Ecstagony

Endgame

Tressa sighed as the numbers on the clock changed to 9:13 PM. Arcane was moaning in his sleep from hunger. Tressa sighed again and popped another Aspirin. She felt like a druggie, she was taking so damn many pills. Hell. This wasn't getting her anywhere. She went upstairs to her laptop and began typing up the rest of the column for the new brochure. She had to get her mind off this. She needed to do something constructive.

When she came back down to call out for dinner, since Tressa really didn't feel like cooking, Arcane wasn't on the couch. Which probably means he's getting into trouble, she thought grimly, as she marched into the kitchen to call the police and tell them to be on the lookout for a crazy man. However, she never made it to the phone.

Tressa stifled a scream as she felt the cold, serrated metal slide gently across the soft skin of her throat. She heard a familiar accent murmur into her ear. "All right, Tressa, it's time for you to make yourself useful, all right? Now I want you to tell him to make it stop -- don't open your mouth to shriek like a dying lamb, do what I tell you."

" ?" she managed to gasp, simultaneously recognizing the blade at her throat as the steak knife from her own kitchen.

"You heard me. Tell him to make it stop, or you're going to feel every bit of pain that I am. Do you understand?"

"You're crazy, Arcane." The blade pressed closer. Tressa began to panic. "Listen to me. Whatever's happening to you, it's inside your own mind. I couldn't end it for you if I wanted to. Now put the knife down."

"Now Tressa, dear, I'll do no such thing. It's not so difficult a thing I ask, is it? Just... simply... tell him to... stop..." His teeth clenched, as he struggled to block the waves of pain that were ever amplifying in his aching brain.

Tressa took the instant of weakness and elbowed him in the stomach, spinning around as he leaned against the wall, gasping. She glared at the doctor. "All right, now what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Arcane struggled to regain his balance. "I was trying to get to the bloody refrigerator--" He poked at his brain. "--before this wretched fool had to go and get hostile!"

"Why were you trying to get to the fridge?" she asked, watching him stagger toward the household appliance in question. He didn't make it. A terrible cry ripped from him, and he curled up on the floor, crying like a child. "I was hungry," he gasped in a sob, answering only in an effort to distract himself. "I'm so hungry... He's starving me..." The pain was gnawing at his stomach like a mangy animal. He moaned, reaching for the fridge door again, but stopped the motion as quickly as it started, fire streaming through his hands. Hungry. Lonely. Pain. Can't go on this way.

He picked up the steak knife that had skittered on the floor beside him and brought it down near his wrists.

In Tressa's world, time stopped.

This monster had done so many horrible things, too many to count. Especially to Alec -- oh, God, he had almost killed Alec so many times, had once tried to drive him mad. If he slashed his wrists now, he would never, ever hurt anyone again. It wouldn't even cause anyone else grief. No one would mourn for him, that much Tressa knew. Wouldn't the world really be better off without Anton Arcane?

Had once tried to drive Alec mad... Her mind drew back to an earlier time, when the man in her kitchen had gone through an accident in that selfsame experiment, and had his brain crossfired. It was as if the glimmer of good in him(if such a thing existed) had been tugged to the fore of his being, and she had gotten to see, ever so briefly, what he would have been like if something hadn't driven him crazy so long ago.

// "Just remember me. Remember me like this, would you?"//

A few words, a gentle caress...

...and suddenly, Tressa couldn't stand it.

Arcane felt something grip his knife hand and heard a female voice speaking in his ear. "This is not the way to handle it."

He dropped the knife and fervently choked back threatening sobs, while soothing words and tones blended themselves gently in his ears. He needed to stop himself from being so disgustingly emotional, but he couldn't. This was repulsive, this was despicable, this was Tressa Kipp... and he didn't care. He couldn't care at this point. He felt like a child. "You won't beat me," he whispered to the voice in his mind. "I'll win. I swear it, I'll win!"

His hair had fallen into his eyes, and she smoothed it gently away. "Calm down. It's not helping you or me if you get hysterical."

Arcane didn't listen. He just shook. Tressa realized that she didn't care anymore about who it was. In the back of her mind, she was still angry with him, but she couldn't be right now. Her son was still a missing piece of her soul, but over the past couple of hours she had seen too much, and she realized at that moment that she didn't want to see anyone in that much pain.

In her arms, Arcane broke down quietly. "I want my wife... I miss my wife... I miss her dearly... only she can make the burning stop... I want my soul, I want my wife..." He felt his own tears melting onto her shoulder.

"Shhh shhh shhh," Tressa murmured, caught up in his rocking motion. "It's okay. It's okay."

