Speak not of the damned, for they deserve no name.

[our decadency]

It was funny, she thought, that the culmination of a life she had been so attached to (and all of the material things in it) had resulted in this state of psuedo-existance. She regretted now, everything that had once been so important to her. Regret was a nasty little bugger who'd snuck up on her during the night, when she was elbow deep in the unfortunate young waiter from the cafe. She regretted that he was dead, lamented that she still lived because of him -- there would be no more loosely tied aprons around his waist, which she found endearing, somehow.

Endearing. What did she know about that? What did she know about anything? Other than malice, spite and anger. She knew revenge, she knew the art of murder, of torture, of pain. The poor waiter was shown mercy and for a fleeting moment, while bloody fingertips closed the eyelids over his wide brown eyes, she considered the options. She didn't have to be alone. But she wouldn't make anyone pay such a terrible price because of her own lonely, self-pitying evenings. It would have the same result in the end, anyway. Solitary was her existence, it was what she had become accustomed to, despite her best efforts otherwise.

It struck her then, as she watched the pinkened water swirl down the drain, leaving rusty ringlets in it's wake, that she had never truly learned anything from her experiences in life, or in death. The only lesson she could draw from any of it was that life and there hereafter were both terribly unfair.



She'd thought her heart had broken with the loves lost. She thought she knew what love was but the reality of the situation was that she did not. She had never loved anyone more than she had loved Francesca. She had never valued a soul over her own -- she had never believed in the soul in the first place. So what was she flailing around for now? What was she so terribly upset about that it became a struggle to drag herself down the street? The fact of the matter was that Francesca had never loved or lost anything. She had played at feelings, convincing herself that it was true -- but it wasn't. She hadn't lost. She hadn't won. There was nothing to lose and nothing to gain from a relationship that had no true underlying feelings. To be in love, one must be loved and she had never been truly loved in return, by anyone.

And if she had (but she was positive she hadn't), they had a funny way of showing it.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ March 10, 2004 02:51 PM: Message edited by: our decadency ]</font>

[our decadency]

Becoming a memory was far more easy than Francesca had ever expected. It was as if she had simply faded away one day, without rhyme or reason, from the minds of all she had once known. It was slightly disconcerting, but understandable all the same. She knew it was bound to happen but hadn't imagined it would be so quickly. Though she had never imagined that she would find herself in any spot like this. What normal person did?

She had an enternity to put together the peices of a puzzle she had drawn and destroyed herself. It was funny how it worked, wasn't it? So many times before, he had been there to pick up the pieces with her. For her. Now, she was alone. Fending for herself through thick and thin, until some fortunate day it would all end. Who wanted eternal life anyway? Especially when there were no meaningful conversations to be had anymore, when your heartstrings were so frayed that eternity didn't seem long enough to heal them. Time didn't heal all wounds -- especially when you knew you had as much as you could ever need. As much as eighty lifetimes... that kind of pain never subsides.

There had been someone once who understood her divinely, who pressed his palm against her cheek and brushed his lips across her head. He was the one whose arms she felt safe in, he was the only one to chip so effectively at the icy exterior she'd been so used to hiding behind. It was as if Francesca were trapped beneath the ice of a lake and he'd somehow fished her out -- and then threw her back. She wasn't good enough, she knew it. He knew it. But he let her thaw, taught her how to breathe again and speak and move... and then she was tossed away. Tossed back into the expanse of time and space, only this time it was permanent. She was sealed beneath her layers of ice, frozen in a desert.

The coffee turned to ash in her mouth, though it might have been ash in the first place -- Il Cantinone, on the corner of Via Santo Spirito and Via Maggio in Florence, Italy, had never been especially well known for it's coffee -- she couldn't tell.

"Signorina?" A deep baritone filled her ears, shook her from her reverie. Oh, the waiter. Such a handsome young man, only in his early twenties, with a smile that made the American girls swoon.

"Mm. No, grazie." Why a refill would be needed was beyond her, as she hadn't taken more than a sip in the first place. But he smiled anyway, nodded politely and she noticed the sloppy way he'd tied the knot on his apron as he wandered away. The little things had always been the most overlooked in dear Francesca's life.

But life had left her long ago and she was reduced to an over-analytical pile of ice... untouchable, insatiable and unhappy.



<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ March 10, 2004 12:45 AM: Message edited by: our decadency ]</font></font>

<font color="#FF9933 " size="1">[ October 22, 2004 10:07 PM: Message edited by: a beautiful letdown ]</font>

[our decadency]

She felt it. Pulsating beneath her skin, her synapses firing and snapping every other time her bones shifted, the searing pain throbbing between her temples... ohhh, she felt it. When he set foot in the city, her limbs burned and her skin bristled. She wondered what he was doing in Italy, if he was seeking her out -- it wouldn't be hard. Even in a city so large, it wouldn't be hard. Not with the blood that coursed through her veins, like an extra-sensory radar.

