Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours. Hours became days, days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years. Time passed at an uneven pace. Down here, there was no time. Down here, there was no light. Only darkness, only dampness, only the steady dripping of water. The scuttling of rats. Darkness, dampness, water. Dripping, always dripping. Keeping him awake. Driving him mad.
Solitude. Endless, endless loneliness. Hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness. Sickness. Dizzyness. Nothing to catch him but a floor of cold stone, nothing to comfort him but an empty room. No company but his own.
Where had it gone wrong? Where had he faltered, where had he failed? Ah, but he knew. He replayed it over and over again in his mind; that fateful night when the world had burned.
He remembered shouting. Wild, primal shouting. He remembered anger. Anger towards a system that he knew was wrong. Hatred for a world that had always hated him. The people rose up that night, rising as one against impossible odds. Rising with voices ringing, rising, proud and defiant. Rising with sword and musket, rising with fist and butcher knife. Demanding freedom from the chains that bound them. Demanding justice. Equality.
Demanding what they had never truly known. Demanding what they would never know.
It was hell; flames licked at the shells of once-proud buildings, painting the sky in wild oranges and reds. The air was filled with the acrid scent of smoke, choked with gunpowder. Booming cannonfire from the fort, cracking musketfire as the soldiers turned on the crowd, cutting them down in droves.
And presiding over it like an ancient god of war was Kasperl, urging them on. Sending out a rallying cry. For liberty! For justice! For equality! A gaunt, blood-streaked face. Wild eyes, the eyes of a man possessed. And Reynaud?
Reynaud was dead.
He remembered blood. Blood of countless martyrs, shot like dogs in the street. Blood – red as sunset, warmer than wine. Warm on his hands, warm as it trickled through the cobblestones in rivulets, spurting from countless wounds. Watching men, innocent men, fall around him. Fall gladly, and fall at his command.
Kasperl was alive. Blood, flame, and gunsmoke. God, he was so alive.
Alive. He shouldn’t be alive. He should have fallen with the rest. He should have fallen for his cause. Why had they taken him? Why had Emile insisted he be kept alive?
The man who had once been a hotheaded, hot-blooded revolutionary sat in his cell, knees pressed to his chest, bloodshot eyes fixed on the door.
She would come. He knew it. She would come.
Subject: Darkness. Madness, 
Sun Aug 02, 2009 4:29 pm
