to belong nowhere

abel gaither-poe 20 years old untriggered psychic demiromantic/pansexual

[ohspecters]

cast out ➶ abel & micah

[sccingthings-blog]

ohspecters:

The old cabin groaned as the wind ripped through its foundation, and he would have sworn the walls were bending, and the empty archways bowing. The spirits that stood legion at his side had been forced back into the astral, but they lingered loyally at the fault between the worlds, trying in vain to answer Micah’s constant summon. The spirit was too powerful for them. And at the pit of his stomach, through the frozen tributaries that were his veins, fear spread like poison – he welcomed the heavy realization that it might just be too powerful for him.

Suddenly, the countenance opposite his cracked with a dark grin. Micah sneered, and continued to wage his war with ancient words. But it fought back, its voice the hiss of a serpent, its words the glinting edge of a dagger. It could sense the fear in him, see it in the shake of his hands as he turned yellow pages. But still, his voice remained steady, his throat a corridor for the Goddess’ gospel. He knew this rite as he knew the lines in his palms, as he had come to know the sound of Abel’s voice, the rhythm of his breath.

“The boy is going to die.” 

Micah fell upon his knee, searching the foggy astral in the dimension beyond for Abel, for any sign that he was still there. 

Then he saw the blood pooling in the folds of old fabric. 

“No,” he whispered. The words which had poured from him like cool water stopping abruptly. He had to do something. His words weren’t enough. “Goddess, help me.”

White eyes were shut against the world, and he inhaled sharply, drawing the ragged cuts from Abel’s flesh. With a snap like a slaver’s whip, they reappeared on Micah’s forearms, crooked trails seeping red. The pain struck him like a wave, rolling over his body and dizzying him for a spell, but he didn’t let it stop him – because, in the midst of the storm, he heard Abel cry his name.

With a strange air of calm, he leaned his forehead to Abel’s. Cold clammy flesh to living, aching flesh. “Abel,” he whispered, unable to hear himself in the whir of madness spinning around them. “Don’t give in.” Still, the spirit taunted him, but he closed his eyes, and felt the eclipse of his own spirit reaching outward for Abel’s. The wounds on his chest broke out, and rivers of blood trickled down his heaving torso. Micah pulled back and looked upon the broken figure before him, and knew it was time.

“You will not take him, spirit,” the necromancer warned, his empty eyes narrowed. 

He moved to his primitive altar at the boundary of their sacred circle, still slowly repeating the rite. Steadily, he held his athame over the burning sage and waited for the gleaming blade to glow orange.

It was time to bind their souls.

The demon let Abel feel its sick pleasure as it realized Micah had seen the wounds dug deep into the boy’s forearms.  And when he fought, when he railed against the walls caging him in while the necromancer stole his wounds away, the spirit retaliated by reopening them.  By carving even deeper, cutting him even slower, making him feel the slow rending of his own flesh.  And he screamed, voice lost to the howling of the wind and the laughter of the demon.  Pain carved white-hot trails into the recesses of his mind, reaching Abel even where he’d been pushed and folded and shoved aside, threatening to shatter and fracture his tenuous grip on his own body.

A new set of marks etched their way into his cheek as Micah pressed their foreheads together, the demon sneering as the older man practically ordered Abel to keep fighting.  To not give up.  “Don’t give up.”  

“The boy is dying, Micah Shipley.  Do you want to hear his last words?” the demon taunted.  Then it froze, a confused frown growing on its face. 

It, and Abel, could feel a surge of strength, zipping through his mind and aimed directly at the part of the boy that was still Abel.  And he used it, used the newfound strength to beat at the walls pressing him backwards, until they cracked and began falling away.  The demon screamed then, a horrible, inhuman howl tearing through Abel’s body as it turned its anger inwards.  Cut after cut, bruise after bruise bloomed across Abel’s pale skin, punishing him for fighting back.  But as the blood ran, as he writhed against his bonds in pain, Abel was finally breaking through.

“Micah, Micah, please-” he managed to gasp, breaths coming short and shallow and just short of enough air.  

“He’s already mine- Micah, please- he’s been mine from the very first day you laid eyes on him- Micah, Micah-” and so on, a litany of alternated taunts and pleas in two different voices as the demon continued to claw at Abel’s body.

But never once did the demon take its eyes off the blade in Micah’s hands.

[ohspecters]

cast out ➶ abel & micah

[sccingthings-blog]

ohspecters:

Micah had been here before.

When he picked his body up and opened his eyes to look upon the once familiar room, the walls had already fallen away. Splintered wood, and ancient bulwark toppled in an astral storm, all jagged pieces to a puzzle he hadn’t yet solved. All pieces of the reality he couldn’t escape in his waking hours. His eyes, once black like a void had glazed over, and they now peeled back white as bone. All-seeing. He lived in two worlds, and at this hour, they bled together No longer were his feet on the worn and weathered hardwood of his living room, but on the thin, dry dirt of the astral.

