fresh blood

but i have promises to keep, and miles to go before i sleep. mark tuan. xxii. ▲ ▼

[wnq-writers]

I am fire. Do not smother me when I burn. I want to consume. I want to conquer. I will take the forest with me.

laceandlovelies (via wordsnquotes )

[vmxmark-blog]

wishbone.

[vmxmark-blog]

vmxgun:

“he is a child that has been plucked from the stars, with moondust coursing through his veins, and here is his life in glimpses”

here is a child who tried to swallow the sun.

      here is the icarus boy,         waxen feathers all aflame,            with tongues of fire licking through his veins that wish to destroy him, to conflagrate him alive, till nothing but ash and smoking bone remains… but the fire shall not destroy him because it simply cannot– it’s impossible to smother a forest fire with gasoline, after all– and here is his life in glimpses:

here is the crack of the whip, the singing of the belt,

and here is the first time he used his body as a weapon to share some pain, his pain, with another.

(his fist breaks upon the rock that is the man’s jaw. it breaks, but it will grow back thicker. stronger. thus is the nature of the human body.)

here is the blurring face of the stranger who stole his first kiss.

and here is where he almost shot a little girl to death and it tore him all up inside.

( tell me mark tell me how do you live with yourself after you’ve committed murder )

( after you’ve murdered two people four people ten people you don’t know how many people you’ve stopped counting you’ve stopped counting so you don’t lose your goddamn mind )

( i don’t know i don’t know how to live with myself )

( and the pill is bitter, hard to swallow: you don’t live with yourself isn’t that fucked up but it’s the truth the ugliest truth of truths )

( how do you live with yourself after you’ve committed murder you ask         and you ask         and you ask )

( i think you just get used to it )

this isn’t how he’d foreseen himself dying.

here’s how he had expected the end to come for him: ( an end to tear the sad little life-letter from his crumpled envelope ) one night, a night like all other nights, would twist too-far sideways to be saved– an inauspicious night, a night thirsting for the red flowing of his blood, and suddenly there’s a bullet in his head but a portion of his brains are not, or– suddenly, the man beneath him wisens up to the threat of his knife and there are two massive hands crushing his windpipe beneath their hot hatred, and there’s agony in his purpling throat but air is not– and suddenly, and suddenly, he is a sallow corpse in a dumpster, thrown out with the trash.

no one ever imagines themselves getting offed by the wood and the flame. but isn’t it the bullet that you don’t hear that does for you?

( “exit stage left” a voice says. the voice is god, maybe. )

he hadn’t expected himself to start wanting to live right as he’s begun to die, either.

how perplexing– he’s lived in this flawed form for twenty two years now, yet he still possesses the ability to utterly shock himself with his wants and dreams.

( “fuck you. fuck your stage directions. i’ve got a life to build with my own two hands and damn right, it is a life made of blood and dirt; it’s all you’ve given me but i love it. i fucking love it. i’ll make it a good life despite all that you do to try and stop me; just you watch. and i’ll leave it when i’m ready.” this voice is your voice. )

( you wonder if you’ve earned yourself such a rotten hand in the poker game of life by regularly telling deities to fuck off. )

( maybe. maybe not. either way, you make no apologies. you’ve been taking care of yourself for as long as you can remember and need no divine intervention now to save this skin you’re in. )

( you are ready. you are ready to live– and to burn burn burn if that’s what living means. )

he is going to die by the wood and flame. he is drowning on dry land. he is drowning on smoke and dust. it hurts. it all hurts very much. and he is used to it, used to the hurt– what is broken may never break– but there is a limit to what a man can take and here it comes here is the eraser bearing down upon the demarcation lines of his existence and he is vanishing and vanishing and vanishing

who is he why does it matter

he is mark scratch that he is zero scratch that too he is a man scratch scratch he is a boy wrong wrong scratch it out he is a human being scratch scratch scratch scratch

he is afraid.

he smokes cigarettes not because he likes them but because his hands are restless creatures and his mouth is too and all three will quiver unless given something to occupy their anxious worrying selves with so he sucks in the carcinogens and breathes in all that flame and tries to hold it inside himself tries to make it his own because it burns and burning is better than nothing at all and the movements of his chest force him to face how alive he is and maybe he was born with all of this fire inside of himself that craves the kindling but he doesn’t really fucking know

his death is probably an ironic death he wouldn’t know he never got to study literature in the way he would’ve liked but there’s probably something ironic about drowning on dry land and dying by all this fire when there’s fire consuming him on the inside too and he can’t escape the flame no matter how far how fast he runs and runs

( but at least you are never cold )

he is an egg smashed against the blank black sky

his thoughts are the yolk and the yolk is the stars and his fear becomes the moon enveloping him in silvered sadness

( floating drifting       as a frightened castaway          you are both free and not free how could this be? )

and then… there’s a hand in mark’s hand. the hand is cool to the touch. that’s okay. it feels good against his own smouldering heat.

mark’s lashes flutter slightly, his eyes trying to open. wanting to open. he is filling to the brim with all these myriad wants and, above all else, mark wishes for that chilly, roughened hand to never let him go.

( it’s the kind of hand he could fall in love with–         because it’s gripping him like it means it, their fingers lacing– locking– together. hot upon cold. rough upon rougher.

the hand says “i am here now; i’ve got you” and mark’s hand says this in return: “yes, you do have me, and you could have all of me if you’d like      but please, please, just be gentle” )

and then… there’s a face swimming into view. a face hovering above his own, close enough to knock skulls with– or kiss– only it’s also very far away somehow. this is the face to whom the hand held in his hand belongs.

no. oh no oh no oh no no no no oh no please, anyone but him. anyone but him because

( you have done wrong to this face and this hand         and you would not blame either if both left you to burn all alone )

mark squeezes the other man’s hand with all of the strength that remains in his extended arm (which is, he quickly realizes, not much at all). he’s unsure about what his hand is trying to convey now– i’m sorry please don’t leave me i deserve this hell but i don’t want to die i don’t want to die i don’t want to die i’m so sorry i’m so sorry please don’t leave me all by myself again– but mark is certain that the man can read one thing– read it loud and clear– from the tightness in that touch: his carnal, shivering desperation.

he looks up unblinkingly into this too-familiar face– and his eyes are opened only as thin black slivers, with smoke and ash to cloud their vision terribly, but they still manage to take up a turbid, phantom-like image somehow.        an image which proceeds to engrave itself upon the walls of mark’s wisping, wavering mind.

( you know this face. you left your mark upon it because it smiled at you, and winked at you, and refused to let you be miserable all by yourself. you were cruel to this face. needlessly cruel. )

( but these are not the injuries left behind by your fists, your elbows, your knees. who else has touched this face with such cruelty? )

( and why is it that when you look up into this face and see all of these new bruises, the fresh blood-spill and split lip– you find yourself wanting to ask: “who did this to you?”

“do you want me to hurt them back?”

              but you can’t speak and can barely even think, so you ask nothing. )

time slows down. it becomes viscous, congealing thickly ( like a scab masking a wound ) and the sand in the hourglass is still spilling ceaselessly down and down and down, down into the void; and the earth is still spinning around the sun and the moon still spinning around the earth ( a galactic set of russian nesting dolls )

and mark, whose edges are squeaking out entirely as the eraser does what erasers must do and erases, spills out into the world like a flute of champagne that has suddenly found itself undefined by all its usual boundaries– flung forth from the glass that once gave it definition–   and time itself fails to register with him.

all that’s left is the sound and the fury

( tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow     creeps in this petty pace from day to day….     out, out, brief candle life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. it is a tale… full of sound and fury signifying nothing )

all that’s left is the sound and the fury– ( a scrap of shakespeare amongst all this burning ) the sound, and the fury, and a hand in his hand that puts some fight back into him.

( the strain in your other arm is edging towards unbearable. you cannot hold on much longer. there are splinters in your palm and a nail embedded there too but you mustn’t let go you mustn’t let go lest you want the splinters and nail to find a home within your throat instead )

( so you think quickly. you take one last look at the eyes-from-above and twist and turn and cry out and then your body comes squirming farther to the side and the threatening plank of wood slams down into the concrete beside your head )

( the hand in your hand feels so sturdy compared to yours and now you can aid your savior in the tasks of widening the gap that gouges into this wall of incineration– two hands, you have two hands, and thank god for that because it means

          that you do not have to let go )

who am i what am i why does it matter

( go leave me save yourself how can you not see        that i’m dead already )

( i cannot breathe )

the world becomes one massive splash of colorful sensation; and time, a viscous gelatin.

( we are the fruit embedded in the gelatin, my dear–     you can be the passion fruit     and i’ll be something sour

do you mind me? i’m so bitter; i cannot help it but it would be an awful lot of fun to see whoever tries devouring us choke on his stinging desserts with you embedded beside me )

he cannot breathe. the splash of color is all too intense– too intense too intense too intense– and he can feel himself fading, suffocating slowly on the razor-blade cutting that is his coughs. his eyes lose all focus and flutter, rolling back till there’s nothing but white.

( you are too weak to help any further so you hold onto the man with two hands          squeezing the fingers interlocked with yours like a lifeline because they are your lifeline and this is a nice way to die after all. )

i wish i could be a starfruit for you. i wish i was someone else someone who would not disappoint you

( you are being pulled free. who is doing the pulling? him, most likely because you are so ragdoll-weak but you kick with your feet anyway. you try to help.

you are being pulled free. the gap in the timbers is a slim little thing but you are even more slender and so you drag yourself free in a way that pulls up your shirt and scrapes your sides into raw meat.

this is rebirth. are you a phoenix? remade from the ashes of yourself with a hand still clasped tightly in your hand. )

he is free. he is alive. ( we are alive ) mark allows himself to be carried. ( as if i could do anything about it even if i wanted to– and i do not want ) his hand tumbles away from the other man’s hand and for a moment mark feels like emitting a panicked, pained cry ( the loss is immediate; a sucker punch to bruised, bruised ribs ) but then he’s throwing his arms around the man’s broad shoulders and squeezing him with all the ferocity he can muster ( which isn’t all that fierce ) and it’s even better, to be honest. it’s even better. mark falls to pieces in the stranger’s embrace. ( that’s a lie. you are no stranger to me. i know you, delivery boy ) he cannot help it. ( i don’t want to help it )

they are alive. their aliveness overwhelms mark and brings a fresh onslaught of tears leaking down his cheeks. how can he still live? how can there be any liquid left in him after lying beneath all of that hot, hot rage for so long, for so damn long?

mark is weeping, and mark is wheezing, and mark is hiding his face in the softness of the man’s shirt. he wants to stay there forever– holding, being held. the lines that define him have bled out into the other man’s labeling lines– bled, and then blurred– and now mark cannot tell where he begins and the man ( the man with the cold heroic hands ) ends.

whose blood is this? whose tears are these? ( both of ours ) ( but the total-body quivering is mine )

they are an egg. a single egg with two yellowed yolks. floating together. contained within their own little universe.

mark wants to stay there forever. every fiber of himself has taken up this horrible shaking– he’s shaking to sharp jagged bits on the inside but he cannot stop, he cannot stop, everything belonging to him wants to tremble and he is powerless to command his disparate fibers, his particles of stardust, in this state of wicked palsy– but it’s all somehow okay when he’s notching his curved parts snugly, seamlessly, into this man’s many firm edges ( this man with the coolly soothing hands ) like they are two puzzle pieces meant to snap together. mark buries his face in the man’s shoulder like has the right to book a room there. mark wants to stay forever.

