Post by Wonder Woman on Aug 15, 2013 11:34:17 GMT -5
Abigail Arcane: August 7, 2013: Sometimes I dream. I dream of you, and I, and a future that never was, that never can be now. I dream I am asleep, waking up in a bed made for two. I am on my side, to one side of the bed; obviously my lover, my Husband, you Alex, had been at my back, holding me through my sleep. You always kept the voices at bay. The Rot refused to be that close to someone so entwined with the Green, just as I know you found peace in my arms, as the Green refused to be as with someone destined to the Rot. But, when I wake up, I do not see you; you are no longer laying with me, holding me tenderly. You have gone to tend to the child, our child, our beautiful daughter; I know this because I see her picture on my bed stand, and I can hear a baby giggling outside of the room. For a moment, before the voices come back, I am happy. I am at peace. I feel normal. And then they return. -c-
Abigail Arcane: The voices, sounds as dark and fear inspiring as one might imagine the voices of the Rot to be, the avatar of darkness shifting in the shadows. "You belong to us, little girl," the all too recognizable voice of my uncle echoes in my ears. I try to scream, but when my mouth opens, no sound is released, merely a torrent of half dead rotten creatures, servants of the Rot. Hands, so many hands, clawing at my body, hold me to the mattress as I try in vain to struggle against the nature I have known to be my destiny. My uncle, the sick and twisted avatar of the Rot has turned a natural end of life into something twisted, something dark and ugly. He has taken the guardians of Balance into something dark, something entirely evil and impure. He stands over me as I still struggle, laughing. That sick laugh, the one he used when I had tried to run away and was returned, time and time again. -c-
Abigail Arcane: "You cannot run from us," he would hiss over me, closing the gap between his twisted, rotten form and my own. "You are of me; you belong to me," he reitterated his unnatural desire. We are family, and yet I know I have been groomed to be as him from the time I was born. It makes me sick to my stomach. His smell invades me, his body atop of mine. I cannot struggle as his perverted minions hold me down. I am possessed, by Arcane and by the Rot, crying tears as I disappear into the darkness, wanting my Warrior King at my side more than ever before. As I slip away, drawn into the Rot by Arcane and his minions, he gives a frightening deliverance: "You've always been mine..." -e-
*****
Journal Entry - There's a darkness. I'm not talking the shadows, or the things that go bump in the night. I mean the real deal, big ugly darkness. The essence of nightmares and monsters. It calls to me; it sings my name in the night, when I am away from him. It's voices haunt my dreams. I can feel it lurking, lingering, waiting, in every thing. There is a little death in all of us, except me. There's a lot of death in me. And for this reason, I am known as the Rot Queen, or in certain circles Arcane, a name I despise even more for its association to my uncle. My uncle was the avatar of the Rot before me, my predecessor, if you will.
He set a low bar for success, if you ask me. He was a sick man. And not just the sickness that the Black feeds you. His was a sickness, a perversion, years in the making; his was an evil that the Rot does not take credit for. For the sake of propriety, pretending to appear normal, "my uncle" is buried in a family cemetery near our ancestral home in Romania. The Rot devoured his form; what I buried along side relatives I never knew, and ones that knew me, and what was going on behind the closed doors of my uncle's house, all too well and said nothing, was just an empty casket filled with rocks.
Even though an analogue for his body was buried doesn't mean that his memory doesn't haunt me as effectively as the voices of the Rot. His voice, his touch, the smell of his breath. Even now, lying in bed alone, I can feel him, I can feel them. They call for me. The memories of what my uncle was and what I might become in his absence make me shudder.
It is all I can do to whisper his name, the one, my one. He deafens the Rot. His presence pushes their darkness away, because he is everything they are not. The avatar of the Green is my saviour from the Black.
Alec Holland, however, is not Swamp Thing.
He does not save me from the Rot, but he saves my heart from my uncle. He reminds me what love is, the tenderness of his touch and the reflection of how beautiful I am to him in his smile. Both parts of my soul need him; the Rot Queen needs the Saviour of the Green to keep the darkness at bay, and Abigail Arcane needs Alec Holland to keep her own thoughts from turning too dark.
*****
She pressed the end of the pen, retracting the ball point and inspecting the item for a moment.
It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to keep a journal. For many years it was simply too painful to keep a record of what was being done to her, and in the years that followed she was simply too wrapped up in the simple, easy joys of being a free woman, of making her own choices, that she hadn't stopped to consider recording the pleasures for posterity.
The heavy instrument was set down next to the book, a simple yet classic looking mole skin note book picked up a stationary store in town.
The old plantation home she had inherited in the bayou was filled with the presence of the Rot, the Green and the Red; life and death in a constant circle. Her uncle had insisted it was a war, but what Abby had come to realize was that it was a scale; a balance. For every life there is a death, for every death there is a rebirth. For the Green and Red to remain in balance, the Rot must keep both in equal parts in check, without growing too wild and perverse in itself.
It made sense to her, then, that the Rot should have a woman as its avatar while the Red and Green had males. Women, throughout history, she thought to herself, setting her diary aside, had always been tasked with the duties of self sacrifice and denial. She thought of Penelope in Homer's Oddessy, waiting celibacy for her husband to return home from his whoring adventures.
Abby rose from her chair with a sigh, making her way to the balcony.
A small bird had flown into the window, breaking its wings but not yet dead. Crouching down she saw the fear in the creature's eyes. "Shh... Don't be scared," she spoke softly to it, scooping the creature up in a tender hand.