The faintest tingle in a long dead heart not only confused her, but it hurt. It was physical pain that made it difficult to walk down the street toward the cafe (minus her favorite waiter) that she popped into nearly everyday. She wanted to stop. She wanted to turn, to look at him -- look through him -- with every inch of spite and malice that she could possibly conjure... but as she neared the doors and passed the windows, the pain was unbearable. She could feel him. She could smell him. She could taste him. It was all too overwhelming, leaving her reeling through a tiny group of American girls, chattering over a map in a heated debate. She couldn't remember English to hear what they were saying, but she knew that they were calling out to her.

"Miss! Miss! Oh uh -- signorina! Are you...okay? Uh. Come sta?" Do-gooders. Fucking do-gooders. She hated them.

Francesca was waving away the little blond who persisted that she find out what was wrong with this woman, who was pale as a ghost and looked sick to her stomach. But Francesca ignored her, lashed out in angry Italian words and the girl seemed to get the idea. Goodness. What was the world coming to? People asking other people (who weren't really people anymore) if they were all right?! Francesca couldn't hear anymore, she couldn't even pretend to breathe. The whole of her being froze, for a split second, her brown eyes fixated on the abandoned alleyway in front of her -- and she fell to her knees. Her palms met the angry cement, skin splitting open when the sharp fragments of glass and stone beneath them was crushed by the weight of her foreward tilt. Her head spun still, grasping at the strings of thought but coming short by mere centimeters. There was never a time that she had felt quite like this, never. No man could produce such a violent reaction from the stoic Italian ice princess. But he was no man.

He was Ethan. And he was back.

[our decadency]

I think I assumed that it would be forever. Why kiss someone with the gift of eternity if you didn't intend spend it with them? I understand now, through months of tormenting myself with all of the 'what-if's,' that he did it for a reason. He was lonely, he was desperate not to let me go -- and he didn't look into the future. He never intended for an eternity to be there, he never intended it to extend beyond that one night. He never loved me. He never needed me. I was never the air he breathed, because he didn't. I didn't keep his heart beating, because it didn't beat. I meant nothing to him, nothing more than a pretty girl who'd gotten herself into a stupid mess. He helped me from the mess, he pulled me from the ashes and made me into a pheonix, my own personal savior, but I crucified him. No, no. He crucified himself.

I never drove him away, he drove me away. He never talked about his past, he never imagined the future. He was never really there, he was only a shell. I fell in love with a shell of man, the shell of a soul, the shadow of a martyr who was already in love with a memory that he would never forget. I should have known better.

Now I find myself back in Firenze, scrawling my thoughts down in ink for there are no ears to listen to me. I have no one. I have nothing. I am the faceless shadow lurking in the tiny alleyways, I am the rainclouds smothering out the sun. I am nothing. I am nameless, I am faceless, I scare small children and meet very few people. I pity myself. I loathe myself. I abhor humanity and resent nature for it's uninhibited beauty. I do not feel remorse for the lives that I have taken, I have no emotion. I do not feel pain, but I hunger. There is no guilt in my life and there is very little humor. But I think it's funny that it ended up this way... because it'll be this way until the end of time.

I am sure of three things:
- I will never again find a shell to love like the one I had in Ethan, no matter how much time I am given.
- If death were to take me tomorrow, I may welcome him with open arms...
- I need to stop dwelling on the past and look for the future. The future is my only hope and there is an abundance of it.

[our decadency]

I miss him. Dear God I miss him... everytime I move, I feel him. I miss his voice, I miss the ever brooding look... I miss him. I feel like the shell now. I know he thinks I abandoned him, but he abandoned me. Long before I left, he abandoned me.

I can feel him in the air like a sickening electrical buzz. If I move, take one false step, I'm going to fry for eternity -- but he won't let me go so easily. I know him. I know him better than he thinks I do. He assumed that I never listened, that I cared about me and only me... but I heard everything, I caught even the tiniest of twitches.