( come inside my shell, delivery boy. it’s empty in here but we can hang a painting by the window if you’d like )

mark wants what he cannot have.

the awakening is an immediate thing. ( oh, how easy it is to jump into awareness and so very, very difficult to slip back into sleep ) one moment mark is pushing his colors, his shapes, his sounds and voices and all that is him up against the other man, encouraging the blending of them; the next, his outline– and his rescuer’s outline– couldn’t be any clearer. sharper. starker.

he scrambles away, falling backwards heavily in a manner that clacks his teeth together ( but you have far surpassed the point where pain began to bear no meaning to you ). he looks into the face of this man who looms so very near to him ( and your hands itch with the desire to curl back into his shirt and be still ). mark’s eyes are black, moon-wide, and more lucid than they have ever been. they see. they understand. the awakening is complete.

some vital switch is flicked on within him and mark startles, as if slapped across the face, into desperate, trembling action. ( we are on fire! )

he slams his body flat upon the asphalt and begins to roll, rocking himself back and forth with all his feeble might, till the orange lacework of flames have died out upon the fabric of his jeans and their children– the popping embers– also evanescence into smoky nothingness.

but the stench of roasting fabric persists.

mark searches wildly, running quick fingers down leg and limb, until he thinks to look up and over– and his heart lurches into his throat– and then he’s moving again, tearing at the straps of his backpack until they slide down his shoulders;         and then he’s swimming in the baggy excess cloth of his hoodie, hiking it up over his stomach and tugging it forcefully over his head, too, so that it finally pulls free from his body and is clutched tensely in his two ruined hands.

“you’re on fire!” he tries to say. “put yourself out!” but his voice is as destroyed as everything else; he has screamed it into complete wreckage– the airborne debris surely aiding his banshee screeching– and now it comes as nothing more than a ghostly whisper, a metallic hush that croaks and cracks.

mark takes matters into his own hands. ( it’s all instinctual; this you know. you are listening to the humming in your blood and you cannot stop, you cannot stop ) he uses his hoodie to beat the sticky flames off of the other man, smothering them with fabric until none remain.

the blond ( but your hair is gray with ash ) discards the hoodie as if it were tainted with plague and fumbles with his backpack, clumsily threading his arms back through the straps. ( you both need this backpack. there’s ammunition inside and, most importantly, your med-kit, too ) he reaches out for him. ( the delivery boy ) his hands are all bloody and quivering, and he reaches. mark has made his decision. he will give up this man only when death itself has scythed his soul and left his body cold.

( i will protect you )

( it’s my turn now )

and then… a gunshot. mark jerks at the sharp retort, swiveling madly.

he stares down the shooter. the shooter in the plastic tiger mask. the shooter who tried to kill them. ( tried to kill my delivery boy )

the man wears a snarling visage; mark’s lips pull back from his teeth in much the same way.

he rises onto his feet. he stumbles, weak in the knees and just about everywhere else, too– but he does not fall.

( mark mark tell me tell me how does one murder and bear all that sin )

( you pick something worth killing yourself for and make a wish )

here is a child who tried to swallow the sun.

the sun wanted to kill him for it,          but he still lives.            stubbornly, defiantly, he lives.

( he will teach the stars how to burn bright )

the man in the tiger mask raises his gun to shoot mark down– tap tap, easy as that– but then comes the twitch, and all of a sudden the tiger’s trigger finger is wracked with convulsion as the recognition sets in and he cannot decide, not for the life of him, whether he should or shouldn’t spit some bullets into this blond, this blond who has the devil shining in his black, soulless eyes. ( this blond who is his comrade and why is mark unmasked, why is mark unarmed, why is mark stalking towards him with a look on his face that is strictly inhuman )

mark squares his shoulders. he lowers his head and puts his everything into the acceleration, one foot falling after the other, until his sprint is swift enough to turn his body into the lead-weight weapon it needs to be tonight. ( the tiger has far too much weight– and muscle– and mere bodily wellness on mark for finesse to be of any use.              not that mark thinks he has enough left in him for finesse, anyway. )

( brute force will have to do )

mark tackles the man in the tiger mask and brings them both down heavily. the gun goes off again but it’s a decision made far too late– the bullet striking neither mark nor the delivery boy he is attempt to safeguard– and although the brutal fall has knocked spinning starlight into his skull ( and once again he finds himself without enough oxygen to fill the sails of his lungs– wheezing and panting and tearing up at the corners of his eyes ) he knows what must be done, so he does it. guided by all of that internal fury, mark goes for the tiger’s throat with ten vicious fingers.

but it’s a terrible mistake. his body is not functioning as it should be ( his body is one massive contusion that aches with his every breath ) and there is no strength left in his brutalized hands ( a crooked nail still pierces the webbing of one hand straight through; its fingers hang stiff and largely useless, hooked into perpetual claw-shape. the other has had its fingernails worn down into blunt, bloodied nubs and is so thoroughly riddled with splinters that it looks more pincushion than something meant for touching and feeling )

the tiger man throws him off easily ( too easily ), and with a cruel, barked-out “what the fuck is wrong with you?” from this animal-faced figure who now looms over him, mark suddenly finds the situation rapidly reversed. he thrashes about wildly; the tiger suppresses him without much struggle by bearing down oppressively upon the boy’s windpipe, grinding him into the ground and keeping him pined there with knees pressing against his belly. the same sort of questions are repeated again and again–

“what the fuck is your problem?” “have you gone fucking insane? i’m trying to help you! just lie the fuck down and stay there!”

–and mark answers each one with an enmity-laden hiss from his ruined sandpaper throat.

( what’s wrong with me? no– what’s wrong with you

can’t you see how he covered up that corpse he covered her up because he’s good, he’s so awfully good

i hate how good he is i could fall in love with him for it and here you are, trying to shoot him dead )

mark cannot reach the knife strapped against his ankle, so he finds and fists a shard of glass instead.

it’s a gleaming bit of debris from the bomb blast. it gleams even as mark twists an arm loose and comes thrusting up with it, the shard disappearing beneath the chin of the mask to slide home into the softness of the throat that hides behind.

( one of you tried to strangle the delivery boy to death.       one of you will now pay for it. )

he cuts the man in the tiger mask a second red mouth that smiles out a shower of blood and mark isn’t fast enough to squirm free, the tiger too heavy atop him

and so he lies prisoner a while longer as lifeblood spurts forth in one horrible, splattering fast-flow. it coats him completely, hot– sickeningly hot– and his mouth is still gaping open, desperate to suck in much-needed breath after his twice-asphyxiation. the bitter blood-taste floods his tongue– a scalding, slick iron– and mark wretches; mark gags; mark shoves the dying cottonmouth away from him so he can stagger, trembling more than ever before, into a crooked, half-collapsed standing position.

the tiger-faced man makes a litany of wet, spurting gurgles as he writhes and wrenches across the ground– clasping helplessly at a throat that fails to frown closed again no matter how furiously he pleads with it, eyes rolling back and lips– now revealed– frothing red.

mark tries to wipe the blood from his face. he tries, choking and swiping, but it’s no use when your hands are steeped in the same crimson, and your shirt is, too. ( there is not a single part of him left untouched by the blood loosed from the man in the tiger mask )

mark falls down onto all fours. he vomits until there’s nothing left to hurl back up.

gone. gone are the dry-heaves; gone are the waves of shuddering, irrepressible nausea. mark spits out the sour taste because he cannot wipe at his mouth without putting more foul blood back into it.

here he is picking himself back up onto shaky legs,

and here he is staggering, limping, past the third glassy-eyed corpse he has made of a person tonight.

here he is not feeling a goddamn iota of sorrow over the corrupted man he has just slain,

and here he is lasting long enough– just long enough– to cross the distance between himself and his rescuer.

as soon as he is at the other man’s side, mark sinks slowly– slowly, until he’s falling all at once– back down to his knees. his tears trickle forth uninhibited, cutting new paths into the grime and the blood and the blood and the blood fuck there’s just so much blood…

but his eyes are clear. clear, and black, and alive with fear.

he wants to reach for the man’s hand. he wants to hold it again. to squeeze it again.

mark extends a hand ( the hand not twisted into claw-shape from the pain of the bent nail ) and he does it tentatively. expecting rejection. anticipating revulsion. feeling shame, burning shame, at all of the gore that covers it. as a last minute consideration, he wipes his trembling, traumatized hand against his pant leg as if that would help clean it a little. ( it does not )

mark reaches for the man anyway. his sobs are quiet and breathless. his voice is no louder than the whispering of the wind, and it scrapes like steel against steel.

“we can’t stay here. we have to get off the streets.”

“we have to go now. p-please– they’re going to kill everyone! we can’t stay!”

nearby gunfire punctuates mark’s words for him as they struggle, too thin and too faint, out into the smoky, dust-clotted air. his quaking appears to double in intensity; and his onyx-chip eyes, already blown wide, fill further with fright.

“i’m not going to leave you. i’m not going to do that. s-so... please, get up..."

[markjin]

here comes mark

[vmxmark-blog]

here comes a hurricane; trouble is their middle name.

