07-22-2018, 08:36 AM
snake.
if betrayal had at any point been off-limits, reserved for people with even less morals than he had - which was about how much it took to fill a teacup, ceramic painted by his very own hand - it stopped being off-limits the moment he woke up alone for the first time in half a century, both legs deliberately broken in order to stop his escape and other limbs wound immobile in the same bandages his mentor had first given him to protect him from the sun. and in one fell swoop the dear entity he'd called brother stomped the metaphorical teacup into many fragments under one thigh-length boot.
unfurling his list of crimes, santa claus would be so unbelievably disappointed he'd be lugging a mountain of coal to rialto's humble ferris wheel carriage by the bulldozer. rialto stole. he lied, bluffed, provoked, swindled, misled, exploited. not anymore, or at least not nearly as often - san creado was in itself not the highway of backstabbing activity cat and alex would have you think, and days toppled by where nothing need happen at all, but rialto lolling like a cat in sunlight over the wooden boardwalk at midnight had (not even long ago, it seemed) once not lived in san creado.
once he'd fought nobly for his own share of the dregs, small fangs poking out from the lips of a veritably mummified child, grabbing for rats and snarling at the larger vampires, all at the very bottom of the pack they'd crawled to for protection; he'd gotten punches, kicks, at some point a blob of spit splattering over the back of his hand, when his mentor was too weak from his own share of the torment to get up, and facing this every day in the shelterless slums they'd been so painfully alive. they knew they were alive, because they were hungry, and they hurt. but they were above the kind of scum that roughed up fledgelings for their own sense of superiority. battered, sharing one measly plastic cup of blood between the two of them, they'd been brighter and fiercer than lion cubs.
even then he hadn't been on the nice list. every day that they were alive, every day there was another way the blurs of huge blistered hands and grotesque faces before his eyes became bloodied, crushed, warped with fear, repentance. he saw the backs of their feet sliced when they walked off with the biggest servings, he saw their sunburnt carcasses smoking as in his mind he got a sharpened block of wood and jammed it right between the ribs - rialto hadn't stolen because the moment he stood there was an elbow lodging itself into his neck, forcing him back down. because he was weak. he was powerless. if he would have stolen - an vampiric infant with his eyes still red, fangs barely passing the lip, tiny face screwed up with the fearsome, empty look of absolute hate - or killed, was there any excuse? would there be acceptance, given his conditions, the hopelessness? would he have killed, given no instrument but his bare hands and teeth?
it was counterfactual thinking, but he would have. five years old, ten years old, sixteen years old, he would have. born vampires developed slowly. their physical age, at least for the first fifty years, was approximately half of their actual age. had any adult and fully-functioning vampire stood still long enough for a two year old child to toddle up to their side, scale up their clothes, and bite while aiming for the eye, rialto wouldn't have ever waited. frightful imagination.
his brother was a charmer. it took years for him to plant the seeds before anything began to shift, but he knew from the start not to beg for food; he took a bite and grinned in the face of chastisement, and had imparted how to control your face, to read what people wanted in the manner in which they clenched their hands, the direction of their gaze. cheat didn't have a physical form until it met rialto's brother, their hair grown long, eyes green with unassuming amusement, lean figure sprawled over a table - he nourished people with the wickedest lies and no one thought them true but they couldn't stop their hands, passing over whatever he wanted, touching his hair because they'd never seen the likes of anything resembling him at the bottom of the food chain. somewhere he could be touched. he was a charmer, and anyone thinking rialto's brother would stay there didn't deserve blood.
still until this point, they hadn't thieved; his brother had only taken, and he was allowed. it was suggestion at most. persuasion. the only reason they hadn't called it manipulation was because rialto's brother had grinned, all fangs, at the idea that the people he played with had any substantial thoughts to begin with.
once they had power, rialto did steal. the two of them stole others' eyes, their attention, once his brother unhooked all the bandages he'd wrapped around rialto's face and arms - they could've stolen anything and there, in that place, at that time, in that depraved world of perpetual sunlight and even the big fish cooking under the sun, lifeless people and a haze of death, the two of them grew from cubs to lions. their strength and influence, gradual but definite, propagated, like the white queen their breakfast became six white lies. their living was a bluff. rialto's brother was more for temptation - he fed rialto his lines, engineered his resting expression, started cobbling together the wider workings of a genius mind once they could get their hands on the resources; technology, far beyond their time, machinery, weaponry.