And before him loomed a devil. Black winged and faceless, changing, and howling. Claws raked at him, barely missing.

                                                                               “Micah!” 

Abel’s voice brought him back.

“Abel,” he breathed. “I’m okay. It’s okay.”

He gnashed his teeth against the ache in his side and rushed back to the center of the room, steady hands snatching up a heavy, leather tome. Inside were endless rites and rituals, powerful spells he’d handwritten painstakingly over the years. A black ribbon marked the page he needed, and he turned swiftly to it, alabaster eyes scanning the intricate calligraphy line-by-line. It wasn’t the first time he’d performed an exorcism, but it was the first time he feared failing at it. The first time he looked on Abel’s face, saw his wide eyes marked by fear, something within him had changed. For weeks, he’d guarded the boy, waited by his bedside while he slept, monitored his health, kept diligent watch. To see all of that effort end in Abel’s demise – it was something he would not accept, even if it meant taking dire measures he’d never before cared to take. 

The demon’s hands came down upon Micah in one fell swoop, and his knees buckled, but he didn’t fall. 

And then it happened, before he could stop it. The vile spirit sunk into Abel like a stone sinking to the lowest point of the sea. He felt his heart fall.

But the fight wasn’t over. 

In the smoke of sage and sweetgrass, he placed a hand upon Abel’s chest, on bare skin made cool from sweat, and spoke the ancient words: “Exorcizamus te, omnis immunde spiritus, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, in nomini et virtute Ceridwen.”

Abel whimpered as Micah’s eyes went bone white, pressing himself backwards into the wooden back of the chair he was fastened to.  His chest heaved with gasping breaths, fingers tightening on the armrests until white bloomed across his knuckles, but he never took his eyes off Micah.  Of his soon-to-be savior.

He had to believe Micah would save him.

“It’s okay.”

A yell burst from him as Micah buckled and nearly fell, the movement driven by some invisible force - the demon - and he yanked at his bonds once again.  The rope burned into his wrists, but still he fought.  And then, then-

Then he fell still.

Abel’s head drooped to his chest, his body falling limp much like a puppet with its strings cut.  Inside his head, however, the boy was raging, fighting against the being that had invaded his body and was currently trying to crush his soul.  It was a curious sensation, not being able to move his own body, but Abel wasn’t about to go down without a fight.  He had to believe Micah would save him.

His head lifted, but the grin on his lips wasn’t his, wasn’t Abel.  And the voice, the sly, almost cloying, voice that dripped out of his mouth wasn’t him either.  It was the demon, and Abel was trapped inside his own head, forced to listen as the taunts poured out of him.

“You’re going to fail,” the demon started, fixing its eyes on Micah’s.  “You’re going to fail, and the boy is going to die, no matter what you do.”

I’m not going to die!  Abel threw himself at the walls surrounding him, caging him in and keeping him out of control, only to stop with a pained, choked off scream as his arm erupted in burning pain and three deep claw marks traced their way along his skin.  

“He’s going to die, Micah Shipley,” it continued, seemingly unbothered by the blood beginning to stain Abel’s right shirtsleeve.  “You might think you’re saving him, dear, but he’s already dead.”

I’m not dead!  Another set of marks burned their way into his other arm.

Then Micah was stepping close, and the demon raised its eyes to meet his, and a hand was on its chest and Micah was chanting and pain pain pain painpainpain-

Abel screamed, jerking back against the chair - momentarily breaking free of the demon’s control - as more claw marks appeared, this time spanning the width of the boy’s chest.  He sobbed Micah’s name, though he wasn’t sure if it was out loud or still contained in his head, gasping for breath as the blood dripped down his chest and stomach.  “He’s going to die, Micah!” the demon screamed, though it had more trouble speaking as it fought to be louder than the necromancer.  “You can’t save him!”

[ohspecters]

cast out ➶ abel & micah

[sccingthings-blog]

ohspecters:

Micah stood in the threshold between rooms (as he stood at the threshold between life and death) and tightened his arms around Abel. The spirit was manifesting, now, in a way he hadn’t yet seen. The physical world was reacting to its ire. Darkness gathered in the far corners of the room. Outside, brittle branches tapped against the roof, and a whistling wind had picked up where there once had been unbreakable stillness. The spirit had waged a war for the broken boy in his arms, and it was gnashing its crooked teeth at Micah.

