The Empty World | The Empty World Sequence [complete | rewriting]

"Thirty" (Draft 2)

"Julien," Morpheus said, "help me up."

Julien became gentle, lifted Morpheus with care, moved a hand up his spine to make sure all was in order, lay his hand to the back of Morpheus' head and rubbed it. Morpheus opened his eyes, blinked to clear his vision. His arm was stinging. Julien's eyes went down to it, and then he bent, and he sucked gently at the wound, almost as if he meant this to be making love. Morpheus closed his eyes voluntarily, braced himself as Julien's tongue probed the gash in his arm, as his lips closed the wound. For a while Morpheus sat, his arm stinging painfully, as Julien licked at it. But he knew that it had closed.

When he opened his eyes Julien was sitting back, licking blood from his lips dreamily, and he was wearing a god awful orange sequined dress with lots of layers of sheer polyester ruffles. Morpheus looked about the room, something of a wooden cell with only a mirror in it, and them, his Djinn weeping quietly, and a hole in the ceiling through which he could see The City. He looked back to Julien. His eyes were open. He noticed the dress was badly stained, and that Julien smelt bad. And he noticed a very interesting plant was wound about Julien's leg, and that Julien was in satin spiked heels.

"Julien, how did you get into Torment?"

"Well, Athen and I were on Magazine street, and there was this fog, and we kept walking, but when it cleared we were not in New Orleans anymore. I thought, Gawd, we've gone completely over the rainbow, and I've only got Athen for company, this is awful, but then we fell through something of a rabbit hole, which sounds fun, right, but instead of finding wonderland, we found Hell, and some Satans damned us because they didn't much like us, or Nephillim, these particular Satans."

"They put you in Torment?"

"Yes, and these tortures are really very personalized, I'll tell ya, I couldn't just be chained up and whipped, no, that would be bad enough, but instead they lock me in this room, and only let me out to go into the other room where every garment is a bad dress and all the make-up is totally wrong for you. And then they sent me on a stage to lip-synch to very early Madonna songs, and they through shit at me if I don't dance to their satisfaction. And I can't really escape, because I've this vine! Oh, and then it all goes over again!"

"Jules..."

"The vine was awful, but I'll tell you a secret, I've found that it was torturing the vine having to force me to do things, and so I've been giving in, rather surrendering to the torments recently for its sake. And they've realized, because most recently there's been a trailer, and we sometimes get in this awful trailer and tour, and the audiences are full of new torments. But the vine and me, we get along in secret, it takes blood from me and it strokes me with its petals so I won't feel so bad."

"You look awful."

"Yes, well, you don't look so hot."

"The world is dying."

"Up there?" Julien pointed to the ceiling. "You mean we could get out? I'm sure they'll come for me any second."

"Yes, but The Land is falling apart."

"The Land? Where are we?"

"I'll show you," Morpheus said. He looked up.

"Um, Murph," Julien said.

"Yes?"

"Well, first of all could we take the vine?"