Failure
The vampiress’ jaw was set. There was silence on the line while she considered her options. “As soon as I feel up to it, I’ll sever him.”
“You two really are ill-suited,” the raven-haired vampiress said matter-of-factly.
“Not at first,” she lamented reminiscently. In her heart of hearts, she knew that time was long past.
“Let him go,” continued the vampiress on the other end.
Let him go. The words resonated in her mind. Let him go. And so she would. “It’s gone on long enough,” affirmed the vampiress. There was a finality to her statement.
“If he does love you, he’ll come back–and maybe with more respect,” the ancient added, perhaps in an attempt to hearten her.
But she could see through the thin veil of reassurance. She shook her head, though the other vampiress couldn’t see her. “He doesn’t love me, and I know it.”
“Then let him go,” the more seasoned vampiress repeated, “and find someone else who will.”
Nothing but static passed between them as the Galway girl Teleported to the Hall of Severance.
“I don’t think he really wants you to,” reasoned the vampiress with the exotic eyes.
“He’s said time and time again he wants me to sever him,” said the vampiress standing just outside the grand albeit ominous building.
“He wants your attention–”
“He always has it!” she interjected, her anger flaring.
“He’s not doing it the right way,” the other vampiress offered. This much was obvious.
“He’s my pride and joy,” started the siress. “And my pain.” Suddenly, she felt his presence as he Succoured to her for what would be the final time. He sauntered into the Hall of Severance with a smirk playing up his lips. “My immense pain,” she said again.
And then the pain was no more.
Your link with Rex Le Rouge has been severed.
Dazed, she was aware of nothing but the cold environs enveloping her as she passed through the doors into the night, leaving her once-childer dancing joyously behind her. She wandered thoughtlessly down the streets of RavenBlack City, allowing her legs to lead her blindly forward.
Yet she had a destination etched in her subconscious; and somehow, before long, she reached the iron gate at the corner of Emerald and 85th.
She pushed the gate slightly and it swung open as if she had used all her might. One of the gate’s hinges, rusted from the elements, disintegrated with the sudden force; and she, too, felt a part of herself become unhinged.
“Dream, and it shall be,” an unknown voice beckoned.
As she entered the garden, the vampiress heard the words, whispers on the wind, and whipped around. She was alone.
“Dream, and it shall be,” the unknown voice said again.
Veering off the path, she sank to her knees, the reality of the situation hitting her like a vial of Holy Water. Bloody tears stained the perfect yellow dandelions growing in Annabelle’s Paradise.
She had failed.
Eyes as green as the leaves watched her descent.
“It’s what he wanted, after all,” said the vampiress with the striking hazel eyes from which streaks of blood trailed over her high cheekbones and down her rose-tinted cheeks before dripping onto the carpet of yellow petals. “I thought it was spite. But he hates me,” she told the dandelions. “He never loved me.”
She recognized the vampiress knelt amongst the dandelions. Tapping into the vampiress’ thoughts, she waded through infinite images until she caught the sight of an image in the far reaches of the elder’s mind: a repressed image of a vampire dancing, his lips stretched into a smile as his steps reverberated through the hall. She extricated herself from the vampiress’ thoughts; she had seen enough.
And the copper-haired vampiress watched the Galway girl rock back and forth in the field of bloodied dandelions, teetering on the edge of sanity.
Gallagher
The Galway Girl
with
MavericksChild af Gyllenstierna
and
Frozen Nova
Brutal
“You’re beautiful, intelligent, kind, and brutal when you have to be,” the vampiress had told her.
And so she would have to be brutal this night.
Tea for Two I
Everything happened for a reason. Whether or not the oft-repeated adage was true, it was one to which she adhered.
Something had compelled her to look up when he walked into the room, and that same something had compelled her to engage him in conversation.
Never had they been close, though always on good terms as far as she could remember. In that moment, however, she had made a conscious effort to get to know him for the first time in their history.
He was skeptical of her motivations.
Why now?
Why not?
The upshot? A date later that week at The Angel’s Wing Tavern.
He departed, and she couldn’t shake the strange sensation of excitement. She was finally making good on her goal to put herself out there, showing her face around RavenBlack City again.
She hadn’t stayed long after him.
Downing Sprint Potions to expedite her exit from the unseemly side of town, she wandered the streets until just before dawn, accompanied by the music playing in her mind. She made several stops before returning home for the day, delivering two Perfect Dandelions to a revered former Ferryman leader she had finally met earlier that night, a forgotten SIE warrior and teacher she had encountered serendipitously the night previous, and the Rogue who had just set her plan in motion.
