❛ and do you really trust your tongue
or did you bury the taste? ❜

. . . . .

THERE COMES TIMES IN LIVING THAT TRANSFORM US, and all we can do is decide how it changes our perspective. Grief is absolute, unchanging, biting and excruciating. It tears into your pores, skinning you from within, twisting your rib cages and veins to the beat of its jocund drum. It festers inside you, scraping your muscle and joints, making room for the burning infection. It spreads its poison, teeth grinding in anticipation at your untimely paralysis.

Augustus Moore long abandoned the courage it took to exit his catatonic state, to meet his temperamental paroxysm head on. For in these profound moments of struggle, he dwelled in the black hole tears of his subconscious. Every strike, every jab - his body rebounded and countered with a hunger to protect. Augustus long fought the urge to dig his talons into his brain and scrape. To mash the matter between his knuckles and joints. What more can you do when your own body betrays you?

Why are you connected to Jasper Whitlock?

The miasma of blood envy and rain slick battlefields always grew more suffocating than the char of his throat. He could control the locking of his jaw and rivets of venom congesting on his tongue, but Jasper managed to usurp the throne and monopolise all his thoughts.

"Every God has his favourite soldier." Augustus mused, eyes cataloguing the intricate movements of the immortals in front of him. Everyone had a role to play in the scheme of all wicked things. Whether it be a finger on the trigger, owning hands coated in thick acts of vice - prioritised for crushing larynx's or pushing shiny figurines on makeshift battle fields with filth streaked faces and freshly shined boots. More importantly, the virulent attack on one's subliminal self, coaxing them from their body's natural defence while scar harassed hands dislodged your head from your shoulders. His entire psyche was merely an extension for Jasper Whitlock to manipulate on his self indulged odyssey to Maria's ratification.

The bronzed haired young man's lips twist into an unimpressed line. He pinned Augustus with a disappointed look. "He's not here. Your Major."

The venom in his conviction rolled over Augustus, leaving him sizzling in anticipation. He remembered being blindly loyal to a man wrapped up in a promising, glorious purpose. The expression didn't suit the youth in front of him, it seemed misplaced, almost fabricated. There was no weight behind the words that hung in the air between them, tantalising and promising no real consequence. However, the strain was evident.

"I am not here for my Major." Augustus sneered coolly, "I pose no threat. I was until recently merely passing through. I have no premeditated purpose." The threat rang clear in the air, 'I'm not a threat unless you make me'

"That's not what I saw." Alice insisted, her eyes holding a type of innocent intensity that raised Augustus's hackles. She removes herself from the protective embrace of her brother, hovering just out of reach in case she needed a quick getaway to escape another of Augustus's brutal episodes. "We both know what would've happened if we didn't intercept."

"I would've fed." Augustus said nonchalantly, "the natural need for one's being. Is that a crime?". Every inch of his body flared up in discomforting cumulation of raw hunger and parturient guilt. The assault of lifeless eyes, gnarled necks and slack mouths frozen in horror scorch his mind.

"To only regurgitate it hours later?" Her brother unhelpfully pointed out.

"And what would you know of my demeanour?" His lip curled in disdain at his lack of effort to try and conceal it. There was something deeper about this situation, something Augustus hadn't been able to tear apart and devour.

"Enough to know that you need to come with Edward and I." Alice reiterated, straying further from the safety of her partner and into the uncertainty of the situation playing in front of her. "Your body took the liberties of bringing you here, surely your mind can follow?"

Compulsion, an imbalance of his own body chemistry demanding his abnormal need to wander. It's rare that he subjugated his body's needs to his wants. He found unconventional safety within the impossible maze of his mind, recessing on the wavelengths that brought him to shore. When he rose from his mind chamber, it wasn't a miscellaneous revelation that the blood that caked under his nails and stained his face was days old or his surroundings had transformed from hyperborean continents to the ageing forests of Lithuania. There was safety in remaining oblivious to your actions and shirking your consequences.

