Tinea swamp heaves its warning outward in the form of a heavy sighing breeze. It wails through the canyon miles and miles away but here in the groves it simpers eerily over the water and snakes through the trees like a
hisss. From his advantage point he can see everything about her, Florentine is as yellow as a daffodil, her smile as radiant as the harvest moon, she is as lovely smelling as peaches, ripe ones, the kind that taste as sweet as they smell. To Stephan, he can taste her on his tongue. To Stephan, she is just right. More than just right - perfect.
He laughs, she spooks, it is delightful to watch her flinch - to inflict something more intimate than a kiss upon her - to chill her deep inside her bones, to
move her without his hands, to make her heart tremble the way nervous knees do and from what? The delight of getting something out of nothing.
Only?
Stephan narrows his eyes on her, as keen and wily and ever-so-hungry as a predator's might be. She has thrown a wild card to him by knowing
his name. The killer stumbles ever so slightly from his plan. But the birds still worry and trill overhead, they sing out of wary intrigue - of the danger that they feel is growing closer and closer yet. Even the crocodiles crawl up the muddy banks and
away as the tall black shadow wades towards her slowly. She laughs. She plays. Florentine's comfort level guarantees to Stephan that she has met him before. In his opinion she has no reason to
trust him otherwise, unless -
unless...
-- unless that little drooler, Only, has anything to do with it. At once Stephan's outcome of this game has changed tremendously - if Only knows her then Stephan must get rid of her. He must punish Only by making this girl suffer for it. He'll tear her away from him slowly in the most painful way that he knows how. Inside of her mind he will plant the seed of doubt and in time it will grow into one glorious metaphor for trees after the other. How dare Only keep something like this to himself. Goddamn him. Goddamn him for
everything - that lousy faker did not deserve anything - not even the right to exist. Not even the friends that feel like they can trust him -
them.
Florentine incites a fire inside of him within seconds, it fills his belly before it worms its way into every other part of him - every nerve ending that exists within him burns and itches. She says the name again. What name is this? His name?
His name?
Only?
Are you unwell? I can help you... Florentine gives him another opening - another chance at redemption but Stephan does not take it. "I am well enough lamby-lamb. Thank you. " He does not seem himself, his neck rigid his body stiff like a poised snake. Most of all, his distractions lay in the knife which tick-tick-ticks nervously under a veil of wild moonlight white hair. The knife is hard to hold onto - even though it takes no hands to keep the blood-soaked handle against him it is slippery. Very slippery and very eager. And the girl he used it on has sank deep under the surface of the water and the weight of her death makes the weapon he hides feel like lead.
Piranha food, Stephan calls it. Feed them first then kill later - kill now, kill later. Kill because he has to then kill because he wants to. The ends always justify the means - don't they?
Stephan is not well, he has never been well, he never
desired to be well in the ways that are considered right in Florentine's world. And though she has seen many things - the surprise in her eyes and the chill which rumples her skin feels like it could be new to her. This woman before him dazzles him like a whirling, twirling galaxy, she shivers and glitters with stars he has never seen before and her lilac eyes. What is worse, she appears to be virtuous and Stephan - Stephan cannot kill anything that is pure.
But he can hurt them.
He can hurt them and make them remember him forever.
He can invade their dreams and make nightmares of them.
He
will make her remember him somehow, someway--
Only awakens to find himself bound and gagged with duct tape - trapped in some abandoned attic space of Stephan's bat-filled mind. Eerie music plays suspensefully as he wriggle-writhes to break free of his captor's bindings but face it - happy ever endings are for schmucks.
"Andromeda forgive me, I may give your name to another tonight." Stephan praises Florentine's beauty with a charming smile and with such gusto that it sets fire to his caiman-gold eyes. Only looks out the window of the house he is trapped in and looks down over the yard - to his complete despair he sees his worst nightmare taking place before him. Stephan is reaching his hand out to her and the girl next door in the yellow sun dress is taking it, her smile is genuine and Only's heart sinks.
The knife, rusty-bloody-true, slides along the sleek black skin of his body as he thinks with it. A business man with a pen will turn the pen end-over-end as he ponders over his books but Stephan - who is not a business man - prefers to twirl a knife quite playfully beside him now. He has improved his handling skills with the blade as it swirls the way Florentine's dizzying tendrils of hair do in the lingering breeze.
Florentine, no. She must get away. She must leave this space at once. Florentine must run fast and run far and for the sake of Life itself she must never look back. A twinge of familiarity strikes Stephan in the way he can get close to her without frightening her. It is too easy to cut the throat of a willing captive - too easy to trick such a pretty-pretty little girl into a trap too. He feels like he knows her but his eyes betray Only's best intentions as they take her apart piece for piece, his mind working many miles a minute to try and figure out the greatest mystery of all.
"Where you meeting with someone? A secret love perhaps -- ah, what is his name? Do I know him?" He teases, but something in the tone of his voice suggests that, perhaps, he is not.
@
Florentine this ending is crappy? Uhm...I'm not sure where we are going to go with this. He's playing with a stolen knife and just stalling because he knows her/does not know her.
.only
si vis pacem para bellum
There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called but few are chosen.
