Subject: [OTL]: [Sandman/Corinthian/Mine]The Storyteller [PG-13 graphic violence] Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 19:25:28 -0700 From: * Thistle * Disclaimer: Mine are mine, everything else is Vertigo's. No money. No sue. The first tale, which you should probably read first, can be found at Luba's 'Fonts of Wisdom' page : http://home.att.net/~lubakmetyk/non-x.htm#thistle The Storyteller By Thistle _*- The first -*_ The Corinthian walked through Nightmare, head down, shoulders hunched forward, allowing the disjointed screams, twisting groans, and deep, vibrating growls augment his already foul mood. White-blond hair dropped into his face and his right eye blew it out impatiently. So intent was he on the ground that he almost didn't notice the pair of most un-nightmarish legs in the vortex of a slow whirl of the misty, black fog that permeated all of Nightmare. She stood, still as a statue, no, still as the timeless that was The Dreaming. He straightened and raised an eyebrow. She wasn't a dream, she was too…something to be a dream. A dreamer then? He didn't really think so. He approached her then; he thought of that moment many, many times in the years to come. Sometimes he Despaired over his stupidity in doing so with a harsh fury, sometimes he merely sat with Eve and thought for days, months, until Dream called him to do some odd job that needed only his special attention. Sometimes he even smiled and felt Desire chuckle and blow gray smoke into his ear. He never really regretted it though. Her back was to him and he watched the tattered scraps of her once gaily-coloured dress twist a Shiva's dance around her. He watched, trying to remember if he once knew her in his previous incarnation. He finally abandoned his attempts as he noticed that she shook slightly, as though cold. He walked around her to her front, expecting to see maggots crawling from her mouth or snakes fighting over her rotting flesh or some other such nasty thing that were common as dirt in Nightmare. What he did see surprised him more than any creation in the Awful Realm; she had the most beautiful blue eyes he had ever seen. Gold floated in her glass-blue irises like those lovely thin glass apples filled with water and gold flakes that you could buy in odd shops that smelled like sandalwood and lavender. He was so enraptured of her eyes that his own fairly salivated down his cheeks, behind his sunglasses. He reached dumbly towards her face as a prisoner in a stone cell hungers and strains for a sliver of a glance moonlight from his tiny slit of a barred window. He grasped her white face in his hands and she gazed at him. Ancient, ancient seeming eyes stared at him like a kitten seeing a human for the first time. He squeezed her face between his hands, wanting to own her, possess her, lock her eyes in a box lined with the fur of a marmot for him alone to see. He was only barely aware of her hand wiping at his face with an insubstantial remnant of her torn dress. "Are you crying too?" she asked softly, her voice licked at his pulse as black tears smelling of mildew frosted her cheeks. He shook slightly and sharply drew his hands down to his sides. He stared at her, uncertain, confused, murderous and she took his sunglasses from his face and dropped them to the ground where they landed as a deaf person would hear them. They shattered. She touched his eyes carefully, wonderingly, blindly even as they murmured words of savages and of languages long forgotten. She did not draw away and she continued to gaze at him and she smiled slightly, mouthing the words she saw his eyes say, not knowing what they meant. "I bet you tell the best stories," she whispered again and he wanted to crush her. He took a jolting step back from her touch and almost broke. She tilted her head to the side slightly and the black mist caressed her neck like a swan as her hand holding the soft cloth didn't move from its position at the level of his face. He longed to stay. He ran. <><><> Mine left her grief that twilight in Nightmare where it clutched after her with bony fingers, calling to her, trying to stick to her like ink. She walked away from it and out past Eve and into the sky where she walked and walked until she came to her house of ice and light. She laid down up on the soft floor and curled her toes around one of the rockers of the chair Morpheus had given her from the dreams of a baby wrapped in a yellow scrap and in his mother's arms. It sang quietly to her as the Delirium's stars that weren't really stars at all circled above her in a gentle, but slightly maniacal manner. Mine smiled for the first time in an eternity and slept clutching the broken remnants of the Corinthian's sunglasses to in her hands. <><><> _*- the second -*_ An uneasy time passed and eventually the Corinthian was sent by Dream to murder someone in the waking world who had displeased him mightily. The Corinthian had managed at that time, through great effort and much carnage, to reduce his memory of Mine to an itching footstep in the back of