[Awakening] September Challenge

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

“So he’s dead now and everyone’s sad. I hope he’s as forgetful as the rest of them.”

A flare of warm light momentarily contrasted with the cool tones cast by a television far too large for the room and thick coils of cigar smoke began to fill the empty air. The pale skin and glassy eyes of a corpse reflected blankly on the sunglasses of the man who sat in the chair, dressed always in black, whose jewellery bore a skull motif.

“I haven’t seen him around since then mind you, so I suppose he’s gone where he’s supposed to.”

The room falls silent again, a cool living room filled with the electronic treasures of the modern age and adorned with Haitian artworks. The man in the chair took another long drag on the cigar, blowing smoke slowly at the unflinching body propped upright on the sofa and watched the smoke curl and twist in the air as though he was waiting for an answer.

“Still, dead is dead and it doesn’t do to let lwa pass on without comment does it my friend?”

The corpse simply rested, milky eyes pointing blankly towards the man in the chair as he picked up a bottle of rum, swigging unceremoniously but deeply between drags upon the cigar.

“Well now. Let us begin by telling the story of the man, as crazy as any god and burdened by the wrath of the divine.”

The man in black began to gesture to the empty room as though addressing an audience or making a grand speech, pausing from time to time to drink from his bottle of rum or fill his mouth with warm, acrid smoke.

“When first I met the man I thought him more than a little odd. Really I was just a kid, all fresh eyed and glad to have survived, completely unaware that everything was about to go to sh!t and half our population was going to vanish.”

“Bon Nuit took me to my first meeting and there he was, some gawky looking academic shuffling round like he was making sure everyone was using coasters or something. I saw him and the word ‘Loser’ might as well have been branded on his forehead, but that was true for rest of them as well. The Bookworm, the Hippy, the Traveller and him, a bunch of Awakened sat chatting about recreating the Napoleonic war in 16th scale or something.”

“I can’t say that I liked him much, certainly not at first. He was a little creepy and kind of superior and frankly in those first few years after the Cataclysm I thought him and the rest of his Cabal were a bunch of idiots. They kept acting like they expected it to all be some big test, as though their beloved masters were just going to reappear and want to know whether he’d been watering the plants and polishing the banisters.”

“Time changes people of course and to be honest the more I knew about him, the more ridiculous I thought he was, searching for Atlantis as though it was some archaeological find that was under a pile of dirt somewhere, writing books about gods in volcanoes and who knows what else. I thought he was just some funny little man who would spend his whole life with tiny metal men and stuffy books if he got the chance.”

The man in the sunglasses paused for a moment, watching the corpse opposite as though it might ask him to go on. When nothing happened he blew a smoke ring into the air and continued.

“I think it was the Seers that started it. Finding out that his beloved masters weren’t as squeaky clean as he believed. I started to see something in his eyes after that, while the Seers or their servants were running around gutting people. He started being more determined, more aggressive in his response. Looking back, I can’t say that he had the wrong idea, but we knocked him back, advised caution and peace.”

“Every so often I figured he was about to lose it, that he’d just go crazy and start raving in the middle of afternoon tea. His eyes seemed full of heat, but it was a kind of patient heat, like lava waiting just below the surface. I expected him to erupt but it never happened.”

“There was no eruption, no fireworks that we could see at least. One day he just slipped off while the rest of us were arguing, headed over to where one of the Seers was lying in hospital and burned him to death. It must have been pure wrath, a God’s wrath, channelled though a man who couldn’t take any more.”

“Some men are murderers and some can commit murder. I’m not sure he was either. Sure he still got angry afterwards, still pressed for hard responses but the fire seemed to have gone out of him, like he’d looked too far into what he was capable of and it scared the crap out of him.”

The man in black paused for a moment and then grinned at the corpse.

“Death defines us all my friend. Our own and the ones we cause. Maybe its co-incidence that he died weakened and helpless at the hands of the seers, maybe its Kharma striking back for the life he took, I’m not here to judge such things. He’s dead now, that’s the important thing. Funny though, I always figured it would be the Bookworm who’d go first.”

The man in black picked up a post-it note covered in Arcane symbols from the chest of the corpse and set fire to one end, the flames reflected in his sunglasses and the blank eyes of the corpse as they spread across the paper.

“Farewell Tarquin Sinclair, Recluse, Obrimos, Member of the Geo-Cabal, Awakened of Cambridge.”

“Bon Voyage…”