I will restore your true form. Let me shed your wretched skin.
<aside>
Draft 1
“You damned fool. Can’t you do a single thing right?”
Spittle flies to his cheek, a secondary source of perspiration tainted by the stench of alcohol. A sharp kick of the polished leather shoe to his shin forces out a pained hiss, the cowering victim shrinking into a crouch at the feet of the perpetrator and the wavering surveyors that border the periphery. Hot iron singes the tip of his tongue, as do the claws of bile threatening to pounce at the posterior.
“Useless, useless, utterly unbearably useless.”
A kick to the stomach. The air escapes his lungs in a long wheeze. The abuser ventilates with heavy burden.
“No better than street crud. I’m sick of your whining… Are you even listening to me here?”
Consecutive blows land to his side just below the ribs. His trembling, heaving figure slumps against the grainy flooring, the debris embedding itself into his cheek.
“Stay down there crawling in the dirt, will you?”
He inhales. Exhales.
A stream of warm liquor pours down onto his head.
The audience dance in undulating rhythm around his personal stage, toeing the tape that circles his glorious performance. They tower overhead, looming above his shivering corpse, their feverish thieving breaths stealing the air from under his gasp, leaving behind no leftover remains for the grovelling vermin.
He’s drowning, suffocating, he’s dying once more— no, that’s not quite right. He has been dying.
And SHE is the one bearing the weight of this rotting carcass.
“Eudeir?”
The matrix of reality snaps back into its proper state. He is attending company dinner at a rather rundown restaurant, the dim light failing to illuminate the decade old stains patterning the carpet. His raging superior is snuffed into containment at the warning of an intercepting officer, the indifferent gazes of onlookers pass by with brief interest, and the unbothered clamour of the seated customers resumes.
On unsteady limbs, Eudeir props himself upward and raises his sodden head to link eyes with a familiar white haired bystander poised at the entryway. Two peculiar feathers protrude from their head, one on either side and curved back as though mimicking a goat's horns. Draped across their shoulders is a sterile white lab coat. A gaze of thinly veiled abhorrence is returned, although he cannot tell if it's directed towards his plight or he himself. Hot shame flushes across his face in recognition of his ugly display of weakness, ineffectively attempting to hide himself with a quick aversion of his eyes.
A gloved hand reaches out to intercept his escaping sight. A foreign protrusion that doesn’t belong in this setting, an anomaly which disobeys the fixed congruity of the world.
“Get up.”
It’s cold.
To succumb to this temptation would be to rescind the foothold that he has established in this plane. Does he have the right to take that hand? A hand he had once considered within arm’s length was in this moment, too distant for him to grasp, a figment of fantasy that he is not permitted to fancy, an implausibility which—
The hand moves to grip his shoulder with it’s biting maw, fishing him from the depths of delusion, pulling him to bay. A gasp is jolted from his deprived lungs, his body clumsily stumbling to the soles of his feet which almost refuse to remain planted on the ground. An half-concealed glare meets his eyes.
“Let’s go. You look terrible.”
Without a chance for protest, he is lurched forward, pulled over the worn tape and weaved through the waves of audience members.
—
“We should talk again.”
—
“I can’t stand it anymore. You— you wouldn’t know, I am aware but…”
His voice must’ve cracked, but he cannot tell.
“This body of mine— this, thing that I reside in…”
He is afraid to look up and see the reflected revulsion.
“It’s alien. All I’ve ever wanted, I—”
The words refuse to dislodge.
His throat constricts, choking out his voice to only leave alive a feeble croak. The faint murmuring of the surroundings are droned into a static hum, his vision ripples and distorts into thin threads of reality that interweave with accelerating pulsations to present a tapestry of disarray. Fingernails dig into the thin layer of cold sweat that sheathes his palms, the inside of his mouth dries with unsavoury friction as he swallows down the blasphemy that pries at his chapped lips, and in a short burst of courage his eyes dart upwards to face the daw.
The eyes he meets bore into him, harbouring an intense intrigue that could only be mistaken for curiosity, perhaps enthrallment. A gloved hand extends to hover above his nape, pausing for a breath’s hesitation, then directing itself to rest against his back; the touch is cold. He momentarily finds himself petrified, only barely managing to break free of with an abrupt twist of his head.
The daw opens its beak.
“Eudeir. You can tell me.”
It's lukewarm.
“Share your concerns, your despairs and I will listen.”
An uncomfortable feeling persists.
“Regardless of what you are, I will support you.”
Lies upon lies. All of it is deception, he knows. This is the universal truth.
“I understand what you want, I know what you desire.”
He is rooted in place.
“I can help you.”
The words that were prepared to spring forth from his throat die down.
This sweet indulgence, is he worthy of tasting it? Is SHE? In this moment, those inhibitions no longer mattered. Not with the otherworldly nectar that he is promised a sip from. Nothing else matters — not the audience that slips past him, the bulging eyes which probe at his skin, the rusted nails which pin him to the board.
—
It’s warm.
</aside>