his mind. The rain that day had reduced the air to syrup and now, appropriately, fog webbed through the tall, thin maple trees of the large estate and their bloody leaves. The Corinthian's fingers twitched in anticipation and his eyes gnashed quietly to themselves. He walked up to the huge wooden door with an oddly out of place video camera staring down at him with its one eye, and pounded the knocker a couple of times. He wondered briefly if the camera actually had an eye and what it would taste like if it did. A short, squat woman answered the door and he smiled at her thinking to himself that she had a nose like a turnip. "I'm here to see Mr. Argrave," he said to the woman, "he should have been expecting to see me for quite some time." The woman, against all asylum protocol, smiled back at him and bid him wait in the visiting room and she'd call Jacob right down to see him. He thanked her and went in the small room. It was furnished with a blue recliner and a shabby red velvet couch with a black and blue afghan carefully tucked over it to disguise the lack of quality. He stretched himself out on the couch and blandly noted the puff of dust that filled the room and drifted through the murky puddle of gray sunlight coming in through one of the two tall windows. A clock ticked loudly on the mantle and the Corinthian waited. The door opened and he heard the end of a brief conversation and a laugh from the turnip-nosed woman before Mr. Argrave entered the room. He walked over to the head of the couch and cleared his throat as the Corinthian gave no note of his entrance. "Yes Mr. Argrave," he said in the calm laziness of a predator, "I know you're here." He could feel Mr. Argrave become slightly affronted at his lack of decorum and he gestured to the recliner, "sit down, please." Mr. Argrave, attempting to recover his dignity by attempting to challenge the blond man laying so insolently on the couch before him, asked, "Do I know you sir?" "Oh yes," the Corinthian grinned at the ceiling, "you most certainly do. Now sit." Mr. Argrave sat in the recliner and the Corinthian finally looked at him. He pulled his Swiss Army knife from his pocket and began to twist it in his fingers. Mr. Argrave was dressed in a standard white pants and shirt combination, both of which were slightly too small for him; he was also wearing scuffed high-tops that for some reason mildly annoyed the Corinthian. He sat up and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees which were higher than his rear because the couch had several broken springs. He continued to play with the knife in his hands. "Mr. Argrave," he said looking directly into the eyes of the man, "you have seriously upset a very important person." Mr. Argrave crossed his legs, exposing his bare leg above one of his sneakers, he wrapped one arm around his waist and began to chew the thumbnail of his other. The Corinthian smiled easily, fluidly, dangerously. "You know what I'm talking about, don't you?" Against his credit, Mr. Argrave shook his head and stared out the window. The Corinthian stood up abruptly and Mr. Argrave started. "So what are you going to do, huh?" he asked around his thumb, "you can't kill me, you know." "Why not?" the Corinthian asked, taking a slow step forward. He felt the panic starting to set into Mr. Argrave and he saw the fear building in his eyes. He savored it. He thumbed the blade of the Swiss Army knife open and Mr. Argrave's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to scream for help. The Corinthian dashed forward quickly and soundlessly as impossible and twisted the knife into the front of Mr. Argrave's throat. Mr. Argrave fell to the floor and clutched at his throat while the blood seeped through his fingers and into his perfect, white collar. Tears and half-aborted screams flowed with the blood and the Corinthian sat back down on the couch and watched Mr. Argrave. He took off his sunglasses and Mr. Argrave kicked at the blue recliner like a beached whale kicks at the shore to try to save itself. He made a sound like a deer being run over. "And now Mr. Argrave," the Corinthian said, hands hanging easily from his knees, "I'm going to eat your eyes." Mr. Argrave stared dully at the wooden leg of the couch by the Corinthian's foot and twitched and convulsed feebly as he tried to save his life. A small pool off blood had gathered around his head like a halo and it slid into the cracks of the floorboards and radiated away from him. Jacob saw a black boot by his face and then his hands were pried away from his throat and the knife slucked out. Then he looked at the ceiling; there was a spider web right above his head. Then really bad pain, then he saw nothing. The last thing Jacob Argrave knew of the waking world was the choked sound of the Corinthian's eyes eating his eyes, the Corinthian falling to his knees as he saw what exactly it was Jacob had done, then the pain of being stabbed through his face and head several times. The Corinthian gripped his bloody knife and shook with rage over the dead body. He