( ft. himchan )

for someone who does not touch others often of his own free will, a simple embrace is a rather meaningful gesture for mark.

( because a certain sort of vulnerability comes with an embrace–

–and it’s the worst vulnerability of them all because it’s the emotional kind– the affectionate kind– the “i trust my back with the edge of your knife” kind. )

what’s an embrace, anyway? an overrated, overly-romanticized, and all too-human ideal– arms and hands encircling a torso– the house of heart and lung– to secure a body fast to another body; the chin and throat of the shorter participant, tender and open, coming to rest upon the shoulder of the taller.

and if an embrace is genuine, then there’s likely much squeezing. (‘i care for you and i want you to feel just how much’).

mark isn’t a hugger. he’s been made to sell his body to strange hands and strange faces for so long now that he preferentially exists, whenever possible, in a bubble of self-imposed isolation– saying “the shop is closed, fuck off and leave me be” with the unspoken, instinctual tongue of facial expression and body language, and it’s probably because all of the trust and gentleness in him has been mangled irreparably, in the most vital of ways, by the groping palms of those who have purchased him for a night of artificial intimacy– …but who knows, who really knows?

mark isn’t exactly the type to make and keep friends. he exists as a lone island in the stream– a specter who wears his distance like chain-mail, and he likes it like this– likes it like this because he gets enough contact and closeness– enough of them both for a fucking lifetime– whenever he’s saddled with the task of tending to a client who tastes sour, hellishly painful to the mouth, and hurts even more with their hands, their two invasive hands.

but then there’s himchan. himchan, the one figure in mark’s life who has somehow managed to penetrate the chinks in his frigid armor to become so dangerously close to falling well within the category of “friend”.

mark smiles his thin almost-smile. he places a light, greeting touch upon himchan’s right bicep before pulling the wolfsbane escort into an easy, comfortable embrace. he squeezes the girl like he means it. (it’s because he does.)

mark lingers at the entrance of the nightclub. the pulsating, frenetic thrum of very loud music spills through the entryway and out into the street each time the bouncer admits a guest, or clump of guests, into the club’s dark depths. licks of purple and green and hazy, yellow-white light follow the example set by their brethren, the stentorian sound, and also tumble out onto the buzzy, hive-like scene of a midnight seoul. the bouncer, iron-muscled and cruel-looking, eyes him questioningly. mark puts the venom into his pretty face and shoots back a smile that one could sharpen a sword upon.

as usual, his unfriendliness has taken up arms with common sense to declare outright war upon his alliance with the man– but to mark, the woman– for he is the confidant of a great secret and, fortunately for her, mark’s lips are stitched shut when it comes to the secrets of those he cares much about– known as kim himchan. in the game of preservation, one mustn’t go fraternizing with those who would wish you and your people dead– dead, all mysteriously afloat face-down one still, silver morning in the han river– or slivered to bits and shoved bloodily, lovelessly into black garbage bags– all in a heartbeat, all in a damn heartbeat– if one plans on winning said game, the game within the larger, ruthless, and all-encompassing game of gangs.

but that’s exactly what he’s about to do: go party with a member of the cottonmouths’ number one rival group, their prioritized enemy, until he’s blind drunk and has forgotten how mean and miserable he truly is.

mark doesn’t know how long they’ve been meeting up like this, nor does he remember how exactly they first happened to meet. he supposes that, in the end, the specifics truly matter not. on the exterior level, his relationship with himchan is technically a hybrid sort of business partnership/truce– something akin to “i am a cottonmouth escort; you’re a wolfsbane escort. i don’t feel like breaking my hand upon your face and you don’t either, so let’s be civil, as civil as gang brats can be, and swap some nonessential intel over booze and cigarettes”.

nevertheless, it’s all transformed into something much more as time has passed. there are many layers to mark’s relationship with himchan– and at the innermost interior there is nothing but warmth, a genuine gladness to be sharing in each other’s company– a company that is pleasantly casual, unforced, while skirting intimacies into both of their lives and happenings. most of which mark has never dared before confide with someone. anyone.

as a result of both his natural disposition and accrued experience, mark shies away from the word “friendship”. after all, the intelligent dog never fully trusts a human ever again once it has been kicked repeatedly by human feet.

and yet, undeniably, mark knows damn well that what he experiences with himchan is the true, raw stuff– something more along the lines of kinship, rather than comradeship– and although he refuses to admit it, to either his mind or his heart, mark doesn’t give two shits about the possibility of danger and simply enjoys every moment he spends with himchan.

that’s the glue that binds them together, that makes their unlikely rapport possible– they both feel nothing less than complete apathy toward the ceaseless perniciousness forever looming between the wolfsbane and the cottonmouths. (in fact, merely thinking of his fellow serpents as “his people” makes him so nauseous, it feels as if someone were attempting to whip his entrails into scrambled eggs with a fork.) although they stand on opposite sides of a bitter line blurred by the blood smear of countless dead, mark and himchan understand each other in a way few other people ever will. himchan knows precisely what he goes through day in and day out. she knows. her body, too, carries a price tag; she, too, does what must be done to put money in the wallet and food in the fridge.

their shared life experiences brought them together with a magnetic resonance–  himchan, who is his polar opposite with her disposition of shape-shifting suaveness and nearly everything mark is not, managed to miraculously mesh with the unforgiving edge of his permafrost personality because– despite of their obvious differences– the similarities that matter, the similarities contained within their cores, sing the same sad, troubled songs– but it was their atypical attitudes of complete indifference toward the gangs to which their loyalties lie that has kept them together, kept them meeting up at myriad bars and nightclubs, as siblings in soul rather than the blood.

himchan doesn’t mind mark’s reserved stoicism. she doesn’t mind the way he pulls so tightly in upon himself, slow to smile and even slower to warm. she does not seem to mind all of the killing that has been done by his hands, either– or perhaps she simply does not know– but mark wouldn’t be surprised if himchan had managed to scrounge up a file on him from the murky depths of someplace, or someone, sometime along the way. (and if it exists, then surely the file is an awful thing; a file riddled with bullet holes and steeped so thoroughly with blood, thickened blood, that whatever papers, documents, or photos contained within run red with the stuff.) that was himchan’s power, the power of an escort with cunning fingers dipped into the pools of intelligence collection– and mark dares not underestimate her for a moment.

nevertheless, if himchan does somehow know that mark moonlights as a hitman– moonlights in the way himchan herself doubles as an intel gatherer– then she has kept silent about it thus far. for this, mark is grateful.

there is nothing left to be done except to enter the nightclub. ( stop milling around, mark– you want to go and not even the most unfriendly bone in your body shall prevent you from enjoying your time with himchan. your flesh knows it well so shut up, stop lying, because you absolutely know it, too. )

mark goes in. the inky darkness of the club swallows him whole and the shift in atmosphere is immediate. it’s like being devoured down by a hot black mouth– only the blackness is lucid and fluid, with whirling pops of neon light in the distance serving as tell-tale indicators of the edge of some still unseen dance floor, and the air is clouded with pungent, acrid-smelling cigarette smoke rather than whatever stench ‘esophagus lining’ might possibly smell like. (jesus christ, that was such an unpleasant… and bizzare… thought. damn, damn, damn. he needs a fucking drink. asap. maybe two. or a straight row of shots to loosen up his too-taut bowstrings.) the music gets into his skull and decides to live there, pulsing behind his eyes and vibrating within his teeth in a way that’s rather nice, rather exciting. mark feels a little drunk already– drunk off of his sorrows– and his thoughts are muddled but there’s no happy, buzzy high. he wants the real buzz and he wants it now. he wants to get drunk off of liquor– not sorrows– and he wants himchan to be the one holding his hair later when he’s ultimately praying, on hands and knees, to the porcelain god.

he needs this. he needs to unwind with himchan. to confide in himchan. he needs this person. this friend. it frightens him how much he needs her.

the cottonmouth boy is in his own clothes. skinny jeans with rips in the knees; a loose tank-top that does not cling. a bare, unpainted face– overly pale, with tiredness showing under and in the eyes– and it’s the kind of tired that is trying so extremely hard not to be tired, and thus seems all the more exhausted when the charade accidentally slips– but it feels great, unbelievably great, to not have his cheeks and eyes and lips iced all up with sticky creams and cakey powders for once. mark is here as himself. for himself. no missions, no targets. he’s armed only with a small, well-concealed blade and his hellbent desire to get lost in the night with a companion very dear to him.

he scans the sizeable crowd for a head of blond hair to rival his own. this nightclub is still a freshly opened scene– either protected by the red recluse or without affiliation at all– and neither of their faces are likely to be recognized here. in other words, it’s just about as safe a place as they could pick. here, they are (relatively) anonymous. here, they can shed their snakeskin, their poisonous leaves, till all that remains is ‘mark’ and ‘himchan’, and what remains wants to laugh and chat and smoke and dance. mark spots her. he weaves a path through the gyrating clubbers. he’s immediately sorry that he even considered leaving without word or notice.

mark smiles his thin almost-smile. he places a light, greeting touch upon himchan’s right bicep before pulling the wolfsbane escort into an easy, comfortable embrace. he squeezes the girl like he means it. (it’s because he does.)

himchan is as handsome– as beautiful– as she ever is. her looks are of the easy, entrancing sort, the kind that appeals naturally to the onlooking eye. (in comparison, mark thinks his own pretty surely must be a pretty that is sharp; a pretty that terrifies, cutting like jagged glass.) she’s slender but supple, and also very, very tall. mark’s chin is level with her shoulder. still locked in embrasure, he allows himself to hide in it for a moment. androgyny simply suits her– masculinity becoming her just as well as her femininity– and mark admires that, he truly does. no matter what, he feels his own boyishness in the way one senses their shadow following along at their feet. he, too, is of a slender build; but unlike himchan, who wears bits of softness so well, mark’s body broadens at the shoulders and narrows at the waist into unmistakable hard lines and firm edges.

he knows that it hurts her, too– that it scares her, even– and that she’s still unsure of herself in her own skin… but mark knows that himchan is quite wonderful no matter what. quite wonderful. quite lovely. he’s here for himchan. if she needs a secret to be kept– and it is indeed such a tender, fragile secret– then he shall keep it. if she needs him to call her just that– “she”– then mark will gladly do so, as well.

escorts must look out for one another, no matter which side they stand upon.