rialto calls his brother, if not an asshole, his mentor. (not to anyone. no one would ask. they wouldn't know.) the sole being who'd ever come close enough to format his whole existence.
thirst doesn't last. ascension is finite. at some point, you hit the top of the container and spill over the sides; in that nasty godforsaken town where vampires roamed and swapped blood for leisure, you couldn't get far. some people grew complacent. most people wanted more.
rialto had blood on his tongue almost every day for a hundred years, he wasn't unfamiliar to the feel of it crusting over his knuckles, streaking over his face, spilling it whether it be with throwing knives or up close, shoving one right between someone's ribs. the day he'd woken up, pain like a flare through his body when he'd tried to roll over and failed, rialto forgot the meaning of backstabbing that wasn't the literal kind. should his mentor appear before him in the flesh, now, decades later, back turned, would rialto hesitate to knife him without warning? no.
maybe.
hesitation is weakness. he knows it. feet stepping on your hands, a foot hooking yours, dirt in your mouth. he's been trained into the want for instant gratification; getting results by grabbing them himself. he was meant to be cunning. powerful enough to accomplish whatever he wanted. ruthless enough to want to do it without pause. fib. smile. entice. it's what he had to do to go anywhere, is what he'd learned. he had to.
alone, broken away from the town, blood smeared over his mouth, someone found him standing blankly in the alley. rialto had opened his mouth, tried to come up with something, failed, and ended up somewhere years down the line in san creado.
it didn't make him good; he wasn't good. he'd stolen. he'd lied, bluffed, provoked, swindled, misled, exploited. now, though, he lies in stasis; lazy, supine, indifferent, ready with a lovely shit-eating smile whenever something blew up in someone's face and a towel to pat down that blown-up something. he keeps his head down, paints his accessories, sometimes stays motionless for long enough that days pass before he gets up again. there is no need for lies here. no need to measure others and their thoughts, to evaluate and snap into action. here, he chooses to do absolutely nothing, and he can.
everything it overshadows is a need for control and autonomy so pervasive that having anything less than one foot of flesh unconstricted by fabric makes spit bubble in his mouth. or maybe that's exhibitionism.
unfurling his list of crimes, santa claus would be so unbelievably disappointed he'd be lugging a mountain of coal to rialto's humble ferris wheel carriage by the bulldozer. rialto stole. he lied, bluffed, provoked, swindled, misled, exploited. not anymore, or at least not nearly as often - san creado was in itself not the highway of backstabbing activity cat and alex would have you think, and days toppled by where nothing need happen at all, but rialto lolling like a cat in sunlight over the wooden boardwalk at midnight had (not even long ago, it seemed) once not lived in san creado.
once he'd fought nobly for his own share of the dregs, small fangs poking out from the lips of a veritably mummified child, grabbing for rats and snarling at the larger vampires, all at the very bottom of the pack they'd crawled to for protection; he'd gotten punches, kicks, at some point a blob of spit splattering over the back of his hand, when his mentor was too weak from his own share of the torment to get up, and facing this every day in the shelterless slums they'd been so painfully alive. they knew they were alive, because they were hungry, and they hurt. but they were above the kind of scum that roughed up fledgelings for their own sense of superiority. battered, sharing one measly plastic cup of blood between the two of them, they'd been brighter and fiercer than lion cubs.
even then he hadn't been on the nice list. every day that they were alive, every day there was another way the blurs of huge blistered hands and grotesque faces before his eyes became bloodied, crushed, warped with fear, repentance. he saw the backs of their feet sliced when they walked off with the biggest servings, he saw their sunburnt carcasses smoking as in his mind he got a sharpened block of wood and jammed it right between the ribs - rialto hadn't stolen because the moment he stood there was an elbow lodging itself into his neck, forcing him back down. because he was weak. he was powerless. if he would have stolen - an vampiric infant with his eyes still red, fangs barely passing the lip, tiny face screwed up with the fearsome, empty look of absolute hate - or killed, was there any excuse? would there be acceptance, given his conditions, the hopelessness? would he have killed, given no instrument but his bare hands and teeth?