I wonder if it's love or if it's obsession. Two co-dependent pathetic shells of once beautiful beings, leaning against eachother for support but crippling beneath the weight. He can't fight my battles for me, he can't save me from anything but himself and even then he doesn't. There was no talk of the future with Ethan, there was no hint of the past. He simply existed, like this was his punishment and I was simply a fortunate mistake that was around to keep him company. It's not that I feel bitter -- yes it is. I'm bitter for all of the time wasted upon him, bitter for becoming this blood-sucking, disgusting creature that I am. I loathe him for not being strong enough to move forward from the depths of his past, for not loving me as much as I loved him. I gave everything for him. My husband, my heart, my life. I gave him everything and he repaid me with a lukewarm sentiment, every now and then, that was never as fiery and passionate as Lucky was. I do not miss Lucky, only his adoration for me. It's as shallow as a soul can be -- but I want to be loved like that again. Ethan would never go to the ends of the earth for me, he would never walk through fire or give himself up to whatever greater force was threatening to take me. He would, I suppose, if it were beneficial to him in some way... but never just because he loved me. Maybe he never did love me, maybe he was infatuated with me. I will never know because he never speaks. He looks at me as if I should be aware, as if I should already know what he's thinking -- and sometimes I do. But I can't predict his feelings for me, especially if they're only skin deep.

He has no soul. I have no soul. Soul-less-mates do not exist and if they did, he would not be mine. At least, I don't think he would be.

But god, I miss him. I couldn't miss him so much if there wasn't something there in the first place. I'm such a liar. I lie to make myself feel better and I know it.

Ethan loved me. He adored me. And I fucked it up.

[our decadency]

When trouble arose, Francesca fled. Ethan was trouble and Francesca ran from him -- back to America. Back to where it all began... to the place where it may all end.

A woman who has no soul will steal your heart--
poison it and make it hers,
she will turn it black and make it dance...
keep it at her fingertips,
watch it pulsate to life every now and again--
to be crushed back into despair by an iron grip.

No one says that pretty girls smile.

Francesca couldn't remember what it felt like to smile... couldn't recall happiness. And she wouldn't find it where she was going either.

[our decadency]

Separation anxiety. That's what it was. An overwhelming sense of panic, planted firmly on top of a useless ribcage (for Francesca had no heart to protect), threatening to press the very life from her body. If she had a soul, she was sure this dead weight would be trying to force it heavenward; luckily, that was a worry she need not possess. Separation Anxiety. She had been separated from him before, though the gravity of the situations were not like these. Ethan would be fit to kill her, she knew, fit to make her pay for the pain she'd inflicted upon him. She deserved whatever she was getting, though this had not been part of the plan. Like a cold cadaver, perched upon her breastplate, this sickening force was creating a clamy emptiness just below the surface. Like a heroin addict who needed a fix, she stumbled along sidestreets and crisscrossed through alleyways, searching blindly for him and knowing that he was not there. He would never be there, never as he had been before. Change did not work to her advantage, certainly not when she was the one who wove it into motion -- the one who had the blame slain at her feet.

Mi manca. Mi manca. Mi manca. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. Written a thousand times over, like a sadistic hail mary, aimed to direct her soul back toward the path of salvation. But there was no salvation left in Ethan, there were only the remains of a relationship that she lamented for hours. There was a foundation to build upon, but Francesca was too skittish to try to find him. She feared that he had already turned on her (because she would have turned on him had he done the same pathetically dispicable things to her) and would not be so reasonable this time around -- though their love had hardly ever been reasonable. Still, she did not go back. She stayed in her newfound city, picking off the poor beggar men who dared cross her path and sucking streetwalkers dry.

There had to be something to occupy her time -- and there was, his name was Micah. As hostile as a tiger backed into a corner, as precious as a rattlesnake -- fighting with him, exchanging unpleasantries and meeting in dark alleyways to scald one another with insults was enough to keep her fears and qualms about Ethan at bay. For the time being. It was only a matter of time before the pretty kitty bored her. But that time had not come and Francesca, much to her own dismay, found it amusing to torment the poor soul.

Here, Micah. A pretty new shirt, just for you. The note read in her delicate handwriting (which seemed not to suit the ghastly evil woman), taped to a perfectly wrapped white package with a perfectly tied little black bow. His pretty new shirt lay inside, amidst of sanguine pool of her favorite kind of dye. It used to be white, but I know much you enjoy red, pretty kitty. I do hope it fits. Francesca. There was a kitten that lingered near his doorstep (trying to paw inside that box), one that she scooped up and cooed to. Kittens were, oddly, a weakness of hers.

"No, no, cara. That box is for Micah..."

Francesca had a way with disappearing into the shadows, like she had never been there at all. Like she was a shadow herself -- and she was. The shadow of a lover, the shadow of a wife, the shadow of an ice queen... like a Venus sculpted from her block of ice, she'd been tipped and shattered and the pieces had melted into unrecognizable forms. Francesca was no longer recognizable -- merely a memory, who faded away when night faded with the coming of the dawn.

