Duality

Uncut from a series of fluorescent lights shining right through my eyelids. A world closed off by the darkness of the belting treeline, I suspect the eyes of the many. The dozens in the thousands of eyes stares, I believe that the Mother of A Thousand Young can hold you down in her gaze. As if I was staring into an abyss with blinking and or flashing lights before me. Holding down another's stares and if I or the other were to blink it'd be the death of our own humanity.

I was drenched in sweat from a desirous fever, or wanting to remember a time in which I couldn't put my finger on. I could feel the eschews of past echelons passing through as a echoes in a place which I doubt could even hold memory⸻⸻⸻that is the drawing board in this quaint office. The blackboard withheld the caricatures of people's faces. I was trying to remember a single day far-removed from everyone else's memories. We can argue about the intricacies of it all Cathro, but I still believe that there are still some evidence in which we can get from a few dead bodies.

Cathro looked into the deepness of a dead Alex's eyes sockets, all hollowed out, you could gaze deeply into a man's own abyss. Darkness encroaching as light passed over, testing the brow-ridge like a cold lump of clay to play with.

'Did you really kill him back in his manor?' I was asking that question myself. Coroner would be a fool if he passed on the bruises where the damage was dealt, and the indentations against his skull, precisely towards the temple, and the clear use of bolts lodged into his chest from a weapon with a strong discharge.

'I hate to break it to you, but you didn't really kill him.' Quite the miss really. You thought you'd have the last say, then the coroner comes around, and about tells you that you weren't the one who dealt the final blow.

'So he came back to life ... after I asphyxiated him?' To, in which, the coroner replied: I explained it so⸻⸻⸻; the coroner took a cloth from the evidence box handing it to me in his gloved hand.

'Slip into gloves yourself, you'll be surprised how much legwork they've done to bring him to life.' I tore through the sanitised hamper for clean gloves to slip into. The gloves felt snug, and the it conformed well to the contours of my fingers. Truly surgically precise the works of simple handwear.

I took hold of the cloth, and I soon came to understand the odd thickness at its surface. As though it was icky, translucent, and yet smooth up to the creased edges where you'd suspect friction from the appearance of its texture.

'Alchemical in substance. Nowhere near as dense and as volatile as other known solvents in this industry. I suspect someone had undergone trials for a new means of demolition within their ranks. Hel, what do I know, am just in forensics.'

'Cheers for this Vincent. I always doubted you to be a coroner. Should've been in the bureau with your skills.'

'Hmph. Am not one for duffel bags over body bags. At least with the dead, post-mortem wouldn't end up with me in the sticks. More dead than there are the living.'

Cathro already left the vicinity without a word. I only followed suite once I had dealt with the paperwork at the front-desk.

For inasmuch as an afternoon could give up, it wasn't the first time. This I had marked as that other time in which I was wondering as to why, as episodic a day and its surprises can be, a question still arises. Why would it be any different? Is it different because I am to treat the days in my life like a canto? I was quite fond of turn-tabling an episode, its chaotic nature, and turning it as a page turning chapter in my life.

Whether-whenever and inasquite-as a moment may allow the change of pace in a single happenstance, as the world begins to revolve selflessly for another in this very person's interest, a compromise made between God and this man whom we shall agree his intentions to be selfish.

Otherwise we'd regard this matter to be just another case of the Monday-blues and it wasn't really a big a matter as Cathro would've believed. If only his brother Tyche had stopped their older brother Sycrose from conspiring a plan which would land women resting on each shoulder.

Should this plan ever come into fruition after they had the events already transpired, the very image of the country farther than the Greek-Latin Steppes could guise itself as, the very ugly country we try to form into our own image perhaps.

I think that we should act upon the good graces our parents have longed for us, as our older brother Sycrose would lay out the plans to serenade the girls at the gates of Vanoirguarde.

Tip of the misty steps, surrounded by the orchard pit, with vines which one could say were ladders to the very depths of Hades. Pity the fools who fall outside the box to dust up the courage to even ask a girl out on another's debut.

Perhaps, and maybe-so, the change in venue could change the atmosphere and therefore unlocking the inner garden before the inlaid library would work their charms excellently, without flaw, to prose romance.

They could work out as to how confidential and amour-filled this plan was, they were stopped with a change in plans as 'princesses' arrive on-scene with a neat little struts and flaunts of their dresses. The three could only guess as to what clues were laid out before them. After all, they were escorted by their brothers who struck them as the polar opposite in appearance, and yet oh-so similar in demeanour.

It was also Anda Liuga's day of the dead, and before the palace walls, here in the Vanoirguarde is where the most unremarkable of men stand before their train arrives. Eight platforms parallel, each distinct side numbered and their allocated lines were relayed by personnel of the station. The track the three bought tickets for was heading for El Once, and the three of them could only mutter as to what to expect at El Once, as they rushed down the palace steps and into the array of disengaged carriages being replaced by sections of strong-men.