“channie. it’s been too long.” mark whispers, his cheek resting against himchan’s cheek as he strains, just a tiny bit, up onto the toes of his sneakers in order to gain the height necessary to hover his lips near the shell of the other’s ear. he leans away, soles pressing flat to the floor again, and the fingertips of one of his hands linger upon his friend’s arm– trickling smoothly down bicep, then forearm– until they have closed gently around himchan’s wrist. “god, i was so worried about you after shit hit the fan at the festival! but… you look well. i’m glad. please tell me that you’ve been eating, though. you know how much i hate to hear that you’ve been living off of nothing more than cigarettes and air.”

mark chuckles. his smile is still a mere sliver, but it’s a happy sliver, and it warms the darkness of his black, unblinking eyes. “i want to hear about everything, himchan. all that’s been going on in your life since we last got together. but first…”

the shorter blond turns and tugs himchan along behind him, guiding them both toward the bar. “…i want to get hammered. absolutely fucking wasted.”

mark strides forth like there’s a war to be fought and won tonight. maybe there is. his head is held high. he glances back over his shoulder at himchan, and he’s grinning. it’s a grin abundant with teeth. ( already, already, his armor has come loose– there goes the helm, the mail, the chest plate; the guardian of his heart. )

“so… there’s this guy, channie. and he’s an annoying little fuck. i hate him. i can’t get him off my mind. i want to get totally shit-faced tonight. let’s get totally shit-faced, okay? and we’ll just not give a damn about anything. let’s show these basic motherfuckers how to really dance, okay? can we do that?”

mark sticks out his tongue. teasingly. cheekily. 

here he is, melting like ice cream in a forgotten dish; here he is, drunk off of nothing but sorrow. the piercing seated in the center of his tongue gleams beneath the colored strobe lights. “...i bet that i can get more guys to buy me drinks than you can!”

[antigonick]

he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for.

Richard Siken, excerpt of You Are Jeff (via henrydear)

[dailygot7archive]

mark_tuan

[vmxmark-blog]

(092215) TRACKER…!

waiting for: vmxgun x2 vmxshison vmxchangjo ( plz take your time, there’s no rush 7 u 7 )

writing for: vmxhimchan

tdl: open plot page

plotting with: vmxember + vmxilhoon + vmxsoohyun + vmxdoojoon vmxmars vmxkikwang + vmxqian + zicovmx + vmxchoa + vmxhyeri + vmxhongbin + chaerinvmx + vmxmin + ( a + indicates that i still need to respond to your last message. if there’s no + and you still haven’t received anything from me, then tumblr shot my reply to f*ckn’ asgard. plz notify me if that’s the case. >: )

heeeey, babes! AS YOU CAN TELL BY THAT HUGE PLOTTING LIST WITH A BUNCH OF +’S EVERYWHERE, I’VE BEEN PRETTY BAD WITH THE PLOTTING LATELY. I’M SO SORRY. i couldn’t seem to keep track of it while i was out of my mind last week with pneumonia & admittedly i’m STILL fighting off that funk, so i’m a lil’ bit slow rn at… p much everything.. nevertheless! i’m feeling MUCH better now and i’d like to try to wrestle plotting back onto track. (i’d like to bump up my thread count, too!) i know that inbox can be hella unreliable, so i’m sorry to ask, but i would GREATLY appreciate it bbs if we could plot through pm/fanmail/submit for now– just ‘cause it’s a bit easier for me to keep track of everything than aim. ;u; although my aim is still avaliable if anyone wants it (@hansol.o) and if aim is perfect for you, then dw i’m fine with plotting there, too! i’m also (slowly but surely) hashing together an open plot page; if you’re interested, be on the lookout for it– i’m hoping it’ll be up within a few days??

OTHER THAN THAT ilu guys, it’s been just incredible to be part of the vmx fam thus far. *u* speaking of incredible, super kudos goes to the admins for their superb work on the lightsout event & the directory overall!! also, welcome newbies! your apps are wonderful omg. i’ll zoom into your inboxes to welcome you all soon, i promise o/

p.s. anyone else wanna plot? just like this tracker then, i’ll come hit you up asap. (also if i’m forgetting anyone that i’m supposed to already be plotting with plz come body slam me IM SORRY FORGIVE ME FORGIVE ME)

with love (as always), jack

[bocademiel]

Visit Original Link

I can’t open up and cry cause I’ve been silent all my life

I feel numb most of the time The lower I get the higher I’ll climb And I will wonder why I got dark only to shine  Looking for the golden light  Oh, it’s a reasonable sacrifice

[wnq-writers]

the rain & i speak in the same tongue, we both understand the art of falling

dontecollinsthepoet (via ecouri)

[vmxmark-blog]

i eat boys like you for breakfast.

[vmxmark-blog]

vmxgun:

“you know what’s on the menu today? me-n-u.”

(you know that feeling you get when there’s a storm coming?)

the motorcycle whips by him. it’s going too fast.

(that feeling. that omen. are you excited? are you terrified?)

it’s going too fast and the agitated air pulls at mark like a greedy, clamoring hand. his hood is blown back and suddenly there’s wind– a brisk, lashing wind– to chill redness into his cheeks. it runs its fingers through his tousled blond hair. tugs at his clothes. catches the smoke that curls off the end of his cigarette and sends it spiraling, corkscrewing, in many disparate directions.

( there’s always that trembling in your skull, in your tongue and your toes, when something real fierce, something real wicked, comes blowing in on the winds. it nearly rattles you to pieces inside )

he suspects that the motorcycle had passed by him rather close– too close– just close enough to put the glitter of adrenaline into his heartstrings. his feet want to stop, which is why he makes them keep walking. makes himself step through the curiosity, crushing it beneath his heels. he is defiant. he is unaffected.

but his eyes are two traitors. and they watch.

( there’s a storm coming that could shake your whole world apart if it wanted, and oh, how it does, how it wants )

the man is looking at him like he’s seen something interesting. something beautiful. something worth plowing face-first into that stop sign for.

mark smiles– until he remembers that he does not know how to smile.

when the motorcycle rider quits his shameless rubbernecking to circle back around, mark wakes the fuck up from his silly schoolgirl daze. there’s a knife in his hand before his mouth has finished smoothing itself back out into a cryptic, mirthless line. it’s a small blade– a switchblade– but it can nip through a jugular as well as any other length of steel. so he settles the knife between two of his fingers, a little hidden fang eager to loose some hot, dark blood at a moment’s notice.

something is wrong with him tonight– something terribly, frightfully wrong. how could he have allowed that man to approach without even considering the possibility of a drive-by? he’s on home turf, yes, but there are other enemies endemic to seoul that would gladly tear a wandering, wounded cottonmouth to shreds than merely the worst of his fellow snakes. this motorcycle dumbass could be a hitman himself, a hitman with a contract for mark’s head–

or he could just be a dumbass delivery boy.

mark reassesses the situation when he sees the stranger begin coaxing the bike down into a slow, ambling crawl.

quietly, discreetly, the switchblade vanishes up his sleeve as swiftly as it had been withdrawn.

this clown poses no real threat.

mark won’t need a blade to subdue him if push comes to shove.

the delivery boy sidles up alongside mark, matching him pace for pace on his motorcycle. it would’ve been an impressive feat of vehicle control– if mark wanted a total fucking stranger to bizarrely, unnervingly, tail after him like some oversized, heart-eyed puppy, that is. the man wears a ridiculous blue cartoon face mask. he tugs it lower, until it’s hooked beneath his chin. mark finds his eyes tracing the lines belonging to the man’s revealed countenance. mark’s eyes follow the slope of his nose– the jut of his cheekbones– the sharp curvature to his jaw. they skirt along the shape of the man’s mouth as it moves, happy-confident, tossing a handful of words out into the early morning air like they’re nothing, like they bear no possible consequence.

the words are greasy. disgusting. it’s a pick-up line mark hasn’t heard before, but it’s a pick-up line nonetheless. me-n-u. revulsion wells up within him like the rising tide.

but the man’s face isn’t an unpleasant one. he’s young. probably mark’s age, or just about. it makes the ogling– the catcalling– slightly more palatable. keyword: slightly.

(nevertheless, mark doesn’t think he could have withstood the attention of some perverted old fucker right now… so seeing this face– as cocky as it may be– is definitely the preferable outcome. an infinitely better one– and mark’s expression, blank and unrelenting, shows its slender ‘relief’ by narrowing its eyes into two unimpressed slivers of dark, dark ice.)

the man looks damp– damp in the way a wet dog looks puffed and mangy as its fur dries out, overcoat to undercoat– and his face, no matter how long mark glares at it, remains… not unpleasant. his unobstructed forehead appears to gleam with a thin sheen of t-zone grease– or is that perspiration? but mark can’t seem to focus on much else besides that cheeky grin.

it’s a nice smile. it’s an infuriating smile.

the delivery boy winks–

–and mark wants to curb stomp all of the teeth right out of his cocky little skull.

“good thing i’m not hungry.” he says, and his retort is a purr– a bit of silk– a razor blade embedded into toxic chocolate. his venomous gaze flickers away from the man and settles instead onto the green– the yellow– the red– of the distant traffic lights.

he tries to shift his attention elsewhere. god fucking dammit, he can’t even enjoy a terrible cigarette, it would seem– not if mr. delivery fuckass has any say in the matter. pissed and bitterly frigid to so much as gaze upon, mark takes a long, lazy drag on the cylinder pinched between his middle- and forefinger. he holds the smoke in until he swears that he could exhale fire, nothing but fire, up into the apathetic heavens– until he could burn this city, himself, and his unwanted motorcyclist companion into nothing but ash and bleached-white bones.

okay. the dumbass is still tagging along. that’s just fantastic.

is he going to have to spell things out for him? spell them out, loud and clear? how about: ‘i know it’s fucking unbelievable that i’m not swooning over your clever little pun, but guess what, champ– i’m not interested in taking a ride on your motorcycle– right on back, with all those styrofoam take-out boxes because that’s so goddamn sexy and wow, my heart sure is won over!– or whatever the fuck you’re hoping to accomplish. also, i’m a hooker. a hooker that could rip your fucking eyes out and put them back in inside-out. not exactly the pretty princess you’re looking for–’

oh. shit.

is the guy coming onto him so strongly because he’s interested in–?