Abel’s voice shook, and Micah held him tighter. “It’s for your protection, Abel. If the spirit’s foothold takes purchase, it’s going to do everything in its power to break you. It’ll kill you, and use your body as a weapon.” Micah ground his teeth together and did his best to coax the apprehensive boy forward. When finally they made it to the center of the room, he lowered Abel into the chair. With his mind whirring, he set to work immediately, strapping him in. Buckles around the ankles, ropes around the wrists. A line of salt to close the circle, a string of whispered Latin to protect them. He felt the cold hands of phantoms on his shoulders. They guarded the circle’s perimeter, and locked arms around Abel’s body.

In the midst of the growing cacophony around them, as he fastened the final chain across Abel’s chest, he caught those fearful eyes with his own. For the first time, he welcomed real fear into his body, and it sunk to the bottom of his veins like sediment to a creek bed. 

“Abel, look at me.” His voice was harsh, but level. He placed both of his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned in close. The voices were loud, but he knew Abel couldn’t hear them. He tried his best to speak at a reasonable tone so as not to inspire any more fear or confusion, but he might as well have been at the bottom of an ocean. “I’m a necromancer. I can take your pain and transfer it to my body. Do you understand?” Black eyes searched those opposite. “You won’t feel any pain. I’ll make sure of it.”

The front door flung open, and pulled Micah back against the wall once more. Wood splintered, and the veil between the worlds had torn.

Abel shook as branches tapped on the window, as the wind picked up outside, and leaned further into Micah’s arms.  He wanted to run, wanted to flee, wanted to get away from the chair with its ropes and belts and- were those chains?  But he’d tried that, tried running away from the spirit and from Micah near the beginning, without success.  It just kept coming back.  He had to trust that the man was going to save him, was going to get the spirit to go away, once and for all.

“I’m scared,” he found himself admitting, voice so small and scared.  “I don’t wanna die,” came as Micah lowered him into the chair and began strapping him down.  He was still shaking as the man fastened the belts around his ankles, tied the rope around his wrists, and the chains around his waist and chest.  

And all the while, the wind blew.  The branches scratched and tapped on the glass.  This was it.

This was it.

He shivered as a cool draft settled around him, goosebumps prickling along exposed skin, glancing around the room as if he, too, could see the spirit responsible for his suffering.

Micah’s voice brought him back, and he looked at him, chewing on his lower lip.  The older man was offering to take his pain away, to hold it within himself so that Abel wouldn’t feel anything.  But he was already doing so much- the pain would just wear him down, make it harder on him to do what he needed to do.  To get rid of the evil spirit.  So Abel found himself shaking his head, replying with a shaken, but determined, “I can take the pain.  I can take it.”

Then Micah was flying backwards, away from him, and Abel couldn’t help yelling out his name, yanking at the rope binding his wrist to the chair as if to reach for him.

“Micah!”

[ohspecters]

cast out ➶ abel & micah

[sccingthings-blog]

ohspecters:

The door didn’t close all the way. Time and nature had warped the cabin’s foundation, and the bulwark leaned just slightly. It was no matter, though. Over the last few weeks, he’d become rather protective of Abel, which was an incredibly surprising development for him. He’d begun sacrificing sleep in his own bed to stand sentinel outside the shop’s bedroom door, listening for sounds of distress, waiting for the demon to raise its monstrous head. 

Micah had been fascinated by the demon’s infatuation with Abel, because it seemed arbitrary. Without purpose. It made no sense. What use did a powerful force like this have with a magickless teenager, too wayward to settle down, too scattered to form a whole being. It wasn’t until he came to Micah complaining about nightmares, and strange visions, that a potential truth revealed itself to the necromancer. It was possible he was a pure vessel, sure, but it was also possible that he was an untriggered witch with a seductive power that this spirit craved. Whatever the reason, Micah was motivated to protect him, and so he would, even at his own detriment. 

In the center of the meager room, he drew the Inviolate Circle on the bowing floorboards in salt, careful not to disturb the ivory lines that composed it. In the middle sat a simple wooden chair, and fastened to it were old belts and lengths of rope. A silver bowl of blessed water sat upon his altar along with flickering candles, smoking sage, and collection of athames wrapped in white cloth. It wasn’t his intention to use them, but he would if he had to. He had burned the pentagram, the symbol of his religion, into the dry wood, and called the Goddess to his aid. It was difficult to feel her presence when such a beast lingered nearby, but he put his faith in her without reservation. She would not leave them in this hour. 

When the room was blessed, and all the consecrated artifacts put into place, Micah returned to the small corner bedroom where Abel slept. The world outside was dark, now, and the sloping mountainside beyond the window pane had all but disappeared in the shadow. 

He put a hand upon the boy’s forehead to gauge his fever, but was forced back with a violent shove. His spine hit the door frame with a hard smack, but he didn’t lose his footing. In the corner, the hulking spirit seethed, beckoning, challenging. The corner of Micah’s lip twitched. It was time. The necromancer whispered the words of protection, and summoned his legion of loyal spirits to his side. He then slipped a hand beneath Abel’s neck, and pulled the covers back. “Abel, can you walk?”

