A/N – for those who like music, I wrote this while listening to Spring 1 -2012 by Max Richter – it’s in the Aiasthlyn playlist on Spotify

Link to my Spotify is in my bio, but here too

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Malcolm

˚

My first memory? It’s nothing special, nothing different from the others.

There was blood. A lot of blood. It dripped from my fingers and poured from the stone table beneath me. Most of it flooded my mouth, the excess slipping from the seams while the rest clogged my straining throat. There was too much, enough already that I remembered the pain of a bloated stomach, but still it poured until I opened my eyes and choked.

Only then did they remove the limp body atop me, and the moment they did, I was wretching it all up.

It was a lot of blood. At least a gallon, likely more, and I returned it all onto the discarded bodies around me—a useless sacrifice on tainted stone.

Red. I remembered it all being red. The stone, the witches gleaming at me, the dead grass, the prone bodies— my body, and even while I shuddered, not knowing where I was or what I was, I knew then that I was the cause of the chaos around me, and I knew with a chilling certainty that I did not like it.

Much would follow that I would not like, but I learned soon enough to accept it because that was simply life.

That memory returns to me along with many others—a theatrical play of the past that my mind forces me to watch to fill the aching, endless solitude.

Asleep, the emptiness is its own heaven. Awake, it is agonising to lie in the darkness with nothing but hunger to keep you company.

There is quite literally nothing else. My coffin, which is built to keep every element barred, forbids me from hearing any other, not even a bird’s passing call. With no air or strength, I can not entertain myself with my own breath.

There is nothing. Nothing but my mind, and I know my thoughts too well to find commerce in them.

That leaves only the pieces of me I did not visit often, the memories I loathed, and the unknown that prompted all of this.

That vision with the water. The current of power. The need.

It leaves me with an entirely new form of hunger. It is like wanting for blood, like the chasm within my dried veins and the soreness within my gums, only this feeling is not sequestered to certain parts of my body. It does not even trouble my body at all.

The suffering is inflicted upon my soul, and how funny that this is how I discover that I have one. I always believed it was there, but I had no clue how to prove it.

I debated it once with Lincoln, though I suppose I debated it more with myself, since that had been at the start of our friendship when Lincoln considered me to be anything but a friend and refused conversation with the hope that it would drive me away.

It did not.

Instead, we embarked on a friendship that outlasted empires ten times over.

I wonder how he is, where he is. Sleeping like me? Or pretending to.
He did that often, simply lying still without actually allowing himself the rest. I still did not know if that was his way of punishing himself or simply a dull way to pass the time.

Anyway, to the debate. I argued that we did have one, even though I had no evidence to support it. Nothing but hope, which was a rare commodity, Lincoln once suggested I ‘stopped wasting on the fickle’.

Debating whether or not our kind held souls was not fickle to me.

In the end, I was unable to prove it, but I can now because I feel this distressing agony in a place I have never felt anything at all. It is not physical, but still just as real, and it is nothing dull like so many other emotions that slip through my fingers.

This pulsing warmth at the centre of myself is real and whole, and it is with my soul that I feel it— the need for this unknown power.

Gods, I sound like a madman. I feel like one, but the price of wisdom and age takes its toll in many ways. No mind, it will all clear with some blood and light.

I will be able to think properly, move and seek it out, whatever this is. Then, when it is all said and done, and I feed this soul-deep craving, I will spend some time to make sure Lincoln is not sequestering himself too deep within the bowels of his castle, ensure Wequie’s mend is still true and strong, and then perhaps stroll along a beach before crawling back into my coffin.

I did not think I would like it as much— the dark, the sleep, the rest.

I never gifted myself the treat, not for this long. I feared how the others would do without me too much to, and also, secretly, that this promised land’s honey would not be so sweet when I finally dared to taste it.

It was sweeter than I ever imagined. It was the deepest kindness I had ever felt.

Why Lincoln stole the respite as much as he did made more sense than it ever had before. Why deal with the world when you could be nothing? Not quite death because the end would be the start of something else, but a space in between where there was silence and stillness and freedom.

Freedom from the world and its many cruelities, and yes, sure, the loneliness that had consumed me when I first laid myself within this box was still there, as deep and true as if I had never left it at all, but it would all go away again once I chose the rest.

I would have already, if not for my soul’s hunger for the unknown.

I have always been too curious. Lincoln said it all the time. He said I cared too much about other things and others and how things affected others. Lincoln thought it better to care about nothing at all, which was why he hated me so much for making me care about him.

I just wanted a friend, a companion to make enduring the lonesomeness a little easier. If I had known that sleeping so deeply would take it all away, then I would never have bothered him with me.

I would not have followed him for years. I would not have followed anyone. I would not even be.

Too late for that now, though, and restrospections aside, I did not regret finding my best friend. We were always meant to be. Now, I only had to wait for my second closest companion to realise that I had woken far earlier than I promised, or later? I could not tell.

How much time had passed since I went under, and how much time since I had woken and been stuck within my own mind?

For all I knew, I was locked with these thoughts for far longer than I’d been asleep. Gods, I hoped not. Undoing madness with the mind that first courted it was so disheartening. Time-consuming as well, and time took enough as it was.

Lincoln said that was our greatest enemy— time. I never understood what he meant, not even when I thought I did. Not until now.

He was right, but Lincoln so often was. It was not even because he was the oldest of us, he simply understood life far more intimately than we might ever dream.

There were some of us who only saw the worst of it and told themselves to survive; they had to be as cruel and as wicked as the evil that had brought us into this world. And others, like me, who took too long to understand that kindness paid forth did not promise as kindness returned.

Lincoln was different.

He saw both sides and understood that there was still more beyond them. As quickly as Lincoln might end a life, he was the same man who would nurture it. He was giving and selfish, unfeeling and secretly overcome with emotions. He understood life, and I had tried for the entirety of mine to do the same, to be even a slight echo of the man he was…

But there was a reason why Lincoln was Lincoln and I was Malcolm.

Or maybe there was no reason at all. Maybe there was no ‘light’ at the end of my ‘tunnel’. Perhaps, this was all just life and nothing else.

…

…what was I thinking about?

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I am quickly becoming addicted to Malcolm’s thoughts. I want to live in this guy’s head.

Thoughts??????

Thoughts on our second Malcolm chapter??? Thoughts on his thoughts (hehe) this time around??????

I said this to the people who got the sneak peek, but I know it may be boring only getting Malcolm’s thoughts while he’s in this box, but I feel like its a perfect introduction to get to know him, how he thinks, what he feels and his past because by the time he gets out, it’s going to be full steam ahead.

I feel like we’re really getting to know him before we see him with Aias which shouldn’t be tooo long away now that Aias has met Kalem!

All that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!!! I don’t think I’ll get another out before the end of the month, but there should be another right at the start of next month – I’ll keep you posted!!!!

Remember to vote and comment if you enjoyed! It helps and I read them all!

Next up, I’ll be working on the remaining Patreon extras for this month – Luciel takes Peter on a date and Wequie shows Mekhi his succubus form.

Oh! And incase you missed it, I wrote a one-shot for free on my website of a random couple, here’s a link

Until next time,

Byeeeeeee Humanssssssssss