After all, her siress was the Mistress of the Dandelions.
Another melody interrupted her mind’s rendition of “‘Round Midnight.”
Her cell phone was ringing.
“Finally made it to Angel’s Wing,” he said confidently. “But you aren’t there!”
She thought she heard disappointment in his voice. “I am headed there,” she offered, silently cursing herself for taking the long way. “I might burn a SoTel to meet you then.”
His answer was self-effacing. “Oh, don’t do that. Conversations with me aren’t worth that much.”
“Oh stop that!” she chastised him. She was saddened by his offhand comments devaluing himself. “I just didn’t think you’d be there for a few days,” she explained with a sigh.
“No big deal,” he reassured her.
She bit her lip, not knowing what else to say, and not wanting to ruin his positive impression of her. “Still, I am sorry.”
“Heh.”
She knew she wouldn’t be able to get there unless…
“So you aren’t going to be there for…?” He trailed off.
She didn’t waste another moment. Luckily she had stocked up on Sprint Potions.
Oppression and 45th was her destination. The Angel’s Wing Tavern was only a few blocks from her usual haunt, The Broken Lover, on the southeast corner of Qualms and 43rd.
Arriving at the entrance, she glanced at the brass plaque before passing through the doors. She grasped the brass railing as she treaded down the stairs, her heels clicking conspicuously against the hardwood surface. She surveyed the room. He had already taken the liberty of claiming a place at the bar. She waved as she approached, her expression alight as a smile formed upon her lips. Sliding onto the red leather barstool next to him, she reached into her purse, producing two Dandelions. She looked down as she presented the flowers to him, embarrassed that the tips of its petals were stained with the faintest tint of brown.
Wordlessly, he gave her a Fading Black Orchid, its stamen, just beginning to brown, crushed against the purple petals. She hadn’t expected reciprocity.
She turned the flower between her thumb and forefinger, admiring the fragile beauty in its gradual destruction. “Truly, it’s the thought that counts, dear…” She pulled the flower through the topmost buttonhole of her blouse, tying its stem securely. Considering her handiwork, she nodded contentedly. Then she looked up to him, catching his eye. “What’s your fancy?”
–Gallagher
Cross-posted to Heaven’s Gate.
Galaga
Green Mayo: hm.. i’ll call you.. Galaga, cause you’re out of this world
–Gallagher a.k.a. Galaga
Familiar Faces
She felt a tug at the dormant dregs of her humanity.
She blinked, unnerved, and straightened her posture. The sensation was unmistakable. She had severed all of her bonds, and yet someone was reaching out to her. She dared not move. Her eyes scanned the periphery, and she entertained the idea that her acute senses had misled her as the call came again, her eyelids fluttering to a close. This time, her balance gave way under the influence of vertigo and she fell sideways against a storefront, grasping desperately at the metal grates pulled across its face.
In her mind’s eye, she saw a face she recognized immediately.
It had been years since they had been in contact. Her initial reaction was bewilderment, then alarm. Their bond had been forged in blood, it was true. However, she had been a mere mortal then; as such, she had been unaware that such a connection could endure in unlife.
Relying on her power of Perception to assess why she had sensed the girl so suddenly, a flash of blinding white assaulted her mind’s eye, forcing her back. She slid down with her back against the wall, assuming the prostrate position of the girl herself. As she placed the detached expression to its corresponding emotion, she gasped, not wanting to believe.
She had a choice.
Cognizant of pain and peace emanating from the girl, she decided to fulfill this sense of obligation, so overwhelming as it was. Holding fast to the lattice, she pulled herself upright, glistening with the exertion of great effort.
She could vaguely make out the outline of her condominium complex just ahead at Zinc and 44th. The hours of the night were waning, but she had to take her chances. After all, if they had been sworn sisters in life, why not also sworn sisters in death?
Slipping the scrolled parchment from her purse, Gallagher whispered the words that would take her where she needed to go.
The girl was slumped in the corner, a razor blade at her side tinged with the same scarlet substance that had started to stain the tiled floor a stark crimson. The same blood that had been ceremoniously shared between them now spilled freely from fresh cuts in a coarse checkerboard pattern drawn up the girl’s alabaster arms. For a moment, bloodlust flashed in the vampiress’ eyes, blotted out in the next instant by the realization of the scene before her. She had been unprepared to deal with the gravity of this situation.
