Ecstagony

Down Low

The space directly in front of his line of sight was a dim sort of brown, as if there was a weak light installed in the ceiling. Everywhere else was pure darkness.

The hell?!

He stepped forward into the light -- or he would have. The smooth, hard wall-like structure that was flat against his back remained there. He couldn't move.

Anton Arcane was beginning to get a very bad taste in his mouth. "Hello?" he called out, desperately straining to see anything in the impossibly dim light.

"Hello, Anton," came an all-too familiar voice. His late mentor stepped out from the darkness. He was tossing something to himself and catching it. The sight wouldn't have been so disturbing to Arcane if the something hadn't been his brain.

"It's beautiful," Mirador said, examining the brain admiringly. He looked up at Arcane. "How long have you had it?"

"Quite some time, before you stole it," Arcane retorted bitterly. "Give it back."

"No, no, no, I'm afraid not, my boy," Mirador replied, holding the brain more carefully. "You're too careless. You usually break your toys." He slid back into the darkness and put the brain on a shelf. "I might let you hold it for a little while if you're good, though."

"Thank you for your immense generosity," Arcane replied, his voice dripping with cold sarcasm. He looked around, finding that he was able to move his head slightly. "Now what's this? Some new hallucination? A dream?"

Mirador shook his head, and Arcane squirmed, recognizing immediately the gesture of supreme disappointment. "Such limited, narrow options, Anton. And so few of them." The elderly man sighed deeply, as if ashamed. "To think that once I taught you."

That hurt for some reason, but Arcane was damned if he'd let that show. "You taught your students logic and scientific explanation. How else am I supposed to make sense of this?" His tone grew mocking. "Are we in Oz?"

Mirador waved off the sarcastic question, distracted. "That's not important now. What's important is that you're here, with us."

Arcane widened his eyes, his eyebrows raising. "Well, fancy that! Here with you. Well, my life's now complete. Shall I shoot myself now?"

Mirador was not amused. "You don't remember how you came here, do you?"

"No," Arcane replied with studied nonchalance, "and quite frankly, I don't care." His words acquired a menacing edge. "Now give me back my mind."

Mirador sat down comfortably in a reclining chair that Arcane would have sworn hadn't been there a moment before. "I've been looking through your mind, you know, and it seems to me that taking something that belongs to someone else without a second thought seems to be part of the main charter in your school of ethics."

Arcane was beginning to lose his patience. Actually, he had lost his patience a while ago, but it had been growing back. "We aren't talking about my methods of drawing the human race up out of the muck, now are we, Mirador?" he replied, almost pleasantly, but with an edge. "We're talking about my personal sanity -- something that you seem to be playing with right now, for whatever reason, and I really couldn't care less about what that reason is. But the simple fact is that it's mine. And I want it back."

Mirador simply shrugged. "Sorry."

Arcane strained against the wall. "Dammit, I don't know what you're trying to do, but--" A streak of pain stabbed his head, and he cried out. "What's going on? Why is the pain back?"

Mirador's darker half seemed indifferent. "You have a great deal of anger and hate. It's going to lead to your downfall sooner or later."

Arcane jerked, making as if to move his hands upward to clutch his head, but he couldn't move them. "AAAahhH..." He took in tortured gasps of breath. "Mirador, why are you doing this?"

Mirador's voice sounded sad. "You still can't make an attempt to take any responsibility for your problems, and what you do to cause them. Haven't we... haven't I explained to you why this is happening to you twice over?"

Arcane strained to be free of the wall. His eyes bugged as sudden realization smacked him ferociously. "The knowledge!" He strained even harder, raving madly, "Where's the knowledge?! Where are your theories??! MIRADOR!" He roared. "Everything I downloaded -- that can't have been the last of it! What did you do?!"

"I took it back," Mirador explained calmly and simply.

Arcane snapped. "You can't bloody take it back!! It was in my MIND!!!!!!"