He buried his head on her shoulder. "No, it's not, it's not 'okay', it will never be, not now, not while she's gone..." His chest felt like lead inside, choked and heavy as his breath forced itself out in impassioned sobs. Tressa just continued rocking, smoothing back his hair as he murmured on crazily. "Only she... only she can stop my fever... she's my cure, and no one else..."

Tressa heard frantic knocking at the door. Extricating herself carefully from Arcane, she hurried to open it.

Alec burst in the door, seeming especially worried. "Tressa, has he harmed you?"

Before she could answer, Graham pushed past her in a frenzy, racing toward the kitchen. Shock rooted his feet to the tiled floor, as about twenty million different things registered in his mind before he could let out the scream.

"Doctor!!!"

He practically leapt towards Arcane. The man lay motionless on the floor, blackness having flooded his form. Graham immediately checked for breathing and a pulse, his own racing like a wild thing's. Pure relief made him shake. "Thank God..." He flicked away some of the perspiration that had beaded on his forehead, as he tried, gently, carefully, to wake the doctor up. He shook his shoulders gently, like a paramedic. "Doctor Arcane, wake up..." he whispered gently. Nothing. Graham's voice got a little louder. "Doctor... Doctor, wake up..." He spun around, still crouched low, to see Tressa at the kitchen doorway. Graham's eyes were wild, his voice acquiring a frantic, hoarse edge. "What did you do to him?!"

"Nothing Graham, I--"

But the man had already shifted his gaze to Alec, his eyes swimming in desperation. He stood up shakily. "Please. Wake him up."

After a few minutes of concentration, Alec made the equivalent motion of a head shake. "No. There's nothing I can do."

"Wake. HIM. UP!!!!!"

Alec started in surprise at Graham's sudden, uncharacteristic ferocity. He took an unconscious step back.

The assistant stepped forward, teeth clenched. "Don't fuck with me." His voice got a little calmer, but with no less intensity. "Wake him up."

Strange how a being such as Arcane has developed such a hold over this man, Alec mused, placing two index fingers carefully on Arcane's temples. The house became deathly silent except for Graham's breathing, ragged and choked with anxiety.

Alec stood. "This is bad."

"have you come here for forgiveness?
have you come to raise the dead?
have you come here to play Jesus
to the lepers in your head?"
U2, "One"

When Arcane woke up, he was hanging upside down in a cold room -- A cave, he corrected himself upon realization. All around him, faint bluish light emanated from an unidentified source within the darkness. The only sound in the deafening silence was the dripping of water and perhaps his own quickened breathing.

"MIRADOR!!!"

Echoes. Ringing in the thick, palpable empty silence and bouncing off the stone walls. Nothing but echoes.

He clenched his teeth. "I really don't find this amusing."

The old man walked in, apparently having not heard a word Arcane said, wheeling in a rather large chalkboard. Paying no attention to his erstwhile student, he immediately began scribbling.

Mirador spun around. "Solve it."

Arcane folded his arms. "Child's play." His expression grew to one of a kind of derisive amusement. "Really, Mirador, you can't honestly expect me to solve that bit of nothing with a straight face."

Mirador was not in a mood to be trifled with. "I said solve it."

Arcane rolled his eyes. Even with the numbers upside down, it was ridiculously easy for him. "The answer is one."

"Correct." Mirador slid an eraser over the long string of numbers and variables, writing over it the number "one" and circling it. "This number is your soulmate, you know."

"That's hardly mathematical."

Mirador seemed to emanate the exasperation he felt. "No, it's metaphorical. For God sake's, shut up and listen. I'm trying to teach you, boy."

The doctor's irreverent mood instantly vanished. "No, you're not. This ends--"

"--Soon. Soon, Anton." He looked deep into Arcane's upside-down eyes. "Do you remember your mother?"

"Why the hell does that have any relevance to--"

His voice was calm and even. "Answer the question."

"Course I remember her. I'm hardly as senile as you, you know."

"I didn't ask if you were as senile as me." Mirador paused as the doctor gave out a shriek of pain. "I'm not getting any younger."

"That's readily apparent," Arcane muttered after catching his breath. Sharp enough to catch the hint in Mirador's eyes, he added quickly, "Of course I remember her. You're even worse than she ever was. What's that point?"

"Think back," Mirador suggested.

It wasn't hard. All he had to do was close his eyes to remember the constant harping, criticizing and nagging, day after day after epoch-long day. He talked too much. He talked too loud. Couldn't he be quiet for once? He never shut up. He was morbid. He was vindictive. He was too interested in stupid things. Why was he spending so much time with those silly little experiments? It was all frivolous. He wasn't doing it for school. Why had he gotten beat up again? He probably deserved it. He always deserved it. He was out of shape. He should have been stronger. He should have been a daughter. He didn't know when to mind his business. She could wash her hands all the time if she wanted to, and how dare he talk back to his mother?! He was insolent. He was sadistic. She was so good to him, he didn't deserve her. He had a skewed, distorted vision of the world. He had bad genes. They came from his father. He had a nasty streak. He was a bad influence on Randall. Why couldn't he be more like Randall? Randall was nice and sweet and good. What a darling boy Randall was. He was a rat. Why had she brought him into the world? He was arrogant. He was ungrateful. He didn't deserve her. He didn't appreciate. He was rotten.

