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[set the scene. a cave -- but something greater. an entity -- but something lesser. a cave that crawls and twitches and squirms and writhes and shifts and moves and sings and dies with every breath and beat and beat and beat -- beat -- beat -- beat --
set the scene. a cave -- but something greater. an entity -- but something lesser. a stage -- set alight.
the fire is new, we think, and it blossoms, blooms, flowers, even in the dark, even in the smoke, even in the suffocatingly dark smoke.
set the scene.
a man -- but something greater.
a power -- but something lesser.
tell me, jordan. who are you? who are you? who -- who --]
[JORDAN KENNEDY sits up, with a sharp intake of breath. he does not need to breathe -- not anymore, at least. the audience knows this. cue audience laughter.]
"You're in… an awfully strange position, I must admit."
[JOHN AMHERST steps out from stage left. he's tall, as he always has been. his eyes are startlingly blue -- his hair is black, matted thick and dark with dry blood -- his brown suit is torn and stained and dusted with a fine layer of light-gray powder.]
"I didn't ask for this, for one thing," Jordan says, dully.
"Well, who does?" John shrugs carelessly, moving across the stage with measured steps. The audience scatters in his wake; his bare feet track dry blood across the rough, rocky floor, but he doesn't seem to notice. John leans down over Jordan, all limbs and joints and skin that should not be here, looking down at him with a gaze almost as dull as Jordan's voice had been. His eyes are startlingly blue. The feverish, watery glow that'd been so prominent in them before is washed out -- glazed over -- he has lost something, and he knows it.
"I guess some people must've, right?" Jordan's stare is still fixed at some indeterminable point on the polished wooden panels of the stage. "I mean, you existed before all… this. People like you have always been making -- choices. If you'd like to call them that."
"I did," John confirms. "You have to admit, though -- it's people like us, now. You forget your place."
"I haven't," Jordan replies. "I didn't ask for this."
"That doesn't change the fact that you're here, now. And I…"
"You shouldn't be," Jordan says, slowly. He tilts his head up, finally meeting John's knife-dull eyes with a frown of his own. "I didn't sense you before… before I took the stage."
"I'm here now, though. That's what matters."
"I burned you."
[the audience shifts anxiously in their seats.]
John tightens his mouth into a thin-lipped smile. "But you didn't forget me."
"I feel like I… I should've killed you."
A beat.
"You were close," John says.
"It wasn't enough."
"Very little is, I must admit. There's nothing to be done about it now, though. You're… here. And I'm…"
"Not supposed to be." Jordan spreads a palm flat on the stage. The audience hums -- the ants pulse nervously with life, clearing a circle around his hand -- he listens to them sing, sing, sing in the silence.
"But expected, nonetheless." John reaches a hand down, tilts Jordan's chin up. His teeth are crusted with blood. A fat, writhing maggot squirms out from the skin between his index finger and his fingernail, cold against Jordan's skin for a second, a second -- before it falls into the mass of ants, swallowed up in moments by the starving swarm. "They love you."
"That's their trick, though."
[JOHN AMHERST's cold hand jolts away from KENNEDY'S face, like he's been burned.]
"So that's what you think of this all," John muses.
"Worshipped, but never listened to," John replies. "Loved, but never left alone."
"It's not enough?"
"Is what I said… a surprise?"
"No," John says, too quickly. Jordan can feel a sudden, wincing pain, throbbing through his own chest, and he doesn't know why -- but John, too, is pulling anxiously at the collar of his shirt, like he's struggling to breathe. "It's a lie, though."
"How so?"
"You're here, after all. You made a choice."
"I never had the chance."
"You chose not to go back."
"That's not the same thing."
"Isn't it, though? You're here, and they're here, and they love you."
"The same way they loved you." With a sharp gesture, Jordan motions John towards the exit, stage left. "Anyway, could you really choose not to extinguish yourself as you burned?"
[the audience is silent.]
"What are you talking about? I'm still here," John protests.
[cut the lights, lower the curtain, quick!]
"You wish you were."
[set the scene. a cave -- but something greater. an entity -- but something lesser. a circle of light that pierces through the darkness, pierces through the ants that crawl and twitch and squirm and writhe and burn, burn, burn --
set the scene. a man -- but something lesser. a power -- but something greater. an outstretched hand; dried blood, crusted dark between the wooden paneling of the stage; awake, arise, or ever be fallen.
set the scene.
the audience is screaming, banging at the locked doors of the theater.
tell me, jordan --]
"Can't you hear them? Isn't that enough love for you?"
[JOHN AMHERST knows better than to approach the light, where the domain bleeds into the rest of the World as it is and as it should be. after all, he ends where the domain does. both AMHERST and KENNEDY know this.]
"I didn't ask for this," Jordan says, again.
[JORDAN KENNEDY knows better than to approach the light, where particles of dirt and dust dance in the sunlight pouring into his domain as it is and as it should be. he does not -- cannot -- go any further.
cue audience…
come on, now. he's not ideal, but he's here, and we're here, and we love him.]