"It was in my mind, too," Mirador replied reasonably. Arcane realized he had walked right into that one, but at this point, he didn't care. Mirador continued. "I didn't think I could trust you with that kind of information any more. You've changed... you've corrupted yourself."

Arcane started to go a tad postal. "You can't make that choice!!! You're a DEAD BRAIN!! You're gone! Dead! Finished! Kaput! Six feet under! C'est Termine !!!!"

Mirador seemed damnably chipper for the dark incarnate of a dead man. "So?"

"So it's completely ludicrous!" Arcane insisted. "It makes no sense!"

Mirador got up out of his chair and traversed the small circle where the weak light shone. "You're down here, Anton. Not up there. Things don't make a lot of sense down here." He smiled a demented smile. "We stopped making sense a long time ago. You should try it -- it's a liberating feeling. Well, it was for me, anyway. You'll stop making sense eventually."

"Then why are you still here?" Arcane cried. "If the knowledge I transferred has evaporated, than why haven't you disappeared as well? Why is this wretched pain still here?"

"Nothing's disappeared, Anton. No smoke, no mirrors. It's all there, all of us are there. But we're keeping the knowledge." At Arcane's stare of incredulity, Mirador added, "That eats at you, doesn't it? When you can't understand, can't have all the answers, you squirm. I remember that look on your face well." His eyes began to take on a gentler, far away look, as he recalled. "You asked so many questions... you had the most inquisitive mind I had ever seen. I noticed that right away." The old man's expression hardened. "Now look at you. Greedy. Power-hungry. Cold." He began to chuckle suddenly.

Arcane moaned, and looked up irritably. "What do you find so amusing?"

Mirador chuckled some more. "Oh, I was just thinking about how funny it was to watch you agonize on whether or not to kill yourself." Arcane visibly winced at that, as Mirador went on to say, "It was such a fallacy, you know; because you killed yourself long ago without realizing it. Your soul's been dead for years." He shook his head, still chuckling. "You've always been a survivor, Anton, even when you had nothing left to feed off of but power, hatred, and the pain of others. And you wonder why your head hurts."

"I hate you," Arcane muttered.

"You keep proving my point."

"I hate you!" he yelled again. "Get out of here!" He shook, straining, looking around wildly. "Graham? Graham, where are you?"

"He isn't down here." Mirador noticed that Arcane had started smiling. "What is it, Anton?"

It was a weak, sick smile. "Do you like it here inside my skull, Mirador?" Arcane asked quietly.

"It's not bad. Not wonderful, but not bad. I enjoy being awake again."

Arcane nodded slightly. "Do you keep an eye on your loved ones through my eyes, Mirador?"

"Why do you ask?"

His head was starting to ache again, but Arcane ignored it. He smiled. "I'm going to kill Dana."

It was now Mirador's turn to look confused. "You can't do that."

"Oh, yes I can. I'm going to kill your granddaughter, and you won't be able to do a dear thing about it, because you're stuck in here inside of me." His smile became all teeth. "It's absolutely splendid, isn't it, Mirador?"

"You're down here, too, boy," Mirador countered. "It's not possible."

"I'm a genius, remember? I can do things like that. I can always find a way. You know how single-minded I can get about these things." Arcane's gaze became dreamy. "Oh, it's going to be so lovely. She's going to suffer for a long, long time as your proxy. And all you'll be able to do is watch." He became thoughtful. "It's a pity, really, when you think about it. She's such a lovely little thing -- or she was the last time I met her. But then, you'd know more about that than..." His voice trailed off as he noticed Mirador glancing at his watch as if he were counting down the seconds.

"There," Mirador announced, as his countdown ended. The old man shook his head in a mocking parody of sadness and empathy. "You keep setting yourself up, Anton. How much raw evil do you expect one mind can hold without vomiting? And yet you still hatch another scheme."

