Poison Elves Fan Fiction

"No One Knows What it's Like to Be the Bad Man, To be the Sad Man,
Behind Blue Eyes."

By: Mary Ciccocioppo
Inspired by characters created by Drew Hayes.

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"NYAR! FORNICATOR!!! ONCE AGAIN WE MEET, AND IT SEEMS THY HEAD IS MADE OF SOME IMPENETRABLE MATERIAL!! THE WORDS OF THE MARAUDER BURN WITH TERRIBLE ACCURACY NOW, DO THEY NOT? PATHETIC!! YES, PATHETIC YOU ARE, LYING HERE ON YOUR BACK, WITH ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME!!! YES!! NYAR! THE EVIL SHE-ELF, WITH WHOM YOU SPENT, YEA, MANY A SORDID HOUR IN SINFUL PLEASURE LEADS YOU NOW INTO RAPTURELESS KA-KA!!! PERHAPS YOU HAVE NOW LEARNED THE FOLLY OF YOUR MISGUIDED WAYS AND WILL COME TO SEE MY LIGHT OF REASON!!!"

With some pain caused by acute annoyance and disorientation, Lusiphur opened his eyes and focused on the long, hairy legs and copiously waxed mustache of an old nemesis.

"Crow. What the hell?--"

"NYAR!! ADMIT IT NOW TO YOURSELF OH FOOLISH ONE!! THE HELL YOU LIVE IN IS THE RESULT OF AN OVER-ATTACHMENT TO--AAACK!!!"

The Marauder wasn't quite able to finish his sentence before his supply of oxygen was cut off. With excruciating clarity, the memories came rolling back into Luse's cloudy consciousness. Cassie was dead. The Purple Marauder was somehow hunched over his horizontal form, his heavily-powdered face not more than 4 inches from his own. Really, what would you do? Cold rage mounting, Lusiphur reached up and clamped one gloved hand around his tormentor's throat and was on his feet in lighting speed.

"Aaack ack!" The Marauder clutched feebly at the tightening fingers as the elvin assassin reached around to the small of his back to pull General from its sheath. The sickening revulsion Lusiphur felt at touching what he considered the hairiest freak of nature in all of Amrahlynn was somewhat alleviated by the knowledge that The Purple Marauder was slowly, and painfully, asphyxiating.

"Listen, you purple fruitcake, this has been a long time in coming," Lusiphur gritted, "Wrong time, wrong subject." The Purple Marauder opened his mouth in a feeble attempt to "Nyar" his captor. In the moment it takes to blink, General was in motion, and the Marauder discovered his tongue lying on the floor. Blood welled up in his mouth like a fountain and gurgled horribly as he tried to scream. Lusiphur revelled in the sound for a moment before he plunged his large dagger under the Purple Marauder's ribcage and into his heart. The only sound then was was the hollow thud as the Marauder's body slumped to the ground. Almost stupefied, Lusiphur gazed at the corpse. Dead. The continuously-annoying, woman-hating, gold-stealing, drag-show-reject was dead by his hand, finally. So why didn't it feel as satisfying as he always imagined it would be?

"It'll never happen, ya know."

Lusiphur looked up quickly and his heart sank. Parintachin's body was materializing through a wall about 20 feet away. That could only mean--

"You know this is a dream, right? Is it safe to come in yet?" Parintachin half grinned as he pulled his body into the room.

"Oh, crow!" Lusiphur cried in complete frustration as he pulled his gun and aimed for the jester's head.

"Wait!!" Parintachin cried, waving his arms in alarm, "Luse, whatever you do, don't shoot!!"

BLAM!!

Too late. Parintachin ducked just in time as the report echoed loudly and burst a large, smoking hole in the back wall.

"Oh shit. SHIT!!" Parintachin yelled, quickly running to the breach. Lusiphur was momentarily puzzled out of his rage as he watched Parintachin trying feverishly to block the opening with his gloved hands. A low, female moan had begun to issue through the aperture. As he stood in stupid bewilderment, the moan grew increasingly louder. Luse clearly heard a heart-rending sobbing filled with pain and anguish and it seemed to be calling his name in a voice that sounded very much like--

"Oh, damn! Your shirt, Luse."

"What?"

