Sketchbook

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:09:21 GMT

Ew this thing is old.

Sat, 10 Dec 2005 02:38:07 GMT

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:51:47 GMT

i have no arms with which to hold you, yet i carry no heavier a burden.

reach

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 21:52:35 GMT

larger (deviantart) image

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:21:30 GMT

Well I think you should all envy me because I got to spend the day in a 12 million dollar house, and I took an amazing amount of pictures. We only got to go on the 1st floor, which was bullshit, but we were there for a babyshower. Just to give you an idea of how insane this house is, it costs $8000 a month to heat/cool the house--and that's bare minimum warmth or cold.

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 23:57:07 GMT

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 23:31:20 GMT

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 19:50:40 GMT

>> old excerpts that should have been put here

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 03:39:14 GMT

[ SHANTALA THE MARTYR: EXCERPT I ]

loneliness is a self-created disease.

along the lines of our fascination with the unknown, we never stop to wonder what we already know. for this reason we are blind to ourselves. the mystery is in the logic, the question is in the truth.

we ask ourselves, as soldiers, as the world, we ask to try; and try we might--bred for battle, forced to fight: you were the epitome of what it meant to be human, and yet you never knew. fatigue was our mortal foe, though what we feared most was ourselves. we built this mighty empire from the bodies of the dead.

for there is no greater smell than the rot of the enemy.

death clung to our army with such a grip as to turn the knuckles a new shade of white, our faces full of pallor and our chest devoid of warmth. breath froze in our wake, our trails marked in the snow. we trudged on.

martyr, she. how we hoped the lie was true.

[ SHANTALA THE MARTYR: EXCERPT II ]

turmoil.

ice dancers in her head - etching. the map was dripping; distorted, the ink smearing and blending into the paper. her pen wavered, her mind blackened from the chaos she had endured that evening. she could not think or see, and the cold bit into her skin. her fingertips were numbed to a dead weight, unsteady and shaking. lower lip trembling. cold. coldcoldcold.

take it. TAKEIT.

gripping the wood of the table, she dug her pen into the paper, scratching the line down. x marks the spot, herehereandhere. strategy is what she needed. ideas. not fleeting sparks of life struggling to survive the snowstorm. her brain wasn't functioning. her body was slowing to a stop. survive, just survive. you can do this.

every breath was a battle. every blink, every heartbeat.

someonesaveme.

[ XIRTRIAN METAPHORICAL SYMBOLISM ]

i am just a machine. my heart beats for two. if i have any control, it will remain this way until it beats no more. this love overrides my other emotions and keeps me stable. i am programmed to feel good.

i am just a machine.

[ SHANTALA THE MARTYR: EXCERPT III ]

she cried.

to cry was weakness. to her, there was no weakness, no emptiness for her to feel--she was dead, a shell of a woman. how could the tears come now. how dare they come now, when everything else had already been lost.

the first tear dribbled down her cheek, down. dropped on the paper with a flat, echoless smack, spreading across the ink and blurring the words written there. she crunched the letter in her fist till her knuckles were bleached white, sobs wracking her body as she sank to her knees in the open field. there was silence and wind and nothing else but her and the world and no one to judge and no one to feel.

how it had always been.

she held the note to her chest, sucking in a shallow breath before dropping it on the grass. the wind quickly caught it up and carried it away. she fell all the way to the ground, too empty to feel her loss.

she loved you, defiance.

[ XIRTRIAN (DEFIANCE) ]

you were bold, you were courageous--you were god, in their eyes. towering above them. an idol, unflinching, untouchable; immortal, said by some; irreversible and illogical, said by many. always won, always prevailed; always conquered and always, always dominated. beast, creature, man, monster, killergodsatanwarriorheathendevilYOU. power of the mighty, ruler of self and all before you.

you were beautiful, because you were broken.

broken beaten battered and still you battled, a behemoth on the battleground, your bellows belting from your biomechanical throat with enough force to shatter eardrums. massive chest scarred with the marks of those who defied you and did not live to tell about it [ those who did were under your wing, crusader ]. share your world, they cried, but you were deaf to their terrorized voices, deaf to all and everything. the volume was on mute, the world was turned down. you courted death with dances that dazzled, demanding nothing short of a do-or-die decadence. deceitful, you were, for you desired death but drove it dormant, dimmed its light to match the volume of your eyes. such a shame, really, for it was what you cravedlustedyearned for with every bolt in your machineheart. salivated at the thought of running alongside the beast, chasing it and tearing out its throat and thirsting for its blood; and it became you. you became it. death was your name, and you delivered what you demanded.

how tall you stood when you fell.