Arcane felt as if needles were being pushed into his eyeballs. He struggled madly, but whatever held him immobile was holding him still. He screamed pitifully, but the sound was ripped away from his vocals. Fire consumed his entire face. He felt a sob break in his throat, and another, and another.

Suddenly, something blessedly cool touched his face. He opened his tightly shut eyes. His voice was a bare whisper. "Tatania?"

"Shhh," she whispered, the vision of loveliness, as she held his face gently in her hands.

Arcane leaned as much as he could into her touch. "You've changed your mind. You've come back to me."

She stroked his hair gently. "I never left."

The pain eased slowly. Unbridled joy ran wild throughout Arcane's entire system. He wept. "My God, you've come back. Don't leave me alone again. Never leave me."

Tatania held his still form and kissed his forehead. "I wouldn't dream of it, my darling. Shh. Try to rest." She kissed him again, this time on the mouth, and he reciprocated with passion, struggling to get close to her, to get free. Strange... her lips were extremely dry, not quite like he remembered--

He looked up into her face. It had a million little crack lines, like fractured china. She was still smiling. Her head cracked into a thousand pieces, her body dissolving into grey dust, less than an inch away from him, in front of his eyes.

A grinning skull and a pile of bleached bones and dust looked back up at him from the floor.

Arcane stared into space, his eyes wide, his pupils small. He was completely and utterly still... except for his hands, which were trembling. Uncontrollably.

~~~

Hours later, Arcane still stared, the trembling having spread all over his body.

He blinked.

"TATANIA!!!!!!!" He screamed her name over and over. "Tatania, where are you???!!!"

His own voice echoed back to him in the darkness.

~~~

Every scrap of Anton Arcane's innocence was dead.

"You can't believe how insanely glad I am to have you back, my darling," he said to the pile of bones on the floor. He looked a little disappointed. "I wish you'd talk back to me, though. You're so intelligent, Tatania, it doesn't become you to sit so silently. You always debated with me." He sighed. "It was so beautiful, you and me. And you always looked so lovely... especially when you wore that dress. The red one." He looked down at the pile of bones. "Now look at you. Well, I still think you're beautiful, my dear. Really I do."

The bones did not reply.

Arcane sighed dramatically. "Well, here we are, trapped in this horrid place. It's a shame, really. I have so much more to contribute to the world... my brilliance has yet to receive a successor that can match me. How will the human race -- the planet -- fare without Anton Arcane?" He clenched his teeth determinedly. "I'll get out of here, oh yes I will. Both of us will, right, my darling?" He looked down at the bones, waiting for an answer expectantly.

The bones did not reply.

Arcane let out a sound of exasperation. "Why are you sulking so much? Come on, tell me what it is. Just talk to me a little."

A bone twitched.

Arcane started in surprise.

The bones began to move -- actually move -- as if they were some sort of living thing. Joints began to re-connect in a bizarre, slithering dance, joining together the bones in their correct placement.

Arcane blinked. "Dear?" he asked quietly.

The bleached skeleton rose erect, moving jerkily, like some undead corpse from a cheesy B-movie horror flick. Except it was real, and it was Tatania, and she shouldn't have been doing that... it was unnatural, a sick mockery of the life he had once wanted to give her.

Arcane stared, moving to bite his knuckle, but his hands were still pinned helplessly. The skeleton began to walk, tottering about the dim brown space like a broken puppet.

Arcane screamed as if his heart were being knifed. "MIRADOR, STOP!!!" The skeleton kept walking, if one could call it that. Arcane struggled wildly, jerking this way and that desperately. "Mirador!! Stop defiling her!!!"

The skeleton continued to move, jerked around like the toy of some insane god. Arcane cried out as if someone was hurting him. He hung his head. "Stop desecrating her, please..." Suddenly, the skeleton was in front of him, inches away from his face. He looked up into the black sockets of the thing before him.