"I don't answer to my body anymore." The body that built Augustus into a man riddled with cinereous tragedies and diabolical means. It was no longer governed by Augustus's own muddled wants of morality or virtue. What his body did was no concern to him anymore, it lay waiting for carnage, sharpening its ivory claws on his femur. And now it smelt blood.

"Alice, it's no use." Edward snarled, his eyes cataloguing Augustus's essence retreating into the cesspool of his mind. With ludicrous courage, Edward moved like light, the air carving around him with overwhelming speed, fangs as sharp as blades outstretched "Get Jasper, now!"

Jasper. Jasper. Jasper.

Augustus could feel a growl simmering at the bottom of his oesophagus, it was molten hot, caustic and positively imperial if it flowed past the blistered wounds on his lips. Pain was lashing across his shoulder like the tides of the ocean, skimming its paralysing nails down his left side. Fight it. Fight it, soldier!

Teeth bared, a blinding anger ripping through his senses, coaxing him out of the deepest part of his mind, he caught the arm strangling his neck in a vice grip and threw his weight forward. The burdensome weight that once bore down on his neck swore violently as it landed heavily on its back. Augustus wasted no time, driving his knee into his opponent's unprotected chest, he slammed his elbow into their throat. Faintly, he could hear terrified screaming, the sensitivity tenuous when adrenaline reinvigorated his purpose. You bring the fear, the paralysis, the slaughter, the victory. Little heretic, savour in your unrelenting purpose.

Beneath him, his assailant bucks wildly in desperation under the obstinate grip of his neck. Golden eyes blown wide in horror, his mouth gave way to the sound of strangled words, tasting of pleads. It was lost in Augustus. The jarring sensation of nails digging into his thigh was sharp and grounding. With a snarl he landed another swing, striking back thrice as hard and thrice as intensely. Edward's head snapped sideways, puncturing cracks on his temple began to web with the fissures snaking under where Augustus's fist throttled the bronzed boy's pale throat.

Completely at his whim, Augustus's body flared with the sickening yearning to silence the convulsing body underneath him. To feel his skin crumble under his dirt streaked hands, grinding it into flaky matter to digest and throw up hours later. If Augustus had his druthers, he would disappear into the foggy abyss, his memory no more than an impression of the stench of gunpowder and anguish. But what good is leaving your prey unscathed? For they will collect themselves off the ground on the morrow, with every tugging stitch of torn skin their mouth salivates at the prospect of revenge.

Before he could land the killing blow, a frenetic growl scorches the tense atmosphere. Suddenly Augustus's right shoulder thunders in pain as he hits the ground rolling, metres from where Edward, perched on his knees, rubs frantically at his frayed skin. Alice flits over, quavering hands pulling her assaulted brother's head onto her clothed thighs.

Wasting no longer to dwell, Augustus uses the momentum of his spiralling body to roll into a crouch, muscles wound tight, tendons sizzling with lightning. The blurry figure in front of him lunges for him again, but this time Augustus expects him. Arising with his hands locked into a familiar fighting stance, he side steps the attack, instead throwing his leg out which meets its intended target of the man's unprotected side. With a grunt, the man is thrown to the side, the forest floor tearing apart at the disturbance.

Augustus arranges his tightly wound body into a defensive stance. The floor shuddered underneath the force of his attacker's obstinate footfalls, he tracks the movement from his peripheral. Nostrils flaring, he drops low and sweeps his leg in a wide arc to knock him off his feet. However, he's too slow. He was losing sight of his control. He was a dead man.

His head cracks against the floor, static swarming his senses. Faintly he hears the distinctive female voice shout again. The world plunges into thick silence Augustus knows his frazzled muscle memory have fabricated. He welcomes the beckoning call of his mind, its silk wrapped claws lunging at him with beastial ferocity to drag him kicking and screaming to the primeval cataracts of his subconscious.

