04-18-2020, 03:36 PM
[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]tw blood/some violence
There are days, Ahab knows, where clearly he has woken up on the wrong side of the bed.
He'd spent weeks keeping these things locked up, quite literally; that mother and her newborn babies could not be near a creature such as himself, not when he was prone to lashing out and frightening anything that came too close. And then it had occurred to him that the leader was expecting cubs of her own, and it all became far too much to bear. He'd closed himself off, lingering in the depths of the jungle when he wasn't locked up in what little square footage his home had to offer. It was safer this way, to avoid the things that caused him fear. (If fear, that was, stood as the emotion that overcame him when he saw red and drew his claws like a wild thing. Anger didn't quite seem to cut it.)
He figures, in these wanderings, that it would not hurt to stop by the beach. It wasn't uncommon to see the bear resting on the dunes when he wasn't hidden in the jungle, expression stony and distant as he rolled a paper in his paws and smoked the herbal mixture within. Wormwood, cloves, only a pinch of tobacco for flavor. It was soothing, maybe, to feel the smoke fill his lungs. It kept him in one place just as much as it allowed him to wander elsewhere within his mind. A tether as much as it was the drifting boat, sailing out to sea.
For the most part, hallucinations tended to be a welcome thing.
And he drifts, out of body, out of mind. His thoughts walk elsewhere, out onto the water. He visits old bloodied halls and drags his long claws through the deep red puddles. He sinks to the knee in it. The shoulders. He drowns in the warm embrace of blood and only surfaces when another paw takes him by the wrist and drags him up, up for air. He was dead, maybe, but now he is born again with claws in his fur and a face all too like his own staring down upon his body, where it was laid out on the floor.
Through the windows, a searchlight dances, or perhaps it is the sun, a comet, hurtling towards the earth. He knows this: if they were running from a comet it would strike the Earth and kill them no matter where they ran. The ground would turn to ash before its body struck the dirt. Wherever they went, it would find them. Helicopter blades overhead remind him of summer storms, the winds harsh and wet. Warm rain, like blood on his skin. He blinks, floats away just a little.
"Does it hurt? We need to fix this now."
His shoulder is dislocated, he realizes with uncertainty. When had it come unhinged? The hallway is on fire and he cannot remember who set the place ablaze. It could have been him. The air smells of ethanol and smoke and the other animal grabs him by the shoulder, slams it against the wall until it lets out an unsettling click. Ahab does not remember screaming. He does, however, remember the hurt.
He swims in the pain, feels distant crashes and the rumble of a building coming down on itself through his paws. The other bear moves with precision. He wanders off towards a blazing sunset and waits for nightfall with a tranquilizer in his neck. They're in the woods and the other bear is dead, maybe, facedown in the dirt with a smear of red across his face that doesn't look promising. He's gone when Ahab blinks, and even ankle-deep in mud, if he wriggles his toes there's a grainy memory of sand deep underfoot. If he presses his ears flat against his head, he hears ocean waves roaring like tinnitus in the muscles of his eardrums. The forest is on fire and he will let it burn just to return to that beach, to the roar of the tide under the crackle of a hospital on fire.
His name had been Ishmael and he was a guardian, if the devil could keep watch over his demons.
Ahab wakes up, scorched by the sun and heaving for air that would never quite fill his lungs. Dry sand under his tongue makes him sputter, choke.
That guardian angel, that devil on his knees, was still alive.
The fear he felt could never compare to the shudder upon waking from a bad dream. That fear - the paralysis, the fading presence of a nightmare - was a temporary thing, a falsehood of another dream. A sour sleep could be shaken off. This terror, though, this world within a world, was a reality all his own.
There are days, Ahab knows, where clearly he has woken up on the wrong side of the bed.
He'd spent weeks keeping these things locked up, quite literally; that mother and her newborn babies could not be near a creature such as himself, not when he was prone to lashing out and frightening anything that came too close. And then it had occurred to him that the leader was expecting cubs of her own, and it all became far too much to bear. He'd closed himself off, lingering in the depths of the jungle when he wasn't locked up in what little square footage his home had to offer. It was safer this way, to avoid the things that caused him fear. (If fear, that was, stood as the emotion that overcame him when he saw red and drew his claws like a wild thing. Anger didn't quite seem to cut it.)
He figures, in these wanderings, that it would not hurt to stop by the beach. It wasn't uncommon to see the bear resting on the dunes when he wasn't hidden in the jungle, expression stony and distant as he rolled a paper in his paws and smoked the herbal mixture within. Wormwood, cloves, only a pinch of tobacco for flavor. It was soothing, maybe, to feel the smoke fill his lungs. It kept him in one place just as much as it allowed him to wander elsewhere within his mind. A tether as much as it was the drifting boat, sailing out to sea.
For the most part, hallucinations tended to be a welcome thing.
And he drifts, out of body, out of mind. His thoughts walk elsewhere, out onto the water. He visits old bloodied halls and drags his long claws through the deep red puddles. He sinks to the knee in it. The shoulders. He drowns in the warm embrace of blood and only surfaces when another paw takes him by the wrist and drags him up, up for air. He was dead, maybe, but now he is born again with claws in his fur and a face all too like his own staring down upon his body, where it was laid out on the floor.
Through the windows, a searchlight dances, or perhaps it is the sun, a comet, hurtling towards the earth. He knows this: if they were running from a comet it would strike the Earth and kill them no matter where they ran. The ground would turn to ash before its body struck the dirt. Wherever they went, it would find them. Helicopter blades overhead remind him of summer storms, the winds harsh and wet. Warm rain, like blood on his skin. He blinks, floats away just a little.
"Does it hurt? We need to fix this now."
His shoulder is dislocated, he realizes with uncertainty. When had it come unhinged? The hallway is on fire and he cannot remember who set the place ablaze. It could have been him. The air smells of ethanol and smoke and the other animal grabs him by the shoulder, slams it against the wall until it lets out an unsettling click. Ahab does not remember screaming. He does, however, remember the hurt.
He swims in the pain, feels distant crashes and the rumble of a building coming down on itself through his paws. The other bear moves with precision. He wanders off towards a blazing sunset and waits for nightfall with a tranquilizer in his neck. They're in the woods and the other bear is dead, maybe, facedown in the dirt with a smear of red across his face that doesn't look promising. He's gone when Ahab blinks, and even ankle-deep in mud, if he wriggles his toes there's a grainy memory of sand deep underfoot. If he presses his ears flat against his head, he hears ocean waves roaring like tinnitus in the muscles of his eardrums. The forest is on fire and he will let it burn just to return to that beach, to the roar of the tide under the crackle of a hospital on fire.
His name had been Ishmael and he was a guardian, if the devil could keep watch over his demons.
Ahab wakes up, scorched by the sun and heaving for air that would never quite fill his lungs. Dry sand under his tongue makes him sputter, choke.
That guardian angel, that devil on his knees, was still alive.
The fear he felt could never compare to the shudder upon waking from a bad dream. That fear - the paralysis, the fading presence of a nightmare - was a temporary thing, a falsehood of another dream. A sour sleep could be shaken off. This terror, though, this world within a world, was a reality all his own.
[align=center][div style="text-align:right;width:59%;font-family:verdana;"][font=verdana][size=11pt][color=transparent][url=https://beastsofbeyond.com/index.php?topic=13462.0][color=black][b][i]LET HIM WHO THINKS HE KNOWS NO FEAR
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE