Fiyero Tigelaar's Journal

There was a club and it beat down on him, like the kick of a horse, like the falling limb of a tree hit by lightning. There must be pain, but he was too surprised to notice. That must be his blood, squirting a ruby stain on the white cat, making it flinch.

He had only wanted to see her. Wasn't that it? He'd wanted to make sure she was all right, that he was being foolish in his worry that in the few precious seconds it had taken for him to lose sight of her, the Gale Force had drawn her away to be scraped or quartered or whatever it is they did for ... that sort of thing. He couldn't exactly think about that now, with the way his limbs were twisting unnaturally and the way the club came down again and again in a grim, tympanic rhythm. The shock had worn off, shattering the blessed novelty of indifference that he felt and giving way to the inevitable pain.

His eyes had floated of their own accord to the cat - Milky? Murky? Mulky ... no, Makly. Malky? It was difficult to tell in the worrying haze that lingered above the pain. He felt his body go embarrassingly lax and tasted sharp copper in his mouth, bubbling up from his throat or his lungs, or perhaps from the Source itself. Some part of him was greatly relieved to have emptied his bowels in order to retain some minimal amount of dignity in this. His limbs made some vain attempts to kick, but they had surrounded him like a great murder of crows - or perhaps Crows, dressed in their colourful finery of scarves like grotesque masks.

Then there was dragging - he kept his eyes from rolling back and forth only long enough to catch the trail he was making with his own blood, already beginning to darken and coagulate into a sickening, sticky mess. Their strong arms as he pulled him across the floor gave no relief from the hail of blows, only a larger pause between them.

But where were they going? Surely these trained men had a purpose, a place to bring him. He knew why they had taken him, and wondered why he hadn't left well enough alone. The answer was simple enough; love, concern, all the silly things that ultimately brought a man to his downfall under the most embarrassing of circumstances. He continued to sag as they muscled him through the empty street - the heels of his boots rattled out (thonk-thonk) on the cobbles and he found himself nodding off, chin meeting sternum with an uncomfortable thud.

He felt irritating scarecrow-like through the blaze of pain running through his body, as floppish and useless as the silly straw totems. If he only let his eyes close a short moment, surely whatever was to come - death, or otherwise - would come more quickly.

The warehouse district became uncomfortably cloudy before dropping off completely, leaving him in an unpleasant haze.

[The first Italic Passage is from Gregory Macguire's Wicked, and is obviously copyrighted to the respective owner.]