[our decadency]

Was Jonah his name, pretty kitty? I think it is. He said I was beautiful, you know. The prettiest girl he'd ever seen. Silly boy, I know he won't tell you that, but I decided to make him wait so I could give you this letter.

I just love that gift. I imagine it was your prude of a wife's -- one that she just never wears anymore? Sexual frustration, I think. You wouldn't be so bitter if you got laid once in a while, darling, but I do know how difficult it must be to find any woman when you have a face like that upon your shoulders. I hear they can do amazing things with lasers now-a-days.

I do hope you had fun with our little game, but all good things must come to an end, hm? Silly things like you can never keep my attention very long -- skin deep is only so thick and I like a little soul, thanks. It makes up for the lack of my own. A pity you don't have one, pretty kitty, I do hope you find it.

Oh, and here's another gift for you. Hope you enjoy it, you won't recieve another.

Francesca."

Already bored with her little games, Francesca had decided to move on, as was evident by the letter. Granted, this was a two-way system and she wasn't the only one making the decisions -- she may have been the only one bored and Micah seemed rather tenacious. It was the kind of tenacity that intrigued her -- and being intrigued meant many things. Many things in which she had no intention of thinking about. No, she already had too much on her mind with a very, very unhappy Ethan.

Ah, his gift. She passed the box to Jonah, who fumbled and muttered and tucked it beneath his arm. (Francesca was such an intimidating thing.) "Grazie, cara." The beautiful smirk splayed across ruby red lips and she watched Jonah start to wander back, black box secured. There was no blood this time, there was no acrid stench or torn lace -- just a red shirt, dyed in a Gucci factory in some foreign land, ready to be worn by a man named Micah.

No, Francesca didn't have a soul... but sometimes she had a heart. A fickle one, with a funny way of operating.

[our decadency]

Ethan,

I want to say that I hope this finds you well, but I think I should say that I would be lucky that this should find you at all. I wonder what happened between us, when the fine line snapped and we became bitter lovers. Ex-lovers. Lovers who were really never lovers to begin with, just two ill-shaped souls who tried in vain to make themselves fit together. I think that's my fault. I'm never going to fit with anyone, though you were a close enough match to satisfy me -- I don't think I was for you.

Instead of running from the inevitable, as I'm so prone to do, I think I would rather just see you. If you're going to kill me, kill me. If you're going to be with me, be with me. But I don't want to wonder anymore, I don't want to guess about your feelings or your actions or anything, ever again. I feel like I've already lost you. I don't want it to stay that way, but if it must, if you think it's best, it must.

I trust that you can still find me, wherever I may be when the mood strikes you to come and catch me, so by all means... I want to see you. Be wary, however, as I seem to have unintentionally made a few friends along the way. One in particular who will not likely give you a friendly welcome. Though I suppose that could be best, as you may not give one to me. I want to be clear, though. I miss you. I know you must be angry with me, but I'm not angry with you anymore. I can't remember what there was to be angry about in the first place, as it is. You have every right to be angry with me. I left you, I ran from you, I gave you every reason to loathe me -- and I hope that you do, I hope you aren't going to forgive me so easily. Love or not, I had no reason to treat you the way I did, but you had no reason to keep me at arm's length, the way you did.

Find me when you want. If you want. I will wait.

My love,
Francesca.

[our decadency]

For the first time in this afterlife, Francesca fled to Italy and it was not from Ethan. Nor was it to him. She fled from Micah... from the man who treated her like she was the plague. No note to be found, no warnings given (nothing of substance anyway, as he had blown all of her threats of leaving off), she had simply vanished into thin air, as if she had never existed at all. Oh, but she had. In Florence, she had thrived, existed upon the existance of others, and now would be no different. Except this time, there was no fear in her veins. If Ethan followed, there would be no malice (at least, not on her end) and she knew that Micah would never leave his beloved city for her.

The Italian didn't know what to expect, with her departure. It became evident though, that not even the ocean could ebb at the feelings in the pit of her stomach. She was bound to Micah, bound by blood and by fate, but not by choice. He loathed her, he had said so. She had hoped with her leaving, travelling across an ocean, that whatever had sewn their emotions together with invisible thread would suddenly fray and snap and leave them as two seperate beings again. But that wasn't the case and it took everything she had to push him and his emotions to the deepest recess of her mind. To keep him locked away, for good, because the pull to go back was almost overwhelming. Even Ethan had never overwhelmed her the way Micah did now. It stunned her.

And so she spent her days, lounging in Italy now, wondering whether or not she should have left him. He was angry. Or at least she imagined he would be, once he found out that she had really gone. Once he realized what he had let slip through his fingers.