The Fight For Us Part III | Resident Evil |

16 - The Flasks of Poetry

This is strange. This feels nostalgic, like a memory from the past I'm running through again. Leon and I, this feels like Spain. Strangely enough however, the pain in my side and my shoulder is far less pronounced than Spain's. I keep thinking about a poem I read a while back, I'm not sure why but it's lingering with me. I can't even remember who wrote it. I think it might've been Wordsworth.

"Coming home is terrible
whether the dogs lick your
face or not; whether you
have a wife or just a wife-
shaped loneliness waiting
for you. Coming home
is terribly lonely, so
that you think of the
oppressive barometric
pressure back where you
have just come from
with fondness,
because everything's worse
once you're home.

You think of the vermin
clinging to the grass stalks,
long hours on the road,
roadside assistance and ice creams,
and the peculiar shapes of
certain clouds and silences
with longing because you
did not want to return. Coming
home is just awful.
And the home-style silences
and clouds contribute to nothing
but the general malaise.
Clouds, such as they are,
are in fact suspect, and
made from a different material
than those you left behind.
You yourself were cut
from a different cloudy cloth,
returned, remaindered,
ill-met by moonlight,
unhappy to be back,
slack in all the wrong spots,
seamy suit of clothes
dishrag-ratty, worn.

You return home
moon-landed, foreign;
the Earth's gravitational pull
an effort now redoubled,
dragging your shoelaces loose
and your shoulders etching
deeper the stanza of worry
on your forehead.
You return home deepened,
a parched well linked to tomorrow
by a frail strand of...

Anyway...

You sigh into the onslaught of
identical days. One might
as well, at a time...

Well...
Anyway...
You're back.

The sun goes up and down
like a tired whore,
the weather immobile
like a broken limb while
you just keep getting older.
Nothing moves but the
shifting tides of salt in your body.
Your vision blears. You
carry your weather with you,
the big blue whale,
a skeletal darkness.
You come back
with X-ray vision.
Your eyes have become a hunger.
You come home with your mutant gifts
to a house of bone.
Everything you see now,
all of it: bone."

"Henry?" Ethan cuts through his train of thought, "You alright? You seem, distended."
"I'm fine. Just, just thinking about some stuff."
He says it as casually as he can, it doesn't seem casual in the slightest. Leon hasn't said another word to him since they fought that woman. They're walking in a trio, Ethan's in the center like a divider. The snow is crunching beneath Leon's feet, and the powder is being kicked up by Henry's sneakers. The silence is abruptly interrupted when they hear a rattling. There's a carriage of sorts. Something's in it.

The three of them stand guard when the doors are thrown open to unveil a massive man. But not mutated, at least they don't think so. He's just quite heavy, rolls upon rolls. His feet look purple, it's a mystery if he can even walk. Henry's never been one to call someone overweight, but this was something far worse than overweight.
"Who the fuck, are you?" Henry inquires, his guard lowering ever so slightly. This guy definitely wouldn't be able to fight him, but that doesn't mean he's harmless. He might have someone else in that carriage waiting for the chance to pounce.
"You can call me the Duke, a merchant."

Merchant. That's what he says, once again Henry and Leon are plagued by the memories of Spain. There was a strange salesman there too.
"Why here? Why to us?" Leon asks,
"You have a flask don't you?"
"What's it matter?"
"Your daughter, you'd like to find her? I'd hope?" Henry then takes out his knife with a scowl of intent.
"If you know something you better talk." He growls,
"No need to be so quick to violence Mr. Lawrence. I'm not here to hurt you." The duke insists. Why is he insisting on his innocence? If you're innocent you wouldn't usually worry about your perceived level of moral purity. This massive man is playing a game.
"Where is my daughter?" Ethan demands,
"Your Rose is with Mother Miranda herself."
"And where is she?"
"Unfortunately I do not know. Wouldn't matter if I did however, she's not someone you can take on I'm afraid. Not with the lord's protection. Not even the stars could defeat her now."
"Lords?" Leon inquires,
"There's four. You've met them all I assume, they're quite the loud bunch, aren't they? The first you've just met the lovely Lady Dimitrescu. The second lives deep in the valley or mist, the doll maker Donna Beneviento. The third is Moreau, a being of twisted flesh and disease that lives in the reservoir past the windmill. The fourth and most dangerous, Karl Heisenberg lives in his factory on the village outskirts."

Beneviento. Moreau. Heisenberg. Henry lists them in his head. That woman wasn't all that hard to kill, these other freaks won't be any different. However, the 'Duke' still hasn't answered him.
"What about my daughter?" Henry steps closer,
"You've got your daughter in your hands."
"What?"
"Look closer."

Henry studies the yellow flask. There's some white gunk crusted onto it, must've been from that woman's hardening. He rubs it a bit, brushing the white off until he reveals a label on it. He sees Rosemary K. Written on it, but there's something else. He has to scrape the white off to see that. One word.

Head.

"No. No, no—" Henry gasps, a hand moving to his chest as he finds breathing more and more difficult. He can't hear, he can't do anything besides crumble to the floor and hold his heart as he hyperventilates. The snow against his bare hands was cold, but his head was colder. Someone's grabbing his shoulder. He doesn't even register it in his panic.
"Before you get too worked up, I should tell you she's still alive." The Duke interjects through the blur,
"This is her fucking head! How the fuck would she still be alive you mother—!" Leon starts,
"She's still alive, Mother Miranda needs her alive. You've seen what these people can do, this shouldn't be a surprise."

I'm gonna die. She's gonna die. Leon's gonna die. We're all gonna die, I can't save them. I can't save anyone. I can't save anyone. I can't save anyone. I can't save... Henry's crumbling mind fogs him as Leon takes the initiative to continue the conversation with the Duke. No matter how much he wanted to curl over and throw up. "Where's the rest of them?"
"The lords all hold a flask."
"It says six on it, how are there six flasks if there are four lords?"
"Two of them lie with... Guards is the term I think is apt. But I have not a clue where they could be." The Duke mumbles before closing the doors to his little caravan. Shutting the men out and leaving them in a state of distress and disbelief they didn't know possible.

Ethan tries to comfort Henry, "Henry?" He asks,
"I... I need a minute." Is the response he earns.
Leon keeps moving, he can't afford to pause. The blonde looks around. There are five gates. Four of which have a symbol on them, ones that correspond to a lord. Then there's a small red gate leading back into the village. That one looks well-worn. Leon wanders over to the one he assumes is the Beneviento woman's, but it doesn't budge. It needs a key. One he's almost positive will be a pain in the ass to retrieve.
"Key's in the village." The Duke says from the comfort of his enclosure.
"Yeah. Yeah, that checks out."