On and on and on it went. But he knew how to beat it. He was a smart boy, he knew he was, no matter what she said. He knew how to beat it. When he closed his eyes and breathed in deep and tried, really, really tried -- he could slip away. He transcended it all, and he could be someone else. He could be the son she always wanted. And no one had to know.

"How painful," Mirador crooned without sympathy.

"I still don't see what this has to do with anything," Arcane sulked.

"You will." He walked below his student, circling him like a bird of prey. "Do you remember your wife?"

Arcane stared in surprise. The question hit him like a bullet. He shook his head, regaining a bit of composure and clenched his teeth. "Of course I do! What the hell do you take me for?! She was my wife, for God's sakes!"

"Hmm. Think of her, then." Before Arcane could say a word, Mirador's features lit up. "Ah HA!" the old man cackled.

Arcane was very cross. "What?"

Mirador stepped in closer to his student. "It's harder, isn't it? It's harder to remember all of her, isn't it? Like a withering photograph, she's fading away. No, don't look at me like that. It's slow, but it's happening. You know that it's happening."

Arcane closed his eyes and breathed in slow. "I. Remember. My. Wife."

"Of course you do," Mirador assured, not meaning a word of it.

The doctor seethed. "Go ahead, then! Rattle me like an infant's plaything! See where it gets you!"

"She was the only one who understood how it felt for you as a child, wasn't she?" The question came out gently. Arcane swallowed. Mirador went on, his voice quiet, almost... coaxing. "Her parents behaved the same way, and she was the only one that meant it when she said, 'I know how you feel.' Remember that, Anton?" He didn't expect an answer. "And you miss her so much..."

He closed his eyes tight and wished it all away, fighting with vehemence the inexorable mental picture show. "It's not working, Mirador..."

"She left you, and you miss her," Mirador reiterated. He grinned inside and put emphasis on his words. "And when she left, it drove you crazy." He walked away to a farther wall and sighed. "I've been trying to help you Anton, but it's been a constant slap in the face from you every step of the way." He shook his head sadly. "I think the only thing left to do is commit you." He looked up and his eyes were dark and brimming with all sorts of madness. "That is what they do with crazy people, after all."

Arcane felt like he was spinning, felt like something strange was seeping through all his veins. Arsenic, hemlock, snake venom, heroin, it was all inside him and he was flying and crashing and spinning and spinning-

He opened his eyes; He was still upside down; It wasn't as cold; Why was there coarse fabric against his arms; He didn't understand; He couldn't understand; He wanted to understand; "The hell?!"; A padded room; Upside Down.

He was still hanging upside down and he was wearing a straitjacket. "Mirador?" he cried hoarsely. Of course, there was no answer. "Mirador?!"

There he was, right inside the door, talking to someone in the stereotypical white coat and holding a clipboard. Why couldn't he hear him?! He sounded very sad.

"And that's how I found him, ranting and raving like that in his laboratory, almost foaming at the mouth. He kept telling me I was dead... I don't understand it. Can you help him?"

The doctor nodded, speaking quietly and gently. "With time, and medicine."

"May I speak with him?"

"Yes, but be gentle. He's probably very disoriented and frightened."

Mirador nodded and shuffled over to his erstwhile student, keeping a respectful distance. "Anton. Can you recognize me? It's me, Mirador. Remember me?"

Arcane stared at him. "Of course I recognize you. Now why the hell am I hanging upside down in a bloody padded cell like a lunatic?"

Mirador scrutinized him closely, squinting. "You don't remember any... details... of what happened before you came here?"

This was getting weird. "Yes I do. I was hanging upside down, but it was in a different place, it was... I, I think... I..." He bit his lip, watching the doctor shake his head and motion for Mirador.

"He doesn't remember killing anyone, does he?" the doctor said in hushed tones, although still not quiet enough.

Arcane started at that, his upside-down body going ramrod straight. "Now wait just a bloody minute!!!"

Both the men spun around. "What is it, Anton?" Mirador asked calmly.

"I haven't killed anyone!" Arcane shouted, his voice rising to a desperate, angry crescendo. Not this week, at least!

The doctor kept his facial expression calm and bland, pulling a syringe filled with dark liquid out of his pocket. "You're starting to get excited again, Anton. You know that's not good for you. Do you need another shot?"

