“I just left your bedroom / Give me some morphine / Is there any more to do?”
send me a number and a character, and i’ll write something based off of that song in my spotify wrapped!
SFW, angst.
leviathan misses you more than anything in the world. he finds himself still following the shadows of your ghost.
Leviathan’s tired eyes drifted to a close, his body present but his mind nowhere to be found. Everything he did, every breath he took, ever gulp he swallowed, was due to autopilot. He barely felt the cold linoleum of the floor underneath him, nor the chill of the door against his back. He couldn’t tell if the bathroom was cold or warm, recently used or if the air was stagnant. The only things Leviathan could hear were the ringing in his ears, loud and constant, and the volume of his own thoughts.
It was purely a mistake. An old habit he thought he’d forgotten. Leviathan’s body moved on its own before his brain could catch up, and he found himself opening the door before he could stop himself.
Your bedroom. The bedroom that he remembered so warmly, a few of your clothes scattered on the ground and snacks on the nightstand, you sitting on the floor, leaned against your bed as you watched TV. You’d pat the spot beside you when he’d enter the room, and he’d make his way over to your quickly. His hand held in yours, you’d lean against his shoulder and all of a sudden he wouldn’t be able to focus on what was on the screen anymore.
Instead, it was cold. All the lights were off, but he could still see the dust floating in the air and on the furniture due to the light of the hallway. The room was barren of any hint of you. Even your scent, which lingered the longest, was now completely gone. It was like you never stayed at the House at all.
Leviathan couldn’t remember how he got to his bathroom. He assumed it was because he needed a shower to clear his mind, but when he shut the door behind him, he couldn’t do anything but sink to the floor and let the tears flow freely down his face. The day you left, there was hope in his heart that you’d turn around and come back, running into his arms and professing your love. Maybe that stuff only ever happened in movies and shows, but… he hoped. That hope all but crashed and burned when you turned your back and he never saw you again.
He hoped you were having a good time back in the Human Realm. Why else would you ignore his messages? As soon as you left, it was like every trace of you left too. Not quickly, though. Your scent, your life, your light all disappeared slowly. Slow enough that he felt he could hang onto it if he just held hard enough… but it was never good enough to have a part of you stay. The sweater you left in your room became Leviathan’s pillowcase, and even that lost all of your scent and warmth.
Leviathan felt his body fall to the floor, cheek pressed against the cold tiles, and he opened his puffy eyes.
But as soon as it heard the door close, eleven eyes opened and the critter formed a ball. And then jumped out to glue itself under the cupboard again, hissing.
“I see you… made yourself… an eyeful”, I frowned.
That… for some reason made it calm down.
Mh. Frederik had consumed his cocoa… and did indeed calm down a little bit, but still was not willing to help me nurture a freshly fallen one. Dismissed me with a sneer and a few experimental seeds. Said the fruits will be tasty.
Alright, then.
I planted them before I sat down next to the cupboard.
“You know… life down here isn’t that bad, really. If you relax a little, it can be nice. You just have to… not hate everything”, I looked to the side, where there was a bit of hissing again.
… he probably was afraid.
I mean… he got back into the container when I was out. And clutches to the wall right now…
Mh.
I grabbed the container and shoved it under the cupboard - being too lazy to bow down that far had it’s perks! Probably not for the lil’ critter, though.
I watched it examine the container – still one eye trained at me – and then… globbed into the beholder again, pressing itself in a corner.
… it seemed more comfortable in there?
Good for it! I supposed… it did dial back at the hissing, at least.
The food-experiments had to continue though… so I roasted some meat – it seemed to have a sense of smell, it did make some noises, there.
Still didn’t leave, though.
When I put the meat into the container, it was immediately consumed.
I… had wanted to try f life food was better, but… like this, the… test was… probably inconclusive.
Because when I put in a life mouse and a piece of meat, it… just went for both. At the same time.
“… you’re not going to make this easy, will you?”
It… happily crunched away.
…. What is weird is that really nothing was left.
And that the thing apparently really did not poop. At all.
I mean… I never saw it poop in the first too weeks. And now he didn’t either, so… the ultimate recycler.
So I spend the reminder of the day cooking and placing things in the container.
Mice, rats, meat, vegetables, water, sugar, cookies, non-edible plants – live and dead -, and finally I scrubbed my place and threw the dirt in. With some wooden crumbs. And a coconut.
And then… it was bedtime, scrunching noises being my night time music.
When I woke up in the morning… there was dirt in front of the container… And half a coconut wobbled on the floor inside it. It somehow managed to look smugly disgruntled.
“… good morning to you, too, buddy”, I reached in to pet the coconut.
Was danach folgte war... nicht sehr viel anders als das, was zuvor geschah. Eine Gewinnsträhne sorgte für eine längere Wartezeit...
Wahrscheinlich waren es gezinkte Herausforderungen, aber nun ja... dafür ließ er ihn einige Male gewinnen, einfach weil es ZU offensichtlich war, dass es gegen ihn ausgelotet war.
Die freiwillige Fairness des Engelskönigs war ein wenig... ansteckend. Vielleicht war es die Anwesenheit der kleinen Engel. Eines bemerkte die Polarität der Herausforderungen und wurde... traurig.
Es war die schnellste Aufgabe des gesamten Labyrinthes.
Aber... ja. Mehr Schlaf, mehr Wortspiele, weitere Kämpfe, einige Gesellschaftsspiele und viele Spielpausen für die kleinen Engel.
