Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on May 13, 2005 12:21:39 GMT -8
Friday Night, May 13th 2005
Somewhere in Seattle
I was walking to think. Something about motion helped me clear my head I had discovered. I did my best to ignore the fact that I was most likely being tailed by Brujah, or Tremere bird-things, or God-knows-what else. I had been dodging agents of those interested in this case all week, trying to gather myself. I was tired of the secret phone calls, the back-alley politics, and the prestation games. Now, one night before the trial that would decide my fate, I was trying to clear my mind.
It wasn't working worth a damn. All I had been able to do is push aside a jumble of thoughts for a few minutes, but rushing back in were matters of the mind, and more insidious than that, matters of the heart.
Nature abhors a vacuum, I decided.
An experiment: Put a man, with a hole in his mind into a city full of people, and monsters, and memories. Watch it fill up. Watch plots unfold, alliances form, dreams walk next to him and call his name.
I had been standing in Elysium when it had happened. The man in my visions had walked by, almost as if he were on the way to something, his hands in his pockets, black jacket lapels pushed to the side by them. He had stepped out of the little rusted mirror in the cabin maybe, or had slipped out of my mind while I had been distracted perhaps. He wasn't real. He couldn't have been.
We talked, Harvey and I, in the middle of the Elysium. I put my arm around my invisible friend and walked him to the side. I felt the tone of the cloth on his back, and the muscles underneath them, though fueled by blood or breath I did not know. Outwardly as calm as I could manage, I was a mess of emotion and unanswered questions.
He answered none of mine, then he asked me who I was and I answered:
"I.. I am Scion... elder of Clan Gangrel... I have... who the hell are you?"
"You're Scion? He said, seeming unsure. "Well that's great." He said, almost frustrated. He paced around me, his voice trailing around my head. That face!
"Then who the hell am I?"
I turned to answer him with another question, tired of his games. And then he was gone.
I shook my head to free it of the vision.
"What the hell were you doing here Harvey?" I threw up my arms and yelled, scaring crows from their perches and opening my coat to the wind. The shadowed city offered no answer. A rag-wrapped woman pushing a shopping cart full of plastic bags shied away from the sudden outburst, making me feel more self conscious than I already did. There was always someone around to catch me at my worst.
"Great." I said under my breath. "I really am going crazy. Now I'm talking to myself."
Truth was, I needed someone to talk to, someone that would listen to me and not judge me, or try to quantify my loyalty or discern my alliances or give me advice on how to navigate a shady Kindred martial court put on for the amusement of bored elders and courtly sycophants.
I thought about Charissma and a wash of shame fell over me. I cursed at myself under my breath. I had started to trust her, to believe her. But all it had taken was one word from the city's corrupt Sheriff and she had gladly used powers of the blood to summon me to her side to stand before false accusations in front of the entire court. The betrayal stung even though I knew better. I couldn't blame her for the betrayal, she was what she was. She was a bloodthirsty monster in a pretty shell, just like me.
But my mind wouldn't leave her alone.
I laughed into the night, a spurious, lost sound rattling out of me, completing the picture of a madman. It was not a sound I made often, or could remember making before, but it seemed familliar, perhaps the outward reflection of the sound my mind made when my heart stopped.
An experiment: Put a man, with a hole in his heart into a city full of people, and monsters, and memories. Watch it fill up. Watch plots unfold, alliances form, dreams walk next to him and call his name...
...Then watch him tell them all to go to hell.
Somewhere in Seattle
I was walking to think. Something about motion helped me clear my head I had discovered. I did my best to ignore the fact that I was most likely being tailed by Brujah, or Tremere bird-things, or God-knows-what else. I had been dodging agents of those interested in this case all week, trying to gather myself. I was tired of the secret phone calls, the back-alley politics, and the prestation games. Now, one night before the trial that would decide my fate, I was trying to clear my mind.
It wasn't working worth a damn. All I had been able to do is push aside a jumble of thoughts for a few minutes, but rushing back in were matters of the mind, and more insidious than that, matters of the heart.
Nature abhors a vacuum, I decided.
An experiment: Put a man, with a hole in his mind into a city full of people, and monsters, and memories. Watch it fill up. Watch plots unfold, alliances form, dreams walk next to him and call his name.
I had been standing in Elysium when it had happened. The man in my visions had walked by, almost as if he were on the way to something, his hands in his pockets, black jacket lapels pushed to the side by them. He had stepped out of the little rusted mirror in the cabin maybe, or had slipped out of my mind while I had been distracted perhaps. He wasn't real. He couldn't have been.
We talked, Harvey and I, in the middle of the Elysium. I put my arm around my invisible friend and walked him to the side. I felt the tone of the cloth on his back, and the muscles underneath them, though fueled by blood or breath I did not know. Outwardly as calm as I could manage, I was a mess of emotion and unanswered questions.
He answered none of mine, then he asked me who I was and I answered:
"I.. I am Scion... elder of Clan Gangrel... I have... who the hell are you?"
"You're Scion? He said, seeming unsure. "Well that's great." He said, almost frustrated. He paced around me, his voice trailing around my head. That face!
"Then who the hell am I?"
I turned to answer him with another question, tired of his games. And then he was gone.
I shook my head to free it of the vision.
"What the hell were you doing here Harvey?" I threw up my arms and yelled, scaring crows from their perches and opening my coat to the wind. The shadowed city offered no answer. A rag-wrapped woman pushing a shopping cart full of plastic bags shied away from the sudden outburst, making me feel more self conscious than I already did. There was always someone around to catch me at my worst.
"Great." I said under my breath. "I really am going crazy. Now I'm talking to myself."
Truth was, I needed someone to talk to, someone that would listen to me and not judge me, or try to quantify my loyalty or discern my alliances or give me advice on how to navigate a shady Kindred martial court put on for the amusement of bored elders and courtly sycophants.
I thought about Charissma and a wash of shame fell over me. I cursed at myself under my breath. I had started to trust her, to believe her. But all it had taken was one word from the city's corrupt Sheriff and she had gladly used powers of the blood to summon me to her side to stand before false accusations in front of the entire court. The betrayal stung even though I knew better. I couldn't blame her for the betrayal, she was what she was. She was a bloodthirsty monster in a pretty shell, just like me.
But my mind wouldn't leave her alone.
I laughed into the night, a spurious, lost sound rattling out of me, completing the picture of a madman. It was not a sound I made often, or could remember making before, but it seemed familliar, perhaps the outward reflection of the sound my mind made when my heart stopped.
An experiment: Put a man, with a hole in his heart into a city full of people, and monsters, and memories. Watch it fill up. Watch plots unfold, alliances form, dreams walk next to him and call his name...
...Then watch him tell them all to go to hell.
