You drink deeply from your glass and wonder what it's like to never die. Watching the world as it sheds one garment and dawns a new one. Different colours, different taste. Not even the people are the same. You wonder what it's like to see that, while you remain unchanged.
You think that if it were you, you'd turn away.
He doesn't. You're unsure how you know, but in your mind he always looks. More attentive than the sunflower to the sun. He looks, and looks. Never flinching first.
Even if everything you know about him is a lie, that's a truth... When he turns his wits to the change, and pain, and sulfuric molting of a world confined by time, and asks: Is that all?
What he says doesn't matter. Saying is easy. He shows truth when he opens up his chest so you can take a peek at the soul there. The way he'd let you kill him, if that's what you needed.
It comes to you one night that you have something ancient and powerful under your thumb. That you could ask him to strike and he would. To stop, and he would. The anger that boils under his skin, you can calm it with a touch. Once you realize that, no amount of whiskey will wash it blank from your mind.
Maybe it's love?
But love shouldn't make your stomach roil, or your hands sweat. Love shouldn't make you this- you've become the detonator to the universe's most destructive bomb. Wielding appalling rage and power with a few simple words. When you let your guard slip -over a drink, or two, or five- you think: This is how God felt enacting creation. He could rip it all down in a second. On a whim.
It makes you laugh. A hysteric, sobbing laugh.
"So what's it like?" you ask, "Watching the world change while you stay the same."
(Because thinking about that is much simpler than thinking about how'd you phrase a request like: These people hurt me. Take care of them.)
He looks at you with those black eyes, white pinpricks of light at the center, and smiles. Fondness and glaring years spread over his face.
"Alive."
But how? He acts like the world's dead to him. All of it but you.
You drink deeply from your glass, and close your eyes. Tonight you're drinking to forget.
YOU ARE READING
To Vore Dignity
ParanormalDo you like looking under your bed? Are you looking for monsters, creatures of the dusty corners? It's a good start, but they don't stay there once they grow up. They leave into the world to lead secret lives. But Werewolves aren't always pretty, si...
