Overthinking it

A long time between posts. There’s a lot of noise in the world and sometimes it’s overwhelming and very unproductive. To the point where I go to log into my own website and can’t remember the credentials. Luckily google does so I don’t have to reset things for the umpteenth time.

The funny thing about writing, is if you leave your own work alone long enough you forget what you wrote. Like looking at a photo of younger you and appreciating just how damned good looking and youthful you were at the time, but couldn’t see. This youthful snippet is a literal head dive of one of my favourite characters. I’m not sure what sort of mental health issues you’d name this, but Caolle would agree he absolutely has it and so what? The important thing is that you noticed him.

This scene exists in isolation right now, an island at the edge of the plot waiting to be discovered. Sooner or later the scenes do link up, it’s how you get there I never plan for.

*****

Delving into memories is a trippy experience. How do you describe being on drugs or intoxication to someone who's never experienced it? How do you describe colour to the blind and sound to the deaf? How would you even start to explain music and art?

Music is how feelings sound. Art is what emotions look like. All concepts that circle each other. Memories...those are experiences, tainted and overwhelmed by the feelings and emotions of the subject. That's what Caolle's memories are like, a whirling kaleidoscope of fragments and half grasped sensations, his mind is never still, never settled, just like the outside. He moves frantically from one manic moment to the next, never quite alighting. When I think of Rie or Mark I think of resolve, single mindedness, purpose, but Caolle is something else. Caolle doesn't think about any one thing, he thinks about everything, all at once. Constantly.

The memory is someplace dark, hidden, lonely. The voices in Caolle's head whisper that it's the mansion, underground, far removed from the city lights where the night seeps into the bedrock. The scene his memories painted for me was silver wrapped in cold, all the warmth and colour leeched away. Even the firelight was grey.

The firelight did ugly things to Caolle's face. That was the thing about memories, they were a confusing mix of perspective. Like a disembodied experience, watching yourself as someone else but remembering it through your own eyes. Like dreaming, lucid dreaming when you straddle the line between sleep and awake.

The torch is in Caolle's hands, held out before him. He sits at the foot of a long staircase, stone, curving up into darkness. The mansion perhaps. The walls around are bedrock, roughly hewn and unadorned. The torch is a living thing. Fire. Burning rags and pitched wrapped around a branch. It doesn't do much to ward off the darkness, nor cast any heat that Caolle or I can feel. I remember the coarse grain of the wood against his hands, grinding it between his palms. He's tense, looking through the flames into the chamber he's come too. I can't see what's there but Caolle's memories paint me the picture. A tomb, a coffin, a sarcophagus. His mind toys with each of these names, turning them over, sounding them out, wondering at the differences, then dismisses them all.

Because the stone resting place doesn't hold the dead eternal. The occupant sleeps, dreamlessly, much deeper and more restful than Caolle's nights have been. A flash of fitful and restful turning plagues Caolle pauses for a moment before he pushes that thought away, seeking distraction elsewhere. He's very good at that, distracting himself. And allows himself a small, tight, smile at that modest admission. Modesty, not a failing of Caolle's. Ever so fond of himself.

The sleeper in the coffin is dead but not dead. Gone but not forgotten.

The kaleidoscope quickens. The smell of burning flesh, a woman's scream, the sound of thunder, no...not thunder, gunshots. Memories, distant ones but still fresh. Raw. Painful.

This is Caolle's curse, so impulsive, so thoughtless. But he's not. It's not that Caolle doesn't think about consequences, or repercussions. It's just the opposite, he considers an action and his mind spills out in innumerable possibilities, branches off in a hundred dizzying directions, and from there into a tangled web of forks and possibilities. Action upon actions. Consequences and repercussions piled on cause and effect. Enough to leave anyone paralysed into inaction. Or in Caolle's case, to act simply for the sake of acting.

Because then it all stops, abruptly, the brakes are slammed on. Caolle rises to his feet, the torch thrown aside, guttering on the stone floor. He doesn't need it to see, all he has eyes for is the sarcophagus. Resolve, blood quickening, heart pounding in his chest. His footfalls are louder as he approaches, heavier, it feels like his whole body is tightening up like a coiled spring, so much potential energy searching for a release. He looks down at his hand, something clenched there, a weapon, a knife or a blade, maybe, sharp and deadly. But something else. The bare skin of his arm, porcelain white only harder than ivory, no flush of blood but the veins are pressed taut against the skin, black and swollen. Porcelain, but cracked. Riven.

This is what the fae look like when they're angry, when they fall into a fight or flight response. It's another side of them few people see, I can't recall if I've ever seen Caolle like this. In real life, not in some half imagined dream.

It's frightening. This side of Caolle frightens me.

Maybe it's because I'm all he can think about.

Huddled up, crying, weak, broken, pathetic. This is the image his mind has seized on, this is what drove him to act.

Because of me. Because of what...

Not just me though, there's something beyond that. A sense of shame, regret. A flash of blue, eyes, I think, and Caolle flinches, before setting one hand on the lid of the stone coffin. It's flung away easily.

Failure. Caolle has failed, that's all he can think of.

But there isn't time for that. He vaults inside the coffin, no hesitation, crouched down, kneeling over the occupant.

Still as the grave, not a hint of life in the body. Big though, taller than Caolle, broader. Big.

Still no hesitation, Caolle stabs down, straight for the heart. As hard as he can.

His wrist is caught at the last moment, iron fingers around his wrist, hard enough to crunch bone. But he tries anyway, struggles with everything he has. The grip is stronger than him.

Failure.

That's all Caolle lets me see, before the memory ends.

*****