Tales from the Overlook

Over the Rails

[ "I'd give you the moon,
I'd give you the stars above,
I'd give you the sun and the sky." ]

The music might have been skipping, coming out as tinny and barely reaching the air itself, but it somehow managed to be the most beautiful music in the whole wide world. It wasn't clear where it was that it was spilling the cheerful tune out into the night, but for the two slightly squiffy - one more so than the other - newlyweds, it seemed irrelevant. Their stumbling down the street, a dance in its own right, shifted to a clumsy sort of waltz between the woman who's eyes shone with all the stars of the night sky above them and the man who had a smile with all the warmth of the summer evening.

[ "The bites in my eyes,
For a kiss.
I'd give you my mind,
But it's already gone.
I'd give you my heart,
On a platter of food,
In exchange for a kiss,
'Cause I'm over the rails,
For you.
Yes, I'm over the rails,
For you." ]

Rain drummed outside, a steady rhythm that showed little signs of stopping, the roof alive with dozens of fantastical creatures from a book read over the dim, each raindrop its own beast. The late afternoon sun shone cheerily through the mass of rain clouds, the downfall lit to shine as if it were something majestic and otherworldly. Yet the pair sat as dry as one could be, blankets tugged up around them to fight off the chill that was just creeping into the air. A woman, blissfully gazing up at her love with her head resting on his lap, a hand never far from her swelling belly as the life grew inside. A man, enthusiastically reading to his beloved as his words and feelings swelled into a marvelous show of love and theatricisms. Rain may try and dampen their joy, but both hoped it would be a losing battle.

[ "I'd pull out my hair,
I'd quit drinking,
I swear to god!
I'd cut off my ear,
If you wish it my dear,
In exchange for a kiss." ]

The world itself seemed to have fallen to a deadly still, silent as if the elements themselves were listening. But a child's wails of pure agony were a sorry thing to hear, so loud even from the islands that split the house into its own worlds miles apart from each other. Eyes that once shone with starlight frozen over with a hatred that barely permitted tears to escape the chill that threatened to freeze her very heart. A mouth that once warmed the soul with a smile was still, silent and unable to utter even the slightest sound in the way of an apology, alcohol still burning his tongue and mind together as one.

[ "I'd sink you to sleep,
For a peck on the cheek my love,
I'd give you a rock,
On a ring,
In a box,
In exchange for a kiss." ]

The wind whistled its possibilities of snow, but it felt as though it might have been a dozen years away, a dreadful stagnation shaping the world to no end. A guillotine held above a neck by a threadbare rope that each endless moment brought closer and closer to the inevitable disaster of an end that it promised with deadly certainty. A lady admiring the dent the ring left in her finger, wondering if it was really worth all the pain that it left her, as hollow as the dent the absence of the ring brought. A gentleman throwing his final card to the table in a last minute gamble that he could only hope would be a saving grace and not the ruin he feared he'd never outrun. It was a do or die for the squirming form on the chopping block, lest the end comes before a decision was made at all.

[ "'Cause I'm over the rails,
For you.
Yes, I'm over the rails,
For you." ]

Like a wild beast, the wind roared and clawed at the building as if trying to force itself inside, the snow threatening to smother the world in its icy nothingness. What a wonderful world it would be if the weather could be considered the worst of the problems at hand, and yet it never was so kind as to allow this to be a reality. A wife, broken, bruised, and bleeding with hope snatched away from her with reckless abandonment, tears hot and messy pouring streams down her face as it was involuntarily jerked about by the business end of a weapon already sticky with her blood. A husband, or what was left of him as he was jerked about as an unhappy puppet, his death denied by the will of a hotel out of anything, a madman made of an almost decent fellow, the blade of a knife grinding in his back as the mallet was raised with foul and final intent.

"'Cause I'm over the rails for you," said it as means of explanation, echoing the words of a song they had once danced to in happier times, in times where the sun still shone on their long doomed marriage, "Yes, I'm over the rails for you." The voice cracking with emotion, as if what was left of Jack was crying out, but there was not enough of the man to stop the disaster from unfolding before his very eyes, by his own hands.

"Fuck..." she uttered aloud, something resigned in her tone. Resigned, but somehow relieved, for she was so very tired. Tired of struggling, tired of suffering, tired of pain, and tired of the walk of life she had so unknowingly danced as she internalised all the cold that was hidden by the moments of warmth she had so desperately craved. Craved like one craved a substance, craved like a fool that had thought it could ever be so.

As the roque mallet raised to commit, to strike the final killing blow, she simply shut her eyes, trying to recall the last moment they had been happy.
A thud echoed the halls before a memory could surface.

((This was my first attempt at a songfic so it's probably a tad clumsy. The song is "Over the Rails" by Circus Contraption.))