[ SHANTALA THE MARTYR: EXCERPT IV ]

we are all soldiers, fighting the inner war; for the only true war is the war against yourself.

she promised dreams and achieved only fatigue, listless woes of melancholy acceptance of her past sentences; verbs and nouns all composed of water and no gills with which to breathe them. she was a ghost in the world, dead and gone but still present, and with this presence she haunted those who loved her by dwelling in their memory.

she only thought of herself, she said.

[ SHANTALA (DECEIT OF): EXCERPT V ]

"Some things can't be changed, Shantala. You of all people should be aware of that."

"I am. But I was unaware that you were so prone to panic under pressure, Xirtrian."

Malicious, are we? "Nion would always say, it's foolish to attempt the impossible, but--"

"--those who do and succeed are nothing short of heroes. I know. You worry me sometimes, constantly dwelling on the past--"

"I'm not dwelling," I snorted. "Bah, dwelling... you're one to throw stones, girl."

She huffed at me, rolling those steely blue eyes to the ceiling. "Are we going to just stand around and lecture each other?"

"You started it--"

"Liar."

We stared at each other for a moment, locked in a tug-of-war teasing game. Then she giggled, averting her gaze from mine.

I walked to her and slid my arms around her waist, pulling her up against me and putting my mouth by her ear.

"All is fair in love and war," I whispered, "and you know I don't play fair."

She exhaled slowly, staring past me into her thoughts. "Time's up, girl," she breathed, a chilling calmness in her words. "Checkmate."

I realized all too late that the enemy didn't intend on playing fair either; I didn't come to this conclusion until the dagger was embedded in my stomach and my blood was spattering on the floor.

She leaned up and kissed me, caressing my neck with her hand. Then she whipped it around and smacked me across the mouth, drawing blood. Her other hand twisted the dagger and shoved it deeper, forcing the breath from my lungs.

"Weren't you listening," she whispered coldly, "when I told you I wasn't myself today."

[ SYMBOLISM EXCERPT 1-A ]

life's a lot like a dream, and dreams are a lot like life; but everything in between is only what it seems, and that's where we all lose ourselves in ecstacy; not reality, not unconsciousness; but between; between in that narrow universe that spirals to nowhere and everywhere at once. more often than not it is this that makes us lose our mind, for we forget who and where we are and what we're doing.

but we never forget the ones we love.

[ SYMBOLISM EXCERPT 1-B ]

time is moving rapidly forward and i have nothing to show for it, nothing to think or say or do or feel from it, and overall i'm at a loss as to where exactly it is i think i'm going; no direction, no path to follow, nothing to see; and it feels like i'm falling at speeds beyond normality, tumbling downward to nowhere;

vertigo.

shut up. SHUT. UP. listening to you is like listening to myself played backward; garbled but full of bullshit nonetheless. but what do i expect? you learned it all from me. like i copied a piece of myself and implanted it into a microchip in your brain, and now you've become me, in a sense. you say we've become each other, but i am not you. i am nothing. i am not what i want to be, not what i was, and not what i am. i'm a ghost in the system, the insecure channel where the AI makes mistakes intentionally to confuse the decoders. morbid fascination with the untruth is where we're at, and it's going nowhere but you fail to see that, just like you fail to see how hopeless this situation was from the beginning, what with you being a hypocrite and all. you've learned, to an extent, how to be intelligent without knowing anything. everyone believes you, just like they believed me, and now the tables have turned and you're sitting behind the right side of the board. so what's it feel like, now, to be controlling the machine.

tell me: what machines could breathe like they?

but you won't, 'cause you don't know.

suits me just fine, it does, since more often than not, and without knowing any better, i'm right, and you fail. you fail miserably. but i console you and we're back to the beginning, after a period of hatred. or something similar. i know what i mean, i know what i say, but you misinterpret and you misunderstand, and where i was going with the topic is lost and we find ourselves meandering through a forest of lies, as always; perpetually. our understanding of one another is based on these lies, and the reciprocals of the lies are beyond us. just a big, tangled web of intricately laced lies, is all. is all is all is all we are.

forever we dance on the ties we've created, unaware that the spiders lie in wait.