It felt as if he were shouting through the void.

Abel’s sleep was fitful, as it had been since the spirit began gaining in strength, and he tossed and turned, quiet whimpers and muttered words slipping out of him at every move.  Over time, however, the sounds died away, and the movements slowed to a halt, his meager well of strength almost completely used up.  Taken from him by the spirit.  

A loud noise startled him out of his half-sleep, eyes flying open in an attempt to place what had made the noise.  Micah was there next to him, a hand beneath his neck as he pulled the covers away, and asking him if he was able to walk.  He grit his teeth and nodded, pulling himself up and off the bed with a low groan of effort.  Once on his feet, however, he stumbled, almost falling into the older man with a quiet apology.  He leaned against Micah, a small smile quirking his lips when the man supported him silently, helping him stay on his feet instead of crumpling to the floor.

They moved slowly to another room, Abel too focused on putting one foot in front of the other to pay attention to his surroundings all that much.  But when he looked up just after passing through the doorway, he froze, shrinking into Micah with a sharp inhale.  He glanced from the chair with ropes and belts hanging from it up to Micah, heart beginning to race almost painfully.  “Micah,” he started, voice quiet and hoarse and shaking, “Is this- are you going to tie me up?  Is it gonna hurt?”  He felt so small now, standing in front of the chair, surrounded by all these symbols and items he didn’t understand.  

But Micah would save him. 

He had to believe Micah would save him.

[ohspecters]

cast out ➶ abel & micah

[sccingthings-blog]

ohspecters:

The last few days had been bleak. The spirit had gotten stronger, and Abel had gotten weaker. It’d taunted them both, leering at Micah in the dark, shadowing the planes of Abel’s young face with age, and suffering. With pain. At first, Micah had planned on doing the ritual at the shop. Moving the younger man in this state wouldn’t be easy, and the fact that his cabin was miles and miles from the center of civilization wouldn’t bode well for either of them if something had gone wrong. But it occurred to him, as most things often did, in the quiet hours of yet another sleepless night. Moving Abel meant moving the spirit. It meant rattling it from the comfort of familiar rooms, and summoning it somewhere foreign, somewhere strange. It would undeniably give Micah the upper hand.

So, he brought Abel out to the mountains – to the humble, stark rooms that, like him, offered no warmth, only order, and balance. He’d walked him to the smallest of the three rooms, and laid him down upon his bed. An iron frame that creaked no matter how frail the bones it possessed. 

“Sleep,” he’d ordered, knowing what an absurd demand it was. Hands unaccustomed to softness tucked the covers in around him, then cast a look out the window. It was nearing sunset. The air was cool, and the forest was quiet. Lichens grew on the windowsill. In the mountains, there was a sense of peace that had eluded them lately. The rooms were haunted, sure, but not with the nameless demon which had latched onto Abel. It had slunk deep into the recesses of the astral, and was seething in anger. Micah had outmaneuvered it once more. He set to work quickly, hoping that he would beat the rising moon, hoping that Abel found rest.

The night that awaited them was harrowing.

Though he’d felt much better after the first night Micah shut the door behind him, the night he’d arrived, Abel could tell the spirit was just getting stronger and stronger.  And at his expense, it seemed.  It started in his joints, a low throbbing not unlike that brought on by a small fever.  He tried to ignore it, blaming it on the scrapes still healing on his palms, but it persisted.  It settled into his muscles next, making every part of his body ache with a dull burn.  Then came the stiffness, sinking into his fingers, arms, and legs, paining him whenever he moved.  Next, a bone-deep fatigue, leaving Abel lethargic all the time, no matter how much he slept.

Then again, he wasn’t sleeping very well, not anymore.  His dreams were full of nameless, faceless figures, looming over him at every turn and filling him with a lingering fear.  Nonetheless, as the days went on, as the spirit grew stronger, Abel spent more and more time in his cot, buried under piles of blankets in a futile attempt to stay warm, drifting in and out of consciousness.

He came to as Micah lifted him out of the cot one evening, a quiet, ragged whine slipping through him as the movement made his bones ache.  The hour-long journey into the mountain passed in flashes, glimpses of the outside world caught in the brief moments Abel could keep his eyes open as his forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window.  Then Micah was moving him again, walking him into another bare, orderly building - that was all the younger male caught before the weight of his own head proved too much to lift, and he let it loll against the necromancer’s shoulder with another whine.  

The bed creaked as the other male lay him down, but Abel was already slipping into the darkness, already obeying Micah’s low request.  Within moments, he was unconscious again, though his eyebrows were furrowed in a mixture of pain and fear.