The girl’s smile was effusive in spite of her weakened state. “Gally!” came her choked exclamation. She had read the five people you meet in heaven, and felt immense pleasure that her blood-sister was her first. “So I’m dead?” she asked in distant wonderment.
She herself had recommended the book to the girl, and so she innately understood the girl’s reaction. “No, not yet,” she answered, shaking her head sadly.
The girl knew that this threshold shouldn’t have been crossed already, from her other failed attempts. Not enough blood had been let. But she was having trouble justifying the presence of the woman from her past. Never before had she hallucinated.
Gallagher felt guilty for parsing the girl’s inner thoughts, but she couldn’t deceive her. “This is real. I am here with you now,” she said softly, moving to the girl’s side and taking her delicate yet bloodied hand in her own, a show of reassurance.
So many questions formulated in the girl’s mind. Why had she left? Where had she gone? How had she known? Why had she come?
The vampiress had to dignify her with an explanation. “I felt you, through our bond…” She trailed off, her silence palpable, unsure how to reveal her true nature to the girl
“You aren’t alive either, are you?” the girl observed astutely. “You feel…cold,” she said, squeezing Gallagher’s hand as she shifted uncomfortably.
It was a fitting dichotomy: the vampiress lacked the physical vitality of the living, yet thrived in unlife, whereas the girl, her physical form until now full of life, felt so dead inside.
The vampiress nodded and parted her lips to reveal her fangs, and the girl’s vacating eyes betrayed a glimmer of intrigue.
It was said that the line between brilliance and madness was thin. Never was that truth more clearly demonstrated to her than now. Gallagher watched the steady stream of blood trail down the girl’s arms like the rivers of blood the Ferrymen navigated.
An idea struck her.
“I can grant you a second chance at life.” Her voice was steady yet pleading, and she was shocked at how fervently she desired to bring the girl into her Embrace.
The girl caught her eye. “I won’t fail again.” The finality was evident. “You should go, before someone hears us,” the girl managed in hushed tones.
Gallagher felt the swell of regret as she removed two coins from her purse, placing them in the girl’s palm. The vampiress slipped her arms around the girl then, a tenuous embrace, as if afraid to further harm her fragile form. “You live on within me,” said the vampiress, before she rose to her feet. She turned from the girl. Trembling, she looked over her shoulder one final time.
Then the girl was still, impervious to the constraints of life.
It was all she could to to hold back the tears. She needed to see familiar faces. Or even just faces.
She needed to feel alive.
Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
She paused just outside. Her last memory of the place felt like forever ago.
It was winter 2006, after an Enforcers run, and she had shared drinks and laughs with Hesu and sangfroid.
The dynamic of the city had changed so. Change was inevitable.
Her fall had been extraordinary. Her rise would be an uphill battle.
She was stronger now, and she carried her crosses proudly. She had learned to accept that which she could not change, and had accumulated the courage to change that which she could not accept. Time would tell if she had the wisdom to tell the difference.
The difference now was that she could control her future.
–Gallagher
((Notes:
About Gallagher:
Technically, Gallagher has not been RPed in the RBC Hall proper, although I have posted RPs in the RBC group. Just to make sure everyone is aware, Gallagher is a continuation of Gringa, as I had the name changed in spring 2007.
About the topic:
I write what I know. My “lil’ sis’” in my former sorority took her life last Thursday, and this post is dedicated to her enduring memory. I am not asking for your condolences. She is at peace now. However, writing is my catharsis. Please respect this.
Choose love, choose life.
Thank you.
–A))
Worth
“You’re worth more than that.”
He turned to her, his expression that of vague intrigue at her commentary. “Do you really think so?” He snickered and arched a brow.
In her imagination, she wowed him with a keen witticism, and he flashed her his sly smile and engaged her in tart banter, giving her his undivided attention and becoming enamored by her sharp charm.
In the next instant, she was standing there in the bar, surrounded by the no-name vampires who would soon surpass her in infamy. She glanced around, flushed, hoping she hadn’t been so careless as to allow anyone access to her fleeting fantasy.
The time for a sassy retort had passed. She nodded then, no trace of sarcasm, with an almost wistful expression.
She wanted to say more, but she had already lost him, to the one he was with.
It wasn’t her. It never would be.
Two years previous, she had fallen in love. She had brought the bitter end upon herself. And she was still suffering for it, this night, every night.
–Gallagher
