The Fool

This is the first of the Rom stories (chronologically the last). It is extremely dark, so I am warning you. (If you've read the Lovers, this is linked)

The first thing I remember are the ruins. And the stench of blood. Not ruins, but they might as well have been, walls stripped bare and room as small as coffins. No life in them. Corpses had more space than I did, but I didn’t need it – I was so close I could touch them, feel their skeletal hands grasping me and pulling me down. I looked over my body – new, all of it, my crippled claw hands, wrapped around themselves, cut and mangled. I stared. Did most people have four fingers? I couldn’t remember. I knew voice, language, sound…no humanity. Knew word, but no memory of what it meant or why it mattered. Or if it did. I raised my hands up to my face, tracing the cracks and crevices over my lips – broken, cut around the mouth – nose, except it was crooked, weird… I winced. I stared down at my chest. A huge gash ran down it, occasionally dripping vital red liquid – blood, the name came, and I knew it well – and… bones, peeking through the skin. That was wrong. Inhuman, whatever that meant.

I looked around with vague clouded eyes. Completely bare. Nothing but a wall and… I knew them. All of them. I stared slowly at the round iron rings and iron stick – a game, maybe, depending on the day, except… my hand hummed as I approached it, power and hate and everything else vibrating until I didn’t know, couldn’t stand couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t… I gasped, collapsing in the stale, suffocating air. Dark… there was something wrong with all the dark, creeping in around me, surrounding and capturing… the air and the stench and iron collapsing into and creeping into me until I couldn’t… couldn’t…

Then there were hands. Vague, dark, calloused hands. They could have hurt, there was power in them, but they didn’t, and it made me smile. He was gentle, with soap in his hand and warm water flowing over me. I felt hands in my hair, the soft rubbing of soap and water and hands and warmth. The brown mixed into the water, so much that I couldn’t possibly believe that I had been cocooned in it, like a little cowering dirt-bug. I mumbled something as soap dribbled in my eyes, and the mouth connected to the hands sighed, muttering something under his breath. I winced slightly as the hands became rougher, scrubbing my arm so red that it looked nearly like blood. Except that it wasn’t, and it wasn’t meant to. The mouth smiled, and a voice came out, quietly. A soft humming. I’d never heard it – never heard music – before in my life, and it was so sweet and strange and powerful that I just sat still for an eternity as hot water and soap flowed over me.

There was food. Laying out in the middle of the room as I crept out of the bathroom, and as soon as the scent hit I remembered hunger. I didn’t even look – still don’t know what it was, to this day, and I didn’t care. I ate so fast that I bit my own hand as many times as I bit the food, the taste of blood tangy and familiar in my mouth, but I didn’t care, just kept on eating until I passed out. It was a strange sleep, and it took me a while to realize why – because I was comfortable.

That morning, when I woke up, there was a man lying on the couch. He was just watching me, a strange small smile on his lips to match his humming. I grasped his dark, calloused hand. Olive coloured, not like mine… I touched each one of his fingers individually, the short fat one – opposable thumbs, the secret to our civilizations – three long narrow ones, one in the middle longer than the other two, a single engraved silver band on one – a star, in a circle. Pentacle, the word came – witches and devil worship an death and bad – and I shuddered for a moment. And the last one, I didn’t have. Narrow and skinny and weird. Did all humans have it? Just I not? Him? He blinked, and smiled, taking my smaller hand in his.

“Do you have a name?” he asked quietly. Name – identification. What other people – it smashed into my brain too fast, too bright – mother father – gave you. Vague faces formed, but still too vague to ne seen, or maybe that was a haze clouding my eyes – no worth – no names here. I shuddered, and he held me in place. He didn’t say a word, no calming or hope or help – his eyes green and gold – were cold. Waiting. Can’t help. Won’t help.

I nodded. I did; it was there somewhere, if I could reach it, if I… “Stephen,” I finally said.

He smiled. “Good name. I don’t think its yours, though. It doesn’t fit,” he said, and then smiled softly, “But we can make names fit. They never do at first, you have to grow into them.” He let my hand drop, and then continued, “I’m Rom.”