Am Ende des Labyrinthes waren es 23 Tage.
Sein Notebook war grfüllt mit Aufzeichnungen und die Engel waren vollzählig. Das letzte Tor führte zu einem Fahrstuhl.
Alle kleinne Engel hatten sich mittlerweile an ihren König gewöhnt und hatten kein Problem damit ihm zu folgen. Trotzdem verabschiedeten sie sich von ihrem 'Pflegedämon' mit tränenreichen Umarmungen.
Jener Pflegedämon hatte allerdings mittlerweile doch mächtige Kopfschmerzen. Trotzdem hielt er sie fest und versprach zu versuchen sie zu treffen, wenn es denn möglich wäre. Vielleicht auf der Erde.
Er ließ sie ungern gehen, aber vielleicht wurde es Zeit.
Zum Abschied bot er dem König zumindest einen Handschlag an. Es schien... vertraut genug, aber nicht übermäßig intim.
Nun, dann verschwanden alle im Fahrstuhl und die Tür schloss.
Erst im letzten Moment griff Levil nach den Türen und schob wie noch einmal einen spaltbreit auf: „Ich... bin froh Euch getroffen zu haben. Wir... sehen uns eventuell in einem Millenium wieder. In einem höheren Rang“, er runzelte kurz die Stirn, „... bis dann!“
Er würde wohl nie erfahren, ob oder was der erwachsene Engel dazu z sagen hatte, denn die Tür schlos sich in diesem Moment und Levil teleportierte in sein designiertes Arbeitszimmer um seinen offiziellen Report auszufüllen.
Er war sich nicht sicher, wie schlecht er abgeschnitten hatte. 23 Tage schienen ihm wie eine recht kurze Zeit, aber... es war immerhin der erste Versuch.
Trotzdem füllte er alles gewissenhaft aus und gab ihn schließlich ab.
Als er später zu hören bekam, dass er die Rekordzeit um etwa das zehnfache geschlagen hatte, wollte er beinahe lauthals lachen.
Die Frage nach dem warum wurde allerdings auch sehr bald beantwortet: Die Aura des Engels brannte schlimmer als jede Flamme der Hölle. Niemand konnte dieser entkommen, auch wenn er sie aufs nötigste herabsetzte um fair zu bleiben. Der erklärende Dämon äußerte sich in diesem Atemzug positiv über Levil's Schhmerzresistenz aus.
Das Problem war nur: Er hatte keine Schmerzen verspürt. Nicht wirklich. Erst zwei Wochen nach Beginn des Labyrinthes. Und auch dann nur als pochender Kopfschmerz.
Und das... hatte ihn in seine eigenen Privatkammern geführt. Und zur Meditation. Um seinen Geist zu befreien. Und den Ursachen auf den Grund zu gehen.
Wie sich herausstellte, wurde nicht nur sein Geist befreit.
Versuchsweise schlug er noch einmal mit den Flügeln...
… kraftvolle, überaus gut gebaute Schwingen. Vier an der Zahl.
Nichts gegen die 72 des Metatron, aber...
…
Dieses Labyrinth hatte ihm definitiv einige Abgründe seiner Selbst aufgezeigt.
I guess you could call it strange, but hey, everyone is in this world...
So there's this one artist, a surging star in the early 50s. Man was obsessed with light, painted on huge canvasses, stuffed them with things which would reflect, refract, scatter and otherwise screw with beams of light in all kinds of convoluted ways.
You could actually see people rooted to the spot in front of his work, not pretending to admire, not straining their intellects trying to "get" them, you would see them simply awed by the cold, hard fact of what the ingenuity of a single person is capable of.
If he had sustained the same output he could've bought the restaurant he was working in as a dishwasher by the time he was thirty and the skyscraper it was in by forty.
So anyway, one night he disappears. Police find his apartment flooded, a suicide note stuck to the fridge.
Turns out he boarded a plane the day after a pipe burst in his flat headed for Lima.
Once he's there, he buys a small patch of land in a nearby village, still using his real name.
The world relegates him to dusty art history archives in a week.
Flash forward a few decades.
My gallery decides to do a show on him, don't even ask.
Apparently, before disappearing, the guy had been going on about this "masterpiece" he was working on. He started referring to his prior creations as mere "experiments" leading up to this, how he was intending to burn every last one after finishing it.
So this extra keen postdoc convinces the director to task me with going down to Peru to try and get this last piece, the chances of it even existing being close to none.
I land, go down to the village he originally bought the sliver of land in by taxi and knock on the door of his rickety shack. Your typical octogenarian Robinson Crusoe answers, thinks I'm the taxman, starts yelling me to fuck off. Once I bring the painting up this stops and his complexion changes, like I'd just pointed out a wound he had been mentally blocking out for ages.
He tells me the night his apartment got flooded he had it drying on the floor. Woke up to find an almost pristine white canvas floating around in technicolour water.
I ask him what it was about, he shrugs and says flatly, "two people in front of a red neon sign during a rainy night." Then he disappears into the darkness of his shack for a moment and comes back with this large folded-out napkin, tells me to hang it as his "defining" work and shuts the door in my face.
So I fly back with this yellowish napkin, a few squiggly lines on it and nothing more, the director loves it and so it gets a spot
Now it’s his most well-known piece, having recently fetched a price of all his other work combined...
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Originally published in Notes #10 “Rapture”.
Winner of our 501 word competition, where we asked you to create a short response to Paul Klee’s In Angel’s Care (In Engelshut) in any genre of writing except poetry.
