Sleep the Sleep of Angels
The dreams are bright and
soft, disconnected from the world and yet everything in it all at once,
overlaying each other like cards falling from a dealer's hand. The
sweet, sharp smoke brings them, forms them, rearranges them in Brian's
head to create a world where he is nothing like the man he knows he is
– out there in the other world. He knows which one he prefers.
Brian out there in the other
world is tough and quick, barely touched by the blood on his hands. A
man's man. An Immortal man. The Finest Swordsman in Europe. Four
hundred years old and still going strong.
Inside the dreams he can admit
to himself what a lie that all is. Inside the dreams where he can sleep
the sleep of angels, imagine a life without the blood and death;
imagine the man he'd be if only the dreams were real. In his dreams he
is a good man, strong, whole. Beloved.
When the dreams are good.
There are times though, when
the dreams have claws and teeth red with blood. When everything he's
lost and everything yet before him seems to collide in a screaming
symphony of loss. Those are the times when there is no refuge. No
refuge other than the sweet promise of the next dream.
It's a crapshoot, which dreams
he'll dream, but the good outnumber the bad and while they do, he'll
keep chasing them, chasing his own weakness -- his shadow -- the things
he can't admit he wants. Chasing oblivion. It's what he wants. What he
needs.
But he knows that's a lie. He
can have all the oblivion money can buy, but it can't fill the hole
inside him. It's the hole dug by the hundreds who've died on his blade,
by the cravings that nothing ever satisfies for long. By the endless
journey of a life that clings to itself no matter how he'd sometimes
love to throw it away.
And he would love to throw it
away. God, if the oblivion could last forever, then…then the pain and
the craving and goddamn aching emptiness would finally end. But despite
it all, he can't seem to do it.
There are moments, razor thin
moments in time when the fight hangs in the balance and one slip, one
tiny slip would do it. A little to the right, a little to the left, and
it would all be over. He can feel those moments drawing at him like
standing on the edge of a cliff, whispering to him seductively that
jumping would be easy.
But because he's just a
cowardly, foolish bastard hanging on for the sake of it, too mired the
habit of living to take on the next adventure, he turns away from death
when it comes calling. Too hooked on the dreams, the lies, the
sweet-sharp kaleidoscope illusions drawn on wreaths of smoke he needs
to re-invent his life into something he can bear to live.
And yet he does live.
Perhaps it's his punishment,
his curse, to live on while the hole inside grows deeper and darker.
Perhaps there aren't enough angels in the universe to cure what ails
him. Perhaps it is fit that the angels are fleeting and the pain is
immortal.
Perhaps only death can cure
that.
The end