This was sent a while back to the gmail account. It arrived after the deadline, but I'm pretty sure I never posted the deadline on G+, which is where this person comes from. That's my fault, so I'm not eager to penalize him. Plus, I think we need this piece for hole-filling due to some NAI votes.
Please excuse the inevitably horrible formatting.
Grasping Phantoms
By Kristoffer Richard D’Amato
They had always known each other but had never spoken. The patterns repeated and churned along. Across waters and time; their story was told in every conceivable fashion. Every moment filled with new possibilities, it was their story because it was our story.
You’ve always known the story; the moments of our lives repeating. Lost between the text of decaying chapters being burnt.
Books burning.
Were burning.
Always burning.
Are burning.
Never burning.
I knew this book. I had spread my fingers between these pages but we hadn’t reached that part yet.
………………………………………………………………….
If not for the clacking of the keys he wouldn’t know how to breathe and bound in the tomes of his forgotten screeds was the defiant word that survived but today he was staring into the eyes of faces he hadn’t met.
She was a memory in a forgotten dream.
She was the aether and he was every bit of her being. He felt her lungs burn. He felt her stretch; he flowed through. He pushed himself out of her lungs
Cold.
Chill truth as he began twisting in the churning air. No up, no down; with no positive form, he began to count the dimensions.
She sauntered out of the inn. He felt her. How did he get here? Her eyes as big as church steeples, her teeth as sharp as razors; he knew those lips. The red spilled upon her blood soaked gown. The red was alive upon her lips. How did he know the taste? She delicately licked her lips. She gently bit her bottom lip. A twisted smile crept across her face. She was enveloped by the night.
Swoop.
A fog ran across the river. Forgotten memories twisting before the eyes of the damned; this was oblivion. It felt completely out of order. It was as if he had already watched this invisible stalker cut his throat. He had watched it before.
“Oh maker, why have I watched this before? Why do I keep watching?” His mind cried out.
“Why do you torment me with these impossible visions? Why do you cloud my eyes?” His body cried.
“Why do the words go out of focus as the tears stain my cheeks?” His spirit consumed his mind.
“What is this light?”
………………………………………………………………….
I am we. You were me. They were we. We were three. Spirit, Mind, and Body; released from the vault. Released from my prison, you were uncaged. I was the moon that bound you.
………………………………………………………………….
The stars began to shine. The black expanse of the witching hour brought that dreadful fog. I could feel their fear. It ran through me. Twisting me.
“Stop!”
I floated from face to face. I peered into their minds.
Shackles.
“Beast let me go.”
She blinked and continued walking down the alley way along the water by cover of moonless night. No breath taken. No step issued. She sank her fangs.
“Please stop, I beg you. Don’t make me watch this. Don’t force me to see through your eyes.”
Her vision twisted and he could see the face of the man that had murdered him. He could taste the warmth leaving his body. His fright, his fear, blew away like ash in the breeze. He felt those eyes and he could finally see.
“I killed you, so you could know me?”
His body crumpled into the muck.
“Leave me phantom.” She thought.
“My quarrel is not with you. You are avenged. Do not interfere. Find your own peace.”
………………………………………………………………….
He had been her, he had seen into his soul. The stalker was meant to be murdered.
He felt the stories of every murder weigh upon his mind; every twisted demon and every reckless phantom. He wanted to cry at the horror of the nightmares he had witnessed. He wanted to despair at every wicked deed he had ever done. He recalled his pleas to the angels; he wept in the presence of their beauty.
“Our prayers were answered by the very monsters that tried to destroy us?”
Oh, but the kindnesses he’d felt. Every warm touch of a mother’s hand, every grain of wheat threshed, he knew the story. He had released those demons. He had answered all their prayers and every living soul had prayed for her return. He was Avacyn. He was every one. He had prayed. He swung her sword. He had tried to kill her.
………………………………………………………………….
Lost in the movements of ordinary lives are a thousand untold stories. He waited for the Saint. He prayed for their deliverance.
He needed to see through his eyes. He had to die.
“Please Waves; don’t pull me further from shore. Let me stand upon this land a moment more. Please let me be at peace. Desist. I am not deceased.”
………………………………………………………………….
“I was not loved but I was respected, it’s all so clear through this young man’s eyes. I was the monster hiding in his closet.”
“His father was my rival and the skeletons we buried were darker than our shame could bear. These weren’t just ravings.”
Just as quickly he was lost again. Deserted by those eyes, he slipped back into the fog.
………………………………………………………………….
“One would think I was a ghost.”
………………………………………………………………….
“Floating with the esper, drowning in the aether, I was every life. I can’t control my ascent.”
Every time he floated out of body, he felt the pull of another set of eyes. Some called out, some trapped him; there was awful magic at work.
“This realm of being was created in the darkest waters and I AM. This universe must fall out of darkness. I must remember the order of these operations.”
“I must remember.”
………………………………………………………………….
He had fashioned her! He felt this planeswalker’s spark. He touched the edge of his knowledge. He knew the real shape of the universe. This planeswalker sensed my presence and shut the gates into his mind. No longer content for blood. He had broken through to the other world. The planeswalker’s proxy was moving him in dimensions that he couldn’t imagine. He could see the gaps in his presence. He was being pulled in millions of directions. His actions fell beyond borders. Farther than the moon could pull.
As this planeswalker’s shadow burned, he felt himself flung into the murky abyss; falling deeper and darker.
A lighthouse blinked out of existence.
“I feel the presence of great hands shuffling me, bending me. I feel all of my existences.”
“I’ve been exiled. Alone. Out of time; out of mind.”
“Why can’t I focus? Remember, the angels had come. It was the angels that set us free and I had been those angels. I was called upon by Sorin for Avacyn’s return. I was formless. We were formless and he formed us.”
………………………………………………………………….
“Who were we? Were we ever more than ghosts in fog?”
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