"'Tis better to be loved and lost, than never to be loved at all." John smiles. Blood pools underneath his feet.
"What's your name?" Jordan asks, absently. The glare of the spotlight washes out the features of Jordan's face. "I don't think I ever caught that."
"Does it matter?" John shrugs, carelessly. "I know yours, and that's enough."
"When did I tell you…"
"You're the Corruption," John says. "The Crawling Rot. The Filth. My everything."
"It's Jordan, actually."
"You're part of us, now," John says, gesturing at the audience.
"I figure that I should at least know the real name of somebody that I burned to death, right?"
[AMHERST's pupils contract. the smell of cigarette smoke fills the air. the audience howls. the doors of the theater hold firm.]
"You didn't, though," John says. "It's John -- but not anymore."
"Why not?"
"The same way that you're not Jordan, anymore." John crosses the stage with shaky steps. The blood loss is getting to him. "You're part of us. You're Corrupted. That's as it is, and as it will be."
"It's because you should be dead, isn't it?" Jordan tilts his head back to stare at John, who's caught in the shadow that the curtain casts over the stage.
"I told you -- that didn't kill me. Very little did -- very little can, I mean."
"So -- something did." Jordan's eyes flash in the light. "You're not really here at all, are you?"
[KENNEDY says it like a question, but the audience knows that it's not. they -- are -- not -- laughing, jordan, who are you -- ? ]
"You can't know that," John says.
"You were the one that said it." Jordan's eyes flash in the light. "I can feel this whole domain, John."
"Because you're part of --
"I didn't choose to be."
"But you're still here, and they still love you."
"I was never supposed to be here at all," Jordan spits. "He took something away from you -- and you want it back."
[AMHERST recoils like he's been burned.]
Fire licks its long tongues up the back of Jordan's throat. "Is what I said a surprise?"
"No."
"Don't lie."
"I'm not. We've always wanted that. You're a part of us. We love you."
[really, now?]
"I don't want this," Jordan says, his voice level. "I just… don't want to go back."
"You can't have both."
"I can learn."
[i didn't think that. i don't remember thinking that.]
"You don't have to."
"I'll start with you."
[set the scene.
a man --
a power --
something --
greater, lesser, isn't it all the same --]
"Please, wait."
[audience -- audience -- audience, come in --]
"What?"
"I love you."
"You've said that already."
"You don't need the cigarettes. You don't need the sacrifices of fish, boiling alive in the very rivers that brought you life. You don't need the cleansing of ash. You don't need to be cleansed. I love you, the way you are. You don't need to Change."
"You'd like me to believe that."
"There's nothing out there. I'm here. I'm suffocating. Help me."
"Are you, really?"
"I'm starving. I love you."
"You're not even human. What are you talking about?"
[set the scene.
a man -- a fire -- a flame -- red petals, dancing in the breeze -- a charcoal heart of blackened stone -- a spotlight, burning a ragged hole into the stage --]
"I love you," John says, wrapping a cold hand around Jordan's feverishly-hot throat.
"I didn't ask for that," Jordan says, calmly, with a degree of composure that he should not have.
"You want to go outside. You want the light. You want to be burned."
"Yes. I think I do."
"Give it to me, then. Give it back. I love you."
[JORDAN KENNEDY stares down at AMHERST, who's balancing dangerously on the edge of the blackened stage, his hands burned and charred and crusted with blood, and JORDAN KENNEDY stares down at AMHERST, whose skin is sallow and eyes are sunken and who is filled to the brim with the very ants-audience-greater-lesser that loves him and puppeteers his movements like a spider puppeteers its prey, and JORDAN KENNEDY stares down at AMHERST, and remembers how he had burned like dry corn set alight, and JORDAN KENNEDY stares down at AMHERST, and the ARCHIVIST stares down at JORDAN KENNEDY, and the EYE, the BEHOLDING, the CEASELESS WATCHER KNOWS US ALL AND CAN ONLY WATCH THIS INTRUDER TAKE OVER, INFECT, INFEST, RAVAGE, DESTROY, BURN --]
"You don't want me here?"
"You shouldn't be here," John hisses. "You were never here before. We were united, before you. Now you -- you --"
"You love me."
"I love you. What do you want? You can have it all. You can have my everything."
Jordan smiles. "It won't hurt."
He grabs John by the collar of his shirt -- pulls him up, onto the stage -- their teeth meet in a harsh, violent clack that almost drowns out the taste of smoke in Jordan's mouth with the taste of iron -- for a moment, two, he is one-all-everything under the Filth, and together they beat -- beat -- beat --
his hands burn when he lets go
and john's scream is muffled
the moment his lips part to let it out
[set the scene
a circle of light
desolate anger passes over, destroys, and sings as it tears away the loved from the lovers, and he sings
and sings
and sings
and sings
sings
sings
sing
si
"i lied."