"Take off your shirt and throw it here!"

"Parintachin, what are you---"

"Ask me in a minute, right now, GIVE ME YOUR GODDAMN SHIRT!!"

Luse had never heard such an urgent tone in Parintachin's voice and he blindly pulled the red shirt over his head and lobbed it into the jester's waiting hands. Losing no time, Parintachin began stuffing the shirt into the hole, feverishly trying to block the opening and the sound emanating from it.

Lusiphur finally had a moment to examine his surroundings. He was inside some kind of poorly-built wooden room. There were no windows in the warped, slatted walls. the floor was in a similar condition, half-rotted and covered with thick, fluffy dust. the ceiling was in worse shape. From the peaked roof leaked some kind of liquid--probably water--in various places. Someone had tried to reinforce the sagging sections, and a plethora of buckets had been carefully positioned all around the room to catch the drippings. It was a shit-hole backwoods cabin for all intents and purposes.

"Ha!! Bob Vila, you can kiss my ass," Parintachin said finally, admiring his handiwork. he had successfully plugged the hole, and the red of Luse's shirt gave the impression that the cabin itself had been wounded.

Parintachin turned around to Lusiphur with a frown. Luse noticed that instead of his usual garb, Par was wearing a black shirt that stated, in white block letters, "My Ride Went to Hell And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." In a different frame of mind, Luse might have asked what it meant, but he suspected that any answer given by Parintachin would really be no answer at all.

Brushing the enigmatic statement aside, Luse said, "All right. I'm dreaming. Where the hell am I?" and then remembering the woman's moaning, "And what the hell is out there?"

"What's out there? What's out there?! It's your screwed-up subconsciousness, Luse old pal, that's what. Trust me, you don't want to be out there right now. This little hell-hole the two of us are standing in is currently all that remains of your sane, rational, logical-thinking self. Not that it ever was a palatial mansion, mind you, but it has certainly seen better days."

"What are you saying?" Luse's eyes closed to slits. He really hated Parintachin's mysterious explanations.

"Okay, you need me to put it plainly? Cassie's death is ungluing you, man. You'll survive of course, you always do, but it all depends on your definition of 'living.'"

"Shut up." Luse said, turning away, finding he suddenly didn't like where this conversation was going.

"You think revenge is reason enough for living, right? Fine. Yeah, make the bastards pay, you say. Screw with my life and I annihilate yours, right? Great. And when you've finally tracked down everyone who may have been marginally responsible--not barring the barbers who cut their frickin' hair--then what? A pile of dead bodies, no problem, but CASSIE IS STILL DEAD. Are ya getting me now?" Parintachin approached the assassin, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Lusiphur was rapidly losing patience.

Luse felt the old cold rage welling up again. Whenever he heard her name, images of her smiling face, her understanding eyes, would creep unbidden into his thoughts, along with an empty, sick feeling of loss. "Par," he began, warningly.

"Life is a game of Russian Roulette, pal. One bullet and a myriad chances to blow your brains out. The question is, what do you do when you've emptied the chamber, right?"

Lusiphur grabbed the back of Parintachin's neck and placed the muzzle of his gun against the clown's head.

"I don't know, Par, maybe you'd like to demonstrate."

"Hey, Luse," Parintachin began nervously, "I'm not your enemy. I've been Mary Tyler Moore-ing it around your skull for the past few days just trying to keep things together."

"I don't get you, Parintachin!" Luse yelled in frustration, "What the hell are you? you keep going on about how you are some kind of head-maintenance for elves or something. Why do you keep doing this shit to me?" Lusiphur asked angrily, pressing the gun harder.

"Oh, are we back to that again? Well, for one, I'd like to continue to wake up in your holly-jolly subconsciousness each morning. You haven't exactly been making that a cake walk. Now, can you ease off with the gun? I'm only doing my job."

"What exactly is that, Parintachin? Seems to me you cause more trouble than you're worth!"

"Me? ME?!! I cause you trouble? Who gave you the idea to strap your gun to your back before the trial, huh? Who warned you that it was time to ditch Sanctuary? Huh? HUH?!!" Parintachin was morbidly indignant.

Suddenly a horrifying thought struck Lusiphur. He backed away. "You--you knew this was going to happen!"

