Descend by Jaded Fae
Short Story by Jaded Fae
Not sure where this one came from. A traveling muse, if you will.

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A song under his breath, Nick walked through the house on his toes. A small private party was assembled in the living room of the beach house in the guise of celebration.

As it was, Nick had listened to the idle conversations for his planned time of exactly two hours. And with the memorization of their voices he slipped away to accomplish his task.

Unnoticed, his feet padded down the hallway and out the french doors to the deck.

For several minutes he held his position, hands on the deck railing and his head slightly tilted to the side.

The night air was warm and crisp with the salty sea. Nick inhaled the scent sighing as he did so. His head he soon tilted to the other side and the song he mumbled became louder.

"You're mothers' child, But night lays you down, Hair aflame, wild look in your eye..." It was so painfully wished upon and sung so hauntingly, anyone who would have overheard the bitter sweet melody would shiver. An icy hand racing down their backs.

Pushing off the railing, Nick descended the steps and walked onto the beach. His shoes, left on the bottom steps, swayed and fell off the stairs with the wind that was seemingly growing stronger as Nick neared the ocean. The song continued--"Naked belly to the ground, a forest fire, nibbles at your veins, crawls up your arm, runs away with your mind, and burns dry thoughts like leaves," His voice, once soft, rose with the last word of the verse, "Amen!"

In the distance, the cry of seagulls filled the air. The ocean, with it's own symphony, crashed against the shoreline sending a light mist that coated Nick's body with nature's tears.

He sang louder, his voice falling on silent ears. "Eyes stare up, but something's in the way, in the Bible only angels have wings, and the rest must wait to be saved, a dry tongue, screams at the sky, but the wind just breathes words in, as a strange bird tries to fly." At this his voice cracked, "Amen!" He faltered, the fell to the ground in a sobbing heap. His crying so loud that for a one obscene moment the seagulls and then terns stopped their own singing.

He was one of the few that were haunted. Life, once so intricately woven around his fingers, fell through his hands like sand. He had no hold on living anymore.

The water beckoned him. The lady of the ocean whispering to her child. "Come home..."

The world that we as human's hold in superficial residence was a world he knew he belonged to no more. The mist of the waves melted his skin away, liquifying him wholly into the grace of the sea. He was staggering. Teetering at the edge of an unmasked doom, slowly treading the line of sanity.

The lady of the ocean stood up, her dress of water cascading around her. "Nickolas..." he could hear the waves as they ascended around him. "Come with me..."

She existed only in his mind. A perfect escape to the unknown philosophy of dream weaving. It was all he wanted. To return to the home he believed was the most true.

Insanity runs deep, but depression runs deeper.

The earth held it's breath; it was awaiting his next move. In a trance Nick stood up and slowly walked towards the ocean, when he was knee deep in the cold water, he stopped. In a voice he never knew existed inside him he continued his sad melody. "Pieces of us die everyday as though our flesh were hell, such injustice, as children we are told that from God we fell, where are my angels? Where's my golden one? And Where is my hope now that my heroes have gone? Some are being beaten, some are being born and some can't tell the difference anymore..." His voiced faded out, and all around him he heard the ghosts of the world singing along, repeating the verse over and over, a soft gathering of melancholy voices that brought new tears to Nick's blue eyes.

From somewhere above him a little blond boy was crying for him, shedding tears to the body he once owned. In Nick’s mind he saw this boy and briefly reached out, attempting to grab this apparition.

His fingers grazed only air and he stumbled. Barely recognizing his surroundings Nick drifted farther back into the recesses of his mind.

The others, just then noticing his absence, tore through the house in a search that would prove useless. For years they had kept him along side them. It was understood that ‘Nicky’ was not well. They tried to obtain him, to have him as their own. It was only at that precise moment, while they fruitlessly searched, that the others finally came to the realization that you cannot keep those who were never truly there in the first place.

And as the clouds took their control of the sky and the rain began its decent, the remaining four Backstreet Boys watched with newly haunted eyes from the confines of the deck and behind the glass menagerie that had so shielded them for twelve brief years.

They were to witness their brother's self inflicted demise of insanity.

Nick was half in the ocean by then, his tears mixing with the blue waters that matched his eyes. Only his blond head and broad shoulders could be seen from the deck. The ocean became a stage in which Nick dutifully performed his destruction.

Softly, he sang the last words of the verse, "Amen...Amen..." And Nick stepped forward, leaned over, and disappeared into the ocean. His soul forever mingling with the beautiful lady he created and his body washing up on shores yet to be discovered.

Somewhere off in the distance the little blond boy finished the song, "Hallelujah...Hallelujah..." and he faded, and disappeared also.

All that was left were those who were all to swiftly touched. Four souls that would bleed forever but were to never be reunited with their Nicky.

The waves rolled on and on.

END


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