"No," Arcane said with uncharacteristic meekness. He had a memory of those shots, and he didn't like it... No, he had never been here before; he must have been associating the syringe with something else. Everything inside his head felt so muddled -- this had to be Mirador's fault. He and the doctor were working in tandem, he just knew it. He glanced at the both of them poisonously.

"You can't remember anything at all about what happened before?" Mirador prompted again hopefully, before receiving a sharp glare from the doctor.

Arcane wracked his gifted mind for answers, memories, anything, but it was all becoming so wretchedly fuzzy... // "Like a withering photograph..."// He had to convince them! He wasn't crazy! "I was with you, and... and I... I... I can't remember." He looked utterly miserable.

The doctor nodded, murmuring, "Mmm hmmm," and Arcane jumped within his skin as the straps on his straitjacket were pulled tighter, glaring at the man accusingly. "Why do you think that is?"

"You drugged me, you sodding quack!!" Arcane cried.

"Yes, Anton, with Sodium Pentathol," the doctor reminded him gently, "and you told us everything."

Arcane's eyes were getting larger and larger. "Told you what?!"

"Shhh," he soothed. "We're going to let you rest now. You've had quite enough excitement for one day." He walked with Mirador toward the door.

"Is his lawyer going to plead it down to manslaughter?" Mirador asked quietly.

The doctor shook his head. "Won't need to with the insanity plea." Mirador nodded, as they left the room, locking the door behind them.

"Mirador!" Arcane shouted desperately. But he was alone.

~~~

The quiet was raping him.

It -- no, not he nor she but It, the pronoun for filth, for decay, for monstrosities -- was filling his ears thickly, swimming around the filthy water that was floating his brain. He opened his mouth. Sweat dripped cold down his forehead in little beads, running a tiny glistening trail down his tightly closed eyelids. His screams were silent. Pure, tortured silence enveloped him, clawing him raw and leaving him to bleed on the already-stained padded floor. There was no sound. Arcane twitched and writhed, squirming like a worm in the mud.

"Will someone at least TALK to me?!!" he cried, rocking his bound body back and forth, upside down, helpless against silence that was bleeding him raw, smashing past the vomiting pores of his skin and rushing his veins, squeezing from the inside and viciously penetrating his bones as he gagged.

His eyes, practically bursting from their sockets with nothing to stimulate them, darted around feverishly, scanning the shadows. His heart thudded. The darkness and its wretched companion Silence creeped up the walls like twisting vines, spilling down to the floor. His breath felt shorter. The floor -- it seemed farther away, less substantial as darkness wrapped around him like the coils of a constrictor. It was needles piercing into his skin. He couldn't hear because he could hear and all he could hear was nothing. He felt like he was going to cry.

"For God's sakes, somebody make a sound! Talk to me, sing to me, hit me, ANYTHING!" He doubled over, wrapped tightly in his black restraint. The blood was rushing to his head from being upside-down so long and he was starting to feel delirious. "TALK!!!"

It was choking him, he could swear it was choking him. It was killing him. He was going mad.

// "Anton, go to your room."

"But--"

"Now."//

His turmoiled soul clawed against his body, trapped. The silence was getting louder. He longed to run his fingers through his hair to make sure he wasn't disappearing.

The shadows were hulking monsters from deep within the basements of his mind. When Randall came to visit, he got to stay in his room, and Arcane had to sleep in the guest room down in the basement. He begged not to be sent down there; would have rather slept on the floor. He curled up under his desk at those times and slept.

//"Anton, get out from under there and go down to your room!"//

And then the monsters would go after him, horrid, creeping shadows that would cover him like spiders, fed only by the even more horrible silences permeating the room thickly like the air over a morgue. No one would talk, no one would listen--

// "Mother!! Talk to me!!!"//

It spiraled up through him and burst. Arcane howled his pain and fear and rage, screaming in raw fury like a bleeding animal. The black straitjacket stretched and expanded as he strained, tearing it wide open like a beast breaking out of its cocoon, teeth snarling and glistening in the moonlight.

The door opened a crack and he dropped to the floor like a stone.

Arcane crawled over to the closest wall, wriggling on his knees as he reached the corner, his arms wrapped around himself along with the pieces of coarse, ebon fabric that were plastered to his shivering body.

He doubled over, tilted his head to the floor and vomited. His eyes teared involuntarily as he kept throwing up. He couldn't stop. He wasn't sick, he had barely eaten anything, it was all acid, but he couldn't stop. His thin form, drenched with cold sweat, shuddered.

When Mirador entered, Arcane was curled up on his side in the corner shaking.

"Hello, Anton." The doctor flopped over on his back and drew his knees up to his chest, glaring with red and sunken eyes at his teacher.

Mirador took his student's chin in his hands for a second before releasing it. "You could use a shave."

"Shut up! Just bloody SHUT UP!" Arcane's eyes were wild. "Give it back! Just give it back, give me back my mind..."

Mirador paused. "Anton..."

Arcane was getting hysterical. "Give it to me! Give me back my fucking mind! Give my fucking mind back, give it to me, it's bloody mine, give me my fucking mind back!"

"Do you need a sedative, son?"

Arcane sprang up fast as a switchblade and rammed Mirador into the opposite wall, his fingers clamped around the teacher's throat, attempting to crush his windpipe. His voice quavered between clenched teeth, dancing warily on the borderline of reason. "Listen you, do what you like with me. I'm not going to play with you. Just give it back to me. Give back my fucking sanity." He squeezed. "Give it back, Mirador, or I'll break your little throat..." Mirador said nothing, could say nothing; simply stiffened as oxygen was sucked rapidly away from his wheezing lungs. He was starting to lose vision.

Arcane's grip trembled as he stared, his eyes filled with pain. "I'll kill you," he whispered. "You know I'll bloody kill you." His fingers let go slowly, one by shaking one, as he drew his hand back, recoiling to his corner. "I want my mind! I want my mind, I want it..."

Mirador caught his breath, croaking, "You're deteriorating, Anton. The doctors have decided to give you an ECT."

Those initials jolted Arcane and he sat up fully, hitting the back of his head on the padded wall. "Bloody hell?!" He stared, his pupils contracting rapidly, quickly drawing his knees up to his chest as he mouthed the words. "Electro-shock therapy?"

"It's the only avenue left," Mirador said quietly, a demented giggle escaping him.

Arcane kept staring. "Oh God... I'm not crazy..."

He was dragged.

