The mark of obsession

[CyBeR]

My dreams too often turn me to the cursed girl, asleep in her dark cave. She lies, huddled, in the embrace of the beast, her hair unkempt and spread around her, breathing jaggedly and coughing slightly in her sleep. She shivers and retreats ever more towards the warm embrace of the creature, wrapping herself in its hairy appendages, shielding herself, unconsciously, from us all.

And I am next to her, watching, trying not to breathe, lest I break this frail balance in which there is only the cold and her dream. And the web. I feel as if I'm hovering outside my own mind, looking into a dream within a dream within the web of the great beast. My courage boils and bubbles and I will myself to take a step towards her, to take her back, to - ha, how pathetic this must sound - save her.

As if something inside her senses my presence, her eyes open wide and she stares right at me, a thousand minds checking me out through her, deeming me unfit to have her. The beast uncoils and lifts her up, on eight giant, hairy legs from her back. In my dreams I try and take that one more step I never could. She flinches away from me, narrowing her eyes and moving back towards the shadows. I fear I will never forget, not in the most intimate corners of my mind, how sickening it was to see her move away from me with such grace, with the horrible, predatory elegance of the spider. My stomach churns when I remember how her body dangled, as if lifeless, from those black, clawed legs that carried her further and further into the dark.

Her eyes never stopped staring, and they never do in my dreams either. Even as the darkness swallows her, I can still feel her eyes on me, accusing me of so many dark things. For those accusations I have... nothing. Nothing at all.

My dreams tend to be sadistic and I chase after her into the cave, into the dark. A thousand what ifs and what could'ves flood my mind, even as my soul screams at me to stop, to let it go, to sleep, to forget, to forgive myself. Even as the darkness takes me and the cold burns my lungs and my face and my hands, I go on through the pitch, maliciously punishing my failures.

In a fit of mercy, I wake and meet my old, frail body once more.

My cough tears any hope of sleep away from me. The pain in my bones hits me moments after. There's something immensely masochistic about living past the moment when you can wipe your own ass without igniting a millions pains in your joints.

For days I am confined to my study, too afraid to sleep and too stubborn to simply die. I know she's out there, asleep in a coffin of ice and stone and frozen shadows. I know she's slowly turning further and further away from humanity, from any hope of return, from me. I may be powerless against it, it would be only fitting to bear this to the grave, but there is no breath that I will not waste in trying to save her.

Let Death come and I will stare it down until my work is complete.

Let my memories come and I will embrace them, with their agony and suffering, and I will make them shield and my creed.

Let the dreams come. They only serve to fuel me.

Ludwig Angledeer
The mark of obsession