There were candles, bouquets of flowers, paintings and wedding dresses, funeral dressings, dancing attires, a whole range of high fashion clashing in the breadth of the sprawl. You could tell who they were there for, as to the position and occupation of a member and as to how'd they'd attain such non-trivial wares were baffling for foreigners.

East Maangatan people were dressed in holistic, regal, yet conservative uniforms, and you could tell who was an Inland-Imperial just by the hidden sabre swaying underneath their coats and cloaks. Other Inland-Imperials could be seen continuing the strings of umbrellas on-high from the very bottom steps of the arcade before the central plaza and one big tree on the oddly petite boundary of a hill-mound.

As arrays of carriages lined across parallel and men, and women, and lovers alike paraded the sprawl at the base of the staircases, they had noticed the eyes of a man who they couldn't mistaken. He was with the lieutenant Morand, and he had brought his two sheepdogs alongside, both mongrels sitting idly, their shoulders against this certain man's knees.

'I'd rather have chosen to chase women, yet you said it yourself brother. You are getting paid to bring vengeance upon a dead man? So we're to believe we'd get paid to accompany you to the sprawl of Hell's Kitchen?'

'Yes, Tyche. I wouldn't have it any other way, since after all we were both conscripted under Garrett's command years before you had known my whereabouts. It's no different to the Nordic Job back in late September more than two years ago.' Cathro, raised his right hand high above his head to signal to Tinsley, 'We are here, come meet us!'

Tyche looked down the slope of the stairs with eyes of a prig, chewing on a morsel of whatever he'd last feasted on. The Anda Liugan sprawl offered no way for them to meet eye-to-eye without looking down another.

Sycrose watched from behind his two brothers, shadowing them even as his eyes were cast towards two unfamiliars, he speaks in bated breaths, 'I don't want this Kumbaya shit.'

There were some things left unbeknownst whence it came the antecedent of the sepulchres people paraded for and through the simulated graves of the dead as the empty caskets littered the very sprawl's hinges where mostly gardens and lawns people tended were now changed into a perturbing, screaming heat of a suburbia.

Within the midst of this suburbia discriminate me against the bobbing of heads amongst a wave of others. I had clambered up the steps with shaky footing. I can feel my prosthetic weighing me down. My sweat permeating throughout my sleeves and the woollen grooves, further poisoning my burns. I clamber up the stairs without grace.

Lieutenant Morand had his sights locked upon the brothers' necks. He had a killer instinct in which he could not let go, those eyes of intensity reminded me of the time in which lieutenants, truly second-in-command, would shutdown the outcry of men hailing from the ends of the earths with their back-handed, and outlandish dispositions of nonuniform like-ness.

Most I knew who had eyes of intensity like Morand would've practiced a more refined, regal most-like and focused martial art of having to centre their sabre's centre-of-gravity to rest against their chest, with their elbows pivoting from their abdomen. Parry daggers, such as Sword-Breakers would be utilised as secondary armaments. I knew assassins too who practiced this inland martial art, aside from parry daggers, the assassins I knew of would employ throwable stiletto knives instead.

I and Cathro clasped and shook hands. Well, I'll be. His brothers didn't take to it translated through their smiles or squinting of their eyes. Rather fond with how their presence were more like trees in the background than men in the forefront of battlements or a play stage.

Personalities which captured me, not because they were a peculiar lot, but rather that they were just like those headhunting blackguards from the outskirts before the frontier.

Sycrose met my gaze, cursed, and grinned villainously. He knew who I was not from Cathro's accounts. He knew who I was because once he eyed me down, tracing my silhouette with his eyes, he saw the prosthetic arm, and he saw the bandage wrappings of sweat and dead skin marring the bandages with its brown stains.

'You're that hound dog. The one I heard once rode with Garrett Graham of the Anda Liuga fortress, and the one who made that Duino king arouse blackguards for your head.'

Oh how I remembered it like so: among the possessions of the Princess. I am. I call upon your lord and king beyond this gate, whom in his position, he was right to do so, decided to send me back whence I came. With a gesture in a back-handed smite of his hand against my cheek after a serenade and dance. Henceforth, I wouldn't greet him with an open palm. I shake my clasped hand towards the sky.

How cruel is that Awful Haunter of Nature who watches my back from the shivs of the blackguard? My back wet, shirt sullied and marred against the cobblestone pavement, I was now wishing I hadn't shown my face before the gates of Duino, and to have met your father who was as regal as Endymion, alas, lacklustre in the more desirable feats of David or Alexander I mirror him against the greats, because if I were to take your hand, to even renounce your father would be a sin.