~~~

"Get me out of here!!" Arcane struggled ferally, flailing hard against the slimy, cold straps that were wrapped around his wrists and ankles, ramming his body spread-eagled to the gunmetal-grey slab that passed for a table. Blood stained the cold metal deeply. Arcane rose, straining, his teeth grit as his spine arched inches off the table before the grips round his skin forced him back down. He screamed. "MIRADOR!!!!!"

"I'm right here, Anton," the old man stated calmly; without preamble, he ripped Arcane's shirt open. The doctor shivered with the chill air against his bare skin and he writhed against the metal table in a fevered frenzy.

Mirador shook his head gently. "You don't know why you're here, do you?" He hooked two wire attachments to the struggling doctor, placing two tiny suction cups to his pectorals, two to his temples. The wires tangled away from the student's body like pale roots, feeding into a bizarre contraption next to the slab, resting like some strangely wrapped box upon a wheeled cart.

Reality splashed Arcane in the face with the consistency of urine. He sputtered. "That's not an ECT machine!"

"You're right." Mirador giggled. "It's not."

More realization continued to pound itself into Arcane like a sledgehammer into the soft parts of his skull and he struggled to be free even more; pure frustration hurtling through his mind and snaking through his body, pushing, pushing, pushing -- wild, raw, uncontrollable rage and frustration that made him want to sob, lash out, run, scream, howl, bite, something, ANYTHING but staying strapped here to this wretched, wretched table...

His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, and he gasped. "Tell me," he managed with some coherence. "Tell me what... it is."

Mirador chuckled again deep in his throat like a giddy child. "It's my toy."

Arcane lifted his neck by a millimeter and scrutinized. It was a freakish contraption, an ugly toy. Now that he was looking closer and adding things up in his head, he realized that he had a device that was similar, although far more advanced.

Mirador continued to chuckle as he turned his back to Arcane, fiddling psychotically with the bizarre machine, furiously pushing buttons and moving dials, changing settings here and numerals there. Satisfied for the moment, he spun. A huge smile spread across his creased features.

"This is my Ecstagony Machine," Mirador stated proudly.

"That's not even a word," Arcane retorted, feeling himself go weak.

Mirador circled the table, leaning over Arcane's forehead with a crocodile's smile. 'Think of it, Anton." His words were barely a whisper. "Pleasure and pain. Agony and Ecstasy. The two twins are siamese now."

Arcane trembled uncontrollably and closed his eyes, forcing each word out syllable by syllable. "The point, Mirador. I'm waiting for the point."

"There isn't one." Mirador laughed. "Not one you'd understand, anyway. Isn't that wonderful?"

"No, it isn't. It isn't wonderful. It's wretched."

Mirador waved him off. "You're just being contrary." He leaned in close to his student, his words sinking into harsh, hissing whispers. "You've entwined so many, Anton, you don't even know. This has been about you from the very beginning, about you and the things you can't ever let go. I've been trying to help you, Anton. I've been doing that from the start. But you're so ungrateful. It was a mistake, I know. And now..." His breath whispered hot into Arcane's ear. "Now, all that have connected with you will suffer." He turned the dial.

