The light of dawn was creeping on slow gray legs throughout the city, brightening some areas, cringing from most. The tinkle of ancient bells jingled through the early morning air as Joshua stumbled out from the small dark shop on the corner. One hand was to the left side of his head, and he'd forgotten to put on his shades. His cobalt blue eyes were at once fierce and frightened, and he walked as one confused yet determined to get as far as he could from the source of his confusion. Aqua quickly pushed open the closing door, a small shadow of brightness to mar the dimness of the morning.
"Come back, Joshua!" she whispered angrily. The hush of dawn prevented her from raising her voice. "You have not heard it all." She started to follow him, but at the sound of her foot-steps he whirled around to face her, his eyes blazing blue fire.
"Don't follow me!" he shouted, heedless of any who might be listening. "I don't need anyone who lies!"
Aqua held her hands out, pleading with gesture and look. "I swear to you, boy tis the truth. Upon the soul of my mother, and her mother before her, and her mother before her."
"My mother is dead! Nothing you say can resurrect her! And nothing you say can make me…do what you want me to do." He turned then, and stalked away before she could say another word.
Aqua returned to her shop, opening the door as if it weighed more than she could move, and crossing the threshold like one carrying a cross on her back.
DelaCroix turned his sightless eyes toward her. "What is this burden you bear, my daughter?"
Aqua glared at him. "You know, Ancient One. You are the one who put it on my shoulders."
"And only he can take it from you. Such is life, my daughter. The young take on the roles of the old. Soon he will take on your role, and then you may die." She continued to stare at him, arms crossed defensively. Then she swished past him in a cloud of bright, patterned yellow, making her way to the back room, where the stairs to the upper storeys were. Before she ascended, she called out, "I don't want to die!" then stomped her way upstairs.
"Yes you do, my child," he whispered softly. "You do not want to live in the world which is to come. I have seen it, and it is not happy. Not like it is today…."
Joshua hurried home, opened the voice-activated doors to his apartment building with a curt, "Now," then headed toward the elevator, which took him to the sixth floor. His apartment door was opened in the same manner, and as he stepped into his home, he wished the damn thing were on hinges, so he could slam it back into the doorjam. It slid noislessly shut behind him, but he was already two rooms away, stripping off his clothes in the bedroom. They formed a messy, mostly-black pile around his feet. He stepped out of the circle of cloth, and headed for the shower, wearing nothing but an intricate silver dragon, western-style, hung on a sturdy sterling chain about his neck.
As steamy, nearly blistering hot water poured down on his bent head and stooped, muscular shoulders, he felt nothing but dead weight in his heart. There was not even enjoyment in the cleansing ritual. He felt the rage building in his gut, burning through his muscles, even as the truth burned with white-hot intensity inside his mind. He braced himself against the tiled wall, breath quickening in an effort to control both. He knew the truth. His mother was dead. He'd found her himself, her neck at an impossible angle, arms and legs splayed out from her body, looking for all the world like a broken, and very dead, flower. But even as the memory filled him with sadness, it was also tinged with evil. The image wasn't right, somehow. There was something obscene about her, lying in that position…
No. NO! It wasn't true, his mother was dead! She couldn't be doing the things that Aqua said she was.
She couldn't be killing anyone. He'd found her himself….
That sound, what was that sound? He heard it again, someone scratching. Very faint, but…there! There it was! He needed to find the source of the sound, but he feared it as well. He feared what was making it. Clutching his stuffed monkey tightly to his skinny, seven-year-old chest, he slipped from his dark room, into the darker hallway, following the sound blindly. He shivered beneath his pyjamas, despite the manufactured warmth that inundated the whole apartment. If felt bad to him. It felt…not real. The scratching led him onward, toward the end of the hall, away from the living room where his father was commanding the computer to fire a quarter of his company's employees to cut costs, toward his mother's room.
He shivered again, though not from any imagined chill. What if his father caught him? What would he do….
Then he straightened his narrow shoulders, his eyes glinting in the darkness. This was for his mother. He would protect his mother at all costs. He knew instinctively that she was in trouble. She was always in trouble, but he could never help her. This time, he would. He strode deliberately, though still silently, down the hall, as if to tell his weaker self, See, I'm going. You stay here if you want to, chicken-shit, but I'm going. The weak part opted to come along, to provide him with any necessary cowering should he get caught by his father.
The scratching sounded again, but it was quieter, even though he was nearer. He hurried his step, though with each muffled footfall, he imagined his father rounding the corner, heading to his own bedroom, and catching the vagrant boy. Or maybe he wouldn't even hear his father coming, just feel a kick in the back, and the breath knocked out of him as he fell to the ground, flat on his face. He would be struggling to breath even as his mother was scratching, scratching, calling for him….
He reached the door to his mother's bedroom; it was cracked open. He ordered it to let him enter in a quiet, barely heard whisper. It slid open silently. All he saw at first was a guttering flame. His mother liked candles, lit them when she wanted to just sit in her favorite chair and relax, rocking slowly. The small flame danced on the end of it's wick, sending shadows skittering about the room, bouncing over the made bed, the uncluttered vanity and dressers, and his mother's favorite rocking chair.
And across his mother. She lay on the floor, wrapped in a silk robe, ruddy in the light of the flame. Her face was turned toward him, though her body faced away, and her arms and legs were sprawled in unnaturals angles from her body. Her eyes were open, and her lips moved, though no sound came out.
He heard the scratch again, and looked down. One finger from her right hand moved lightly against the wooden floor. He looked back at her face again. something glinted when she moved her mouth. He walked slowly toward her, thinking he should be trembling and screaming right now, his mother was dying on the floor! But another part of his mind was talking calmly to him. She's just sleeping, it said. The bed is too soft for her back, and she wants to sleep on the floor. Even as he tried to shove the thought away, trying so hard to cry out to someone to get help, he small legs bent, and he knelt down by her. The monkey fell unnoticed to the floor as he bent forward onto his hands, turning his head so that his ear was directly above her lips. The words were garbled and slow. Something was blocking her speech. So he rose back up slightly, and looked down at her mouth. There was something in there. He reached in, very slowly, very carefully, and lifted out a silver chain; and dangling from it an intricately wrought dragon, it's wings flared out, it's head thrown back, and sparkling silvery flames shooting from it's maw. He stared at the dragon as it swung back and forth on it's pendulum, then he looked back down at his mother. He bent down again, striving to hear.
"Take the dragon…be it's Keeper…" Over and over again she said this, softer each time, until air no longer filled her lungs, and the blood stopped in her veins. He stood and stared at her a long time, then finally put the chain over his head, hiding the charm in his pyjama shirt. Then he picked up his monkey, and went back to bed.
But before he fell asleep, a painfully familiar voice whispered in his ear, "You have killed me, my son...."
