A Certain Melancholy

I wrote this for funsies, there are easter eggs hidden. It's an early rendition of my persona character. Written 03 Dec. 2023

An eternal sadness in those glassy eyes, dull orbs of once bright golds and honey lemons, dashes of a sulphuric neon.  But now they are simply empty.  Vacant.  Even light does not shine off them, only a tired refraction as it seeps and filters through, as if they were the dusty old marbles that a child would play with on a hot summer’s day, now lost and forgotten in a corner of a little wooden box, inside a faded chestnut trunk that sat gathering dust in a quiet nook of the attic where shadows creeped and crawled around it, in the way that the darkness does in the absence of light.  Zephyrous. 

Thinning strands of raven black, draped like a worn shawl, having grown long and unruly, like creepers left untouched on the sides of a house in an overgrown garden.  They hung lank, weighed down by grime, a curtain of flimsy protection against the horrors that lurked in places unseen.  Like those eyes, the fibers had long lacked their healthy gleam, having once been a strong, supple sheen of a fresh-cut plate of metal, newly dried from a wash and polished with wax.  There was now a coarseness, a scratchy, sticky feel, beat up and rusty and bent and matte, but the colours have since chipped and cracked away, leaving only the bare frame, the sheafs of alloys that threaten to break apart.  Atrophy.

A milky complexion left those eyes hollow in their sockets, glazed over to match the pallor that surrounded them.  Ashen circles hung heavy, a weight of perpetual dusk that would never see the glow of the morning sun.  Frail would be the word if it weren’t for the lean, lithe frame that huddled in the corner with a delicate curvature of the spine.  Yet each line and scar and near-festering wound, sickly carved engravings hidden underneath the soiled, off-white ensemble of bound cloth held together by pins and thread and broken dreams, tied down the fact that whatever they had seen, had heard, had touched, it was not to be.  Keloidal. 

From behind a ceramic mask, now splitting and cracked, each a striation of a many-mouthed tributary, intricate patterns like the veins of a leaf, those eyes had once been.  A haphazard discardment of a past well-crafted facade left it missing a piece, or rather opened up a hole in between the subtext, eroded a vertex of the mirage that had concealed the face those eyes belonged to.   Illusory.

Underneath the monochrome patchwork, a third appendage twitches, catching a glimpse of the dingy light from above as it retreats back to its cove.  For the briefest of moments, it snags on the fabric, a rift in space, pale bare skin exposed underneath.   A thin red line forms unnoticed, until the rush of acidic toxins engulfs the nerves, jolts through the bloodstream.  The body jerks with a start, the face contorted, those eyes snapped wide and awake, like a flare amidst fog.  Ablaze, gold with fury and disgust, as the neutraliser begins to administer itself and the wire-like caudal slithers deeper within the folds of cloth.  Such peculiar grace brought such shame, and shame leads to a bitter taste in the back of the throat.  This was a testament, a stabbing reminder, undeniable proof to the lone witness in this desolate court that there needed to be no confirmation for the attestation.  The stinging lulls into a dull throb, as those eyes lose their lacquer and articulate the tabula rasa of Locke once more.   Ephemeral.  

For this was but a fleeting requiem, a despondent cadence in the vast expanse of being.  Lamentation, as the fragmented melody played out what was never meant to be, a sinking vessel in a sea of tar.  Novocaine.