The Phantoms of Marvis Pass

Five - This is love!

        The room carries a strange sense of unease, like Al could lick the fear suspended like thick fog in the air.  Al's ears throb as he listens out for any more of the Sorrow's chilling spellings.

        "Day!" Al cries.  "Say something!"

        "S...O...M...e......t.........h........." The Sorrow's voice fades into the distance, but the way her voice wavers about...he knows where she is off to.  The familiar echo of human communication could only be produced by the semi-mountainous region surrounding the mine shafts.  Dear Lord, why is she going there?  

        Bury Day alive.

        Spear his skull with a pickaxe.

        Throw him down into the shadowy maw of a collapsed cave.

        Al salivates as he longs for the cottony touch of the blanket against his dry tongue, but he resists the urge to crumple against the wall and chew until the blueness is reduced to nothing.  Just bits of thread and stitching spewed across the floor.  And he would sit there, naked and exposed, crying until the Sorrow felt remorse and returned his boyfriend, the man he had willingly hurt and now felt grevious remorse for.  He is a beast.  A monster.  A demon straight from the steaming pits of the Devil's abode.  

        But he can make this right.  They are in a bit of a psychological scuffle, yes, but that shouldn't stop him from saving his lover from intense danger.

        Al rushes to the living room and throws his clothes on, tensing up as the outfit sticks like fresh taffy to his damp skin, before hurrying out the door and into the blinding light.  He grunts as his eyes are briefly overstimulated, but imagining Day's lively voice sucks him back into his mission.

        "It will be okay, sweetheart.  I believe in you."

        The free dust swirls about his feet and barrels into his boots, and he can feel the countless specks of dirt rolling beneath his socks.  It's time to run.  The power of the calves.  The mighty nature of the tendons and thighs.  Al feels his knees pull up higher and higher as his strides increase in length and repetition, and soon he is sprinting across the town.  His blood is hot and boiling like rocket fuel!  It's time to set aside our differences and jump to each other's rescue!  This is love!  Drop the hurt for a brief minute.  He didn't mean it.  He was angry.  He was hurt.  Drop the self-pity and reveal how you truly feel about him.

        This is freedom!

        This is beauty!

        This is love!

        The empty eye socket of the mine pulls into view, and the darkness pulls over Al like a great thunder clash as he slips through the opening.  He drops his momentum and sneaks around a minecart, finding where he left his oil lamp before he was infected with the murderous bout of cholera.  A box of matches is resting beside it, and with a quick flick of the wrist and a little "ch-ch-chhhh" from the birth of the flame, the mine is ignited in a small aura of light.  Al puts out the match and ventures forward.

        The mine is like a great dragon's throat, and soon it splits off, leading to different sections of the incredible beast.  Al is unsure of which direction to take, and he swings the lamp around like a drunken priest weilding a censer.  

        "Day?" Al calls, hoping to hear the individual in question wail back, but he knows that the Sorrow is more talkative than both of the men combined.

        "D...A...Y..."  Her voice rotates out of the tunnel straight ahead.

        Al jogs forward, still cautious with every step.  "Day, I'm coming!  Say something!"

        No one answers up this time.

        Al continues to push through the smothering blackness, and the heels of his boots clank on the rails and sleepers beneath him as he trots along.  The hairs on his chest raise with anticipation as he sees a golden light ahead, and he halts as a woman, supposedly the Sorrow, yowls.  He raises the oil lamp up a bit higher, confused, and Al reels back as a furious ball of shimmering dust erupts ahead, pouring towards him with the energy of a determined warrior.

        The lamp slips from his hand as he blunders about, trying to avoid the oddly chilled embers as they dance and parade about like amateur ballerinas.  He reaches the point where the tunnels branch off and dives behind a wall, and the cloud of golden dust tumbles past him and shoots into the daylight ahead.  Al gasps and sputters before shoving the cloth tied to his hand between his teeth, moaning and drooling as he chews feverishly.  He holds his breath as someone pads down the tunnel he had just escaped, and a smallish figure enters his peripheral.  It's small enough to be Day, but something about it doesn't radiate his shyness.

        This being is blunt and vicious, but it is a courageous aggression.

        Al slowly turns his head, and his eyes connect with another pair, these ones unfamiliar.  They are brown like Day's but are framed with straight ebony hair as she curiously gazes upon the frightened man hunching against a dirt wall.  She turns her body, revealing that Daryl is thrown over her blocky shoulder, limp and motionless.  The woman edges towards him, and Al carefully takes Daryl into his grasp, pulling him into a one-person lift.  Daryl's spine cuts into his forearm, and his eyes are slightly open, just the whites showing.  

        Lips loose.

        Breathing light.

        Not even a flinch.

        Just still.

        Still as absolute death.

        Al looks up at the mysterious woman, expecting an introduction.  And an explanation.  The dust.  What was that?

        She places a soft hand on Daryl's forehead, and the bend in her fingers is so delicate yet powerful.  She is very concerned about the fate of the young man in Al's arms.  "He knows.  She showed him.  He wasn't supposed to know yet."

        "K-Know what?"

        Her eyes flash open like the flick of a switchblade, and she pulls back.  "You don't know."

        Al furrows his brow.  Of course he doesn't.  The Sorrowed showed him what?  Does he know what she is now?  But who is this new character in this play?  This delicious theatre of torture and rejection and sugar and spice and everything nice?

        The woman places a finger to her lips, and as a delicate "shush" breezes through her teeth, the mine snaps to blackness.