wanted to gut it, he wanted to wrap its intestines around its neck and hang it from the dusty chandelier above him. He wanted to run away. Instead he carefully wiped his hands on Mr. Argrave's clothes, cleaned his knife, and dropped the black and blue afghan on the body's head and put his sunglasses back on. He walked out the door and closed it carefully, nodding to the turnip lady as she looked up at him, smiling. "You might not want to go in there for a while," he said as he walked towards the front door, "he just got some bad news." "Oh?" she replied, concerned. "Somebody died." He jammed his hands in his pockets and strode away from the asylum, disappearing into the mists of the Waking World and reappearing in the Dreaming. He did not see the white smudge of a face watching him from the middle window of the third floor as he left. <><><> Now Mine was wandering through the dreams of a Hindu Brahmana and watched as he watched Kali doing her dance of victory and Mine's eyes hummed with fire as she watched Kali dance. Her cheeks burned and Kali smiled blinding at her and blew a flame at Mine and Mine's dress burned to cinders and she was wrapped in Kali's flame and it felt like a warm wind. And she and Kali danced for the Brahmana and the Brahmana stared at Mine and the Dream king told the Brahmana to find Mine and to take her to India and to hide her in the city of Calcutta and to protect her with his life. And the Brahmana asked 'how will I know this woman' and Mine gazed into the eyes of the Brahmana as she burned with Kali's flame and the Brahmana knew. <><><> _*- the third -*_ So Mine wandered through the dreaming, wearing Kali's flame and observing, watching the minds of others. Then Dream came to her and she was sad, for he was not the Dream she remembered. He brushed her black tears from her eyes and asked her to walk with him. They walked through the great, endless blue deserts the lost dreamed of with no moon in the sky. They approached the statue of Ozymandias and Dream bid Mine to sit. Dream told her that her body was moved to Calcutta and that the Brahmana had hidden her where she would not be found, as they were looking for her because she had disappeared. Mine smiled a small smile at him and thanked him and Dream liked that. He did not say that he had the Corinthian murder the orderly for her. He didn't know that she already knew; she had left the dreaming for several minutes to watch the Corinthian arrive and leave the asylum. Then she heard Minnie the new orderly scream so she returned because Minnie's scream sounded funny and she new that if she laughed she would be whispered at and she didn't like being whispered at. And Dream made her an aviary filled with glass birds to add to her house of ice and light and she was very pleased and she kissed Dream's cheek. The Corinthian, who had been watching Mine for a very long time now, was extremely upset. He went to Nightmare and abused so many of its residents that Eve asked Mathew to ask Dream to do something about it. Dream called the Corinthian before him. Dream watched the Corinthian for a time before the Corinthian spoke. "You called?" he said, keeping just barely this side of civil. Dream smiled and the very pits of his eyes flashed red. "Corinthian," he said, "you have done me many services over the years and done them well." The Corinthian's eye twitched behind his glasses. "For that I will give you another chance if you explain why you are injuring my nightmares?" The Corinthian stood in front of Dream, then he paced, then he made as though he was about to speak, and then he rubbed his forehead and rested his hand on the back of his neck. "It's…," he said glaring uncomfortably at one of the more interesting windows that lined the throne room walls. "Are you jealous?" Dream asked, raising an eyebrow. He steepled his long fingers in front of him. He turned to Dream; his forehead was furrowed. "Can I get jealous?" he asked. "Yes," Dream answered. The Corinthian stood wordless for a moment; his hand dropped slowly to his side. "I suppose that I am then." His eyes chittered and laughed oddly at the absolute absurdity and irony of his being jealous. The Dream king's eyes narrowed slightly and one corner of his mouth turned up. "Mine," he said softly. The Corinthian's eyes narrowed and he unconsciously bared his teeth at Dream who he thought was challenging him. He felt a light touch on his arm. He jumped slightly and turned behind him and stared directly into her eyes. Her eyes swirled in his vision, the heart of the flame she was wrapped in, her hair was black burned wood, her skin was ashes, but she was more alive than a child. She raised her other hand slightly and held something to him, he tore his eyes from hers and glanced at her hand; it was a pair of sunglasses that had been carefully re-pieced and apparently glued together with something. "I dropped these," she said softly and he nearly collapsed. She smiled a small smile at him and kissed his mouth and the fire that was her burned him. And he burned willingly.