"Hello, Anton," it rasped, in a sick, hideous parody of his beloved's voice. It was the clicking mandibles of hairy spiders. It was a wet razor blade sliding across blood-slick wide eyes. It was the screeching of chalk down an endless blackboard. "I love you."

Arcane screamed. He closed his eyes tightly, his heart thumping perilously. "TATANIA! Help me! Where are you?"

"I'm right here," the skull purred in a hoarse, dead rasp.

"You're not my wife!!!" Arcane howled, flattening himself against the wall.

"Of course she is," Mirador's voice assured, echoing through the darkness. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? This is what you were always trying to do?"

"NO!" Arcane's eyes were wide in abject terror and revulsion. His stomach churned and heaved, tying itself up in tight, hard knots. He lurched away from the wall, finally free, shoving the skeleton away ferociously. "Get away from me!!" He shoved it again with violent rage. "Get away, you putrid thing, you're not my wife!!!"

The skeleton opened its mouth as if taking its dying breath, and then crumbled, shattering into bone shards and fragments on the dusty floor.

"You killed her again," Mirador said quietly.

Arcane knelt amidst the organic shrapnel and bone debris biting his knuckle, a billion thoughts spinning in his dizzy mind, as he felt his body get flung back like a rag doll. His back slammed hard against the wall, his body once again held taut and still.

All the lights went out.

