This freebie story for my surreal steampunk inspired by 19th century poetry, poets, legends of fae and vampires, On the Other Side of the Mask was the result. I'm thinking of rewriting this and including it in the story itself...
Shelley buried his face into his pillow, trying to avoid the sight of the shadowy figure bending over his bed. It wasn’t real. It could be real. It looked too much like his own face, if he were to add a few years, surrounded by his own ginger curls, only it couldn’t be Shelley. He’d never worn purple velvet, not in all of his short life in Paradise. Only the pale lords and those who served them wore such costly attire, such vibrant colours.
“Get thee behind me,” he whispered, recognizing how empty his words were. There was nowhere to get and nowhere to go. Shelley dwelled in Paradise, in the heart of the Goddess’s church, as one of her songbirds. Nothing could touch him here.
Nothing that wasn’t supposed to.
“Your kiss, your surrender is long overdue.” The familar face came closer, revealing more differences between Shelley’s and it; a longer, narrower nose, lips covered with rouge. It was almost a doll’s face, very like a painted mask. “All the other songbirds have surrendered their souls. How have you held onto yours?”
“Why is my soul due?” Something about this doll-like man, a ghostly hint of spirit mingled with sorrow in his blue eye emboldened Shelley. He sat up and leaned closer. “Why do you require it? Why are you sneaking around the choir cells at night to claim it? Doesn’t it belong to the Goddess?”
The figured recoiled from the bed at this confrontation. Or perhaps Shelley’s words made it question its resolve? Whatever the reasons, it withdrew back into the shadows, vanishing, leaving only dust behind.
Shelley sat up in what felt like brilliant moonlight filling the room, only to have warm arms catch him up in a fierce embrace.
“Shelley!” Byron hugged him, pressing his face into his hair, his cheek, breathing in the scent of him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right.” Shelley hugged back, surrendering to the other boy’s tight embrace, his feverish touches which made certain he, Shelley was still there.
This was the only surrender he was willing to render. A sharp spark of defiance, the same defiance which inspired him to follow Byron and claim his name flared within Shelley’s breast, intensified by the heat of Byron’s fingers. That spectre might believe some other surrender was due, but Shelley wasn’t going to give it.
He glanced at the other figures in the small beds. Some of them stirred, showing a wan interest in Shelley’s nightmares. Once Mae would have come running to his side. Now she only offered him a sleepy, sad smile before closing her eyes. All the fire had dimmed in Caro’s, leaving them gleaming with only the palest light of intelligence.
They were changing, the other songbirds, just as Claire had changed after claiming his name and his bed in this cell. The spark of interest in what was happening around them, one which all the children used to share was dying.
Dying or being taken from everyone except Byron and Shelley. Could it be their souls? Or was it something else which the other songbirds had given up, bit by bit?
Shelley tightened his grip on Byron, the spark blazing within, fanned by protective fury. Not Byron. Never Byron. Let the hungry spirit haunting these cells take everyone, even Shelley himself in the end. It would never take Byron.
Shelley would force the creature to choke on his own life force first.
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