Now I stood before three brothers, and I knew as to what them knowing about a past charade entailed speaking out that, 'Cathro should disclose my affairs in detail with you. Brothers are either bonded by blood, or cut-throats with a deep hatred for their own blood.' My response took Cathro by surprise, he shook his head rapidly as to say, Cathro didn't drop a leak about me. Not even to your own brothers, Cathro?

Sycrose's shadow fell upon me, he smiled faintly with the sun dimming his face, only showing his upper teeth, then brushed me aside by lop-siding my prosthetic arm knowing the singe of pain I'd endure. I couldn't catch even a glimpse of his profile. The moment I knew, albeit, that heading inland after the events from the abandoned Imperial dockyard would continue to haunt me. As I am haunted, the sprawl haunts.

Haunting as the tomb and church of Santa Maria Formosa, heralded as a grand tribute to those dwelling beneath the earth, and their spirits amidst us, aiding us in our time of need. I found it awful, do not mistake it as a denotation of what is truly awesome and wonderful. Full of awe. Her sprawl was truly magnified. If I were a child I'd be awestruck and in the most magnificent of presence of a sprawl.

To the city streets it was a testament to human desire to architect even the minute. To even architect the moment. Understand when the Italians say, 'minute,'' they truly mean 'moment' in their tongue. Speaking to the presence of the unseen and the exotic. Speaking life into the very moment. I am enamoured, and I am quite possibly obsessed. I feel the absence left behind of ones whom lived for one-selves. Their presence⸻, all-but-lethal like a child's very own soul soaring like a bird it pierces the very being whom comforts, and supports, a lagoon lapping its atoll. Spirits, amidst us, fluttering hummingbirds bring respite to those who yearn for it, those who are the paupers begging in the slivers of shades on the city streets succumbing to their salivating souls, to satisfy them through charity. No other treats the poor to be their beloved for it already pains them, their livelihoods, their love for their significant other, and their love for their children outweighs poverty calling them.

I had watched the parade, amongst the caskets of glass was Alex being paraded through the sprawl. His eyes were non-vacant. Coins laid upon the contours of where his eyes were. A stream of glass coffins for men.Even for men who already came in a amphibian casket, the redheaded man who presumably drowned earlier this morn. Bodies no one sought care for, neither identified by loved ones. If they even exist.

The parade parted giving way to them as if cells in a bloodstream going against the current. The city is alive! The irony of the dead, strangers do not know the name to. All are mourned equally. I watched them gather, and part, they separate waves to show the bricked-inlay streets of sepia. The newly maroon inlays distinguished tell of shop owners who cared for sweeping the four-by-four patch of bricks before their storefront. For those who've done neither housekeeping, housewarming, nor any of the tender and care for life outside their comfort, their brick inlays before their storefront were sepia.

I saw children draw against the grooves of slabs to create squares to separate another in a hierarchical spiral. A chalk rolled into the gutter, and a child winced at bending over to spread his hands before the storm drain in fear of the dead's cavernous eyes' absence lurching over. Wild abandon I suppose. A bad omen I digress to even imagine the dead wandering in the sewage. I imagine the gutter rats from my past-life. I begin to imagine Alex's face in the gutter to replace the perversion of thought.

'Reckoning upon us.' I parse the Latin of those who beckons. Love and fear binds, again I say this not as realisation, but as two separate entities I have to pour my self worth into one or the other. Do I love? Or do I fear? To choose both surmounts into madness in the end. I'd know this for I hear the Lieutenant's prayer recur to the top of his creed. I hear him slowly sigh lower and lower as his voice trembles into himself.

Bothered to not eye the men parading the departed, they knew as to who these men were, we could say they were either from their king's court, or accomplices, or men resigned to poverty laying right into their chests their rites of passage. The Lieutenant had his cap cupped into his chest, his head lowered, his lips parting words of sorrow, 'Vixi aliis dum vita fuit. While life was, I lived for others.' I am the Lord of Desire. I am the Lord of Pained-Madness. I am the Lord of Obsession, you may also pronounce me as the Lord of Love. I have garnered many underneath my wings. Garnered many underneath my umbrella. Matters not space-or-time, I am the Lord of Desire. I grow with jealously everyday so that you may see my bloody tears straining down my face. I am enraged and weeping. I drink the elude of the deed. The good deed. I sent my Archangels downwards to spread God's face on the Sabbath, that you may look towards me on Sunday.

The brother you once loved⸻: Nito had succumbed to his burns before tuberculosis could take him. You curse me for it, yet you yearn the same. You came from Lovers, you are loved, and were loved, and are to love, or had loved. The Pained-Madness is like an encroaching fever climbing up your aorta and splitting your arteries as if halved bread⸻; valleys. The coroner cut away at the slab of meet at the back of nape to reveal the eschews of sinew and gore. More than tuberculosis the coroner presumed.