Alone in the darkness, Arcane closed his eyes and cried in bitter sorrow.

~~~

Arcane opened his eyes in waking, and then proceeded to vomit all over the floor.

Mirador strolled in to greet him. "Poor Anton," he remarked with false sympathy. "You cried yourself to sleep last night."

Arcane, finished retching, looked up weakly. "I hate you," he murmured. "I'm going to finish you. It's over."

Mirador was smiling happily. "Oh, but it's never over! That's the fun!"

"That's where you're sadly mistaken, old man. You've lost your grip on the threads of reality." Arcane looked up at the ceiling, playing the suffering saint. "I, on the other hand, am still burdened with the knowledge that the earth is still round, and hurled objects don't fall up. And I know that all things come to an end, including you, Mirador."

Mirador seemed unmoved by the biting remarks. He sauntered back into the darkness. "Mmm. That's nice." His voice still echoed from where the light stopped. "I haven't seen you with Tatania in a while. How's your wife doing?"

Arcane seethed, straining like a rabid animal against whatever invisible force held him. "You desecrate her by even uttering her name, you filthy bastard."

"Your voice sounds more hoarse than usual," Mirador observed, walking back into the light with an ornately carved glass chalice.

The doctor swallowed convulsively. "Don't play games with me. I'm dehydrated. I haven't had any form of sustenance since I arrived in this piece of bad fiction."

Mirador's eyes seemed to glint, like fire sparking from struck flint. "Well, in that case..." He held the cup of water to Arcane's lips, letting him drink, adding with earnest casualness, "It's up to you on whether or not you swallow. The water has Cyanide in it--"

Arcane spit it out in haste.

"--or not."

Arcane stared at his mentor. His eyes were starved. "Blast, Mirador, tell me if the water is genuine or not!!"

"There's only one way to find out."

Arcane closed his eyes and sighed shakily, and for a minute, sounded like he was on the verge of frustrated tears. "Real water," he grit out angrily. But even then, he was doubting himself. It would be so much easier to take a nice, long drink. His troubles, his failures, his frustration and his searing, deeper-than-nerves lonely pain would melt away into a wash of blackness. He would slip off of life's page quietly. He could sleep forever, and never have to deal with any of this horror again.

"here, you said you would/ love to try some
here, you said you would love to die some"
"Swallowed", Bush

Arcane closed eyes that blackened with fury, his voice leveled and aimed like a bullet at his mentor, impossibly soft. "Get away from me, you sick waste of life."

One of his hands came free, and Mirador placed the cup in it. "It's water, Anton. Let me know when you're thirsty enough for the real thing." He shuffled back into the darkness.

Arcane drank deeply, letting the water soothe his throat that was dry and sore from the screaming, pausing only when the water started to taste strange in his mouth. He stared at the cup. The water congealed and blackened inside the glass. Arcane dropped it in disgust, watching it crash and splatter on the floor. The puddle it left was clear.

Arcane snarled. I'm going to kill you, you senile old bat. He would rip the old man's weakening heart out and feed it to him by spoonfuls, hand the man his spine and let him use it as a serving fork. He would -- The doctor jerked suddenly, finding that he could step away from the wall. Ha ha ha. Yesss. Finally, liberty. He fairly leaped away from the wall, feeling extremely lively.

Premeditated murder for vengeful purposes always gave his spirit a good high.

He scampered off into the dark, following a trail of impossibly weak light spilled from another one of those hidden, dim ceiling lamps, or whatever they were.

Ah. He reached the room that Mirador had scuttled off to. The centerpiece of the cave-like room was a good-sized plateau-shaped rock, where Mirador lay -- no -- Arcane looked closer, squinting. Mirador was floating a few inches off the rocky platform, apparently asleep. Arcane crept up to the platform, leaning over Sleeping Beauty with a demonic grin on his face. "Awake, fair princess," he whispered.

Mirador bolted upright, his floating ceasing, as he landed on the rock hard. Arcane leaned over him, half predatory, half friendly-like. "Getting our beauty sleep, Mirador? It's a pity I had to wake you up, but this thought has just been spinning around my brain all night..."

"Out with it, boy," Mirador grunted crossly.

Arcane grinned. "Well, I was just pondering, 'Mirador's done so many wonderful things for me. He's made my entire life much more bearable than it ever was to be.' So I thought it only fair that I give you a present or two, just some small tokens of affection just to show you that I care; I mean, after all you've done for me..."

Mirador still seemed sluggish and tired. He settled back down. "This is pathetic."

Arcane dealt him a right cross so hard that the old man went clear of the platform, falling to the rocky floor with a nasty sound.

The doctor jumped and landed beside him. "That's for desecrating my wife," he said, his own voice becoming more of a growl than anything else. He backhanded the old man viciously, once, twice. "That's for desecrating ME!" Arcane grabbed the man by his shirt front and threw him against the opposite wall with enough force to fracture his skull. "I have to hand it to you, Mirador, your techniques of torture were quite exquisite!" Holding him up against the wall, the younger man pressed in close, continuing in fury, "Giving me your knowledge, and than snatching it all away again when it was, and had become, rightfully MINE!!"

Mirador stared into Arcane's eyes, feeling actual fear start to creep into the cold parts of his bones. It was like staring into the eyes of a mad beast. He cried out as Arcane drove his fist into his gut, his side, hard, again and again. He felt the young man's breath warm in his ear. "That was for all the depression."

Mirador felt himself get hurled roughly to the floor, and felt something make a loud, sickening CRACK.

Arcane was a mad thing of pure rage. "And that was for trying to make me shove my head into a stream of bloody CYANIDE!!!" He searched around the cave madly for any sort of sharp, hurtful instrument. His eyes fixed upon a shelf on the far wall, where another chalice lay. Arcane grabbed his, smashing it against the wall with ferocity, until all he gripped with bleeding fingers was a nasty-looking glass shard. He rushed toward Mirador and knelt by him, grinning.

Mirador stiffened as he saw what was in his student's hand, the look on his face. The grin was the grin of a jackal when it spotted a fresh corpse to feed off of. The shard of glass was poised dangerously over one of his eyes, than moved a little to the other, than floated in the space between, right above the bridge of his nose. The old man started to feel sick.

Arcane's words were slow and dark, with carefully controlled hatred. "And this is for every bit of that agonizing, horrible pain that would swallow up my mind, and leave me begging for mercy, while you told me that it was my own fault, and that you couldn't help me."

Mirador tried to keep the quavering out of his voice. "Who taught you, Anton? Who helped you when the older bullies beat you up time and again after school? Who was there when your father never was?"

Arcane shook his head. "I seem to recall that the man who did those things died -- you drove him to murder himself, remember? The Mirador I knew is dead. And soon, you will be." That grin, that sick, awful grin spread slowly across his face. "Which eye, Mirador? I'll let you choose."

That second of pause was all the old man needed.

Untouched by anyone, Arcane was flung backwards, hurtling toward the floor by the opposite wall, the glass shard slipping from his blood-slick fingers; he lay face up, his arms pinned behind his back. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe.

Mirador took a sharp breath, and limped over toward his student. "Don't start a game you're not old enough to play, or man enough to finish."

Arcane blacked out.