"It's disgusting."

Graham regarded Tressa's softened eyes with sneering contempt as she watched, completely focused, on Alec's efforts to revive her enemy. "You only have compassion if someone's personality suits you. Aren't I right, Mrs. Kipp?"

Tressa stared straight ahead to the still body on the kitchen floor. "You didn't understand then, and you don't understand now."

"Don't I?" Graham's expression was halfway between a grimace and a sneer. "Look at you. You would have left him to die, wouldn't you, if you hadn't -- by some off chance -- remembered that lab accident that you think is still lurking beneath his skin."

Tressa turned on him. "Is it that hard for you to imagine? That there are actually people that don't enjoy seeing others suffer?"

Graham looked away. "Come off it." His teeth were clenched as he swung his arm toward the kitchen, pointing at the lifeless form on the floor. "That's a human being down there. He isn't what you want him to be. He never was. He's never going to be." He paused a moment before adding, "And he's not your child." Graham stalked off into the kitchen and knelt down by Arcane's body as Tressa stood in the threshold and seethed. The lab assistant looked up at Holland with mournful blue eyes. "What's going on? Can you help him?"

Alec was not paying attention. He gingerly placed his index finger on Arcane's forehead again; eyelids fluttered shut as the link between their life forces coalesced. He opened his eyes just as quickly, wide and staring, his mind thrown back and reeling for what had to be the fifth time, maybe more. Alec grunted. The link to Arcane's mind, though undesirable, was important. It started when Alec had peered at the man's aura. It was out of control. His senses told him akin to nothing, blackness. Arcane's mind was shut off, with nothing to express the danger save for the man's own behavior, Alec's own pre-warned knowledge, and the occasional flashes of involuntary, outward thrust thought, like red alert klaxons from the brain. He had to know what was going on in there. Obstacles loomed up like ghosts. Every time he tried to connect, Alec was sent reeling with the anger and fear and deep, rage-filled pain that made up the entirety of Arcane's wounded being; it was like fire, searing and lapping up the edges of his soul. It made him spin with revulsion. He was being asked to walk into a filthy and ancient evil. He didn't need to do this. This wasn't his responsibility. It didn't matter, he -- he placed his palm down toward Arcane's forehead.

It met the back of a hand, knuckles. Graham's hand was already there, comforting. "Dr. Arcane, please wake up--"

The seconds ticked in aeons as if in slow motion. Alec's eyes went wide in horror. "Graham, do not--"

Tressa rushed forward as time flowed quick again, reaching a hand out instinctively as Graham doubled over into a ball. "ARRRRGH!"

"What?" Alec asked, baffled as he put his attention on Graham. "What is it? What has he done to you?"

Graham clutched his head. "AUGHH! AUGH!!"

Tressa put her head in a hand. "God, both of them..."

Mirador looked up at the ceiling. "My, one seems particularly protective of you, doesn't he? Hmm. Doesn't matter." He leaned down and grinned in Arcane's face. "We've come full circle, haven't we, Anton?" Arcane kept quiet and hoped the question was rhetorical. It was. "You started out trapped within that thing you called your life. How many times did you contemplate an open window or the scalpel you kept in your room? Anything to get out, eh?" Arcane looked away. "And now look at you!" Mirador exclaimed joyously. He tapped the restraint lightly with his thumb and index finger. "Trapped again!" He beamed, leaning down farther to whisper in his student's ear. "Life hates you, you know. It's been trying to flush you out for so long -- but you're a survivor! I told you that you were a survivor..."

"He's hurting him!!" Graham raved as Alec kept him pinned to the floor. "I saw!! I SAW!! He's hurting him!!!"

Alec tried to subdue him, but the man wasn't having any of it. "Who?" Alec asked. "Who is hurting him?"

"Mirador!!" Graham struggled to be free of Holland's vice-like grip, making quick glances over toward the doctor. "That thing inside his head!! You have to let me go!! We have to stop it!!!"

Alec let him up slightly. "No, Graham. You can't touch him again. It could kill you."

"Isn't that what you want?" Graham snarled. "Then both of us will be dead!! Won't that make life perfect for you?!!!"

"Graham!!" The lab assistant looked over at Tressa. "Shut up!"

"Sorry," Graham mumbled.

"Now," Alec tried again with as much calm as he could muster, "what did you see?" And more importantly, how did he see it? his brain quested.

"I... I... connected with him somehow," Graham explained lamely, trying to find some way to describe it. "I don't know what happened. But that's not the point!! We have to get that thing out of there. He's HURTING him..."

