And we laugh like soft, mad children - Rapt

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever Monsters and gods are intermingled in Rapt’s feeble mind. He isn’t even sure there’s a distinction – all he recalls is fear, curling hot and heavy in his heart, his ribs, and something else, too, unfurling like a rose. He hadn’t had a name for it, then, he’d been too young, too awe-struck by the monster who’d loomed before him. Now there’s a name for it: love. A sick, twisted breed of it, sure, but love nonetheless, love for the god, the monster, the thing he kneels before with such a rapturous expression on his face. Foolish, foolish boy. My boy he calls him, and Rapt glows at the praise. His, he is his, a possession, a gift, whatever the monster wants him to be. He rises when touched, thrilling at it, though even when he stands his knees want to shake, want to tremble before the monster as he is meant to be trembled before. As he is meant to be beheld. “Yes,” he breathes, though the actual details of the promise barely matter – what matters is that the monster still wants him at his side, “I have not forgotten, either.” Have not forgotten you, he means – all his actions since their first meeting have been imbued with the monster, meant as acts to bring him back. And it’s worked, has it not? For here they are, reunited, Rapt on shaking legs and Pollock with blood on his mind and mouth, a monster, a god. rapt caius x else