( no. he’s probably too daft to realize that only a prostitute would hang out on the outskirts of the red light district, in short-shorts, at two o’ fucking clock in the morning )

‘maybe’ is the correct answer, though. and mark is fucking livid. he’s pissed for no real reason at all– or maybe it’s partially because his cheeks are prickling, flushing, with an awful sort of heat and of course the man hadn’t looked at mark because he thought him interesting, because he just couldn’t quit looking.

there’s only one thing such a look ever really means. looks like that say: ‘i want something from you because you’re pretty– how much do i pay until you give it to me? oh, of course it doesn’t matter if it’s been ‘gently used’– it’s all the same to me. i promise to return it in the same condition but guess what, my fingers are crossed and i couldn’t care less about promises anyway’.

mark isn’t dealing with this.

he wants to be alone. he wants to be alone so he can fall to pieces in goddamn peace.

the blond strikes like a cobra. (like a cottonmouth.) one moment, he’s just walking alongside his little piggy pest– walking and smoking– and there’s a vein throbbing dangerously within his smooth, smooth throat– a vein that’s hammering away to the beat of his fury– and then he’s lashing out sideways with a vicious, sweeping kick. his heel pummels into the center of the delivery boy’s chest. the sound is solid. the thunk of foot connecting with flesh. he concentrates all of his weight and momentum into leg and shoe, effectively shoving the smiling idiot clean off his motorcycle. before the riderless bike can tip and crash, mark catches the handlebars and drapes himself over the front of the vehicle. he holds it in place. keeps it steady. languidly, with one sneaker still lazing against the curb, mark grins a lethal grin down at the fallen stranger.

“you should hurry home to mommy. don’t you know it’s bad for little boys to stay out past their curfew? they might get themselves into trouble.” mark’s pale pink lips, curling out smoke, twitch into a half-smirk. “…look at the facts. if i weren’t such a doll, you would’ve lost your ride just now– the deliveries, too. and wouldn’t that have been a real bitch to explain to the boss?“ 

mark’s visage hardens in an almost imperceptible way. his smirk glitches into an almost-grimace.

he pauses to take another drag on his cigarette. his fingers are steady but his stomach is not. (damn, that kick strained the fuck out of his sutures. he sucks on his pain like a bitter sort of lozenge.)

“listen. i don’t care who the fuck you are– snake, wolf,  or a motherfucking red– i don’t give a shit. if you’re looking for someone to suck you off– someone to fuck until they puke– then keep looking. you’ll get nothing from me but another kick– and next time, i’m aiming for your balls.”

( you’re being irrational you’re being cruel you don’t even know if he really wanted sex and this is why no one ever likes you )

( fuck it. alone is all i know how to do and i do it so well )

he exhales a thread of smoke downward, right at mr. delivery fuckass’s face. he hopes it carries far enough to choke him a little.

mark straightens his spine. he folds his arms across his chest and holds the motorcycle upright with a thigh propped against the front tire.

“get out of here. come back when a single hit won’t knock you flat on your ass.”

“…and if you ask for my number, i swear to god, i’ll rip your fucking tongue out.”

[vmxmark-blog]

friendly fire.

( ft. changjo )

12:44 AM

epsilon has taken an innocent hostage.

of all possible liabilities to complicate this assignment further, it just had to be an innocent.

and the innocent is a man.

a meat shield. a bullet sponge. a human sacrifice. an innocent young man.

fuck. this is why mark despises wolfsbane pricks like no other.

epsilon thinks he’s been a real clever motherfucker– a regular fox-face, if you will– and that by squeezing an innocent man against his body– by notching the steely-cool muzzle of his firearm into the hollow of said innocent man’s throat– he has somehow secured his life back from mark’s soul-reaping clutches.

epsilon’s ‘cleverness’ shall be his downfall.

epsilon smiles at mark from over the crown of the innocent’s head. his teeth are white and straight– so white they nearly glow in the violet darkness of the alleyway, so straight mark feels somewhat reminded of how soldiers stand to attention, pressed shoulder to shoulder against each other in severe rows. a sizeable lump of cash has gone into perfecting that smiling mouth over the years, he deduces.

and now, those gleaming teeth grin. tauntingly– mockingly– they grin and grin.

( mark can’t wait to fuck up that grin– )

( –with a bullet’s kiss )

epsilon thinks that mark won’t take the shot because an innocent will perish in the cross-fire.

epsilon full-heartedly believes in such a notion because any decent individual would not slaughter this unfortunate sheep of a man who strayed unknowingly into the lions’ den– this sheep of a man who was merely in the wrong place at the very worst of times. any decent person would not fire through the aforementioned hostage simply to execute the snickering swine who hides behind.

clever epsilon, however, has made a fatal error in judgement.

he has forgotten that there’s no one less decent in seoul than a cottonmouth with a suppressor fitted onto their gun.

mark lines up the shot.

without blinking– without breathing– without batting an eye–

mark squeezes the trigger. the glock in his hand, sleek and clean, spits a quiet little bullet straight through the thigh of the captured civilian. blood spatters onto shoes and sidewalk alike. the spray looks as black as the night itself without any streetlamps nearby to shed their flickering orange-peel hues down upon this  murderous scene.

epsilon falters. the corners of his sickening smile twitch, uncertain and astounded. he does not seem to understand the situation even as it unfurls before his very eyes. epsilon’s grip on the innocent captive slackens. likely a result of the innocent captive suffering his first stings of pain, or no longer finding himself capable of supporting his weight on his own two feet.

the innocent’s head pitches sharply to one side as epsilon attempts to adjust.

mark steadies his hand. there is no room for error.

not unless he’s keen on making ‘reservations’ for two, as opposed to one, with cottonmouth’s clean-up crew.

he fires the gun a second time. a dark circle opens up within the center of epsilon’s forehead.

12:29 AM

target number one. codename: delta. target number two. codename: epsilon.

both males. both in their early thirties. both heavy-set– meaty, muscular, and with the same kind of pinched, pompous faces to command their hulking forms.

both wolfsbane.

both dead.

this nightclub has some class. decent enough for ‘private rooms’ tucked in the back, at least. mark finds himself in one such 'private room’. the wicked thumping of the dance floor’s electronic bass bleeds right through the booth’s curtains of velvet cloth and rustling glass beads. the music bleeds right on through and settles into the marrow of mark’s very bones. he swears that he’s vibrating. it’s not an unpleasant sensation. not any more unpleasant than delta’s panicked fingernails tearing into his shoulderblades.

“shhhh,” he soothes, lips grazing against the curving shell of delta’s ear before they migrate over– over, and down– to settle upon delta’s desperately gasping mouth. mark swallows up delta’s quiet death sounds with a chaste, apologetic kiss. he kisses the man out of this world because it’s only fair, it’s only right– a kiss for a life, a kiss to hold onto, a kiss that is something comforting– something humane– as fearsome death robs the bodily frame of the beat of life.

there’s a syringe nestled into delta’s thick, sinewy throat. it continues to plunge its toxic solution upon the prompting of mark’s pressing thumb.

mark, seated firmly in delta’s lap, embraces the dying man tightly against himself. he grinds his ass down. he kisses delta’s breath away. he squeezes lethal chemicals into his target’s flesh and vein with the jab of a well-placed needle.

( perhaps that’s partially the reason behind mark’s inevitable fuck-up– he had been much too gentle tonight )

( far too much of a fucking bleeding heart for these two wolfsbane pricks ) 

delta is eliminated. dead as dead can be, with his head lolling limply against mark’s shoulder.

“ay, babe!” the curtain parts suddenly, decorative beads rippling and tinkling. a meaty, square-shaped visage appears, and it is a familiar one. a smiling one. “when am i gonna get my turn– …wait, shit shit shit, fucking christ–”

ah. so epsilon has decided to join the party earlier than expected.

mark withdraws the 'hidden’ gun holstered at delta’s side without hesitation, without a second to spare. he whirls around, a dead man’s weight pressing against his chest, and fires two rapid shots into epsilon’s heart.

( not a soul on the distant dance floor screamed. it was a cottonmouth club, after all– wolfsbane clientele rarely leave the place without a bullet for a party favor )

epsilon staggers. but he does not fall. he does not slacken, nor do his eyes glaze over and slip into the damning 'thousand yard stare’ of doomed men.

so epsilon wears kevlar, then. that’s the only possible explanation.

epsilon takes off running.

mark follows in pursuit.

( he would not catch up to target number two until– )

12:45 AM

“dinner reservations for one, please.”

mark gives clean-up his location– their location, he mentally corrects himself, and he gives the civilian a brief once-over from the corner of his eye. he then ends the call. pocketing his cell phone, the cottonmouth hitman calmly steps over rigid corpse limbs and splattered brain matter to crouch down beside the innocent man. the wounded man.

mark slips his face mask down over his lips. he leaves his hood on, though.

“i shot you clean through the leg. i shouldn’t have hit anything vital, but you will likely die of blood loss unless you allow me to aid you.” mark speaks coolly, crisply. his words are clinical. matter-of-fact. not a hint of emotion tinges them in any way. “i’m sorry it had to be this way, but i promise not to hurt you again if you comply.”

mark ghosts the muzzle of his firearm over the poor civilian’s throat.

“the alternative to compliance is death. so don’t be a dumbass and you’ll walk away from this just fine.”

“think you can do that for me? 'not being a dumbass’ means no shouting. no escape attempts– which would be a vastly unwise move, by the way, when you’re bleeding the fuck out. no phone calls. no texts, either. no struggling. no looking at my face. and no police reports of what happened here tonight will appear if i save your damn life, you got that? in other words, you’re going to try to forget. about me. about the bastard lying dead right next to you. about everything.”

“…and in return, i’ll spare you.”

fuck. here he is, being a goddamn bleeding heart yet again.

this can only lead to trouble.

“do we have a deal?”