“Gypsy?” I said, before I could think. All in Europe, beggars and thieves and… and he wasn’t any, not thief or murderer or… well, people and books lie, we all know… control, truth, lie – same same same.

He nodded. “Romani,” he said, and then glanced over at me. “You’re hurt?”

I glanced up at him and nodded. I was on my knees in front of him, and it wasn’t that odd – almost comfortable, in the shackles and coffin comfortable way. He pulled me up, sitting upright himself until he was staring into my eyes. He brushed my hair back out of my eyes, and sighed, pulling out a shiny piece of glass. Staring back at me was a broken shell, another man in the room. Eyes as broken and empty – all lights out, boys, nothing left in there – remnants of a lurking cabin, ashes burnt and cut up in those eyes – dull and brown and painful as whip’s leather. A fake, plasticy face, sour cheese and old milk white and drawn, maggot pale. Weak lips, falling face – all of it crumbling down like a Colorado avalanche, white slidign and slipping until ghosts cover it all. A mirror. Hello, I. I smashed my ahnd into the mirror, blood dripping down over I, shards and blood and ghosts.

He pulled my hand back and sighed. He began to hum, keeping my hand still in one of his, as the other appeared with tweezers. He pulled the mirror out, embedded in me and covered in my blood, but I didn’t cry out – too used to it, hand clamped over mouth, teeth biting and cutting into my tongue. He sighed, running a hand over my back, and hummed. My hand was wrapped and bandaged in a second, as far as I knew. He frowned slightly, seeing the red seeping through the white.

“Hurt in more ways than one,” he murmured, and sighed. He set my hand down and gave it a stern look, as if telling it to stay. “Do you remember?”

I shrugged, closing my eyes. “What?” I asked softly, opening them and looking at him. He didn’t look as cold anymore – his eyes looked almost human, his eyes entirely green and almost alive.

He sighed softly. “Do you want to?” he asked, then laughed quietly, “I wouldn’t, but I don’t get that choice, do I? If I… but you do. And I’m sorry, because…” he stopped, shooting me a mad grin, “the only way you can possibly make a decision better than flipping a coin is by knowing what you’d be remembering, and if you knew…”

I laughed quietly. A paradox, I remembered those. Once upon a time I loved them, in vague, twisting way that I loved and didn’t, not getting too close cause then you could get caught in them, swirling around until you didn’t even know who or what you were besides a paradox – a know all catch all of nothing. He began to laugh with me, mad hysterical laughter that took over the whole room and ourselves, turning and twisting us about until there were none of us, just the laughther and madness twisting us inside out til all the pain was there to see and feel, until tears streamed down both our faces and fell in our gaping mouths, and who knew who was who anymore? A mass of writhing, dripping crackling or cackling flesh clinging madly to one another until we couldn’t.

I woke him up the next night. He was twitching in his sleep, rabbit caught in a trap, tortured twisting hands bodies jumping off crucifixes… death spasms all animals twisting and howling and writhing and dying…

“I want to know,” I said before I knew why.

He looked up at me, eyes sharp and golden – cat’s eyes, no animal in there just pure power. He smiled softly, sighing. “Decided already?”

I nodded. He sighed, standing up and grabbing a black shirt from the floor. He looked over at me and placed a hand on my shoulder, a sardonic smile twisting his lips. He didn’t say a word, just gestured to the door and led me outside.

It was dark. Dakr and cutting and suffocating, and I knew it in this dark. Voices raising up in the weird chants, violent iron splitting the night in shrill inane screams… cutting through air and skin and bone alike. And more than anything else, terror creeping up your back and crushing your heart, sliding under doors and peering through keyholes all to just get you in its grip… I shuddered, and Rom raised an eyebrow.

“Too late now.” And I laughed bitterly under my breath. Too late for me and them and everything else, and those three damned words I did remember, curse and blessing and hope carrot and whip and damned and blasted devil words…signifying nothing and everything. Too late to back out, too late to survive, too late to give up. You’re here now, after all.

