The Room With A ViewBy Rune
I'm not sure why I came back here.
Yes I am.
It's the usual thing. Can't let go.
The Past and I have this... long-running affiliation. Frequent trysts of soul-searching and the occasional self-mutilation, a ritual ripping -off of scabs to re-open and re-taste old wounds.
It's a love-hate relationship, and like most of my relationships is no damn good for me. It's responsible for the melancholy lines on my brow and for the liquid anguish and regret glistening in my eyes. The brooding is mine; I cling to it like a man possessed which in effect I suppose I am. Possessed by grief and on a mission of Repentance.
The Past wields itself like a double-edge sword, it's two sides tempered with the blood and tears of many.
On the one side Love, because I learn from it, I grow, I become, *will* become. It affords me a beggar's modicum of comfort in the brief flitters of happiness that I have had.
On the other Hate, because the pain is unbearable, that hated knowledge of evils done, atrocities played out and humanity pillaged.
I caught the sword between my fists as the deathblow fell, and the Past washed over me in a sea of screams and faces and Romany grief.
But I can't let it go.
The Past is a cruel mistress. She holds me tight in her clutches, close to her breast like a suckling child and she coos, never letting me forget my obligation to her. Never letting me forget that I belong to her and her alone.
I am in Her hands.
There have been others, corporeal in form. They have not taken her place, nor would I let them.
How could they? There is no room for them, my providence lies with Her, my future bound to Her, and my fate belongs to Her. And She's a jealous lover, this bitch of mine. There is no sharing, and there is no room.
We walk together, tethered, through this unliving existence of mine searching for the inevitable conclusion. The irony of it all is that the conclusion brings an end to us. The tethers will be loosed and I shall stand or fall without Her, while She... She will have to let go again.
Sometimes?
I don't think She will.
I'm not even sure anymore if I want her to.
Which brings me neatly back to why I'm here.
For the Past. Let's just call it... appeasement.
Sixty-eight rooms.
Sixty-eight reasons to be here.
Sixty-eight pieces of the Past to chip away.
I've worked my way through all of the rooms bar this one, staying for a night or two, exorcising ghosts of supposed mis-deeds and a failure to be the knight in shinning armour in the Past when they *needed* me. I've saved this room to last, because it was first.
217.
I traced the mock brass lettering on the portal with my fingers, half expecting it to burn. Half expecting the roof to cave in.
But it doesn't. The only thing that burns is Her.
Inside is cool and dark. I removed the dust covers, made up the bed and settled in for the day. Not night. Night is the time for absolution, breaking loose just a little bit more from Her, desecrating what I was and sanctifying what I now am.
Setting me apart from Her.
In the day, while I rest, there is no escape. She is everywhere, pervading my being like some parasitic tic, leeching on happiness, on happy times, on loves had and lost to her. She invades my sleep like a succubus, draining me of substance and replacing the light with despair.
But you know the sad thing?
I crave it.
I yearn.
Hell, I lust.
I awaken time after time hard and horny and ready, sometimes sticky with the desire, sometimes needing to take that hardness in my fist and stroke it, fan the flames, bittersweet black memories of the Past seducing me and making me Hunger.
And it was here. Here in 217 that tonight I woke and I saw it.
The view.
It's not what I thought it was.
It wasn't the glow of the city, seen from high up, sparkling like a jewel in some giant princess's tiara.
It wasn't two lovers walking in the rain, sopping wet and steaming lightly, or some snow-topped peak reaching with stony fingers to the heavens.
It was an augury. It was a comprehension of who She was, for She is not who She seems, not what I thought.
Returning from sleeps tight grip I glimpsed a whisper of gold. Skin of the palest honey on whitest bread, marred only by lips so pink and lust swollen that they could be the silken petals of a rose coaxed open, pregnant with moisture from the dew and fluffed to fullness by heat of the sun. Oh gods, what divine scent wafted from it's cloistered heart. It was She, at last. Here and with me, tangible.
She is a Sphinx.
A demon with a human voice. In mythology she devoured travellers who could not answer her riddle.
She was devouring me.
She has been devouring me all these years.
'Who am I?' She titters 'For I am the riddle.'
I thought I knew who She was.
Well, I was mostly right.
I thought She was the Past. And She is.
But in this room, I found a view.
A view of Her.
She is Cerberus of the three heads. Past, Present, Future.
She is the double-edge sword, She is the Past, and the Past returned.
She is Mother, Lover, and Mistress.
She was the Beginning, the Middle and will be the End.
And much as I fight Her, curse Her, hate Her...
I love Her.
Darla.
The view afforded me an answer to the riddle.
The Sphinx poses the riddle and the traveller must answer. The price of success? The Sphinx must take her own life, die by her own hand.
But am I not her own?
Blood of her blood.
So in the end, it lies with me.
But then, matricide always was my forte.
~Fin~