[yourdailymarktuan]

[brokenmusicshop]

Visit Original Link

[vmxmark-blog]

wishbone.

the police swarm the festival grounds, and you await anxiously for the bomb. and when it goes off it shakes you, takes your breath for a moment before the smoke clears and you can breathe. the gun in your hand is heavy, but familiar. and your orders are clear. kill them all. so you do, partaking in a night that will haunt this city forever. you dash forward, blind, and begin your shooting. only you don’t see it—the towering stall and its breaking wood. and you still take no notice of it as it begins to collapse beside you. only when it strikes you, knocks you down and pins you to the ground under burning wood, do you see. and it is too late. you are trapped, and your only options are to free yourself, with the risk of harming yourself in the process—or cry out to the crowd of people screaming past you and put your life in the hands of a stranger. take the risk and live, or lie down and die. but in the end, its no longer in your hands. 

this is where the evening splits in half, henry, love or death. grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.

( ft. gun ) 

the air is sweet and acrid with the scent of cotton candy and gasoline.

a bomb goes off; the rattling of automatic weapons follows rapid-fire.

mark, like all the other pawns upon the playing field, nearly buckles at the knees and crashes to the hard black asphalt when the heat and the force and the flames come rising up to smash the midnight into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths.

( his appearance deceives. he’s a pawn unlike all other pawns. they should run. they need to run. mark matters none but he’s still got a gun )

seoul is a piano sonata shot all to hell by the staccato of cannon fire,

and mark is a marionette defined by the pull of his strings.

it is time for the puppet to dance. everyone has a role to play,

and his orders are to kill, kill, kill.

kill them all.

( i’m so sorry )

lanterns dot the rows of festival booths like little origami stars folded by and fallen from a heavenly hand.

the fire presses down upon the festival from every cardinal direction. it heaves its hot, rancid breath down upon the backs of their necks and threatens to devour the corrupt city whole. mark looks only at the lanterns.

he thinks they are beautiful.

they are beautiful, and he is so terribly sorry for what his hands are about to do. the lanterns glow warm and yellow in the irises of his dark, dark eyes and mark wishes that he were here to gorge on street food, to knock down stacks of milk bottles with a baseball, to laugh, and to swallow a tiny morsel of happiness and to hold that happiness inside of himself because it is his and he is alive, and no one can take that away from him, his levity or his life, when the lanterns are bright and the night sings softly with hope–

but it’s all too fitting that mark only gets to walk amongst the lanterns as a fucking hurricane.

he gets to walk amongst the lanterns as thunder and lightning and a sleek black gun to bring some rain down upon this perfect little parade.

it is time. mark pulls the mask over his face and it, too, is yellow– yellow like the spinning, swaying lanterns– with rose-dipped cheeks and a black button nose seated right above its cheery, cartoonish smile. it’s a goddamn pikachu mask and that, too, is somehow fitting.

( i don’t want to do this i don’t want to do this i don’t want to do this i don’t want to do this i’m sorry )

but when has mark ever had a choice when it comes to his body and the sins it has been made to do?

smoke burns his vision; his eyelashes flutter against airborne debris and a battering of near-tangible heat. the safety releases. his hand steadies.

the man in the pikachu mask blinks blindness from his gaze, but his aim holds true nonetheless.

mark drops away from himself. he lets go, and it all just drops away.

he squeezes the trigger and a scarlet rosette blooms across the back of a woman’s pretty white sundress. he squeezes the trigger and a wet red flower opens itself up in the center of a man’s chest, right at the core of his heart.

he blinks the smothering miasma from his stinging, watering eyes and a young girl’s round white moon face flickers into his pistol’s line of fire.

mark’s finger turns to stone upon the trigger.

she is just a child. she is also lovely. she wears her hair in two black pigtails so silken that they shine and bounce to the movements of her head, and tears cut tracks into the ash and grime that coats her pallid cheeks. she falls to the side of the woman in white– now, white and red red red– and the shape of a word appears on her small, quivering mouth. the word is ‘mother’. she looks at mark and the line his gun makes in his hand– looks at him unwaveringly, unrelentingly, with eyes that are awed and abhorred by what they view– and mark knows that he has witnessed a scared little animal gaze into the face of an apex predator to see its own death staring back. the ‘o’ of her opened mouth is deep and black, a portal into the watching abyss that mark cannot tear his eyes from, and although her screams are swallowed up by all the other screams, he knows that hers exists. it is alive with terror.

mark pulls the plastic mask up over his face and allows it to tumble, too yellow and too smiling, onto the hot black tarmac. the safety clicks back into place within the gun and then the gun is fluttering away from his hands like a big evil bird, and the gun is a raven, maybe. the raven skitters to the ground with a clattering metal retort and lies still.

he is an orphan. he has made another into an orphan. for this, he shall not be forgiven.

( i’m so, so sorry )

mark’s mouth molds into the shape of ‘sorry’, sorry sorry sorry sorry, an endless litany of sorry, but his tongue is dry and his ash-choked throat refuses to unstick itself and in the end, sorry means nothing anyway. sorry doesn’t mend mutilated flesh or put the lifeblood back into a mother. the little girl watches the true countenance of her apex predator appear and then shatter apart, contorting into something true– something sad, something scared– and she does not understand. she does not understand why a bullet has not ripped through her yet to leave her as stone-still as her mother. she does not understand why the man in the pikachu mask unveiled his real visage only to drop his weapon and mumble– all numb in the face and dead in the eyes– these little quavering things that she could never hope to hear.

abruptly, her confusion mutates back into wide-eyed shock and the girl is feeling her fear again, the selfsame fear she had momentarily forgotten how to feel. she points at mark. the shape of a lone man solidifies out of the vibrating, pulsating mass of screaming, stampeding people to scoop the child up into his arms. her pigtails bounce. she still shrieks. she still points.

mark wonders if the man had been the girl’s father. he wonders. he is devastatingly sorry. his 'sorry’ still does not put the breath of life back into the slain woman in white.

the little girl had not been pointing at mark.

she had been pointing behind him.

mark doesn’t know what’s happening to him. the world whistles past his eyes, flashes through his ears– lanterns smoke fire lanterns fire guns bang bang blood fire sorry blood dress sorry sorry– and suddenly, he is– and suddenly, he is very much–

and suddenly, mark is very much dying.

the wooden construct above his head is a circus performer– a massive stilt-walker teetering forth on broken stilts, stilts that are sharp and snapped and flaming hotly– and mark sees it looming in his peripheral vision only as the stilts– the supports– flay apart and fail, and the great burning thing comes rushing down to embrace him in its crushing arms.

he’s knocked flat on his back. the wooden beams slam down atop him, whipping his powerless limbs this way and that, and one falling timber catches him directly in the forehead. it cracks his skull back into the road. he lies very still, scarcely breathing. the debris has compressed all of the air straight from his flattened lungs. he lies very still and origami stars chase each other’s tails around within the pools of his eyes, shooting comet-like through his discombobulated brain.

this is it.

this is how he will die.

if the beams do not impale him or crush him completely beneath their weight, then he will burn to death.

isn’t this what he wants?

death is easy. it’s living that’s the hard part. and he’s ready to fold.

( no )

mark gasps. filthy, smoke-laden air rushes into his lungs and he wheezes; he coughs; he blinks dirt and dust from his eyes, and his pinioned legs twitch underneath all of the wooden weight that binds them.

( no. stop lying to yourself. you say that you feel nothing, but you want to feel everything– and you’re scared of feeling everything– all at once, all at the same time. you’re a liar. you’re a pretender. you’ll never be the same as your masters because you care about things, about everything, and nothing will ever be enough to fully excise that truth out of you. you don’t want to die but you don’t know how to live. you’re afraid. you’re afraid and being afraid is what scares you the most. you’re afraid of death. you’re afraid to be alone. you’re afraid of your loneliness. you’re afraid of love. you’re afraid of falling in love. you’re afraid to die. you don’t want to die. you don’t want to die but you don’t know how to live. you want to live anyway )

the fear wakes mark up.

he’s had a scream confined within his chest since his days of childhood, and he has always swallowed it down, held it inside. allowed it to burn there, caged and captured.

for the first time in his life, mark looses it from the depths of his throat. he lets those two unspoken words sing free, and they become a sharp noise– a clear, piercing noise– the war cry of a frightened, wounded little beast– a little beast that does not want to die; it’s a sound that curdles the blood, thickens it to ice in the vein, and it cuts through the burning night sky like a knife and echoes, echoes, echoes.

“help me!”

the words thin until they are nothing but an organic shriek. it’s the sort of scream that wrecks the throat utterly, and mark was already suffocating– he cannot breathe except in gasps, and the agonized wheezing draws in more smoke and dust than oxygen, shredding the throat and seizing the lungs– but he forces the screams into the world anyway.

epinephrine makes everything bright and lucid, and maybe he deserves this for all the ills that he has done, but this is not what he wants.

improbable tears spill forth from his blurry, clouded eyes. it is so viciously hot beneath the burning wood and immolating skyline that he would’ve thought his tears had all dried, but he is wrong. the tears are thick, salty, and mix with the blood from the gash upon his forehead. it blinds him. he is blinded, and burning, and screaming his whole life out into the choking air.

( please help me i want to live )

mark can feel the hot little teeth of flames gnawing through the fabric of his jeans. it won’t be long now until his lower body, compressed and immobile, is completely aflame– and not much longer after that until his arms and abdomen suffer the awful lickings of the fire, as well. one arm is trapped against his chest; the other, beneath him. he hears popping from within the mass of smoldering wood and senses the internal shifting within the beams.

with another guttural cry, mark wrenches his arm out from underneath his body and catches a wayward plank of wood against his palm just before its jagged, nail-tipped edge embeds itself into the soft, pale column of his throat. his spine creaks. his lungs struggle for breath. mark turns his head away from the threatening wood and presses his cheek to the roughness of the asphalt.

time’s up. mark invests all of his remaining breath into the liberation of his other arm– the arm not currently acting as the sole safeguard between himself and a gory demise– and his screams die in perfect synchronization with the closure of his eyelids.

but he gets the arm free.

he is exhausted. he is smothered. his hand stretches out, searching and frightened. clean, well-manicured fingernails scrabble across the ground in a blind, shivering panic, clawing at the hard asphalt only to shred themselves apart in the process.

( help me stay with me please)

( i don’t want to die alone )

[vmxmark-blog]

i eat boys like you for breakfast.

