The Rabbit Dies Pt. 04

My eyes drift downward again to a waltz. Dantea and Amaru, hands clasped, dance to Annette's spinning of creation through the noise. Graceful, light, intimate twirls, and dips. I watch him and him alone, the fine control he expresses, the shift of the muscle and the bone beneath the skin, letting the whole-body bend and shift. I think of more positions he could be in. Mostly on his back. Sometimes on his knees. Sometimes standing and picking me up with my ankles on his shoulders and my thighs pressed to his stomach. He dips her low, so low, almost letting the top of her skull dash against the floor. Dantea smiles right at me and I can't help but notice how sharp her teeth are. Normal as far as I know, but still, the pulse jumps and the hands go to the hammer that is no longer there. No weapons were allowed in the theater. House rule. Everyone had to follow it. I regret my obedience.

She comes back up and bows, like a swan of crimson velvet. She turns and steps and there is Amaru, beaming and bright, finally deciding that it is appropriate for him to put on a shirt. Terrible shame. Incredible shame. I think I am glaring at him because the smile falters for a moment before it settles back into docile compliance at the faceless crowd hidden in shadow. The music starts again, and I can't seem to recall thinking anything in particular.

---

Intermission rolls around and I am covered in a cold sweat. There was black, endless infinite black in the music and nothing else. No other color. It only lasted a moment, but it was there. Void and gaps and nothing at all. I breathe. It's the only thing I can do. The floral scent of the tea fills the air. There has to be a fresh pot of it underneath my seat. It's the only explanation I can think of. The mind has the tea, and the soul has the black that fades and drops and will be gone in a moment or two. But it's fine. It's here now, but the memory will fade, and I will be calm again. Annette pokes her head over the lip again, beaming, and stifling child giggles that burble through her lips.

"What the hell was that," I ask and the face freezes in stone.

"What was what?" she says, "Listen, if it was about the glissando two movements ago, that was all Freddy's fault. I told him not to go for it, but that's trombones for you."

"No. That was alright. Good choice on his part. Give him a raise. No. When you stopped, when the music stopped, it was like everything went black." Annette shrugged.

"Don't know what to tell you. Instructions were to keep everything red and blue. I've taken quite a few liberties with that, but the black noise wouldn't work here. You alright? I can send one of the boys to grab something for you. Wine? Beer? I think they have water."

I shake my head and keep my mind slow. She shrugs and sinks back behind the barrier between us. I don't hear the crowd shift and move. They should be though. An hour or so sitting always tends to gum up the works and it would be a good idea to stretch. Not for me though. I just sit in my little chair, staring at the curtain of red velvet that falls like shooting stars. Dancing, they were just dancing together, a wonderful swirl of color mixing with another that swirls back again. I don't know if they mix. At least not yet.

Tired. I am tired. I don't know what time it is. I don't know where the sun is, or where the moon is in its place. It's not early, I think, but the degree of lateness is something beyond my reasoning. I don't even know how long this had been going on. At least an hour. It always would be about an hour or so. Shows tended to break at about then from what I know. So that means there is another hour or so left. Maybe. Unless there is another break and another bit and another break and another bit, the show would go on and on and on some more until I meld into the seat and refuse turn to dust. Or I could just walk out of here whenever my legs get tired. A little shadow thing walks in front of me and offers me a glass frosted over. I turn it away and the thin shrugs and still sets the glass at my feet. Cold tea, it seems. Insanity. Absolute insanity.

The lights dim again, and the curtain rises. The music swells and I see no reason to stop the colors shifting and bleeding into my mind. No black, though. Just red and blue, tinges of orange and green shifting between them. Beautiful, simply beautiful, the dance and twirl. The glass finds its way to my hand and someone takes a sip. It is me. It has to be me. The cold weeps down my throat and settles in my gut. It's refreshing really, the floral spreading its roots and blooming in my core. The colors sharpen and shine and sing down to twin forms once more, blue square and lethargic, red writhing and lithe. The glass is empty, and I am full of cold ice burning down to my heels.

The colors meet, never mixing, center stage. There are blanks in the color now. Boxes and hills that they dance around. Slow dancing really, not quite the deliberate march of the first act. Not quite the stately stride of a waltz. Together, they are so close together.

