Frail Feathers - OC Oneshots/Roleplays

The Plague

A plague. 

That's what Crowly found himself calling it, a name fitting to something so debilitating that even the light seemed to warp under its weight, an inescapable influence that drained his life of anything daring like a forgotten beast. Shadows shifted into sharp smiles, grimacing in wild excitement for each purple-brownish bruise, each bloody wound running hot against pale clammy skin. It should have been comforting, the warm embrace of his own life-line, the very moon turning a blind eye to the shakes and tremors of a young skeleton, already dead within its vessel. Releasing the cries of anguish caught in his throat would only lead to a worse fate, an emotional crucifixion. So it was best for each terror-filled howl to fall victim to the suffocation of linen sheets and dark walls. They seemed to grow faces during nights like that, plaster features breaking into bouts of ridicule he couldn't tear his ears away from, a yowling that only dared to die in the shine of morning light.

The stomp of feet. The grumbles of anger. The sound of a running tap.

The bounce of the bus brought him from the twisted haze that had caught him like a fly, nails leaving light lines in his knuckles, white as they clenched the bones inside closer and closer. Granting his gaze freedom from the blank spot of dirty floor he had fixated on, Crowly's eyes strayed to the window, the rise and fall of a concrete jungle breaking the horizon like breath. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Powerful structures, unable to be shaken by a trick of light, by the misheard melody of words they couldn't trace to a source. They were buildings. Nothing else. But  his mind still seemed to will them to life, envying them in some sick way. The inanimacy. The lack of thought. A silent mind was a sweet one. It couldn't be infected with scorns of the past, worries of the present and fears for the future. 

Sharp ears now seemed unable to tune the silent buzz of people around him, every single word that fell from their lips in hushed whispers twisting into something malicious, something that left his throat dry as his mind once more trailed somewhere he wished it wouldn't. It behaved like a disobedient dog, biting at the constraints of self preservation that were slowly waning with each tug.

The flick of a light. The shuffle of covers. The lift and fall of breath.

The beast was gone, returning to her lair with a gleeful grin that lay patterned with disgust even in the blanket of sleep she had succumb to, enough reassurance that the opening of his window wouldn't be heard, the scuff of shoes fading into the white-noise of the night. Slipping down tiles and pushing himself from the lowest roof-top, Crowly lay in a cluttered heap of rough edges, hair already twisted with leaves and twigs, clinging to him as a warning not to go, not to disappear in the dark once more. It was a second home, that's all he could say to himself as he strayed down the street, lamp light casting jagged shadows across tear-damp eyes and a runny nose. Losing himself was the best medication he knew, a cure to the crippling reality of remaining in a room that didn't feel like his own. It was a vaccination, a chance of that hollow feeling to flee for once. The gloom of late night lashed at his ankles, a frightening nip and bite but the beg to return to that house had faded in recent months, tender moments pinched and plucked from the bricks and rafters. 

The ding of a bell.

Foggy eyes perked up at the flash of red neons and the shuffle of tired feet leaving Crowly's head to turn this way and that, to gather lost bearings from the stuffy air around himself. Rubbing moisture from blood shot, eye-bag hooded eyes, he settled on a sign outside, a name so close yet so far. It wasn't his stop, not just yet. Taking round framed glasses from his face, he dabbed his discoloured cheeks free of their greatest enemy found in tear tracks and the pop of white veins against sclera. Dark hair swooped before his face as he ran his hand through the greying strands, a mark of age he was sure had come too early. He couldn't help but keep his hand there, to prop his heavy head up, to relieve the crushing weight it seemed to stab into his spine, shockwaves he couldn't expel. 

Clenching his concrete-grey eyes closed, his jaw set tightly, he let out a breathy sigh from between his lips, cracked and cold. The motion of the bus jolted Crowly's ribs in all the wrong ways, leaving them tense and digging into his lungs, already struggling to cling onto the abundant air around. Never did he think he'd free himself from the phantom feeling of enclosed alleyways, curled into the rusting sides of dumpsters and damp dirt beneath him. So exposed. So safe. 

It felt odd to find so much comfort in the mist of midnights cloak shrugged onto the earth and leaving it in this ghostly torment, even looking on from a second perspective, a traveller in his own memories, the map uncharted even in his own head. He supposed he'd just have to pick through, to kick up forgotten dirt and let it stain his skull. Maybe then, once it was all on the bone, Crowly could make out the truth, find the antitoxins for a 'self ingested poison.' 

He couldn't be sure.
Of anything really. 

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>Last Edited - [16.10.23]
[Finished]