i was a child and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea,
cassius is not so dissimilar from his mother.
he’s a stranger to himself, reflected in every mirror he passes and fabricated from an unnervingly recognisable exhausted vacancy that his mother had adopted before she too, became a stranger to cassius. yet unlike his mother, there were no pills that made cassius this way. there were no pills that forced cassius to empty himself until all that remained was a rotten void.
his mother had purged cassius’ body of his heart long ago, but even now that toxicity continues to fester, corroding him from the inside out. perhaps this is what they mean when they refer to the power of a ‘mother’s touch’ – the way cassius’ absent mother has made him the man he is today, worthless and utterly so.
indeed, he is as unworthy as his mother has shown him to be, has proven him to be.
(cassius is nothing if not his mother’s son).
but we loved with a love that was more than love— i and my annabel lee—
cassius is not so dissimilar from his father.
for as much as he positions his mother near the inception of the magnitudinal emptiness that dictates his existence, it is his father that lies at the centre of it, waiting to pull cassius off the precipice of resilience into resigned defeat. and it would be a lie for cassius to say that he had not fallen to the addictive song of his father’s ghost, a haunting siren nestled at the pit of an inescapable crevasse.
indeed, he is as insignificant as his father has taught him to be, has contorted him to be.
(cassius is nothing if not his father’s son).
and so here cassius stands, emptiness incarnate; forged within a never-ending strata of deteriorated vile rot.
with a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven coveted her and me.
cassius’ lungs burn as he looks down into the ocean below, an involuntary memory prickling at the back of his throat as he catches himself mid-gasp in a desperate breath for air. years later and he can still remember the ache in his arms as they struggled to keep his head afloat, to keep himself alive. now, looking back, death doesn’t seem like such a terrible choice. if cassius had drowned all those years ago his head would have been blissfully silent, the incessant thoughts that crowd his mind today extinguished under the roaring waves of the ocean.
but cassius was a coward then, too afraid of dying to simply fall immobile and let the waves wash over him.
today, even as cassius steps off the dock, he is still a coward.
and this was the reason that, long ago, in this kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful annabel lee;
perhaps that is why cassius is running away – adorned in a heavy weather-wearing cloak with a gifted satchel of gold and platinum coins tied at his hip.
(emmeline had kissed his temple that very morning, softly and caringly in a way that he both hated and loved. she had murmured adoring promises into his ear as she tightened a glorified collar around his neck, reminding him that a dog must always heel when called, no matter the distance. cassius briefly wonders if it is emmeline that understands cassius best in this world as only she had recognised that he could no longer stay in a place like this when he himself had been blind to the fact).
too much a coward to die, all that is left for cassius is to run.
(there’s a glimmer of a question at the back of his mind, wondering, perhaps even hoping that the few remaining people cassius cared about would notice his absence: nothing of the human’s presence left but an abandoned apartment and a messily written letter).
he has no destination in sight, no notion of what may lay beyond the watery depths below and ahead – but cassius has never needed a destination, not when he had never imagined a future for himself to begin with.
so that her highborn kinsmen came and bore her away from me,
if cassius has failed to impose silence over the cacophony of his own thoughts, then perhaps cassius must learn to live with them instead. for cassius is desolate hollowness embodied, and that will never change because cassius is perpetually “just a human, an insignificant human – irrelevant to the gods and the stars up above”. there is nothing left for cassius, nothing left of cassius.
the ship rocks beneath cassius’ feet, protesting as crew and cargo are loaded onto its aged wooden planks.
cassius is running on empty, one step after another carrying him towards an uncertain future – but he’s lucky in that sense, because cassius is as empty as the fathomless ocean, so he will never lack in emptiness to propel him onward.
to shut her up in a sepulchre in this kingdom by the sea.
