his to take.
Maybe when they’re free game.
Everyone is, eventually.
He waits.