The warm morning rays kissed his cheeks, his eyelids, his nose, and slowly beckoned him from the void of deep sleep. Eyelids lifted their red curtains, and crimson eyes were momentarily blinded by the morning glow. Alastor exhaled the last remnants of sleep from his lungs before pulling his cheek from his knuckles, craning his head to meet the back of his reading chair.
What a peculiar dream, was his first conscious intellection. It had been decades since such a memory reared its head, let alone to vividly assimilate himself into it. He perceived it all as if he was truly there. He felt the rough bark of the tulipwood tree through his shirt, and the dew from the grass dampening his backside. The enlivening sounds, sights, and scents of that summer day were still hewed to his senses. But, frustratingly enough, the sights and sounds of him seemed to dissolve upon his awakening. It was clear that he was supposed to be there, as there was a vexing gap in the picture where he should be, but the puzzle pieces that made him up were irrecoverable.
Alastor glanced at the side table, to the cup of tea that lost its heat hours ago; now just a bitter, room-temperature concoction, undesirable. He sat up, uncrossing his legs and looking to the open book that lay neglected in his lap against his open palm. The late hours of the night had claimed him in the midst of reading. No matter, he had no drive to continue. He marked the book and shut it, setting it beside the cold cup of tea.
As he shifted his attention away, he gazed around his pristine parlor room, over every elaborately-crafted, dark mahogany piece of furniture; every book spine that lined the walls from floor to ceiling; the cream wallpaper; the morning rays that spread across the aged floorboards. His eyes were keen, for whatever reason. He surmised that if he looked carefully enough, that he'd find the answer to some question that prodded at the back of his mind; but about what, he wasn't certain.
He propped his elbows against his thighs, and rested his chin against the bridge of interwoven fingers. Sights zeroed in on the light-streaked floorboards and the illuminated particles of dust that flitted about within those brilliant columns. The smile he bore was soft, but inside, a storm of anxiety came on quickly as more of his senses woke with him.
Angel hadn't returned to the hotel last night.
When he had noticed the spider slinking over to the vending machine to get his fix, he jumped at the opportunity to relish in the entertainment of yet another demon's failure at betterment. That is, after all, why he agreed to offer his assistance, and Angel's angry outburst certainly did not disappoint. It was rather amusing to see him lashing out to hide his shame, but he didn't intend to take it so far as to drive the tearful demon away, and have him not return all night.
The whole altercation stuck in his mind with a bond stronger than any physical weld. Alastor couldn't, for the life of him, figure out exactly what he said that devastated the arachnid. Angel had always remained hard-wearing under his volley of arguments and derision. Not only was the addict consistently inviolable in his perspectives, his partialities, Angel always seemed to augment them out of spite for him, to get underneath his skin. Eliciting a tearful breakdown from the hard-bitten pornstar was never in his realm of possibility, and the blowup had left him standing on the curb utterly bushwacked.
Now, after the fact, he couldn't ignore the knot in the pit of his stomach that gnawed at him. The pain in those heterochromatic eyes felt so real, a pain that identified with him in the depths of his subconscious. He shrunk back in his chair.
To say that Charlie was upset was the understatement of the century.
She. Was. Livid.
After reporting what had happened, he watched with dread as the rest of her pale face matched the red in her cheeks, and found himself at the brunt of a scolding unlike he had ever experienced. The tongue-lashing immediately prompted a long lecture on how the hotel staff needed to support sinners during their low points, her companion, Vagatha, glaring at him in taciturn anger the entire affair. He had only half-listened; not because he didn't care; his mind was still numbed by the foregoing encounter, and wandered through a register of thoughts and recollections all a jumbled, undecipherable mess.
YOU ARE READING
Vintage Memories
Fanfiction(Earlier parts of the story are currently being rewritten, chapters 1-12 have been updated) "Seventy-four years..." "Seventy-four...fuckin' years!" "I searched for ya' for decades! I thought ya' were fuckin' dead!" "We are dead, my dear." "Did ya' e...