"Oh shit," Parintachin thought as the fire began to blaze afresh in Lusiphur's pain-crazed blue eyes.

"You knew about the trial, you knew about Cassie!" in a spasm of rage, Lusiphur grabbed the front of Parintachin's shirt and pushed him roughly against the feeble cabin wall. "You knew she was being set-up. 'Cassie will catch up to you,' you said, when all along you knew she was never coming back! Why didn't you tell me?!"

"Luse, Luse! I'm not a damn prophet! Things were headed in a certain direction. It didn't take a pre-cognitive genius to see that!" Parintachin sputtered.

"Like hell it didn't!"

"And if I did know, and if I had told you, what could you have done? Maybe go in with guns blazing and have gotten yourself killed. Wow!! What a great idea! You're an elf, for the love of Mike, you have all of eternity before you if you don't fuck it up!"

Luse angrily let go of Parintachin and turned away. The jester decided that this was as close as Luse was going to come to being receptive to advice.

"Look, Luse," he began in a somewhat calmer tone, "what's done is done. You have to let Cassandra go and figure out what you are going to do once you've finished killing off half of the city. You're not seeing the big picture here and--oh great."

Luse turned back to Parintachin to see a steady stream of water from the ceiling cascading off the bells attached to his lopsided jester's cap. Sighing deeply, Par extended his hand and a fresh bucket materialized in his gloved fingers. With the attitude of one who is long-suffering, the undead clown backed out of the path of the new leak and gingerly positioned the bucket to catch the dripping.

He looked at Luse meaningfully, "See what I'm talking about?"

"I'm causing that?" Lusiphur asked incredulously.

"No, the King of Siam is causing it...of course you're causing it! This is your subconsciousness, after all. I just live here. Every moment you dwell on your present situation with no thought of your future this ungodly wreck springs another leak and the thing outside gets worse."

"The thing outside--"

"Is fucked-up, Luse." Parintachin finished. "Now, you're through with Sanctuary. That much is abundantly clear. You have to look at the big picture. You are alive and in relatively good health--well, physical anyway. Where to now?"

"I never look at the big picture, Par, you should know that by now." Luse was feeling weary.

"No shit. Maybe that's why you keep getting yourself into these messes," Parintachin stated ironically.

"Crow, Par. I can't think. All i can think about is, is--"

"I know, I know. Cassie--and revenge." Parintachin approached Luse and sympathetically put a hand on the elf's shoulder. "You probably don't think so now, but things could be a hell of a lot worse. You could be in Marvin Allen's shoes."

"Who?!"

"Uh, never mind. Look, you still have a friend out there, a couple of them actually. Find them," Parintachin said.

"What? Who? Parintachin, you've got someone specific in mind, don't you? Is this another one of your damn cryptic omens?"

"Aw, Luse, get a grip." The jester could see that the assassin was dangerously close to losing his temper again.

"no, no," Luse grimaced, shut his eyes, and grabbed his head, "you said this is all in my mind, right?"

"Luse."

"Right?! This shitty cabin, that--whatever it is outside, and I'm dreaming, right?" he said angrily.

"Luse."

"And you...you don't fit in at all! Maybe I'm so fucked up that I've created you too! Could I be that masochistic? Yeah, probably. But isn't everything else enough?!" Luse pulled his gun. "Maybe I can get rid of you if I pump you full of enough lead..."

"So, I'm a figment of your imagination, is that it?" Parintachin looked warily at the gun.

"Yeah. You aren't real. Crow, maybe none of this is real!" Luse advanced on Parintachin menacingly.

"So what if I'm gone?" Par asked, "Your problems don't change! GodDAMMIT Luse, you're running out of time and I'm running out of buckets! You want to know what I am? Fine!" Parintachin grabbed the front of Luse's chain mail shirt, "Right now, I'm your goddamn shrink and I'm the only one who will tell you what you don't want to hear. I'm the only one who will tell you how it is!!"

At that moment, the entire cabin began to sway. The sound of creaking and cracking boards echoed loudly in the nearly empty room. And the Luse saw something he hadn't noticed...or maybe it hadn't been there before: a door.

"I'm getting the hell out of here." Lusiphur stated resolutely and pushed roughly past Parintachin.

