symmetryguns

"You know what they say," and someone grins, friendly and challenging in the sunlight, "a parent's lights make his kid's look seven times brighter."

No. No. Seven is wrong. "Make it eight."

Everyone is staring but, "Make it eight. Seven is-"

"Incomplete," he's being slammed against the wall, dust is falling and there's a mouth dripping blood (his blood) and a hand pinning his head to the wall and ruffling his hair in a way that is not friendly at all. "only half your stripes."

"Eight is better than seven." he recognizes his own voice, knows that eight is better than seven and three is better than half of three (even though he is only half of three, only seven compared to the ideal that is eight) and suddenly the uncomfortable pressure on his skull is gone because the man in front of him disintegrates and the hand on his head is replaced with handcuffs on his wrists and there's a different man's voice, smooth and deep and calm and dangerous and, "but even incomplete is better for my collection than nothing."

(first you write a book on everything, then organize it with magic. then you trap power and insanity inside its pages in order to destroy the world.

then you tear a sheet out and make it hold a boy's wrists above his head so you can beat him until his bones turn to dust and ashes.)

He's not falling anymore.

There's something in here with him.

Oh. It's ugly. It's made of black goo and terrors, twisting and twisting in entirely disgusting and unbalanced-

everything is inverted. black is white. up and down stopped making sense. wrong and right have always been human inventions.

there is only order there is only order there is----

There is something filling his lungs, and it isn't air, and instinctively he struggles against it, and his hand finds the wall of a cocoon.

DREAM