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:48:44 GMT

Again.

I knew it was a dreamworld the second I stepped into it, drifted along; but hardly cared. Fighting it was futile, and a fight I’d rather forfeit, at that.

I crunched through the snow. Familiarity flooded me, mingling with that same painful nostalgia that lodged itself in my throat. I had never been here before, consciously or not, but it stabbed at me nonetheless.

Walking distracted from the inevitable.

So I walked.

Mindless trudging through the snow. I felt like a mechanical man, my limps stiff and my joints slow to respond to my will. My breath was a fog that clouded my vision and blurred the flurries in the frozen air, chilling in my chest. The soft, warm fabric of my scarf slid across my cheek as it was blown over my shoulder in the wind.

I pulled my jacket tighter.

Shh, the trees whispered, their dead branches rustling and rasping. Shh.

I glanced over my shoulder and stopped, staring into the forest. It was dark, and shadows danced as the clouds swept past the moons. My breath was the only timekeeper here; inhalations and exhalations marking the seconds as time ticked by. I lost track - not that I kept it in the first place - and an eternity passed in my gaze.

I CAN’T WRITE BECAUSE I SUCK.

more later. if i'm not stupid. why are these so hard to write all of a sudden?

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:06:22 GMT

Benjamin was a crook. The dirtiest scum this side of the galaxy had to offer, and he made no effort to hide it. Not that he boasted about it; no, Benjamin was no braggart. He handled everything with either a flashy smile or a snap of the trigger. In his mind, there was no need to make anything more complicated than this simple rule of thumb, and he enforced it with deadly severity. His crewmates admired and respected him; his enemies detested him for their fear; and his betters? There were none. No one had ever pulled a stunt on Benjamin Axis Baskerville and lived to tell about it—-at least, not by mouth. One of Benjamin’s many trademark punishments for betrayal was a cut out tongue or cut off fingers, neither of which was done without other miscellaneous torture tactics.

He was one hell of a marksman, despite being blind in his right eye—-the result of one battle scar too many. His aim was near flawless, and his precision was beyond deadly. Hand-to-hand combat with this fucker would undoubtedly leave you wishing you had been sent to the guillotine instead, for that would be a far more humane death, and quite a bit cleaner, to boot.

Perhaps one of Benjamin’s most recognizable habits would be that of his cigarette addiction—-that is, if ‘addiction’ could barely scratch the surface of describing his obsessive smoking enslavement. The man could easily go through five to ten packs a day, if offered. We can only speculate just how he manages to elude the authorities without pausing for a breather and a hacking cough every few steps.

>> 05?

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 03:14:26 GMT

I grabbed him by his frail human neck and jerked him violently up off the ground, shoving him bodily into the brick wall and pinning him there with my weight. He stared back at me defiantly, but I could hear, smell, see, and feel his heart racing under his ribcage.

I growled long and low, my face a hair's breadth away from his. A primitive, animalistic desire to rip his entrails up through his throat pulsed in my veins, throbbing and pounding like some insane war cry in my mind, roaring in my ears and making the volume of the world dim to near silence. All I could hear was the blood in my head.

The rebellious look on his face faded. His eyes slowly widened, his brows knitted, and the unfamiliar stench of human fear was so intoxicating that I reeled from it. Fear was not an emotion Jackal was accustomed to experiencing, and it showed.

He swallowed, his eyes searching mine for any hint of mercy, reconciliation, anything. His mouth slacked as if to speak, but no words came out--only a rasping, choking sound as I clenched my fist tighter around his neck.