~~~

"Good morning."

Arcane opened his eyes and then shut them again, sighing in short little breaths, wishing that this could all be a bad dream, that he could wake up and blow Mirador's putrid little brain to Kingdom Come.

Unfortunately, the doctor wasn't that lucky. He would never be that lucky again.

Arcane couldn't quite remember the last time he had been truly, devastatingly afraid. That kind of fear gripped him rarely. Now was one of those times. Mirador's dead eyes held true menace, and he was completely helpless to stop what his crazed mentor might do to him. It didn't stop him from trying, of course. He forced a smile reflexively. "You seem to be in an unusually good mood. Did you have a nice breakfast?"

Mirador didn't answer, and Arcane immediately took that as a bad sign. Mirador was only silent when he was disappointed. And disappointment made him angry. And being paralyzed and stuck to a wall was not a very good position to be in when one was sharing space with an angry person. Not to mention that Mirador was probably still sore about Arcane manhandling him the night before.

The old man continued to dodder around in the darkness, seeming to be looking for something. Arcane sighed, his eyes narrowing in loathing. Contemptible old bat. He was going to get him. He could try again, and again, and again. As soon as he could find a working way, he was going to get the demented old bastard. And it wasn't going to be pretty. Oh, definitely not pretty. In fact, it was going to be rather ugly. Even uglier than the last time. Much uglier. He had been far too merciful. Arcane didn't care that Mirador happened to be dead; within his mind, that was only a minor technicality, and easily dealt with. Yes, very ugly. Arcane had a couple new things in mind. Right now, though, he had to handle the task at hand, and that was staying alive(since he had decided, at least for the moment, that he wanted to live now.).

"Ah!" Mirador cried as he turned to face his former pupil, his entire worn face lightening up. He grinned from ear to ear. "Did you sleep well?"

"Oh, marvelously," Arcane replied with more than enough sarcasm. "This wall does wonders for my back, you know. Have you ever tried sleeping on iron spikes? I heard it's even better."

"Good," Mirador replied in a chipper tone, the mordacity either lost on him, or ignored. He sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap with the air of a parent looking down at a disobedient child. "Now, you've gotten dirty over the years, Anton. It's time for you to take your bath."

"Your sparkling wit has completely surpassed my limited mind, Mirador," Arcane replied, casual sarcasm still interwoven throughout all his words.

"I shouldn't have to explain it to you any clearer than that. Now brace yourself. The water might be a tad cold."

Arcane looked up.

The translucent liquid poured upon the doctor from above in a small trickle.

"Damn pipe must be clogged," Mirador muttered.

Arcane closed his eyes as the water dripped down his face. "Mirador, if this is your twisted idea of a joke, let the record show that I'm not laughing." He paused. "And neither are you, for that matter." Suddenly something occurred to him. He sniffed the air around him, scenting something funny.

It was then that he realized that it wasn't water that was pouring down on him in a more steady stream.

It was gasoline.

Panic started to shake the doctor. He tried to keep calm. "Mirador, if this is about yesterday... I didn't really mean that, you know."

Mirador raised his eyebrows, looking up from a magazine he had been flipping through. "You didn't mean to viciously attack me and try to murder me? It was all a misunderstanding?"

