He doesn’t pick a direction. He tightens his laces, cracks his back as he rises, and runs.
The manager was the one who nudged him into running. A healthy outlet for your anxiety, he’d called it.You LOVE monotonous repetition, was Pickles’s teasing back up. Skwisgaar’d dismissed them both. He had a hot and cold relationship with Being Outside, and also, huhuh, he wasn’t lacking in opportunities to get physical. (This, spoken in his Seduction Voice and accompanied by a lascivious lick of his lips, cleared the room, which was his intent.) But then he sprained his wrist playing Punch Ball—a drunken game he and Nathan made up with rules he could not explain with a gun to his head—and he had to take an actual, no really, Your-Sponsors-Will-Pull-Out-If-You-Don’t-Comply break from guitar. And then sex wasn’t enough, and sessions with Twinkletits weren’t enough, and the band was falling apart and Toki was distant and he wanted to claw open his chest and press down on his heart like he was smothering a child with a pillow. And one day he finds himself on the Mordhaus lawn, brain buzzing, and he sees the flush of trees edging the property, sunset dappling orange and pink across the shiny green leaves, the trunks cutting through darkness like a smile missing teeth, and he thinks get there and starts sprinting.
That first time was bad. He was in boots so he fucked up his shins, and the bowl he’d smoked earlier with Murderface fucked up his lungs, and his hair was loose and falling into his face so he fucked up his eyes. But bad as it was it felt good. The skittering stress that had woven into every part of his body over the last year was gone. The thrill of creating an impossible goal and then exceeding it was familiar, but exciting in this new context. His body was capable of something beyond guitar or sex. The manager helped him find the right shoes, clothes, gear. He ran for one minute, five minutes, fifteen minutes; four kilometers, eight, ten. He threw himself into Dedditt forums and studied answers how to maintain pace and fuel and stretch. He started eating more and didn’t feel guilty about it. He felt stronger. He felt good.
Icy crust crunches under his feet. The Mordhaus grounds are illuminated by lamp posts, black iron winding up to cradle an egg-shaped red bulb. A design choice Skwisgaar screamed to defend when he was 22, but as he jogs by now he winces. His ankle twists as he hits a slippery patch. A spike gf panic slams into his backside but he doesn’t falter. He adjusts his cadence. He draws a deep breath though his nose, exhales through his mouth, and looks up.
The sky is inky but the moon is bright. The red lamp light is a starburst of blood against glistening snow. He thinks of Nathan. He thinks of Toki. He thinks of a knife. His ankle gives out as the path under him becomes rougher and he shifts again to accommodate. Tension solidifies in the backs od his thighs. He’s in the woods. He keeps his eyes up. He looks for cool rocks to pick up and show Toki later. (Toki’s getting a little too into crystals. Skwisgaar is keeping an eye on it.) There’s a clearing, wide and secluded, and it would make sense for him to stop there but he can’t, he can’t.
(“Why do you think that is?” Twinkletits’s voice echoes in his brain. “What makes you think you can never rest?”)
He’s looping back, Mordhaus looming on the horizon. He woke up the yard wolves—as a child he was praised for moving quietly (another thing Twinkletits has mentioned that he refuses to examine) but according to Dedditt his step his “heavy,” all the weight falling on the balls of his feet. The elders hang back but the pups excitedly nip at his heels, lopping their fuzz-plump bodies into the path he’s carved to keep pace. It’s snowing again. Soft, fat flakes catch on his eyelashes. He blinks and his vision blurs.
The road beneath him is smooth. The path is straight. His body is faltering but his will is strong. He picks up speed, the pups flanking him. The moon shifts as his approaches, gliding gracefully into the mouth of Mordhaus’s dragon, a design choice he would scream to defend at 22, now, forever .
The dragon sinks its teeth into the moon. Skwisgaar tilts his head back and howls.
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