( ft. gun )

two o’clock a.m.,

and mark is walking alone.

it has been an overcast day that bled into a rainy evening. gunmetal gray stormclouds blew in on the stiff, hot breeze– an entire fleet of cumulonimbus, and all so heavy and full with their lightning and their fury. they pierced themselves upon the spires of seoul’s tall, glass-faced skyscrapers until the steel-colored sky finally split open like a milky-blind eye to lash back at the city beneath with a downpouring of fierce, needling tears.

the eye in the sky has closed once more. seoul now sits still and silent and very, very slick. few fires will rage tonight. the dampness permeates too deeply into everything, and the hazy, lazy ennui, leaden in the bones and in the blood, runs too thickly, too. excess rainwater pools upon the streets and sidewalks like swatches of dark molten mirrors, catching and holding the illumination of the humming, murmuring neon signs within their surfaces.

mark pauses to gaze into one of these puddles. his face glows blurry and smooth, haloed in a soft pink hue. it’s almost pretty. blinking the shine from his eyes, mark steps on through the puddle and continues walking. slowly, slowly– going nowhere in particular. he’s walking just to walk– to move, and be reminded of his inescapable aliveness. his sneaker lands in the center of the puddle, disrupting the image of a boy painted in misty pinks, and leaves only ripples in its wake.

he’d had only one client scheduled for tonight, and the slimy bastard seems to have stood him up.

but mark is glad for it. he’s got a little hurting red mouth sewn closed upon his side and the last thing he wants right now is for another set of brusque, calloused hands to grab at him and rough him up further– to scuttle all over his battered, protesting body like fleshed, dexterous cockroaches. quite frankly, he would prefer actual roaches upon him tonight to a man’s strange hands. so, mark is relieved. he’s relieved, and walking just to walk, and perhaps he’s also very much ill.

mark needs time to repair himself. his last mission, while technically a success, has left him terribly unglued. it’s an awful thing, to realize that you are coming apart at the seams and that there’s not enough tape in your possession– maybe not enough tape in the whole fucking world– that could pull your mauled parts together and seal all the cracks in-between, making you into a complete and feeling creature again. there will never be enough tape to fix mark– but he possesses a needle and some thread and can sew a row of neat, tight stitches through a raw and smarting wound. mark will gather up all his broken bits, piece them back together– like a color-by-number picture, only his numbers are struck through with lines of blood and oh no where does this sharp little piece go, what about this one and this one, too– and, eventually, he will push through this. he always does. he has no choice. he needs time, though– and it’s rare for him, but he needs some fucking time.

he looks like hell– feels even worse– and who would’ve known that make-up could conceal all of hades and lucifer’s own goddamned wrath so well? he wears foundation like a portrait wears its paint. unseen to the outside eye is the plum, bruise-ish rings that encircle his eyes– for his sleep has been dragged in upon the coattails of painkillers, and is thin and restless when it does come. each slivered fingertip upon mark’s hands are cleaned and dressed, and beneath the loose fabric of his hoodie lies the central source of all his woes– a messy, sutured stab wound.

the cut delves deep into his side, sliced into his lower abdomen just above the line of his sharp hipbone. even on the drugs, mark still finds himself hurting through the numbness. feeling pain on painkillers is like seeing sunglow through closed eyelids, and although the ache is minimal mark still senses it everywhere, aching in his teeth and skull and sides and stomach. the waistband of his shorts rubs against the bandage– and thus, the wound lying beneath it– with each step. mark keeps walking. friction builds. he feels a tad bit nauseous, but there’s nothing in his stomach to expel. he presses a hand flat against his hip and keeps walking. faint prickes of a cold, cold sweat break out across his arms, back, and at the nape of his neck.

he toys with his tongue piercing, idly rolling it between his teeth. the stud has been a constant metallic taste in his mouth for a long while now. he’s used to it. he’s used to the cool hardness of a blade tucked up his sleeve, or stowed in his pocket, or strapped against his thigh– and the chill of needles, too, both syringes and the fatter, thicker needle weapons used to stab into sensitive nerve points or pry up fingernails. mark realizes just how many different metals are hidden within and against his body. he’s not sure what to do or feel about that rumination, so he twirls his piercing some more and tries his best to forget.

it’s very late. or very early. depends on how one views the world and the way clocks count time with their ticks and clicks. he’s in the belly of cottonmouth territory, but he feels no particular unease. this is, technically speaking, home turf. these people can’t hurt him any more than they already have.

mark doesn’t want to go home. there’s no point to it, really. sleep won’t come, and he can be alone out here just as well as he could be alone in his bed. perhaps he should force his legs to carry him home anyway. that would be the intelligent thing to do.

mark is always doing the intelligent thing. he’s always trying to survive. maybe he wants to take the stupid option tonight. maybe he wants to walk until his sutures irritate enough to weep blood. maybe he wants to smoke a cigarette and wander around until the break of dawn– until he’s so fucking exhausted that he has no choice but to rest.

the storefronts are all burned-out shells here. these handful of streets took a real beating during the immolation days two years prior. since they’re seated right in the literal maw of the cottonmouths, no business ever dared rebuild. graffiti now coats the few bits of glass that remain in smashed-out windows and most every other ash-blackened surface with obscenities and spray-painted colors.

mark stops beneath the faint, flickering light of a lamppost not yet broken. he digs his bandaged hands into the pocket of his hoodie to withdraw a lighter and a package of cigarettes.

he lights up. takes a drag.

there’s a motorcycle approaching, noisy as all hell.

it’s a dumbass move to come riding through here– at two in the motherfucking morning, nonetheless– all while being that cacophonous. the motorcycle rider is practically asking to get mugged. or shot. maybe he’s brave. or a newbie cottonmouth who’s making a fool of himself. or maybe he’s just a goddamn dumbass.

mark would’ve rolled his eyes if he actually gave a fuck.

oh. looks like it’s a delivery boy. mark leans against the lamppost and smokes. whoever ordered take-out at two o’clock in the morning and made this guy drive into cottonmouth territory to deliver it deserves to get their face kicked in.

‘take-out’ brings mark to the thought of food. because he took no clients tonight, he will not eat tomorrow. he hasn’t got the money and won’t get paid until the end of the week.

oh well. that’s just too fucking bad, isn’t it? just too fucking bad.

mark keeps his shoulder turned to the road and waits for the delivery boy to pass, smoking and thinking.

[vmxmark-blog]

help, i’m alive.

your task is simple, and rather easy to accomplish. your higher ups have tasked you with seducing a member of wolfsbane for any information regarding connections to the police. any name, company—anything of the sort that wolfsbane all over them is important information to have and return back to your members. once you have the info, eliminate your target—however! they are armed, and before you can deliver the killing blow, they injure you. whether it is something very small or very drastic is up to you, but please ensure you make it back in once piece. do your best, be careful, and best of luck!

“your daughter?” it isn’t really a question if you already know the answer, but mark asks anyway. he stops in front of the picture frame laid flat upon the coffee table.

it’s an unclean coffee table. liquid perspiration– likely from the beer cans, mark decides, for there are many of the empty shells scattered around the slick, hollow apartment like aluminum-skinned corpses– has burned black rings into the table’s pallid surface. magazines, stacked haphazardly in pancake formation, teeter precariously close to the table’s edge. moon-shaped breasts glow upon the magazine covers, repeated over and over and over. so many breasts. so much porn. he’s surprised that this man let mark seduce him into his home. mark’s chest is flat, and his body edges out into sharp, athletic lines where, upon a woman, there would be softness and pinchable curves. at the same time, he knows this man already. he’s met the type before– many a time, too many a time. men like this don’t want soft. they want a hard, firm body to drive like a fast car into a solid brick wall. they want a crash test dummy. they want something to break– to smash and smash and smash until suddenly, small death– and then pieces, only pieces left, and they’re all sharp and glass-edged.

mark refocuses on the prone picture frame, sad and fallen. it, too, is unclean. a fine film of dust blurs the pane of plastic that protects– should protect– the photograph beneath. the plastic is scratched repeatedly. a wide gash slashes through the plastic sheet right over the smiling teeth of the little girl, letting the dust fall and settle into her nice white grin. mark is surprised about that, too. from a wolfsbane man, he’d expected more. certainly not an unkempt, empty apartment– empty, all empty, if one does not count its echoes and half-crushed cans.

he refocuses on the picture yet again. the girl has an amber warmth about her eyes. she’s the man’s daughter, without a doubt– but those eyes, licorice-dark and more docile than a lamb’s, come from the mother. mark rubs the dusty sheen away with his thumb and sets the picture frame back onto its stand. “she’s beautiful.” mark says, snapping the dust from his fingertips. he glances over the curve of his shoulder to watch the man and any reaction his words might have wrought.

the wolfsbane man is in his mid-thirties. not too old and none too young. he wears his black hair slicked back severely with an expensive, spice-smelling brand of mousse. he must’ve removed his suit jacket sometime when mark had been turned to examine the photograph– the suit jacket still spangled with blue, green, and pink glitters from the depths of the shuddering, pulsating nightclub– and he’s sweated through his crisp, starch-white dress shirt. the man’s underarms are visibly damped, with a red hue faintly pushing through to the surface from underneath. the wolf either wears a red undershirt or sweats blood.

he’s a businessman. once upon a time, a cop– but he retired suddenly and put the uniform away wet. now, he’s a businessman. a chain-smoker, too– one who puffs more than a freight-train out on his balcony when the nights are cold and long and there’s no hot body in his bed to tear apart with hands and tongue. he’s an analyst– a counter of numbers, a surveyor of the scales. he looks at mark and dissects him with his eyes. mark knows his type well.

“yeah, she’s my kid.” the man peels mark to nothing but his skin and scars with his gaze. ‘shut up’, it says, 'i don’t care. can’t you see how much i don’t give a fuck? now hurry up. come over here and let me touch your prettiness and make it mine. i want to ruin something and you will do just fine.’

“she plays the piano– no, the violin?” mark persists. he wants to test his intuition, to see if his eyes are as right as he believes them to be.

“shit. yeah, i think she– how they hell did you…?” the man’s voice comes out muffled, an unlit cigarette dangling precariously from the corner of his mouth. he looks at the boy like he’s viewing something different for a few uneasy seconds– and then, a lighter snaps open to reveal a little yellow flame, and he lights up– breathes in the nicotine calmness– and prowls closer. impatient. he’s a wolf and he likes the flesh rare and raw. he wants it between his teeth, and he wants it now.

“you should’ve gone to her violin recitals. i bet that she’s very good.”