The black comes again, sharper this time. A dot really, a speck of dust on a mote of grit, centered between them. Small thing really, but it swallows me. I keep staring into it. I keep looking into the middle of the black dot, the middle of the small bit that doesn't move with the colors. I control it. It moves with me. Wherever I look, it is there, right in the center. It cuts through the colors and the shades and the tone, letting the gap of color linger and swell before the red or the blue mixes back in to fill the gap. Still no purple though, no violet or indigo. Still a sharp line between them that the black enforces. I want another drink and there is one before me, in my hand now, glass empty. I can't sate the throat and the drink only pours more and more cold within me. A shard of ice, the size of my fist, coils and pierces over the rising knot.

I close my eyes and let the black grow to be all that I can see. It's nice, not seeing any colors for a little while. It stops being a hallucination and becomes music again. Kind of heavy on the horn for my taste, but it makes sense given the conductor. A little more drum maybe, or a good old piano. I think the entire thing could be done away with and replaced with a nice long piano piece, but that's my preference.

Through the music though, through the shut of senses, I hear something else, something like drums and hand claps shoved together. I am amazed that it takes me so long to realize what it is. It was the music's fault. If that wasn't there, then I would have realized it in an instant. Sex. Skin on skin pressed together, the sound of Amaru shifting inside of Dantea as she sings the song of carnality and warmth and delicious intimacy for the world to see.

The black claw razes my core. So that's what all that was. My mind breaks and the little part of me that is still somewhat rational sits in placid confusion. This was in me. The black claw that bleeds and shears and finds everything soft and delicate. That was in me. That little bit sits back down and sits in calm wonder. There is nothing more it can do. It's weak and small and it doesn't really want to get in the way. That would be impolite and that little bit of not black would hate to be impolite. I take a deep, deep breath and I can smell the bitter tang of smoke break through the flowers. I breathe it out and I swear I can feel the sparks still dancing on my tongue.

The black makes me stand, the music of red and blue subsumed by the void in my skull that says to stand in front. The crowd does not respond. There is still the meeting of red and blue to observe, the swirl to lose themselves in. A black dot barely even registers. I am not important to the grand show. I am not something to be paid any mind. The black in my core reaches up to my neck and wrenches it to the side, cracking the bone and it feels good. The same to my knuckles, blending into the drumbeats and the rakes and I step forward into the color.

The dance is still there, the motion of bodies contorting and twisting. But it is closer now, so incredibly close, there almost isn't a line between them. A section is blue and then it turns red. Simple as that. No line, no gap, just one then the other. I step forward and up onto the lip between me and the stage. I gaze down into the mouth of the pit and see the little speck of green waving happily, lost in its own reverie of noise. The things making the music are not black. They look that way, but they are not full. Just gaps, just voids in the world. The black in me is something, is a nasty thing that spits venom and flame and scours the world and roars as I step over all of them.

The music stops and I do not want it to. It should continue. It should be loud and thumping and dedicated to working its way into my body and the fact that it stopped means it can no longer do any of that. That has to change. That must change, because I refuse to allow the world to be something I do not want it to be. I turn to the little speck of green.

"Play," says the black spilling through my lips. The green nods and takes up her hands. Her chest shifts and bounces in the low-cut dress that should be ripped off and pooling on the floor. Later. She will be that way later. Despite the black hunger, I cannot have everything at the same moment. I can certainly have everything though. It all just has to wait in line.

The music loses every single bit of sophistication it has. Drum beat and drone and slow, so incredibly slow, bubbling noise that bounces through the floor and shakes the curtain above. The crowd still says nothing. No claps, no cheers, no boos, no murmur of general confusion. I have broken that invisible wall that separates the parties so easily and that should not happen. I step forward and that same wall bends and shatters and breaks.

I can see everything. The press of her body against his, the slight distension of her stomach by him. That, that simple swell in her belly, that turns the step to a stomp. She is lost in the sensation though and does not acknowledge the avalanche coming down on her.