it was counterfactual thinking, but he would have. five years old, ten years old, sixteen years old, he would have. born vampires developed slowly. their physical age, at least for the first fifty years, was approximately half of their actual age. had any adult and fully-functioning vampire stood still long enough for a two year old child to toddle up to their side, scale up their clothes, and bite while aiming for the eye, rialto wouldn't have ever waited. frightful imagination.
his brother was a charmer. it took years for him to plant the seeds before anything began to shift, but he knew from the start not to beg for food; he took a bite and grinned in the face of chastisement, and had imparted how to control your face, to read what people wanted in the manner in which they clenched their hands, the direction of their gaze. cheat didn't have a physical form until it met rialto's brother, their hair grown long, eyes green with unassuming amusement, lean figure sprawled over a table - he nourished people with the wickedest lies and no one thought them true but they couldn't stop their hands, passing over whatever he wanted, touching his hair because they'd never seen the likes of anything resembling him at the bottom of the food chain. somewhere he could be touched. he was a charmer, and anyone thinking rialto's brother would stay there didn't deserve blood.
still until this point, they hadn't thieved; his brother had only taken, and he was allowed. it was suggestion at most. persuasion. the only reason they hadn't called it manipulation was because rialto's brother had grinned, all fangs, at the idea that the people he played with had any substantial thoughts to begin with.
once they had power, rialto did steal. the two of them stole others' eyes, their attention, once his brother unhooked all the bandages he'd wrapped around rialto's face and arms - they could've stolen anything and there, in that place, at that time, in that depraved world of perpetual sunlight and even the big fish cooking under the sun, lifeless people and a haze of death, the two of them grew from cubs to lions. their strength and influence, gradual but definite, propagated, like the white queen their breakfast became six white lies. their living was a bluff. rialto's brother was more for temptation - he fed rialto his lines, engineered his resting expression, started cobbling together the wider workings of a genius mind once they could get their hands on the resources; technology, far beyond their time, machinery, weaponry.
rialto calls his brother, if not an asshole, his mentor. (not to anyone. no one would ask. they wouldn't know.) the sole being who'd ever come close enough to format his whole existence.
thirst doesn't last. ascension is finite. at some point, you hit the top of the container and spill over the sides; in that nasty godforsaken town where vampires roamed and swapped blood for leisure, you couldn't get far. some people grew complacent. most people wanted more.
rialto had blood on his tongue almost every day for a hundred years, he wasn't unfamiliar to the feel of it crusting over his knuckles, streaking over his face, spilling it whether it be with throwing knives or up close, shoving one right between someone's ribs. the day he'd woken up, pain like a flare through his body when he'd tried to roll over and failed, rialto forgot the meaning of backstabbing that wasn't the literal kind. should his mentor appear before him in the flesh, now, decades later, back turned, would rialto hesitate to knife him without warning? no.
maybe.
hesitation is weakness. he knows it. feet stepping on your hands, a foot hooking yours, dirt in your mouth. he's been trained into the want for instant gratification; getting results by grabbing them himself. he was meant to be cunning. powerful enough to accomplish whatever he wanted. ruthless enough to want to do it without pause. fib. smile. entice. it's what he had to do to go anywhere, is what he'd learned. he had to.
alone, broken away from the town, blood smeared over his mouth, someone found him standing blankly in the alley. rialto had opened his mouth, tried to come up with something, failed, and ended up somewhere years down the line in san creado.
it didn't make him good; he wasn't good. he'd stolen. he'd lied, bluffed, provoked, swindled, misled, exploited. now, though, he lies in stasis; lazy, supine, indifferent, ready with a lovely shit-eating smile whenever something blew up in someone's face and a towel to pat down that blown-up something. he keeps his head down, paints his accessories, sometimes stays motionless for long enough that days pass before he gets up again. there is no need for lies here. no need to measure others and their thoughts, to evaluate and snap into action. here, he chooses to do absolutely nothing, and he can.
everything it overshadows is a need for control and autonomy so pervasive that having anything less than one foot of flesh unconstricted by fabric makes spit bubble in his mouth. or maybe that's exhibitionism.