“listen, babe. this is real interesting and all, but i’m not paying you to stand around and look at pictures of my bratty kids.” he talks to mark slowly, in a measured tone, and as if he were constantly biting back a sneer. he thinks that mark is something stupid.

“you should’ve gone to her violin recitals,” mark repeats himself. he turns on the smile– he’s got a fish on a hook that he needs to keep, after all. his lips are soft and firm, and also very pink– pink like blood in water– “…and you haven’t paid me yet.” he purrs that last bit– and it’s a challenge, a seductive little taunt, all artificial sex and hollow flirt. reel in the fish. only the man isn’t a fish, he’s a wolf, and soon–

( the night fractures like milk-white bone, like a mirror’s silvered face )

there’s a man inside of him, a man who doesn’t belong there– an intruder, invader– get out leave me alone i don’t want you here stopstopstop. but this is what mark is, an envelope for others to rend apart– fingernails scraping beneath his glue, tearing him out from within– and then they stick a few lines of tape over his shredded parts, consider him resealed, and hand him on down, a letter to pass round and round– rend read reseal resend.

welcome to the show. the show is your life. you’re the main attraction– a crash test dummy and a contortionist, too; look at how he bends your legs above your head and yet you still do not break, you sad, stubborn thing. you have not belonged to yourself a day in your life. 

there’s a man inside of him, and that man is going to die. dead man walking, you live on borrowed time. you fuck your killer and dare to call him the stupid one–

and then mark lies there and does not move for a while, all by himself in his flesh. the night still sings past his ears, shrill and trilling. his head is still a fishbowl; and his thoughts, the fish. he wants to curl around his aching core and maybe bathe himself until he feels clean and sane– re-taped, repackaged, and ready for reshipment. but there’s still a job to be done, so mark rolls onto his side as if nothing hurts inside and whispers prettily, sweetly; he coos soft lies just as a morning dove sings sorrowful dirges and uses them– like sugared, sterilized pliers closing around novocaine-numbed teeth– to coax the information right out of the wolfsbane informant.

the compliant wolfsbane informant. the man is all loose-lipped after sex, satiated and smoking. he likes to peacock– to talk himself up and fan his gaudy feathers like the shameless, greasy braggart he is.

oh, you used to be a policeman? do tell me more. tell me a funny story–

tell me a scary one, too. wow, you were so brave– what was that about your friend? hm, i see. so interesting. yes, yes. why did you leave the force, again?

you have so many friends. i imagine that they would’ve wanted to keep in touch with you– ah, wolfsbane… is that a name i’ve heard before?

mark repeats all the mentioned names over and over in his mind until they’ve become a mantra, a prayer. he inks them onto the walls of his memory until he feels certain in their permanence.

he allows the man to grab him and kiss him, and the boy tastes tobacco, tar, and himself in that repugnant mouth. he exits the bed, bare feet padding soundlessly over an unpolished wooden floor, and makes himself walk straight on through the agony that brings pricking tears to the corners of his eyes. do not limp. show no weakness. there’s a small sun blooming lotus-like at the base of his spine; mark taps into its rays of heat and fury, letting the pain consume his whiplashed body until nothing remains but the hurt.

the man lazes against the headboard, drowsy and heavy-lidded. the small red smoldering at the end of his cigarette provides a dim, orangey illumination to the planes of his unpleasant face. “you know the way out,” he’d grumbled after receding his greedy, slimy, yolk-tasting tongue from mark’s mouth.

mark approaches the lone-standing chair where his shirt and shoes had been discarded. he turns away from his target. pulls his jeans back up onto his sharp hipbones. zips himself up– not much effort involved, his jeans having never been fully removed in the first place. he’s used to it. makes things quicker, in the end. he shakes out his shirt and pulls it over his head. he slips into his shoes– one foot, then the other. discreetly, he palms a length of tough black fabric from the sole of a sneaker into his fist. he squeezes his fingers around the garrote. it’s simply. unflashy. usually, mark prefers wire– wire, to slice the sensitive, tender throat in tandem with asphyxiation. he’d had to go in light for this particular hit, however. simple and unflashy will do just fine.

“cottonmouth–” is a word murmured in a moment of too-late epiphany. glazed-over eyes flicker open. mark swivels, rising like a cobra with hood flared and fangs bared.

the world breaks down into sensation and color. mark’s blood is a living creature within his veins– his blued, blued veins– those unhappy veins, so blue blue blue– and it is a livid thing, a feeling thing. the thumping staccato is all that the boy can see, hear, taste. free the blood and let it run. the world breaks down into sensation and color– sound and fury– signifying nothing, signifying nothing– and his hands move without instruction because they already know what to do, fluttering out to crush his target’s nose flat into the skull. the blood achieves its first taste of liberation, gushing forth in an arc of dark crimson onto soiled sheets. the man unleashes the cry of a panicked, pained animal and clutches foolishly at his mashed nose; mark takes him by the neck– by a fistful of his slick, gelled hair– and throws him forward onto knees and elbows, making him grovel in the mattress as he slides in behind.

it’s easy, taking the life of this man. too easy. he should feel something, but he doesn’t– the slender lines of his legs curling around his victim’s waist like a set of vice-tight claws, pinning them together, back to chest, no matter how wildly the other man thrashes. feeling nothing probably means that he’s broken, right? but it’s not the time to ruminate upon his inability to be a proper human being. he’s choking a man to death. the length of sturdy black cloth loops securely through his fingers and around each wrist; it coils around the man’s thick, straining neck at mark’s prompting. no matter how frantically the asphyxiating figure kicks his legs and tears at the garrote with scrabbling fingernails, mark still cinches the coil unbearably tighter and begins to force the head in his grasp sideways. he intends to snap the neck if his target does not start dying faster.

mark doesn’t see it coming. the man hadn’t seen his end looming either until he looked death right in its cruel, pretty eyes– ‘'cottonmouth’, he’d murmured in the few seconds before mark stunned him into submission– so perhaps this is karma. karma, served hot on the edge of jagged glass.

the man– an ex-policeman, and how could mark have underestimated that– stops yanking at the garrote. utilizing every ounce of fight that remained in his strong, suffocating body, the wolfsbane gangster forces an arm out to the side and throws it back, blindly groping at the barren nightstand– barren, save for an empty bottle of wine– and mark inhales a sharp, quiet gasp at the telltale crack of glass shattering against wood.

the broken end of the bottle buries deep and quick into mark’s lower left abdomen.

( the night fractures like a mirror’s silvered face and suddenly, suddenly )

mark screams. he screams and for a while, that’s all he is– a shriek of pain in the shape of the boy. he holds on because that’s all he can do and squeezes tighter around his target, pulling fiercely at the ends of the garrote until the businessman slackens in his grasp, twitching into the stillness of death. burning tears form into rivers, and these rivers cut paths down the curves of mark’s cheeks. he pushes the dead-weight corpse off of himself and the agony wrought by that action alone has him choking on another cry. his hands fly instinctively to the wound.

the jagged end of the bottle juts into his flesh like a crescent moon with many snarling teeth.

“fuck.” he grabs at the splintering length of dark-tinted glass, bloody lacerations blooming across his fingertips as they, too, shred, and then he pulls– “fuck!”

( the night splits apart like a mirror punched clean through with a fist, and now there are many bizarre little mirrors– many eyes reflected, over and over, and are they his? is he looking in at himself? who is he?– he is an image repeated, the repeated image of pain– a boy alight, from within and without– )

mark doesn’t remember how he made his way home. it doesn’t matter. he doesn’t remember how he made it up the stairwell and into his apartment, or even if he’d closed the door behind him. it doesn’t matter. he’s lost a profuse amount of blood already, his shirt soaked through as if he’d been caught in a heavy rain– only the rain doesn’t stick, red and ferrous and pouring from within the body– and fuck it all because there’s just nothing to be done about that. no hospital. hospitals are strictly out of the question. hospitals write things down; they’d see, and they’d question, and they’d know. all mark has got is a medkit and a year’s worth of medical training– and a woozy, tilt-a-whirling mind that must recall such training, all while his vision tunnels and every other sense becomes strangely intense. warm. bright.

he thinks that he’s bleeding out. mark drags his kit– and a bottle of vodka– and his body, beaten all to hell, into the little square bathroom he calls his own.he smokes a cigarette that he thinks is his last and shoots himself up with painkillers until he’s fucking high, higher than a kite, and drifting, too. disassociating. mark is a formless specter looking in on himself from above as his numbed, clumsy body picks through an open gash– a smiling red cheshire mouth that grins, mockingly, upon his hip– and plucks out shards of dark green glass from his raw, wet flesh until there’s red splashed everywhere and the stab wound is clean. his stitch-work is uneven but the sutures hold tight and mark crawls into his bathtub because it’s cold and shiny-bright and the kiss of the cool tile feels like a friend to his shuddering, nauseous body.

he does not die.

mark wakes midday to watery light spilling across his forehead and pain knifing its way through his legs, hands, abdomen. he wonders if death would’ve hurt less. he wonders why he saved himself.

he thinks of kafka. he thinks of the man he strangled and left dead. he thinks about how he'll have to leave his little tub eventually to call for the ‘cleanup crew’ and report in to his superiors. he thinks about how tired he feels. and how much everything hurts. he thinks of kafka again.

"a first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die."

help me, i’m still alive.

[vmxmark-blog]

A QUICK INTRO...!

hello, all you beautiful people– i’m jack, the mun behind mark’s pretty lil’ face. first things first, i’d like to thank everyone for such a warm welcome! (seriously, you’re all the sweetest– my inbox is so full i’m just?? ilu guys mwah) i’m currently busting my ass trying to get my initiation task completed (’cause i’m super pumped to start plotting & threading & all that wonderful stuff!!). it should, all fingers crossed, post sometime tomorrow. i think i’ll hold onto everyone’s welcome messages until then so i can reply when my attention is 100% on getting plots together. (and i wanna plot with everyone, ok. no lie. everyone. pretty plz with sugar on top.) <: speaking of plots, i'll start working on an open rls page sometime..... heh idk when i’ll have the time for that though. soon is all i can promise! anyway, i’m really psyched to be here and excited to get things rolling. i have an aim that i’m usually lurking around on; if anyone wants it, plz just ask. otherwise, i’m totally chill with inbox/submit plotting. 

xxoo – jack