"Jasper stop."

Jasper. Jasper. Jasper.

"You know this isn't how it goes."

Jasper. Jasper. Chaos. Golden. Jasper.

"Your visions didn't intercept this. How could you know?"

The vibration of his deep voice told the story of scepticism and red, hot fury. To Augustus it was as homecoming tyres upon a gravel road. A flicker of fear and resentment licked at his gut. Before he could stop himself, a malevolent laugh percolated from his lungs, addled with by the familiar disbelief one was saddled with in the presence of a God reincarnated.

"No matter how far I run, I'll never be free of you will I, Major Whitlock?"

His own voice grated his tender nerves. It croaked, like an old door in a thunderous breeze. It was pathetic and weak. The silk claw sinking into his membrane never felt more victorious. Cool hands encompassed his head, holding it delicately in fear that if he moved a finger, his scattered brain matter would leak out of his ears. With great effort, Augustus levelled his eyes into focus.

Golden.

Jasper Whitlock's aureate eyes regarded him cautiously. The same eyes that once painted him a light that propagated violent ardour. Eyes that dictated the tide that strained against Augustus's seams and hissed its acrimony into clipped ears. This vibrant gold, a humorous juxtaposition of the violence that breeds its malformed power inside Jasper's twisted structure. Augustus could almost taste the hysteria and its edge.

"You don't deserve it. Redemption."

After all, Jasper was his creator of his damned self and the cause of his premeditated demise. The judge, jury and executioner of an imperious fate injected into his bone marrow on that battlefield marinated in blood and vengeance. Redemption was never a topic Augustus humoured himself on. Not when major cities were built upon the carcasses he so artfully wove together.

"You don't deserve that privilege." The words tore from his throat with a ferocity that rivalled overheated machines of war. He wanted Jasper to suffer. To feel the scorch that boiled his membrane. He had been suffering since he crossed paths with the surly soldier, eyes bright with duty and naive purpose. "How dare you find peace in this lifetime. A security you wouldn't afford your soldiers who rot away in non-native soil, undermined under foreign flags?"

"Augustus." The warning in his tone was powerful, dogged by the tightening around his face. Augustus allowed another raspy laugh to grate his throat, tilting his cheek into the contracting grip, revelling in the grate of skin against skin. Hate is a fickle thing that was planted in souls reborn from creation. All it takes is a crack for animosity to spring from its hollowed cage, teeth sharpened and craving carnage. Augustus had found himself lost countlessly in yearning that it was exhausted to an aching numbness.

Securing the grip Jasper's hand on his lax face with his own determined hands, Augustus felt Jasper's eyes drilling into him a conglomerated approach of distrust and uncertainty. With one last glance to Jasper's stormy face, Augustus let his eyes roll back, "Finish this."

Faintly he could hear loud bouts of protest before the silk wrapped claws slammed into his neck, severing his back and oesophagus. This time, he welcomes the mesmeric call of his mind, allowing the boundaries he so conscientiously cultivated to disintegrate. The blood streaked across the floor, leaking from his dragging body doesn't alarm him as intensely as his longing for eternal caliginosity.

For once, the screeching intonation of cracking marble doesn't bother him. Nor does the familiar weightless feeling of his battered body dislodging once more from his head. As Perseus was to Medusa - Jasper Whitlock will always be his executioner.

AUTHORS NOTE: I'm back bitches. I know, I know...it's been way too long, and this chapter is shorter. I pulled myself out of my hiatus that was sodomising me and whacked together this chapter. The writing process has been insanely aggravating, especially trying to get into the self loathing mindset that Augustus carries with him 24/7. Augustus is a hard oc to write, mainly because he was created during a time of my life where everything seemed so hard. Chapters will be longer when I'm back into the groove of writing him again. Regardless, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! Let me know your thoughts (like Jasper beheading Augustus hehehehe)