"Precisely." Arcane gave his most charming smile. "It was all in fun, really. You know, keep eachother on our toes, keep the old reflexes sharp... Why, Graham and I do that sort of thing all the time. I never meant any harm upon you. Quite the contrary! Of course, I had to make the whole encounter seem authentic. But it was really nothing but a scare. I--"

"Not this time, Anton."

The gasoline began to gush down even harder, with no intention of stopping. Arcane sputtered, shaking his hair out of his eyes furiously. "May I ask why you want to douse me with motor oil?" He added, "Unless it just makes you feel saucy."

Mirador didn't answer, absorbed with playing with the little Zippo he held in his hands.

Arcane's eyes widened. "My God..." The gasoline continued to drench him, and Arcane struggled frantically, shielding himself from the pouring oil with his head under his arms, his body somehow still attached to the wall. It was a rather pathetic sight.

Mirador stood up from his chair, still fiddling in glee with the little flame, stoking it and letting it go out, over and over and over in fascination.

The gasoline trickled to a stop.

*drip drip drip*

Arcane looked up, blinking to get the dripping oil away from his eyes. A nervous chuckle escaped him. "Mirador, why don't you put down that darling lighter, and we can talk like civilized people, all right? We can discuss anything you like. A debate! Like the old days, eh?"

Mirador wandered forward absently, still engrossed with the Zippo. Arcane started to perspire. "Mirador, you don't really want to do this, do you? I still have so much to learn from you." He poured on the charm. "You wouldn't really want to harm me, would you? I'm your student, your protege."

Mirador looked up. "Drowned rats shouldn't flatter themselves." He stepped closer, playing with the lighter again, but his eyes took on a bit more menace.

Arcane swallowed hard. "Well, out with it, then! What is it you want to hear? That I'm scared of you? Well frankly, Mirador, anyone in my position would be, and if they weren't, then they'd be either a bloody fool, or totally inflammable. So what is it? What do you want?"

"You're different than Carl," Mirador said thoughtfully. "Carl was weak. I was always the strong one. And you're a survivor, Anton, I've told you that. But you're too corrupted--"

"Said the self-proclaimed 'dark half'."

"-- too many motives, not enough darkness for the sake of darkness." He smiled then, and it scared the hell out of Arcane. "The fact that fire cleanses is not only a religious principle, but a scientific one. You know that."

Logic was definitely not going to work in this situation. "I'm human Mirador -- a rather highly attractive brilliant one, if I must say so myself, but I'm still human -- and so are you. We make mistakes, Mirador. That's not a crime, nor a true stain on one's character, is it? I don't think I warrant death for the reasons you've given me."

Mirador was still smiling. "The nice thing about being mad is that you don't need to justify anything with reasons. You've tasted that. But now it's time for me to aid my poor, suffering student." He held the flame close to his former student, watching him try to back away impossibly, flattening himself against the wall in a panic, his eyes wide in abject terror.

Mirador tsk tsked. "Anton... dear me. And I thought you wanted to die?"

Arcane felt his heart thumping fast and hard, pounding into his chest with enough force to crack his ribs. "Maybe so, before... but my way, when I so desired." The flame flickered in the lighter, and Mirador was moving closer. Arcane knew it would do no good to try and blow the fire out -- it was a lighter, after all, and Mirador could always stoke it again. The doctor smiled. "Come now, Mirador. You don't want to toast me. Just put down the lighter."

Mirador's voice was low. "Retribution scares you, doesn't it? Don't worry. I'm giving you what you wanted. I've been giving you what you wanted since you came down here."

Arcane sighed, careful not to let the escaping air blow out the flame. "Do you want me to beg you for my life? Would you like to see me grovel on my belly in abject terror like some sort of dog? I won't give you that satisfaction, I promise you."

Mirador shrugged. "Debase yourself if you want. It doesn't matter to me either way."