The instinct to tear him to bloody ribbons was so strong that it almost overtook me time and again; somehow I retained my sanity and just let the fear sink into him. I realized I was shaking from the effort, sweat beading on my forehead and trickling down my strained neck. I felt nothing but hate, and it was so black and volatile in my heart that I felt like I was diseased by the very emotion that had fueled me for so long. I could barely breathe; I was growling so hard that the machinery was shredding the meat in my throat, and I tasted blood. My tail snapped like a whip from my frustration, cracking the air like a gunshot.

How badly I wanted to kill him here and now cannot be conveyed in words. It was more than a fury, more than a rage. It was a command in my mind, a need. Do this now. Do it. Do this now do this now do this now do this now do this now KILL HIM.

He was suffocating, but he didn't fight me. The look in his eyes was empty, haunted--

Was that regret?

My pulse slowed, and somehow I regained control. I dropped him, taking a deep breath and calming myself.

Let it slide...

Absentmindedly I pulled out a cigarette from my pocket and lit it.

He caught his breath after a moment, then looked at me with gratitude. "Oh God Xirtrian, I knew you had a heart, I knew you'd forgive me, thank you, Xirtrian, I--"

I pulled out my revolver and shot him dead without a thought.

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 03:22:44 GMT

“Make a wish,” I whispered to her, folding her miniature hands around the coin.

She looked up at me, those gleaming golden eyes sparkling vibrantly. “I wish you were here,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek.

I laughed and hugged her, nuzzling her lovingly. “That’s silly. I’m already here.”

“Tomorrow, then,” she said, giggling when I tickled her. “And forever.”

“I’m always here.”

“Always?” she asked. “Forever and ever?”

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. Now make a wish, but don’t tell me what it is this time. And throw the coin into the water.”

“But why?” Her voice held that childish naiveté that mine had never known. “It’ll be lost, then.”

“The coin isn’t what matters,” I said soothingly, letting her sit on my lap. Our feet dangled off the cliff overlooking the waves far below. “What matters is the wish.”

“But won’t the wish be gone too?”

I sighed. “The wish is a part of you, not the coin.”

“Then why—“

“Shh,” I insisted, squeezing her hand. “Throw the coin.”

She paused for a moment, then let it tumble over the edge. I held her out over the cliff to watch it fall, listening to her squeal with delight as I pretended to drop her.

Then it was quiet again. Just the sound of her shallow breathing against my chest and the crash of the surf on the rocks. I fell back with her, lying on the snow and pulling her on top of me to keep her warm. The wind howled quietly, like an animal in the distance; unthreatening and beautiful when it mingled with the ocean, a melody of calming resonance.

If time passed, I was unaware of it. Time was irrelevant here. Everything was irrelevant here, except for her. Her and I. Together again, safe again.

She tugged on my shirt, burying her face in my chest like she always did. “I wish my wish could come true.”

I looked at her, running my hand through the soft fur on the top of her head. “Why couldn’t it?”

She said nothing.

“Oxiandi?”

My hand went to rest on her shoulders but instead landed on my stomach. My heart dropped and I sat up, whirling around to stare into the dark tree line.

“Oxiandi!” I cried, scrambling to my feet and stumbling in the snow, running and running and running. “Oxiandi, come back! Oxiandi!”

My heart was shuddering from the cold anxiety that coursed through me, making my stomach twist in a sickening knot. I kept calling her name, over and over and over and over.

Feet must’ve been getting heavy; I couldn’t lift them high enough to clear the snow and I fell. I laid there, unmoving, letting the icy cold bite into my skin. Desperation dwindled and all I could feel was remorse.

I started crying silently, the ache in my chest unbearable. It was all my fault.

All. My. Fault.

Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:52:23 GMT

“Tell me a secret.”

I didn’t respond. Didn’t know what to say. I pushed her forward on the swing when it came to me, staring blankly ahead as she swung forward, giggling with delight.

My mind wandered.

“Xirtrian,” her singsong voice chimed. “Xirtrian, tell me a secret, Xirtrian.”

Swing, swing, swing, swing, swing—silence.

“Xirtrian...”

It was cold. Cold and dark, I’m not sure why we were out. Where we were was familiar but had no name, only memory. That single lamppost over the asphalt. The snow-covered ground. The crisp air, the snowflakes drifting, the trees that stretched on into forever, the star-filled black sky, the moons—

The silence.

