desiderium | t. riddle

prologue

It was a breed of pain that even he couldn't describe. If he tried, he might use words like "all-consuming," "merciless," "crushing." None of these frivolous strings of letters would truly do justice to the pain he was feeling at that moment.

He could have sworn there were tornadoes of flame cold-bloodedly pirouetting across his skin, daggers of dry ice doing nothing to soothe the scorch, for they were too engrossed in assaulting his molten bones in every way possible. His nails felt as though they were being hacked off, then forced back into the tips of his fingers laced with acid. But this was nothing in comparison to the agony in his restless core, merely a steady breeze amongst the gusts of wind forming the hurricane in his charred lungs. Volcanos of lethal mercury erupted in the void where his heart should have been, causing him to splutter and grasp for air. He couldn't quite put his finger on what, but a sort of metaphysical being in his ribs felt as though it was stretching apart to the point of tearing, not unlike a rope, frayed down to its breaking point, holding on to one last, pitiful string. The pain glided higher and higher up for hours until it finally reached its velvet throne and allowed him to be released with a blunt thud to the unforgiving stone ground.

He thought surely there was blood coating every inch of his skin by now, but when he forced his tongue to run across his chapped lips, he tasted nothing. When he heaved his eyelids up, he saw nothing. His hands had melted from a healthy peach to a blurry, pale, almost skeletal sight, yet no crimson liquid.

A sudden, overwhelming need came over him, eliciting the chocolate haired boy to launch into a  struggle to move his limp body from its sprawled position on the ground. When he found he couldn't muster the strength to get to his aching feet, he submitted to inching himself across the soaking wet stone until his raw, blistered hands finally found what they had been so desperately searching for; a leather-encased book filled with blank parchment.

Its yellowing contents were drenched in the same filthy water that floated on the surface of everything in the dimly lit chamber — it hung morosely over the serpentine statues that seemed to come alive if you looked straight into the murderous depths of their emerald irises, it even dewed the majestically carved, stony complexion of Salazar Slytherin himself.

Shaking slightly, the tall boy found the strength to lift himself off his bruised back and onto his knees. He rummaged weakly inside the deep pockets of his robes and extracted from them two vials and a wand. One vial played host to a thick charcoal liquid swirling with nearly imperceptible wisps of a clear, glowing nectar, while the other was filled to the glass brim with a thin, syrupy scarlet.

He pushed his wand into the first vial momentarily and then withdrew it, only to press it to his left forearm, where traces of a strange sketch could be seen. It looked as though someone had tried to rub permanent marker off his skin, but only managed to go so far before his flesh began to unstitch itself and allow specks of blood to reveal themselves in a path along his veins. The unsuccessful scrubbing now was shown to be entirely in vain as the ebony substance extracted itself from the boy's wand and snaked into the skin where the tip was so determinedly pressed. 

Strands of his disheveled hair fell into his eyes as their pupils dilated at the sight of the onyx color flowing back into his veins, flooding the worn out sketch with ink again. The action made it easy to discern the writhing snake slithering out of the jaws of a skull. The image was haunting, to say the least, although the bearer of the illustration patently did not feel the same way. Instead, his dark eyes glittered with a malice that they seemed to have temporarily lost during the painful ordeal he had just endured.

Once he had gazed at his forearm for a while, unintentionally obtaining a far-off look on his elegantly shaped features, he swept his hair out of his vision and picked up the vial that lay full on the ground. 

The tremors in his hands increased as he uncorked it and poured the blood-red substance over his wand, watching with a hardened expression in his dark eyes as it disappeared into the yew wood. He then pressed the tip of his pale wand into the cover of the diary and let it figure skate three ruby-colored words over the stained leather. The snake-like penmanship dissolved momentarily before reappearing, embossed in a strawberry-gold.

The same color as her hair. It would serve as a painful reminder of the sins he'd bled onto her ethereal soul. The way she had last looked at him. The lack of emotion in her overcast eyes. She hadn't made a sound as inky, obsidian-like liquid glossed over her eyes and oozed out from the claw marks that littered her left forearm like fallen redwoods in a forest. The addictive cherry and rain scents her chestnut freckles seemed to carry everywhere was slowly bidding him farewell, only leaving traces of itself lingering on his lips to taunt him. Her cherry lipgloss. The same sweet syrup he had despised for so long was now the only thing he wanted to taste. For perhaps if he could taste the maraschino on his tongue, he could pretend she was still there, with waves of her strawberry blonde hair flying in the nonexistent breeze, locking themselves onto her rosebud lips.

The boy didn't take notice of the single, crystalline tear that extracted itself from his boiling coffee eyes. Anyone watching would have seen the way it slipped off his bottom lashes to grace the dark circles that had formed under his eyes. The way it slid down from his cheekbone to pool into the three words freshly engraved into the leather-bound book in his weakened hands. Written in the same color as her haunting locks: Tom Marvolo Riddle.