"Oh God!" Arcane grinned broadly with his eyes closed, veritably melting in pleasure upon the slab table. "That's... that's... fantastic...!" he managed to gasp. "Wh- what is it?" I'm... I'm lucid -- as usual -- not buzzed at all! Well, not really. Remarkable! When had he last been this happy? He couldn't remember. It had seemed almost that for so long, he had been so firmly entrenched in his own misery that he would never get out again, that his mind had simply stuck that way. When that thought occurred to him once, it had depressed him even more. But oh God... this was glorious.

"This is better than sex!" Arcane exclaimed. Every pore of him was tingling with an overwhelming rush of pleasure. Surely he hadn't been sad so long to be so happy? Another grin spread slowly across his face as his chest rose and he laughed. A genuinely happy laugh. It felt so remarkably good to just laugh, felt like an iron band squeezed around his chest had just snapped.

"Anton, Anton, Anton." Mirador looked down upon him with an almost tender smile. "I feel almost like a father to you, at times, you know. Even though you may act hateful towards me and even though it seems like you don't appreciate everything I do for you --" He paused with a grin. "You do appreciate me... don't you, Anton?"

Arcane nodded fervently, humming.

"Good. Now, you know that you're a parasite, Anton. You can't survive without others." For some reason, Arcane thought this was the funniest thing in the world and laughed hysterically. Mirador raised an eyebrow and continued. "And I've been there to help you. I've given you everything you've truly wanted. Because you need me, Anton. Carl needed me and couldn't admit it, but I think you might." Arcane closed his eyes and wriggled in pleasure. "But you, my student... you need me simply because I know what's best for you. If it wasn't true, you could just let me go. But you can't. Ha HA! In fact, boy," he added, turning on of the particularly large dials, "you're the last one to know what's good for you. I do. Your mother did, even though perhaps she showed it differently."

"Mirador!" Arcane giggled. Silly old man. His mother hated him.

"Oh no, Anton," Mirador corrected with solemnity. "She loved you. To death."

The dial was turned up a little higher, some more buttons were engaged. "My God!" Arcane shouted, his eyes bulging, pupils darting around wildly. "How -- how in the heavens' name did you manage all this? It's amazing!!"

Mirador gestured proudly to the machine. "Look at all I do for you. I modified this very machine to fit you and only you. Every response, every signal, is molded to your little brain. I do so much for you, Anton. Even in death, I've bent over backwards to give you what's best for you, to try and teach you something. But to help you, you have to cooperate with me. It's too hard to try and do what's best for you if you constantly insist on fighting me. Just acknowledge the control you know I already have, Anton. Do that one thing for me, your teacher, your mentor -- I might as well be your father. Acknowledge my control. That's all."

Arcane started at that. "What?!" He managed to shake himself out of his utter happiness. "C-control?"

"Yes, boy." He fiddled with the controls and Arcane was swimming in ecstasy again. "I am in control Anton. Just say it..."

"Heh heh... Heh heh heh heh..." He shook his head weakly. "N-no... you're..." He chuckled again, overcome with joy. "I'm in control and you can't stand it!" he sang out.

Mirador blinked. "Anton..."

"I'm in control, and you're not, and you KNOW IT!! Hee hee!"

"All right. That's it."

"You're not in control, and it's destroying you! I am!"

Mirador turned up the agony.

"Graham, what the hell is going on in there?!" Tressa was fairly shouting.

Graham shook his head confusedly. "I... I can't hear... I can't understand it... It's --"

Mirador rubbed his temples, his eyes shut softly with weariness. "I tried being gentle, Anton. I tried."

Arcane swallowed the scream that was itching to break out, sweat gleaming from the pores in his forehead it was effusing from. His mentor shook his head. "Pleasure is a much more benign and effective convincer than pain." He stroked Arcane's hair softly as he twitched. "But you know as well as I do that there comes a certain point in the brain where it can't hurt anymore. Where it can't do anything but give in to the truth it already knows. It just hurts too much."

Arcane nodded deliriously. He knew very well. He had brought enough people to that very point to know. "AAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

"No, Anton. You should have killed yourself when you had the chance. That would have ended all this. But you're too much of a coward. You've eschewed your only chance of escape. And now there is no mercy for you."

"God..." Arcane twisted painful inches to the left, to the right, tears blurring his vision. "God, please..."

"You forsook God, remember?" Mirador reminded laughingly. "And He's forsaken you."

"NO!" the doctor screamed. Agony raked claws down his body and brain, leaving him raw, stretching ugly, invisible scars across his skin. He couldn't see, couldn't speak from the pain, but he knew Mirador had moved the dial because it felt like acid-filled salt had been dumped onto his wounds. He whimpered, unable to speak, his body shuddering softly as it tried to curl itself into a ball and found that it couldn't. "Mirador... Mirador... You're hurting me... I won't do it..."

Mirador blinked. "What?"