I said nothing and listened. The chains from the swing groaned with her movement, she laughed merrily, but everything sounded... far away. Distant. Surreal.

Break my fall, Xirtrian. Tell me a secret.

I blinked. The words echoed in my head, and when I went to push her in the swing again, my hands passed through air and the seat smacked against my chest. The chains rattled inharmoniously.

I didn’t move.

It was cold.

Cold and alone and where was I again.

Tell me a secret, Xirtrian. Xirtrian...

The silence.

I started walking away from the lamppost, toward the trees. It got darker each step I took. Darker and colder and quieter. I put my hands in my jacket pockets, wandering through the snow and listening as it crunched under my boots.

I walked.

And then I was at the ocean, it was lapping the shore, the snow on the sand dissolving as the water enveloped it. The water was cold. Cold and dark. I looked up, up at the stars, the hazy clouds drifting across the moons and I felt regret. Nostalgic tuggings at my heart made me sad, made me empty, and it was cold.

Cold and alone and where am I now.

Did she know? Did she miss me? Can she hear me now, can she feel?

The water washed over my feet and I said nothing. Just watched and listened and felt the cold in the air and the cold in the water and the cold in my heart. My empty broken heart.

Tell me a secret...

No, I mused. No, she didn’t know. She didn’t miss me; after all, how could she? And of course she couldn’t hear me, couldn’t feel... she was gone and alone and nowhere, nowhere at all.

Just like I am now.

I turned to go back. Thoughts tumbled in my head, drifting away with the tides I left behind. Let go...

But she stood there all the same, like I knew she would. Reaching to me, beckoning to me, that innocent smile on her face as she laughed, prancing to me in the snow.

“Tell me a secret, Xirtrian.”

I said nothing.

She ran to me, wrapped her arms around me, buried her face in my jacket and smiled as she clung to me. “Xirtrian, I love you Xirtrian. Tell me a secret.”

The silence.

I said nothing; did nothing. I did not return the hug. I knew if I did, she would be gone. Not that she was there now, but I could delude myself, couldn’t I? Or maybe it was all pointless to begin with, this being here. This living here. This dreaming here. Who knew where we had gone, our thoughts and memories and when we forgot it all...

How could I have let her die.

I love you, Xirtrian...

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:25:28 GMT

Little by little. Pushing and pulling and twisting and jerking and twitching and--and keening, in her throat, she whined. Desperate; desolate. Her head hung, her thin neck jutted out over her bruised collarbone, and the cords in it worked and tightened as she struggled to free herself with little more movement than the rhythmic sliding of her wrists; up; down; up; down; back; forth; whine.

Whimper.

The glass was shattered on the floor. She could not reach it... would not reach it; for that was the easy way, the escape, and she could not have it. Could not. Could. Not.

Whimper.

I watched helplessly. Nothing, absolutely nothing could describe the hate that was eating me alive, dissolving my insides into acid.

It burned.

Life was slowing; tides were turning; and in this realization I succumbed into the numb depths of my mind, where unconsciousness beckoned alluringly. Oh how I wanted to go, to release myself. To relinquish the last shred of hope that clung so tightly and yet was so easily persuaded. Sweet surrender.

I let out a disheartened chuckle, a sort of "so this is it" sigh that made me smile at my insanity. This was the end, we lost, I give up, she's dying we're all dying FUCK IT.

Then I saw her eyes.

Those cobalt eyes that locked onto mine so intensely that I was afraid to look into or away from them. I was held by that gaze, frightened by it. Captured by it. The utter determination that she possessed was beyond me, beyond myself. I had never felt it, never known it, and I couldn't begin to comprehend.

But I could see it.

Her lips moved, only barely, and her breath was so shallow that no sound was made. She hadn't the strength to speak, but her lips moved all the same, and she continued to stare at me. Her lips cracked from the movement, blood trickling down her jaw, dripping down the side of her neck. Ears flattened, pointing sharply backward; knuckles white and body trembling; skin bruised, fur clotted with blood; shivering, shivering, shivering, scared someone please help her--

She spoke, so quiet I hardly heard her.