"Don't do it, Luse."

It was too late. Lusiphur opened the door, fully prepared for whatever chaotic mess he had unknowingly created. In the back of his mind Luse envisioned a horde of slavering demons waiting to devour what was left of his sanity. He was NOT prepared for what he actually saw.

Lusiphur Malache had walked out of a dilapidated cabin and back into Cassie's old room in Sanctuary. But what stunned the assassin more was the fact that Cassie was lying on the bed--the bed that they had shared--looking just as alive as the last time he had seen her, had held her.

"What?" he whispered.

"Hey you," Cassie teased, "what the hell took you so long?"

"Cassie?" was all that Luse could manage.

Cassie giggled, "Well at least you still remember my name. What's wrong with you? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"You-you're dead."

Cassie didn't look convinced. "Oh, really? And tell me, did you see a body?" she asked as she slid off the bed and walked slowly towards him.

Lusiphur balked. It was true...he hadn't actually seen her body, but, "Dendrin...the papers..." Lusiphur began, wondering why he was trying to defeat the second chance that he had seemingly been given.

"Oh, well, if Dendrin said it, then golly, it must be true, right?" Cassie smiled laughingly and put her strong, slender arms around Luse's neck. He could feel her body against his, the warmth. This couldn't be a dream.

"Crow, what the hell does Dendrin know, anyway?" Luse smiled as Cassie bent down and touched her lips to his...

"Luse!!!"

Lusiphur heard Parintachin's ragged cry at the same time Cassie began to feel cold in his arms. Startled, he backed away and watched in horror as Cassie's body began to fade into an intangible mist. As she melted away, Cassie began to sob plaintively. Her face expressed inutterable sorrow and her grieving moan began to take on an almost physical form. The sound seemed to wrap around Luse, crushing him. Blood ran in a river from Cassie's neck and the last thing Luse saw as she completely disappeared was her outstretched arms desperately reaching for him.

"No!" Lusiphur clutched feverishly as the illusion vanished. Now only her voice remained, increasing in pitch and volume until it seemed to be the only real, undeniable force present. It was a burden so heavy that Lusiphur felt his knees buckle and his vision blurred.

But Luse's instincts told him that something else had entered the room, something he was familiar with, something almost welcome. Struggling to keep back tears he raised his heavy head. Somehow he wasn't surprised to see the mirror image of himself standing before him, drenched in blood, Cinlach in hand. A twisted, sadistic grin leered down at him. "Yeah," Luse thought remorselessly, "Yeah, this is it."

By this time, Cassie's crying had reached a fever pitch. He couldn't move but he didn't care either. And then he became faintly aware that someone had pulled his own sword out of its sheath.

It was Parintachin.

The last thing he saw before everything became totally surreal was the jester blocking a mighty downward swing meant to cut him in two.

Images began to flash through Luse's fevered subconsciousness: Death, love, cruelty, revenge, brief flashes of pleasure and pain--lots of pain. he saw Hyena again, his mother, Lirilith, and even Tenth's undeniable smirk. He remembered the Gilles Root withdrawal, guns, and cold steel. He felt anger and sadness, unbearable heat and intense cold. He knew emptiness. And overriding it all was Cassie's face, still and lifeless...and uncontrollable hatred for every living being on the planet.

"Don't give in to it, Luse." He thought he heard Parintachin say from somewhere far away.

*it's who I am. It's all I am.*

"Luse, I want you to live." This time is was Cassie's soft voice.

Slowly the fog began to dissipate.

"Cassie?" he whispered.

"Cassie is gone, Luse." Parintachin's voice was clear and he found himself lying back in the dripping cabin. Parintachin was nowhere in sight.

"Let her go, Lusiphur."

Luse gazed at the sagging ceiling feeling half on the threshold of oblivion while Par's voice echoed around him. He remembered her face, her tears, but most of all, he remembered her complete love--possibly the only untainted thing he had ever known.

With a tone of finality Luse replied, "No, Parintachin. I'm not ready to. Somehow I don't think I ever will."

**************

With a jolt, Lusiphur woke and sat up in a cold sweat. Images of his dream returned with all the crushing weight of reality. With a shudder, Luse leaned forward, burying his head in his hands, and wept.

FIN