My fist hits her right in the back of her head. The snap echoes through the high ceiling of the theater, those same carvings that held sharp shadows so dearly hang on to sound just as well. Replaying and replaying and replaying, that same sharp smack of my bones into her. To her credit, Dantea keeps most of her body still. The skull, though, falls to her chest. She does not scream, or even move to cover her head in any meaningful way. A long, long, long moment passes between us as the color fades and once more, I see the simple stage of wooden planks stretch into the darkness of the audience beyond.

She turns and looks at me, red eyes dancing and burning and laughing at me, at my simple transgression against the theater. Dantea remains silent, however. I look down to their joining. He is only halfway inside of her. I hit her again.

And she laughs. She laughs high and sweet and sharp like kitchen knives against whetstone, and they needle under my skin. The black reigns strong within me, weathering the laughter as she slowly rises and sinks down again until that bulge appears just below her navel. That little rational bit in my mind sighs. Shame. All such a shame.

I grab her throat and crush and lift and squeeze, pulling her off as fast as I can. And he is free and gloriously towering up to the sky, still slick and wet. She lands on the cold boards and rolls away, stopping once she is on her back and staring at the ceiling. And she is still laughing, still singing glass shards that needle into my muscles. She rises. The pieces of her body slot back together and form something shorter than me yet looming over. The black is not scared. I hear Amaru shuffle and shift and try to scramble to his feet. The show has gone off the rails and the best thing for him to do would be to leave. I glance over my shoulder.

"Stay." And he does. My voice echoes through the music again, echoes through the long shadows and shakes the pane of reality. I still smell smoke and fire and embers slowly cooling under the night sky. Dantea bends and shifts and waivers now that the music is for me and me alone. Heavy thumping drumbeat in time with my step. She does not move away, just teetering and laughing at my approach. I hit her in the stomach and the laughter sputters and dies, buried into a cough that wracks her body. The hand finds her hair and lifts her to my eyes. They still smolder and burn through the smile and the cough.

"That is mine now," I say. My voice is even, calmer than it should be. A simple statement of fact for the world to acknowledge. And if it doesn't, everything burns to the ground.

"Take it then," Dantea purrs. She laughs again and the world turns topsy turvy. I stagger forward and that is backwards and sideways and upside down. The red shifts and staggers and swirls in the black center void of stars dying and shifting and I want Amaru hard and hot and bucking underneath me. She is in the way of that union.

The worst part, the absolute worst part out of all of this, was the pathetic display she put on. There were flashing lights and graceful music and that only got her halfway. That only got half of that glorious length in her. From the eyes, he was faking so much of it, so much of the joy put on for the people. I step forward and I go forward, just an inch or so. It is still forward.

Something claws at my cheek and I am bleeding. Sharp nails, talons, rake in my eye and I bleed onto the stage, dripping and pouring and the puddle of red crimson blood laughs at me, bubbling and burbling and popping mocking me for feeling pain. I sigh and the cold finally leaves for blackened heat, the wonderful, blackened heat. Bitter. It's bitter and biting and searing my core as Amaru cowers behind me.

The claws come again from the dancing red with no music. My other cheek sears with bleeding pain and it runs to the corners of my mouth. Blood, copper metallic blood laps into me and I love the taste. The black coils and runs through me, fiddling through my muscles and tensing and shifting and growling together. I like the taste. Sharpens the colors, sharpens the light and the music and the swirl of something dark within me. It makes sense. It all makes sense now.

My mate lies helpless and frozen. A threat drifts through the air, bleeding me and making me tired and sluggish. My other mate waits in the wings, her little hovel surrounded and damp. Simple. All so simple. I have to bleed someone else to get them to leave. I want my hammer, but it is not here. My hands clench and tense and crack. I've already devoted myself to the simplest form of brutal subjugation. I see no reason to evolve beyond that.

The streaks of blood on the stage boil and sway and rise together. It shifts to one mass, pooling in front me. I raise my hands. I raise the haunches and I steel the gaze as the black notes pound and scream. The horns, the wonderful horns go low, low enough to shake the room and turn my muscles to slurry. And then it sharpens, and I smile. The music takes the muscle and molds it back to stone and brick and steel and bent iron.

