Chrysalis - Prolouge: Butterfly's Lament
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
The sounds of a thousand, thousand little gears filled the tiny room, each clicking in an odd rhythm with one another, giving the room a predictable, almost living pulse, with each synchronous clack another machine, toy or device would witch, blink or roll in it's enclosure; a testament to motion to the motionless; false life made mockingly solid.
The room was setup like an old world puppet shop; from every nook and cranny stood some sort of doll, toy or clockwork game to delight children, to fill the mind with a joy, with an adventure into the depths of some magical world, just before dinner. Marionettes hung from a lattice in the ceiling, and porcelain dolls lined shelves long covered in dust; all seemed turned as if by their own accord, to the cracked and weathered door; rustically labeled with red paint 'Workshop' above the door; lit along it's outlines by a flickering light within.
To the daring, within the door lay a truly mystical scene, surrounded by the spare parts of a million and one dolls, puppets and various machinery sat a single wizened old man; age weighed heavily on his frame; but he still seemed oddly solid and steady, despite his bent posture, a slim van dyke moustache stood on his face, a brilliant shade of white to match the salt-and-pepper in his shortish, messy hair, pulled away by an old battered bandanna; oil stained and paint-spattered from years of use. Perched upon his nose were a pair of silver rimmed spectacles; fitted with multiple lenses to function like a magnifying glass when needed, a smile painted his face as he reached out to something out of sight; a paintbrush held in his nimble, spidery fingers.
To those who would dare, a curious site was presented to them, sitting before the old man was a almost polar opposite to his age and caution; a beautiful, blindly good looking young man; striking one at the age of maybe late twenties; his face was a Botichelli angel's wet dream; perfectly smooth angles set in a statue of alabaster skin of the purest, most milky white, framed by soft locks of the same hue, loose and messy, pulled away from his face haphazardly with metallic clips, his eyes were intense but somehow still loving; lacking color nor definition beyond three black lines, denoting pupil and iris against the white. Clad in nothing but a wrapping of apparent gauze or cloth over his lower extremities; the boy sat perfectly still as the old Dollmaker reached out with his paintbrush to trace a neat black line around his eye, the old toy man smiled as he completed the line;
"See - the girls all like the effeminate look nowadays; gone are the sales of my knights and lords made of wood and steel; they all want pretty things now" he said with a loving smile as the boy apparently tilted his head as the Dollmaker painted another line over his left eye; completing the application of his permanent eyeliner.
"Am I girly Father?" he asked quietly, blinking with inhuman speed to help the paint dry before it smudged, and the old artifice smiled, gripping the boy's bare shoulder warmly
"My dearest child; you are not girly; you are beautiful, the culmination of a most divine inspiration; you're a masterpiece!" he crowed quietly, taking the clips from his hair to let it fall along his face and grabbing an old careworn mirror from his workbench, holding it so the youth could see his face.
Indeed the youth was lovely, enough to make the coldest baronesses in the iciest reaches of the most frost-locked world's heart warm and flutter at the sight of him, he smiled and looked at his father and then frowned a little
"But I'm not finished yet Father" he said, pushing down the mirror "I'm incomplete"
The old toymaker sighed and nodded "This is true my boy, you are yet to be a real masterpiece; so much work to be done, yes!" he reached out and cupped the boy's cheek and smiled "But the day comes soon! Do not fret your ticking little heart about it." He said warmly, idly going to mix some paint "Now then, let's start on those lips, too pale they are, too pale you are!" he smiled; kneading several tubes of pigment as he said it, eyeballing the youth.
"After that your hair needs a colo-..." the old tailor trailed off as he heard the bell to his front doll ring, setting down the paint he touched the youth's shoulder gently "Stay here my son, make not a sound"
The youth seemed a bit frightened, his father had never made him stay in the workshop unless it wasn't safe for him to leave. The old man stood and walked out of the workshop, beyond the white-haired youth's vision into the main shop, his voice traveled back in his comforting accent: "I'm sorry, we're closed"
But the answer was far more sinister.
"No, you see you're about to be closed old man, permanently closed - you seem to have neglected to pay us for those 'items' that my friends and I risked our necks to get you; and your grace period officially expired ten seconds ago"
The youth strained to see, but he heard a scuffle, the sound of a doll's head shattering and the labored grunts of his father, oft heard when he tried to lift something heavy; he bolted to his feet when he heard the too-familiar sound of a blade being drawn.
Shoving through the door he watched with a unknown emotion as the mysterious aggressor; clad in a floor-length coat and a wide-brimmed top hat, plunged a slim bladed knife into his father's chest, the slender edge arching through the air in almost perceived slow motion, before finding a new and terrible sheathe in his father's abdomen. The older man jerked, letting out a gasping cry as the taller, black-clad figure wrenched the blade upwards, gutting him from pubic bone to sternum like a fish in one quick movement, the gout of blood that sprayed pattered against his coat like rain, the candlelit ambience making each droplet glow and glimmer like a tiny little hellish ruby, through all of this, the boy watched, his empty heart filled with an emotion he never felt before; he wanted to run away, he wanted to break down and beat the ground with his fists...he wanted to tear out the black-hatted man's heart and feed it to him, but in the end, he settled for catching his Father's swiftly falling body, holding him close as his rich red blood oozed over his immaculate white skin.
The boy didn't know how to scream, he didn't know what was happening, but he did know one thing; how to cry.
Tears began to run down his blood-spattered cheeks as he gripped his quickly-fading creator's figure, whispering unintelligible panicked gibberish as the old man cupped his cheek one last time, unable to speak through his ravaged lungs, he mouthed a single phrase to the terrified toy.
Live my boy, live. The final, mimed words as his once steady and strong hands quivered and shook with death's grip, clenching on the Doll's shoulder as his warm gray eyes stared glassy and lifeless; Death stealing their light for his own.
The Doll's artificial tears ran down his cheeks, mixing with his father's blood in a river of unintelligible pain as he turned to the hooded and cloaked man still standing over him, a new feeling burned through his empty, blank slate of a soul; he felt as if he'd explode, his body filled to the breaking point with a hatred, with a rage he'd never even knew he could feel as he stared at the man, as he stared at mankind; he was still too frightened to fight, but as he black-clad man approached him; he did not flinch, did not look away.
He felt a pair of deep blue eyes meet his colorless ones and felt the rough, gloved hand grip his face, then push it away with a derisive snicker
"Just an overgrown toy; batteries will run out on their own" he muttered, shoving the Doll away to glare at him, cleaning his knife with a broken toy's hair, he smiled sadistically at the blood-stained marionette, still clinging to his father's eviscerated corpse.
With a tip of his hat he was gone, and the unfinished Doll; was left so very alone - with only his hatred for company.
Many claim to have heard in that night; a scream that they say still reverberates in the deeper sections of the ghetto; a scream of such loss and pain that every mother, every child whom heard it, still weeps at the memory.
But the roar that would follow it in time would deafen the world.