"I surrender."

I stared at her. And stared. Just stared.

Was she delusional? How could someone so driven by determination--even now--possibly speak those words and mean it? No, damnit. No.

NO.

The desire to die left me, the chains shackling me to the wall no longer concerned me, and my broad scope of the world suddenly narrowed and became her. Her, and nothing else.

I threw myself forward, pulling the chains with me as hard as I could and using my entire body as weight. The second they reached their limit, a bone-shattering jolt wracked me all the way through, making me exhale sharply from the impact. My frame shook from the effort, but I threw myself again, taking no heed of the jagged metal that was slicing into my wrists and ankles. No heed whatsoever. I knew pain, and this was nothing. No one could make it worse.

But she made it better, and that, to me, was worth dying for.

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 19:54:47 GMT

It was a shame, really. All these long years containing nothing but memories of the foreboding future, and now here we were, standing at ground zero.

Or something like it.

Shantala leaned close to me, her voice a hoarse whisper. "Do you see it?" she asked me, and I felt her clutch at my sleeve. "Please tell me you see it."

"I see it." I swallowed anxiously, my saliva cold and thick as it sloshed down my throat. My breath kept catching itself in my chest.

"Well?" she panted, tugging on my arm. "What does it say? What does it mean? What's the answer?"

I didn't respond. Didn't want to.

"Xirtrian!" she hissed, standing in front of me and shaking me by my shirt. "Goddamnit, answer me!"

"I don't know," I muttered. "I can't read it."

She stared at me. She blinked.

Something indistinguishable ran through those smokey silver-blue eyes. It looked like a cross between hope, doubt, desperation, and fear. "No," she breathed, releasing her hold on me. "No. You're lying."

Of course I was. I could read it just fine. Didn't mean she should know. Ignorance is bliss, they say, and in this situation that was definitely the case.

I let her register the reality of what I said, let her hope drown in itself as she sobbed once and bit her lip, closing her glistening eyes. "No," she whispered, exhaling sharply as she struggled to keep herself from crying. "No."

I stood there, unsure of what to do. It was difficult for me to take this seriously--mainly because it was a lie, but also because I had closed off all emotion since Oxiandi's death.

Shantala suddenly wrapped her arms around my waist, burying her face into my chest. "It isn't fair, we came all this way and there's no turning back now, but--but how are we going to move on, Xirtrian? How can we continue if we don't know?"

I held her as she cried, my face blank.

I wanted to tell her, but I figured it was better this way. Even if I did know what it said--which I did--we couldn't go any further anyway. But she wouldn't want to hear that, wouldn't want to give up.

That's just the way she was.

After she finally got herself together and stopped crying, she... didn't let go.

"Shantala," I murmured, rubbing her back slightly. "Shantala?"

She mumbled something into my chest and nuzzled my neck.

Annoyed by the gesture and getting more and more exasperated, I spoke a little louder. "Shantala, we have to keep moving."

"Mmmokay," she said quietly.

She still didn't move.

"Can I ask, in the nicest way possible, just what the fuck you're doing?"

She giggled pleasantly, squeezing me tighter. "Let's just stand here like this for a while."

"How about no--"

She leaned up and kissed me.

I really have no idea what exactly my reaction was to that. At first I wanted to hurt her, then I got confused, then I liked it, then I got mad at myself, then I went completely blank and had no idea what to say. I finally calmed down a few seconds later.

We paused, staring at each other for a moment. "What was that for?" I asked hesitantly.

She shrugged, biting her lip and smiling.

"Hmmm well in that case, let's do it again."

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:45:30 GMT

Nion was getting very, very annoyed. "So, basically, you fucked the entire thing up and came out of it with nothing but another street brat to show for our efforts."

Benjamin growled as he smiled, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. The gesture was familiar. "Basically."

Nion threw his expressive Human hands into the air in frustration. "Damnit, Benjamin, you know we can't afford this--"

"Sure we can," Benjamin said smugly, grinning wider and leaning back against the wall.

Nion looked at him with scorn, then with interest. "What?" he inquired. "What've you got that you haven't shown me?"