She stroked it's head softly. "No more pain," she whispered, bringing it up to her lips and kissing the crest of the twitching form's head. The bird stopped twitching, watching her as the light slowly left its eyes.
Abby's gift, manipulating the dying and rotting within anything alive, was not always so humane, but with her uncle's manipulations gone, she was learning a new what it meant to be the keeper of such powers.
Abigail Arcane: The voices, sounds as dark and fear inspiring as one might imagine the voices of the Rot to be, the avatar of darkness shifting in the shadows. "You belong to us, little girl," the all too recognizable voice of my uncle echoes in my ears. I try to scream, but when my mouth opens, no sound is released, merely a torrent of half dead rotten creatures, servants of the Rot. Hands, so many hands, clawing at my body, hold me to the mattress as I try in vain to struggle against the nature I have known to be my destiny. My uncle, the sick and twisted avatar of the Rot has turned a natural end of life into something twisted, something dark and ugly. He has taken the guardians of Balance into something dark, something entirely evil and impure. He stands over me as I still struggle, laughing. That sick laugh, the one he used when I had tried to run away and was returned, time and time again. -c-
Abigail Arcane: "You cannot run from us," he would hiss over me, closing the gap between his twisted, rotten form and my own. "You are of me; you belong to me," he reitterated his unnatural desire. We are family, and yet I know I have been groomed to be as him from the time I was born. It makes me sick to my stomach. His smell invades me, his body atop of mine. I cannot struggle as his perverted minions hold me down. I am possessed, by Arcane and by the Rot, crying tears as I disappear into the darkness, wanting my Warrior King at my side more than ever before. As I slip away, drawn into the Rot by Arcane and his minions, he gives a frightening deliverance: "You've always been mine..." -e-
*****
Journal Entry - There's a darkness. I'm not talking the shadows, or the things that go bump in the night. I mean the real deal, big ugly darkness. The essence of nightmares and monsters. It calls to me; it sings my name in the night, when I am away from him. It's voices haunt my dreams. I can feel it lurking, lingering, waiting, in every thing. There is a little death in all of us, except me. There's a lot of death in me. And for this reason, I am known as the Rot Queen, or in certain circles Arcane, a name I despise even more for its association to my uncle. My uncle was the avatar of the Rot before me, my predecessor, if you will.
He set a low bar for success, if you ask me. He was a sick man. And not just the sickness that the Black feeds you. His was a sickness, a perversion, years in the making; his was an evil that the Rot does not take credit for. For the sake of propriety, pretending to appear normal, "my uncle" is buried in a family cemetery near our ancestral home in Romania. The Rot devoured his form; what I buried along side relatives I never knew, and ones that knew me, and what was going on behind the closed doors of my uncle's house, all too well and said nothing, was just an empty casket filled with rocks.
Even though an analogue for his body was buried doesn't mean that his memory doesn't haunt me as effectively as the voices of the Rot. His voice, his touch, the smell of his breath. Even now, lying in bed alone, I can feel him, I can feel them. They call for me. The memories of what my uncle was and what I might become in his absence make me shudder.
It is all I can do to whisper his name, the one, my one. He deafens the Rot. His presence pushes their darkness away, because he is everything they are not. The avatar of the Green is my saviour from the Black.
Alec Holland, however, is not Swamp Thing.
He does not save me from the Rot, but he saves my heart from my uncle. He reminds me what love is, the tenderness of his touch and the reflection of how beautiful I am to him in his smile. Both parts of my soul need him; the Rot Queen needs the Saviour of the Green to keep the darkness at bay, and Abigail Arcane needs Alec Holland to keep her own thoughts from turning too dark.
*****
She pressed the end of the pen, retracting the ball point and inspecting the item for a moment.
It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to keep a journal. For many years it was simply too painful to keep a record of what was being done to her, and in the years that followed she was simply too wrapped up in the simple, easy joys of being a free woman, of making her own choices, that she hadn't stopped to consider recording the pleasures for posterity.
The heavy instrument was set down next to the book, a simple yet classic looking mole skin note book picked up a stationary store in town.
The old plantation home she had inherited in the bayou was filled with the presence of the Rot, the Green and the Red; life and death in a constant circle. Her uncle had insisted it was a war, but what Abby had come to realize was that it was a scale; a balance. For every life there is a death, for every death there is a rebirth. For the Green and Red to remain in balance, the Rot must keep both in equal parts in check, without growing too wild and perverse in itself.
It made sense to her, then, that the Rot should have a woman as its avatar while the Red and Green had males. Women, throughout history, she thought to herself, setting her diary aside, had always been tasked with the duties of self sacrifice and denial. She thought of Penelope in Homer's Oddessy, waiting celibacy for her husband to return home from his whoring adventures.
Abby rose from her chair with a sigh, making her way to the balcony.
A small bird had flown into the window, breaking its wings but not yet dead. Crouching down she saw the fear in the creature's eyes. "Shh... Don't be scared," she spoke softly to it, scooping the creature up in a tender hand.
She stroked it's head softly. "No more pain," she whispered, bringing it up to her lips and kissing the crest of the twitching form's head. The bird stopped twitching, watching her as the light slowly left its eyes.
Abby's gift, manipulating the dying and rotting within anything alive, was not always so humane, but with her uncle's manipulations gone, she was learning a new what it meant to be the keeper of such powers.