The claws come again, and I do not bleed. The beast in my core purrs and struts and I laugh this time. Deep in my chest, down to my belly and I laugh as the blood does not grow. The red wavers and bends. I step forward and the boards creak in protest. Another claw to my stomach and I do not flinch.

I catch the hand as it rakes across my back. The demon stops laughing. I was getting annoyed. It did not go with the rest of the song. Clashing, atonal, not quite the same tempo. The music had shifted behind me and she refused to let it go. More claws, more talons, more little knives breaking my skin and I bleed some more. The music can only get me so far. But I do not let go. I do not let the prey escape my grasp. My other hand gropes and grasps and goes to her neck. Slender, so slender and graceful and soft and I crush her. All the black, all the notes, all the blood pouring from my skin and I crush the soft skin and delicate bones. So much though, it takes so much. The red swells and finds the muscles and tendons of its own, slowly trying to eke out enough strength to combat me. I take my other hand free and move to her neck too. Same, it does the same.

Dantea struggles, her form flickering and shifting and glamor failing as the form behind it manifests. Horn and fang and tail, red skin, and bulbous pockets shift and bouncing, tumors really. I don't see the eyes, though. No red gleaming and shining and peeking through the black. But there are teeth. And mouths that snap and bite and try to take more of my flesh. I squeeze tighter and tighter and tighter. My palms meet and something snaps. Dantea laughs one last time, and it goes quiet. The music stops and I slowly stand.

The swirling colors are gone, and I can finally see the stage for what it is. A stage and nothing more. Simple tables and chairs, some other benches and a nice long couch sized to let Amaru lay there and do nothing at all. He is afraid. Absolutely afraid. But he is hard and that is good enough for me. He does nothing. He says nothing. The crowd is silent. Indifferent really, to the demise of the hostess. No cheers, no applause, no boos even. Just nothing. Silence and shadow. I do not care.

I walk to Amaru as he is frozen to the spot.

"You're mine now," I whisper to him. He nods and that makes him a good boy. I kiss him and I still taste the floral cloy of the tea on his skin, his tongue. It will wash out. It will fade and be replaced with green grass and clear skies in a matter of time. The black claw beast sneers and chuffs. Adequate for now.

The music starts again, and Annette will get a reward at some point. Good choice, losing most of the instrumentation. Just her lyre and her humming. Just her voice and the strings coming together. I slowly, so slowly, lay myself on top of him. A moment, just a moment to be on him and feel him on me before he is in me. Mine. Simply mine and the knot tightens in my core at the realization.

The dreams are gone, and he is real. The floral meadows and kind shady trees are gone, and we are left on a barren stage, him still bearing the taint of another woman. I will change that.

"I am going to ride you until you break," I say. Those words echo through the theater, bouncing from the walls and the ceiling, back to us, again and again and again. And each time it registers in his beautiful mind, there is fear. Raw fear that he is now pinned and helpless and trapped. It's not wrong. And it is the right thing to feel. The right thing to do is not struggle and he does that as well. The clothes come off easily enough and I am naked before him, on him, almost over him. I take his hand and lead it to my chest. His hands are so soft, so smooth and gentle and I push him to go rougher.

He does, slowly, giving me more and more strength in his grip until the fondles become teases become iron vices on my skin. And it feels good. It feels right. I want him to fight back and try and struggle. He will fail and fall and kneel, but I still want him to try. I shift and move his length between our stomachs. Hot, hot, and pulsing and terribly aching against him. I press into him and his wonderful preseed spills from his tip, forming rivers on my body. His hands go to my back and draw me tighter.

I start moving, running against him and his length outlining the path he will take in me, the heat of my stomach, my core against his and he shivers and shakes and rocks his hips with my motions. The music still plays, still sweeps, and soars and shifts into the thoughts. It melts into Amaru, as well. I see the gleam in his eyes, the dark hunger forming in his core, pulsing in his blood stream, turning his breath ragged and hot. Hand to the back of my head and he pulls me down to his lips. Cold, he tastes cold, so wonderfully cold. Ice and snow and fallen evergreens shattering in the blizzard winds. Windswept peaks of barren rocks and thin crystal casing of ice on the tree branches. I pour into his cold and he pours it into me, and I take all of it.