Our strangers' bond comforted, and support the unseen and the exotic. I knew now as to why even men such as we should mourn for the dead. My father wouldn't answer me to say life's sacred, nor would my mother. Its as though watching a fire burn, and watching the flickering tongues, the embers flutter then fade into night, oh, night. I implore the idea of this feeling not being empathy, nor any sorrow, rather the solitude found when you realise you weren't alone altogether. Embracing another. Weeping for another. Kissing the feverish foreheads of another. I came to understand the Lieutenant's prayer. His spite was temporarily gone, yet the spite would return later, even before the day's end. It was the moment of respite we cling onto. I came to understand why men take courage, and act manfully only to succumb to a lover's comfort, and support.

Cathro's eyes fluttered, and the teary tinges at their very corners, 'Sweet, and Clear.' He said with bated breath. His tearing up within this moment. I am reminded of a time of as to why, an my immaturity met a premature death. The death of life as I knew it. The hereafter.

The loneliness sets upon the distance you give up close friends, or how uncontrollable your anxiety becomes as you fall into yourself. Or how the once downtrodden muse begins to form without your attention, as your chords turn from sour, and forlorn, into something sweet and clear. Although you hate the change, you knowingly need.

Comes about morning, the colours of comfort in the Scandinavian palette has you now seeking New England sunbathing colours within the transition of Spring into Autumn. At times, I a foreigner, am like the French dreaming of an American past-time. I could only find respite in the arrhythmic poems I wrote. I'll probably rewrite a prose or two. Lose sleep while am at it.

Write a letter later to my mother to let her acknowledge my health. Tell her about the 'him' I refer to when addressing my sanity. Curse God while am at it. Receive echoes of one of the sisters catching my handwriting flutter and hover.

Pray the problem doesn't haunt me again after waking. The perfect-peace between waking and realisation. Realising am 'him' again, and then this same being perverts my life. Always and forever.

Still, the problem festers and burns like a cyst. I flash-freeze the damn thing but it's finicky, and I grow worrisome. These worries have culminated into the loneliness, worthlessness, purposelessness which in turn become my selfishness, like seldomness in a sense. I have named this transformation: Pained-Madness, and 'he' lords over the condition.

I shouldn't have named 'him', as any demon should 'he' has physically manifested. That was my first mistake. My first true mistake. No wonder I do not count the seconds, the minutes, I count only the hours consumed, now exhumed.

Distance is what makes memories marked and most memorable. The distance we keep to separate another. To set no great store in another. Observing the parade of people finding themselves in close proximity. All talking. People talk. It's just that it is. Such is life, and such is life when it especially takes away from you. Takes as quickly as carpet bombings across the breadth of a plaza. At times I'd imagine maybe a gunman or two treading along the crowded streets carrying iron, holding onto what little help they could get.

Garrett's words echo to me. Standard operating procedures. Close Quarters. The most complex, and most difficult of circumstances for an operating agent to find themselves in close proximity to suspects, civilians and hopefully you have friendlies on this side of the fence. Being on this side of the fence, however, measures your disciplines, your tactics, your communications all stemming from your house's rigorous planning and thereafter execution.

I will now illuminate the three cores of any site clearing procedure: alterations are assumed before engagement. Never presume before entry into a section. I have seen men die before they even barge through the entrance with their weapons at the ready. Plan. Plan. Plan. Slow is fast, fast is smooth, you'll find yourself in a best case scenario over anything else. Now to the next core...dexterity, understand how I discriminate dexterity over agility. A plan is executed in a timely manner, but do understand you are not in a rush, and it comes about to your training and expertise in ensuring and providing the best case scenario in any given situation. Confidence is the last core, self-explanatory.

'Us four aren't enough. We need a fifth man. Someone who doesn't already fulfil the three tenets of close-quarters battle.' I gave them a rudimentary lesson in special tactics, and all returned scoffs.

'Who'll fill the shoes of a bureaucrat? Another partisan?' Sycrose spits. 'Not a single soul here would be able to recreate Garrett's rules. His codes. His means. I spit at the thought of loose ends. You already asked for the brothers. Here's clearly, the Lieutenant isn't even fit to be the evidence guru.'

'So we ask for Jorge, and his connections, and we network it out on the down-low. We figure out where that body adrift this morning came from, and we return to Alex's residence in spite.'

'Despite the circumstances with the Military Police!? Do remember we are in a country that is not fit to even be in martial law, or the home of clandestine operations!'

Then it came to me. It gnawed at me and clenched its jaws right into my guts. I knew one person who could recreate the effects of Garrett's operations. A caricature of the Balkans, and yet all-but-lethal. With authentic hands, and intense eyes, 'I propose a Bactaggard.'

'Speed and Aggression. Two out of three. Don't expect him to follow orders.'

'I don't expect him to. I'm going to secure him so.'