He sighed, capturing me effortlessly as I kicked as stratched and bit, putting his hands over my eyes. After a while, I stopped struggling and let him – I’d walked so many paths blindfolded that it was almost natural. I knew the scent and feel of every part of this wretched country, rocks cutting into bare feet, leaving a road of dried blood in your wake with cracked bones marking each step you took, stench of death surrounding you in some places, reminding you where you’d go, and children’s laugher still ghosting around in others, reminding you where you’d been and couldn’t ever return, but mostly just thick, stifling silence, worse than any beating drum, the silence of the walking dead – meeting it by night, the only way I knew it, shrouded and hiding from its own sins.

After a while, he let go, and I closed my eyes and let the night devour me, but it wouldn’t. Maybe it couldn’t. There was flesh, life around me blocking out the night, warm and grasping and worm infested, but alive, goddammit, living and there and I could live. I would live. No matter how dark and twisted and miserable, life… except except except… pray for death. Release and black oblivion hope. Always an except.

He tapped my shoulder, and I stared. I couldn’t tell what I was looking at – it was oozing blood and pain and hate from every old crack and crevice, covering the old gray stone in a distant haze. But through it all, through the haze and pain you could still see it, see the old perversion twisting out from underneath, warm meat devoured from the inside out and you don’t notice until its inside of you, creeping and twisting. Green vines grasped at it, pulling it down into Hell, but it was too strong… built in Hell, came up through a crack in the Earth and now we’re damned with it. Better story than the truth.

Barbed wire twisted into the ground, hungry and cutting for blood, our living vampires, barbed wire and bones twisted around one another – what’re you kepeing in place don’t let the dead rise well you’ll be there don’t worry just wait bleached white staring up at me accusing me alive in a world of the dead. Don’t worry, not for long.. .we’re all waiting, all coming, hands of green twisting up to pull you down. The doors were welcoming, and I laughed. Want to gobble us up we don’t don’t don’t dragged in kicking and screaming and now, now, was a good time to run til the ends of the earth and past that until oblivion… and I walked in anyway.

Same white cracked bone walls, remannt ghosts hiding. Stripped and raped bare, marble swirled with blood and screams. No name no nothing just the same pure white of heaven or empty white room of Jungian death and there they were, iron ring and poker toys to play with innards and make them outers, blood stained rusty knives lying on the floor – discarded playthings four year old, don’t you ever learn how to clean up after yourself, brother mine? Red flakes could be anything who knows? I don’t don’t judge… no bed just shackles, well its not a hotel what do you expect? Lucky not to be in a pen, hemmed in bed of needles or needle in a haystack – ever find that, brother mine? Find truth no no not the point, not that truth…

Smell of tears most of all, dripping from the walls and drowning me in them, couldn’t breathe and had to swim through them, salt filling my mouth and nose well, why don’t you stand up? I spat it all out, standing up, and wandered down hallways, not paying any attention, feeling the cracked broken shell and pain and misery burning up in the walls, smoke and cries still seeping out with the tears to drown you in them, pull you back in.

And stop. And turn. And burn.

And there was I, bound and burning and open for all to see welcome to the show, boys. Insects creeping and crawling around inside, twisting and writhing and eating me up from the inside out – just maggot infested meat, after all. Bruised and broken but what did it matter? Just pain and flesh and bone and life and I. Confess… to what? Just say and I’ll and I’ll and I’ll... tears and sweat and pain and blood leaking out from the floors and walls, and these were our saviours. Oh thank you lord, thank you for this pain and torture more please more more oh my saviour. Save us from invaders and hell and death, and here we are drowning in our own filth.

Are you?

Yes.

Are you?

Yes.

Are you?

Yes. Isn’t it enough stop please stop stop stop

Are you?

Yes.

Then you’re dead.

And pain and here we are drowning in it.

“Does it ever change?” I asked quietly.

Rom nodded. “Yes.”

“Really?” I asked, and the hope in my voice disgusted me. Of course it didn’t.

He smiled. “Yes.”