Benjamin took a heavy drag of his cigarette and said nothing.

Nion was too close to his blood brother not to know that the smartest thing to do to get an answer out of him was to wait. So he did.

Several minutes later, Benjamin reached down and fished around in his pockets for a moment. His hand closed around something as he leaned forward across the counter, taking his cigarette between two fingers and beckoning to Nion to look close. He pulled out a long, flat keyecard that had nine holes punched in its long side, with a ring looped through every other one.

Nion stared at it, not comprehending. "Okay?" he said, getting cynical. "What's the big deal?"

Benjamin chuckled throatily, pausing to smoke some more. "What's it look like?"

"A standard shipkeye, why--?"

"Come on, you bastard, look at it. How many shipkeyes you seen like that?"

The "keye" looked as if it were made of some kind of metal, but it was semi-transparent and was an odd cobalt color. Strange symbols were scrawled across its edge--old Zentharian, he guessed, since it looked somewhat familiar but he still couldn't read it.

Then it dawned on him.

Benjamin saw Nion's eyes widen. He grinned, then laughed as Nion's mouth dropped open.

"Are you serious?" Nion murmured.

Before Nion could swipe it from him, Benjamin slid it discreetly back into his pocket. The hands of a thief.

"Where'd you get it?" Nion asked, trotting after the mammoth Zentharian as he headed down to the bottom deck of the ship.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Benjamin huffed. He started humming some old pirate songs to drown out Nion's persistent questions.

His boots clanked metallically when he bounded down the staircase, his tail clattering recklessly against the handrails.

"You see, Nion...wait, what's the phrase you always say?"

Nion barely refrained from rolling his eyes. Benjamin was purposefully irking him--he damn well knew the saying. "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

"Dunnit, yeah?" Benjamin chortled. "Listen, ay, what you call street brat, I call pickpocket. The best I ever laid eyes on."

"Right." Nion was unmoved.

"I ain't feeding you lies, Nion, see for yourself."

Nion wasn't sure what he was supposed to be "seeing for himself"; the room was all but empty--just a vast, dark, unused storage deck.

Then he froze as he heard the click of his pistol being cocked right against the back of his neck.

The kid pressed it harder to reinforce his statement, then obnoxiously kicked him behind the knee, making him stumble. Two shots snapped off on either side of him.

"Bang, bang," the kid said, a cynical streak underlying the tones of his voice. There was no immature childish sound in those tones; in fact, his voice held a chilling maturity of a child who's grown up far too fast and seen far too much.

Nion grimaced, turning to the young Zentharian. He was expecting to look down, but found the boy's face at his eye level.

Nion backed up several steps, muttering profanities under his breath. "I thought you said he was seven--"

"He is," Benjamin said, lighting up a new cigarette.

Xirtrian activated the safety on the gun and handed it back to Nion, who snatched it out of his hand indignantly. Xirtrian smirked at his temper.

"Fuck off," Nion snarled, holstering the weapon. "You think you're hot shit, don't you--"

"Dunnit, yeah?" Benjamin interrupted, cackling like a hyena. "Cool off, Nion, live a little--"

"You too, you dumb fuck," Nion said, glaring at Axis. "You proved your point, now shove it."

Benjamin couldn't stop laughing.

Nion was fuming at this point. Benjamin had never seen him this angry, and to him, that made it all the more hilarious.

"Fuck you both," Nion finally growled, abruptly walking out of the room.

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:30:09 GMT

"If you really don't give a shit," Jackal sneered at me, looking at me with that same cocky gleam in his eyes that I remembered from years and years ago, "Then I guess it won't be too much of a problem to put a bullet through her head and paint the walls with her brains, dunnit yeah?"

Jackal had this infuriating ability to somehow swagger without walking. He was just that full of himself.

I feigned disinterest. "Didn't ever see you as much of an artist--"

I didn't even finish the sentence when the gunshot went off. I stared blankly, in shock at what he had just done. Jackal never, never acted on impulse. He took after Nion.

But the grey splatters on the wall didn't lie.

Jackal was suddenly very grim. He kicked the body to the ground and holstered his weapon. "Think I'm serious yet? Think I be telling you lies still, asshole?"