The flame was the only thing separating their faces. Firelight illuminated parts of their features, hiding others in flickering shadows.

Arcane steeled himself; his voice was barely audible, as he held Mirador's gaze calmly with the force of a cobra. His eyes gleamed, daring the old man. "Do it."

The hand holding the lighter trembled infinitesimally.

"All right."

The doctor screamed, crumpling off the wall and onto the floor, clawing at his face. White fire encased him.

Mirador eased back into his chair. "I've set your challenges, Anton. Meeting yours are as easy as child's play. I don't bluff. You should know that by now."

The doctor howled.

~~~

Arcane wasn't hurt, wasn't injured or burned. His body was in the tightest ball that he could curl himself into, and he was shaking nonstop. But he wasn't scarred. Wasn't hurt. No raw wounds. No blood. No marks.

Mirador was scribbling on his chalkboard. Without pausing his writing, he looked over his shoulder at his former student. "Feeling any better?"

The voice was nothing but a soft whisper. "Agony."

Mirador blinked, and went back to concentrating on his physics equations.

Arcane's face was hidden in his hands, as his body shuddered. "Agony... Mirador... stop burning me... Mirador, help me... stop burning me..."

Mirador shook his head. "Are you still upset about that?"

Arcane started to cry.

His teacher sighed heavily in disgust. "I'm disappointed in you, Anton. I really am. It was time to start acting like a man a long time ago."

Arcane had never daydreamed in class before, but he wasn't paying attention now. His body shook with sobs. "Mirador, I'm thirsty."

Mirador turned around. "What was that?"

Arcane continued to rock back and forth, tears streaming down his face. He knew what agony was. He knew. Pain wasn't an adequate word, anguish wasn't even the right semantic. He knew what pure, unadulterated agony meant. "I'm ready to drink now. I'm ready. Please."

Mirador shrugged. "You refused my help before. Don't ask for it now."

Arcane sobbed, his hands clenching and unclenching. "Please. I'll listen to you. Let me die. Please let me die."

Mirador shook his head. "I'm sorry, Anton. You're going to have to deal with this on your own. No easy outs this time."

Arcane screamed.

Mirador grunted in exasperation. "Stop making so much noise! I can't hear myself think."

"...stop burning me... stop, don't burn me anymore, turn off the lighter, stop burning me..." He screamed over and over, collapsing on his side, managing to draw a deep breath and speak. "All this time, you were trying to coax me to do myself in! Why won't you let me die now?"

Mirador's eyes lit up as he figured out the problem on the chalkboard that he had given himself. "Ah!" He wrote quickly, adding, "I haven't had this much fun in a long time, especially with Carl killing himself. Keeping you alive is much more fun. We can spend time together forever. Won't that be nice?"

Arcane crawled blindly over to the nearest wall, smashing his head into it, trying desperately to beat himself into unconsciousness.

"No, no, no, we won't have that," Mirador chastised gently. Arcane moaned, feeling his fingertips slide along the ground as he felt himself get dragged away from his only chance at surcease. He ran a trembling hand through his hair and rubbed his temples furiously, trying to massage away the hideous knots of pain. Tears streamed out his eyes.

He felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Anton, don't cry. It doesn't become you. You're not a little boy anymore." Mirador paused, and added, "Don't think that I don't know it hurts. What do you see?"

Arcane sobbed softly. "Fire. All I see is fire." He whimpered and moaned, the pain far too horrible for any one creature to endure.

Mirador nodded in satisfaction. "All right. I'll give you an 'A' for this one." He pulled a long needle filled with dark fluid out of his pocket, and plunged it deep into the suffering man's neck.

The doctor's eyes rolled back into his head. His body shuddered, and he collapsed, falling still, final, blissful peace hugging him. He lay motionless, his eyes staring and blind, black fire sliding across his irises.

Deep within the crackling flames of Anton Arcane's mind, Tatania danced.

Continued in Part 3

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