pray to hell that heaven lets you in; tarnished

[Tarnished]

It's in the nature of the beast to do as it will.

He tries not to move while the ‘doctor’ makes meticulous incisions across his throat and torso, but he lifts his head up slightly to watch; each new gushing wound is large enough to slip a hand or finger inside, he doesn’t even flinch when the white suited gentleman makes a fist and punches his hand through a slit in his lower abdomen. Grunts, yes, but the pain doesn’t become unbearable until the doctor starts feeling around and forcibly tries to pry out his spleen; he hisses, voiceless, and violently struggles against his binds. His hands bound above his head and his feet held tightly together by thick leather straps, it isn’t long before he gives up the fight. “Save your strength,” the doctor chuckles. “You’re going to need it.”

Grunting in response, he lies his head back on the pillow and tries to focus on the lightbulb swaying lazily above them. It burns—it burns, it feels like his whole body has been lit on fire, and while tears leak from the corners of his eyes, he doesn’t dare move. It’s only the beginning, after all. He’s only taking him apart.

It’s when he starts putting him back together that things really start to hurt.

Something hits the floor with a plop, but he pays it no mind.

Instead, he focuses on the lightbulb swaying lazily above them.

And so the hours creep right on by.

Kept alive by the grace of magic alone, he feels nothing when his captor flips him off the table and into a puddle of his own blood; the doctor grabs him by his hair with one hand and lifts him slightly off the floor, reaches in to his hollowed sternum and from the top begins pulling back his ribs. He pops them off clean from his spine and it’s the last thing Tarnished remembers, really, before everything falls out of focus—literally; the room around him appears to drop into oblivion, the ‘doctor’ vanishes and the floor gives way. He is certain he is falling, too. Falling into nothing, the way he always wanted to.

Dying at last, perhaps.

He hopes, he prays, but death never comes; instead, there is light, and a woman and her perfect little world that she crafts so wonderfully it makes him sick. He presses against the veil, watches her create her lover and their child again and again; he cannot help hating her, cannot help wanting to destroy all that she seems to have. He presses harder against the veil until one night it gives, until one night he breaks free and slips into her haven long before she has time to rebuild.

Tarnished arrives in the shape of her purple lover, smiling—sickly sweet; she should know, but she doesn’t, she won’t realize it until it’s too late. “Hello,” he answers in Corsair’s voice, reaching out to touch her muzzle gently. But that’s the only gentleness she will know from him. She merely endures the things he does to her in the dark in the name of ‘love’ and he keeps up the guise by whispering sweet nothings in her ear—but leaves her bruised and bloody for the dawn to find. He finds his escape, then; it comes in the form of bright white light and that’s when he realizes he’s home. This is it.

This is the sunrise.

TARNISHED