I growled involuntarily, the mechanical rotors grinding in the back of my throat. "That was unnecessary, you conniving son of a bitch motherfucking Human--"

"Save it," Jackal said dismissively. "I know what you want, Xirtrian."

"I don't want anything--"

"You want the girl. You want Shantala."

"Fuck you." I wanted to hit him. I wanted to tear his fucking throat out. The impulse was so incredibly strong that I had a hard time forcing it out of my head. I knew he was purposefully pushing my buttons, shoving me to the edge of my temper, but it wasn't any less difficult to control it once I understood this fact. He'd always been that way, and with Jackal, there was little room for change.

I said nothing.

"This isn't about that, anyway."

I glared at him. "What's it about, then?"

Jackal grinned slyly, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it. "Someone by the name of Oxiandi."

My blood ran cold.

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 04:05:03 GMT

The impact repeated in my mind like a disk that couldn't stop skipping. Over and over and over the screeching motors roared in my ears along with the horrendous cracking and snapping and splintering of bones I didn't even know I had bursting upward and tearing through my flesh. A vile, unreal sensation greeted my raw fingertips as I clutched at my stomach and chest, feeling hot, sticky, wet masses in my hands--realizing somewhere in the back of my buised and bleeding brain that I was squeezing my own goddamned intestines. I wanted to vomit, I wanted to scream, but I was too busy choking on the blood that was rapidly pooling in my mouth and clogging my throat. My chest had been pushed inward. I laid there, trying to breathe, trying to think, but my heart and lungs were being crushed by my own skeleton. I was losing my mind. I was so far beyond pain at this point that I was unable to feel anything; see anything; hear anything. I was suffocating slowly and the only thought in my head was:

How could I have let her die.

How could I.

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 04:01:07 GMT

It was an idea; a thought process; a quaint little thing in the back of my mind, like a slice of glass embedded in my brain.

It was driving me absolutely fucking insane.

Overall the feeling was nothing short of unsettling, and it made me sick to my stomach every moment I involuntarily began to let my mind drift away from what I had been concentrating on. The left side of my heart ached deeply, like I had swallowed something heavy and it was pulling it down my throat. The mechanical part continued to shove oil through my internal mechanisms, mixing with the blood in the remnants of my veins. I closed my eyes and listened to it clanking monotonously behind my ribcage. Something about the sound of the machinery that was now a part of my body, a part of myself... it was cold, alien, desolate--and yet comforting, like a narrow metal shaft that stretched on in both directions into oblivion that wrapped around me and was holding me prisoner.

This sudden claustrophobic vision captivated me. I leaned back and let myself drown in the paralyzing terror, staring down the space as if I were really there. It was intoxicating, this feeling, the way my heart seized in my chest and I couldn't breathe. A cold chill swept down my spine. Suffocating. Suffocating. Suffocating.

Claustrophobia became my escape. My refuge.

Claustrophobia in my mind.

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 03:56:15 GMT

Xirtrian was somewhat of a martyr; at least, that's how he saw himself. Shantala could see it in his mannerisms, in the way he moved and spoke and thought and carried himself, in the way he trained and fought her. It was a dead, empty look in his eyes, a perpetual void, a hopelessness. He had nothing to live for, and nothing to die for. To him, he was simply existing until his time was up.

A shame. Such a shame. She could see through that armor-plated facade he had so meticulously coated himself with over his lifetime, this image that he was such a cold, heartless individual that cared about himself--if that--and nothing else. He feigned disinterest in her, but she knew very well that he did, in fact, feel something for her; it was that oh-so-discreet manner that he'd put on whenever she was around. He'd throw her a smile on ocassion, take an interest in her thoughts and feelings, offer to take her places, or go to her study and read to her ( his one passion was reading ). As much as he hated to admit it, deep in the crevices of his biomechanical oil-pumping heart, he loved her. He loved her more than she'd ever know.

To Shantala, the one thing she hoped to accomplish was to breach that facade, to get past the barricade he had built. Unbeknownst to her, however, was the fact that she had already vaulted the wall, and was well on her way into alien terrain.