"...won't do it... I'm in charge... I'm always in charge... I won't do it -- AIIIIIEEEEEE!!! No no no no don't do it don't do it..."

Mirador shook his head. "Stubborn to the last, I guess." His voice and eyes were tender as he smiled into Arcane's face. "It won't be long now, son."

"Love?"

Mirador raised one eyebrow. Then the other. "Anton?"

"I see her so clearly..."

"Really?" came a bemused smirk from deep in the wrinkles of his mentor's face.

"Yes..." Arcane's eyes were shining as he stared up into the blinding overhead light, his voice incredibly soft. His body was shaking with pain. "Her hands... and her fingers... and ohh... her eyes, shadows on ice... I remember, I remember..." His chest moved up and down breathing so terribly sharply, tears flooding down his face. "I remember, oh God, I remember!! Her beautiful smile... and her hair... I can run it through my fingers... I can just feel it..."

Mirador made a jerky movement with his arm, arthritically twisting the knob on the interface higher.

"Ah - agh - and I c-can see her lips... and her f-face and I can feel her skin..."

"You can't see anything, Anton!!"

"Shh, shhh, listen -- you can hear her... see her, Mirador, isn't she beautiful?" He smiled with teeth clenched against the searing knives that were digging deep into his tender back. "And she's dancing... I'm dancing with her, but I'm not moving..." He closed his eyes, his voice almost high pitched but still low, hoarse, ragged with agony intertwined with invisible joy. "I feel you... your arms are around me and... it... it doesn't matter anymore, beloved, it doesn't matter anymore, the pain doesn't matter... I'm fine, darling... can you see me? I'm fine..."

His head inclined infinitesimally to his teacher. "Look Mirador, look, can you see?" He was smiling that bright, beautiful smile. Mirador choked. "Can't you see her?" His eyes rolled upward to the light as another wave of pain crashed down on him and he curled inward a little, trembling.

"...look... l-look at her eyes..." Arcane stared, awe rendering him speechless. He stared into her eyes. They were everything in the world that was beautiful, everything that was precious and far away. The darkness in the ebon pools twinkled with stars. He gasped as fire burned him, turned into bullets that smashed into him... and below him. They were missing him, he was floating. Floating like in the trance of a slow song, a slow, swaying dance with another close cuddling warm body that was stroking his hair and telling him that they loved him very very much and as he stared into those eyes

it was light and it was God and it was the stars swirling around that blue-black darkness that was the universe and the nebulae and the moons and thousands of suns and powerful quiet that was everything was so *small* and it was all so

beautiful

"Thank you, Mirador," the little boy whispered to the old man.

Mirador sputtered, choked, re-tried, failed, flushed, cooled, and heated up, burning again. His eyes flared up, his voice was cracked and furious. "I haven't given you anything!!!!!!!!"

The stars in those fascinated eyes spiraled and widened in understanding awe.

"You... haven't given me... anything."

Mirador stared at his student, his eyes shaking his head frantically in lying denial. "No, no, we were so close, we were so close!! We can do this, boy..."

Arcane stared deep into the light, the blindingness enveloping him and everything around him.

"...anything at all..."

"You're back!!! You're BACK!!!" Graham seemed like he was going to collapse in joy.

Arcane pulled himself up using Graham's shoulder, giving a smile to him. Then he stared off into space and left out the door. Graham turned to watch him.

The stone was cool and grey beneath the skin as he ran his finger down its side, tracing the engraved words.

(Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea.)

She sighed, a tendril of gold catching a glint of dim, comfortable light as it floated slightly out of place. Her forehead made a muted thud as it rested softly, nestled against his gently rising chest.

(To the open arms of the sea.)

His breath sighed out soothingly, her soft fingers gently caressing the side of his face as she stared up at him with those bright, amused eyes. Sway. Back and forth. Sway.

A smile darted on his face as her fingers pressed harder into his back. She shivered and he held her closer, burying his face in her soft hair.

(Lonely rivers sigh, "wait for me, wait for me.")

Outside in the world, the sky was a leaden, calming grey.

(I'll be coming home.)

(Wait for me.)

"See Anton, dancing isn't so hard." She rocked with him, staring into the golden, comforting lamplight on the stand near the couch, her cheek resting on his chest, the tender pressure of his chin muted against her hair as he looked up and nestled against her.

"I've never quite understood how to do it," he murmured with a shy smile, gently touching his forehead with hers.

They closed their eyes. "It's not so difficult, is it? Just to sway."

"Can we sway forever, Tatania?"

She stared up at him, surprised, and lovingly kissed him. Softly.

Arcane blinked, staring at the stone. Then he got up and walked away.

"there are some things that I guess I'll never know
when you love someone, you've gotta learn to let them go."
"Dream About You", Stevie B

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