caress of the dead (man walking)

Minoth has always had an unhealthy fascination with death.

Well, that is to say...in the conventional sense. In the tossed-off vernacular of "thinks about it too much and isn't that just so quirky" without, dilutively, the actual mortal and indeed quite morbid ardor for the topic that would actually arouse anybody surrounding to be concerned.

Ostensibly.

He doesn't look goth and gloomy, grim and gory. His armor's dark because it complements his skin tone, like as not. If he's angel of death, it's by philosophy and not by aesthetic - and by occupation, as keeper and not killer of legacies. He tries his best, anyway.

(He goes for roses, but red ones, and not black.)

If looks could kill, they probably will...

But there's no one around anyway. The two who were, that he cared to concern himself with, are dead.

He's holding their corpses in his arms now. Soon enough, he'll have to go outside and get the shovel.

And leave them. Alone, except together, on the bed. (Next to it? On the floor? Horrible.)

They could just be sleeping. Old age sweetly teased out the decline of the paired both of their wellbeings at the same time, and without one awake to mourn the other, really, what is or was or would be the difference?

Well. Minoth is there, anyway. Of course he is.

Anyway. An easy, throwaway word. Means "no matter what" and "despite all else" and "in the end" and a word like that belongs with death, don't you think?

The great inevitable. The big curtain.

Anyway, it's over.

Anyway, they say she comes on a pale horse...

One thing's for sure: now that they're dead, he has no illusions of wishing them back. His own fear of the actual infinitesimally blunt mechanism of death and the crossover and/or carryover therewith associated, as a Blade and a Flesh Eater and a person, generally (he can feel in his carbonite bones that this same creeping superstition would follow him even into the truly plain mortal world of so many antiquities' years ago), surrounds the supposed ineffectualness, the grossly unfair impotence, of the reaper's guillotine, so if anything, he's watching his behavior, making sure they'd still be proud of him in their final glimpses, but...

No more. He doesn't want any more. Couldn't stand any more. What he'd gotten had already been far, far more than he ever could have deserved, and he'd had time to stand the aging. He'd come into companionship with his own status non-wrangleable and theirs quite approachable and pleasant. No groveling to be done.

Shoveling to be done, though. Or should he build a casket?

Ultimately, they're going in the ground. Regardless.

Is it wilful exaggeration to posit that Addam would want as much of the ceremony stuffed as possible? That a casket is one step closer to a mausoleum, a communion with the earth many paces closer to natural progression?

And Flora...

She'd never talked about it. No "when I go, bury me in willow," no penning of final notes, no shaky-handed sewing up of a gentle black dress trimmed in lilacs and ladies' lace.

We don't believe in pain...

Minoth had thought about it every day. Reflecting back on it now, he's not sure if he should be angry with them for putting it all on his shoulders.

Oh, Minoth, please, let's not worry about it.

Oh, no, Minoth, don't fret so, it's only one story of all the many.

Oh, let Minoth take care of it, he loves things like that.

"I don't. Flora, you know I don't. Addam, you know I'm no good on my own."

No good. Only good enough for this. No one else was fit to it, no one else in the Architect's creation would ever come close.

For every job, so many men no one needs...

Heavy steps take him to the yard. It's not (directly) because his arms are so full.

Their weight still gives at the hollow of his chest, still arches about the lone of his shoulder, still nudges noses into his cheek as he loses ever-fainter grasp.

Ah. That's the thing.

He's not supposed to be alive, now.

He's supposed to be dying too.

Wasn't that obvious?

Doesn't everyone know that?

But the realization is so violent it kills.

Empty stomach, empty head, empty heart and empty bed...

Intrusive voice says to kiss her, kiss her mouth and see if that kills him, leach poison from his neck and ample chest. As he has not been poisoned to death for years, and years, they hadn't been strong enough, mere humans, to give him this absolution. Some conflicting, debatably more childish and innocent, impulse, braces their bodies to him, tight as sublimation from one form into another, until he considers offering himself as the casket box.

His hand on her cheek.

She does not swallow. And her hand is not on his cheek.

His side against his scion's.

He does not breathe. And his hand is not on his back.

'Cause I'm alive...

Minoth, the spectre watching the spectacle, lifts himself out of the grave and wraps a golden cloth about his dear departeds' deathly still, apallingly pale faces. They're not going out, just going on.

He knows he'll see them again, in every silent shade, in his dreams.