Black Rose Immortal.

A lone leaf fell from a now bare branch, twirling around in the breeze before landing gently on the ground, the soft grass cushioning its descent. Ends curling inwards, its death was a haphazard mix of red and gold, with a hint of its previous green barely peeking through.

“I witnessed your beauty, felt your death…”

The murmured sentence was followed by a low snort, the derision of the taller of the two evident.

“Please. Don’t compare me to a leaf.” It was nothing short of a sneer, pale eyes narrowing further as cracked and blistered lips curled slightly, his skin a pale and hollowed out picture of what it used to be.

“But you were beyond all help…”

Those eyes, always so cold, widened fractionally, a hint of madness and a fury unimaginable only just perceptible. Those hands, now thin but still strong, reached out to run its palms across the silken hair of the other, before clenching into fists and pulling tight.

The pained hiss pleased him.

“I was ruined before you knew me, poet.” The acrid scent of chemicals filled the air between the two, a promise of decay.

And yet he continued. “With your embrace, so tainted…”

A growl; he’s provoked. “I’ll show you tainted… Tainted is what we did last night, tainted is when you beg for it, tainted is when you just sit and watch as I pump that shit into my veins.” The muscles in his neck are pulled taut, his back is rigid, and his teeth are dull accessories in a mouth now grinning in some sort of satisfaction only understood by someone else as ill-wired as he.

And yet he still smiled, his hair caught within the grip of pure volatility, and his eyes caught within the gaze of a man unwilling to claw his way back from a life dependent on the smaller and smaller rushes given to him by those muddy rocks. It was barely a whisper, but it was heard, and it was hated.

“A lamentation I sigh, again and again…”

The scent of iron assaults his nose as a fist hits its target, and the poet stumbles, his footing lost and his face shouting of something wrong. His eyes lift upwards, to see golden strands caught between the fingers of those pale, thin hands, hands with burns and calluses, hands with an uneasy past.

And yet he once again asks for it, for the sweet rush of pain, for the hatred of the other to flood over to him. A lick of his lips assures him that it’s blood flowing from his nose, and it only drives him to take the final step.

“In the name of desperation, I call your name…”

A bite, a scratch.

“At night I always dream of you…”

A rip, a pull.

“Am I to bid you farewell?”

A push, a shove.

“Why can’t you see that I try…”

A gasp, a cry.

“When every tear I shed, is for you?”

A kiss, a lie.

“I love you… somehow.”






\OPETH/ : )